Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Impoverish   Listen
verb
Impoverish  v. t.  (past & past part. impoverished; pres. part. impoverishing)  
1.
To make poor; to reduce to poverty or indigence; as, misfortune and disease impoverish families.
2.
To exhaust the strength, richness, or fertility of; to make sterile; as, to impoverish land.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Impoverish" Quotes from Famous Books



... applied. There exists a spirit of adventure in all societies, which will lead a number to throw themselves into the hands of Chance in one way or another, & which, under the direction of a wise Legislature, may be made to subserve their best interests. The monies raised by lotteries cannot impoverish the community—as they are not sent abroad, but only taken out of one ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks

... daughter Margaret's marriage with the powerful Henry of England was considered a connexion much above the fortunes of the King of the Troubadours. But in the issue, instead of Rene deriving any splendour from the match, he was involved in the misfortunes of his daughter, and repeatedly obliged to impoverish himself to supply her ransom. Perhaps in his private soul the old king did not think these losses so mollifying, as the necessity of receiving Margaret into his court and family. On fire when reflecting on the losses she had sustained, mourning over friends slain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... before he moved the King to farme the Customes in the manner he do, and the reasons that moved him to do it. He showed the a very excellent argument to prove, that our importing lesse than we export, do not impoverish the kingdom, according to the received opinion: which, though it be a paradox, and that I do not remember the argument, yet methought there was a great deale in what he said. And upon the whole I find him a most exact ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... am angry, I try to escape from it by every means. How many times, when I have perceived a beggar sitting huddled up at the end of the street, have I not gone out of my way, for fear that compassion would impoverish me by forcing me to be charitable! How often have I doubted the misfortunes of others, that I might with justice harden ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... is too precious to me, and because it is my first duty to shed it only for their honor and security. The population of Berlin is only a victim of the war, while the instigators of the hostilities between France and Prussia have escaped. But I will humiliate and impoverish the court-aristocracy, who dared to oppose me, and make them beg their ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... European states. In later times, on the other hand, as the piety of the Venetians diminished, their pride overleaped all limits, and the tombs which in recent epochs, were erected for men who had lived only to impoverish or disgrace the state, were as much more magnificent than those contemporaneously erected for the nobles of Europe, as the monuments for the great Doges had been humbler. When, in addition to this, we reflect that the art of sculpture, considered as expressive of ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... greatest beauty, with its comradeship in many fields—these will lift woman by the very soaring quality of her innermost self to spiritual heights that few have attained. Then the coming of eagerly desired children will but enrich life in all its avenues, rather than enslave and impoverish it as do unwanted ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... few occur to me. In addition to "bowdlerise," there is "sandwich." As is well known, this compact form of nourishment derives its name from John, fourth Earl of Sandwich, who lived between 1718-1792. Lord Sandwich was a confirmed gambler, and such was his anxiety to lose still more money, and to impoverish further himself, his family, and his descendants, that he grudged the time necessary for meals, and had slices of bread and slices of meat placed by his side. The inventive faculty being apparently but little developed during the eighteenth century, he was the first person who ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... pyramidal clusters. On this latter plan the SHOWY or NOBLE GOLDENROD (S. speciosa) displays its splendid, dense, ascending branches of bloom from August to October. European gardeners object to planting goldenrods, complaining that they so quickly impoverish a rich bed that neighboring plants starve. This noble species becomes ignoble indeed, unless grown in rich soil, when it spreads in thrifty circular tufts. The stout stem, which often assumes reddish tints, rises from three to seven feet high, and the smooth, firm, broadly oval, saw-toothed lower ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... with any undertaking for the permanent improvement of the island. Unlike the Gangetic race, who were the earliest colonists, and with whom originated every project for enriching and adorning the country, the Malabars aspired not to beautify or enrich, but to impoverish and deface;—and nothing can more strikingly bespeak the inferiority of the southern race than the single fact that everything tending to exalt and to civilise, in the early condition of Ceylon, was introduced ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... independent of all others; and if, notwithstanding her steady devotion to her own progress, she can scatter such rich alms among her sisters, it should be remembered that her charity is of the sort that does not impoverish, but "blesseth him that gives ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... would not admit it, and offered to clear himself by ordeal. King Harald would not have this, but laid on the bishop a money fine of fifteen marks of gold, which he should pay to the king. The bishop declared he would not thus impoverish his bishop's see, but would rather offer his life. On this they hanged the bishop out on the holm, beside the sling machine. As he was going to the gallows he threw the sock from his foot, and said with an oath, "I ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... another one upon the post-office or in some other prominent place. It will be the talk of the region. At first you must give him several days in which to force a sale of his belongings at something approaching their value. We will ruin him by-and-by, but gradually; we must not impoverish him at once, for that could bring him to despair and injure his health, ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... use freely the natural productions of their country, and to increase to the utmost its artificial ones; that they will, permit them to call their own energies, their own resources, into life and action, and no longer impoverish them by rendering them the prey of richer colonies, and what is still more absurd and vexatious, of foreigners; that they will, in fine, grant them the free unrestricted enjoyment of those privileges which the bounty of the Creator has extended to them, and which it ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... the same abuse. Such Popes as Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII had broken up the States of the Church that they might endow their children and their nephews. The nepotism of such as these never had any result but to impoverish the Holy See; whilst, on the other hand, the nepotism of Alexander—this Pope who is held up to obloquy as the archetype of the nepotist—had a tendency rather to enrich it. It was not to the States of the ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... made incumbent on the nobles to maintain the honor of their king, who himself always dined alone, and never kept open table. Spanish policy had devised a still more ingenious contrivance gradually to impoverish the richest families of the land. Every year one of the Castilian nobles made his appearance in Brussels, where he displayed a lavish magnificence. In Brussels it was accounted an indelible disgrace to be distanced by a stranger in such munificence. All vied to surpass ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... would gain from these things if not destroyed, but it is an awful war doctrine that refuses to discriminate between the immediate and the eventual, the direct and the indirect, the important and the negligible advantage that would impoverish posterity to get a dime in cash. No military advantage is sufficient motive for such wanton ravishment. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... still more conspicuous in actions. Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the likeness of all ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... great groups that constitute the bulk of the incoming millions, there are representatives from all the nations and tribes of Europe. All parts of Great Britain have sent their people, and from Canada so many have come as almost to impoverish certain sections. French-Canadians are numerous in the mill cities of New England. From the Netherlands there has always been a small contingent. Portugal has sent islanders from the Azores and Cape Verde. The Finns are here, the Lithuanians from Russia, the Magyars from Hungary. The Greeks are ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... micrococcus or heal the wound, and you are free from both. It being, therefore, granted that the ills of life are in the air, we have but to find the peculiar nature of the case in hand, its habits, tastes, and constitution, in order to destroy it. Impoverish the soil on which it thrives, before its arrival, if you can foresee the nature of the inoculation to which you will be exposed, by a dilute solution of itself, and supply it only with what it particularly dislikes. For an already established tubercle requiring rapid action of the blood, such ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... and fail it must, for there were no hopes that I could honestly retain my seat, to what other means could I resort? While I continued to indulge in wild and extravagant schemes of enriching myself, by which I did but impoverish others, ought I to require of Olivia to partake of my folly, and its consequences? Had I nothing but the cup of wretchedness to offer, and must I still urge her to drink? Was it not my duty rather to tear myself at once away from her; ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... right places for any of those—but I've found something I wouldn't trade for all the others. It is all I have to bequeath you, dear. But the beautiful part of this bequest is, I don't have to die to enrich you with it, nor do I have to impoverish myself to give it away. I just whisper something in your ear—and then you go and see if it ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin

... of guilty, and the prisoner was condemned to banishment and to pay a fine. The place of banishment (which he was apparently allowed to select outside certain limits) was Marseilles. The amount of the fine we do not know. It certainly was not enough to impoverish him. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... at a bright moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing-table, and the frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks drawn by Laura, and hung over his drawers—is it true that I am going to earn my bread at last, and with my pen? that I shall impoverish the dear mother no longer; and that I may gain a name and reputation in the world, perhaps? These are welcome if they come, thought the young visionary, laughing and blushing to himself, though alone and in the night, as he thought how dearly he would relish honour and fame if they could be his. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... when, as in 1831, Irish agriculture employed 1,131,715 workmen to produce a value of thirty-six million pounds sterling, while that of Great Britain(341) produced one hundred and fifty millions a year, and employed only 1,055,982 workmen, these causes are as sure to impoverish the country, as the waste of the Spaniards in supporting such an army of clergy and servants. Of course, the temptation to waste wealth on parks is greater than to waste it in vegetable gardens! The probability ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... encourages a more active use of the individual faculties. And vice vers, all errors in finance and taxation which obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth and morals, tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to impoverish and demoralize them. It holds, in short, universally, that when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest sense for the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are but the requisites of Order in a greater degree; those ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... armies, and send them into the lands of their masters to burn and to pillage, to lay waste and to destroy; they did not slaughter, by their schemes, over a million of free men and another million of slaves; they did not make widows and orphans without numbers; they did not impoverish the land, and lay upon their subjects burdens which would crush them into very dust. Nothing of all this. That is not the way in which the Church abolished slavery. The Popes sent bishops and priests ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... with some ceremony the extremes of human existence—birth and death. Both events are honored with feasting, drinking, dancing, and firing; and the descendants of the dead sometimes impoverish, and even ruin themselves, to inter ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer

... and the papal court served greatly to impoverish the citizens; and they had suffered yet more visibly by the depredations of hordes of robbers, numerous and unsparing, who infested Romagna, obstructing all the public ways, and were, sometimes secretly, sometimes, openly, protected by ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of play, and by that epithet condemning them, as a certain school seems to do, to gradual extinction as the race approaches maturity. But if all the useless ornaments of our life are to be cut off in the process of adaptation, evolution would impoverish instead of enriching our nature. Perhaps that is the tendency of evolution, and our barbarous ancestors amid their toils and wars, with their flaming passions and mythologies, lived better lives than are reserved ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... Spence, "that such an undertaking as this will impoverish her. She is not so wealthy as to be able to lay out thousands of pounds and leave her ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... summed up: He should look upon himself as an agent necessarily interfering with the operations which naturally form and preserve the soil. He should see that his work brings two risks; he may impoverish the accumulation of detrital material by taking out the plant food more rapidly than it is prepared for use. This injurious result may be at any time reparable by a proper use of manures. Not so, however, with the other form of destruction, which results in ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... some rather shy, awkward advances, as if to secure my favor—a very futile endeavor as you can imagine. My views are changing in respect to remaining in his father's employ. The grasping old man would monopolize everything. I believe he would impoverish the entire South if he could, and I don't feel like remaining a part of his ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... young man," Forsyth said, "we can't let you impoverish yourself at this rate. What have you said to your benefactor, Tata? What are ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells

... Their serious occupation was the separating of citizens from their coin and valuables. Preferably this was done by weird and singular tricks without noise or bloodshed; but whenever the citizen honored by their attentions refused to impoverish himself gracefully his objections came to be spread finally upon some police ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... in three days declare the riddle. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they said unto Samson's wife, Entice thy husband, that he may declare unto us the riddle, lest we burn thee and thy father's house with fire: have ye called us to impoverish us? is it not so? And Samson's wife wept before him, and said, Thou dost but hate me, and lovest me not: thou hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people, and hast not told it me. And he said unto ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... as a seer of visions, Nor yet as a dreamer of dreams, I send you these partial decisions On hackney'd, impoverish'd themes; But with song out of tune, sung to pass time, Flung heedless to friends or to foes, Where the false notes that ring for the last time, May blend with some ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... an extensive variety of plants, augmenting the number of their cattle, whether intended for subsistence or reproduction, and improving the breed by a mixture of races well assorted, procuring a greater quantity of manure, varying their culture so as not to impoverish the soil, and separating their lands by inclosures, which obviate the necessity of constantly employing herdsmen ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... yields no better profit in the long run than would be gained by competition in fair prices on a cash system; and in leading up to a general emigration of the laboring population the abuses described will eventually ruin and impoverish those who have heretofore been the only beneficiaries thereof. The decay of improvements inevitable under annual rentings, the lack of sufficient labor to cultivate all the good land, and the universal idleness of the rural whites have kept the land owners comparatively ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the shattering of such a moderate financier as Len Haswell should foreshadow the total ruin of a money czar like Hamilton Burton and impoverish his parasite brother, was an idea too colossal to grasp in its entirety. Yet in the news from America it slowly dawned. In the Paris edition of the Herald it was convincingly chronicled, and the beautiful dark-haired woman who had thrown away her ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... the most precious type of common individual a community can have, and to let a woman on the one hand earn a living as we do, by sewing tennis-balls or making cardboard boxes or calico, and on the other, not simply not to pay her, but to impoverish her because she bears and makes sacrifices to rear children, is the most irrational aspect of all the evolved and chancy ideas and institutions that make up the modern State. It is as if we believed our civilization existed to make cheap cotton ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... politics—I propose to begin first by taxing America, as a blind—that will create an eternal animosity between us, and by sending over continually ships and troops, this will, of course, produce a civil war—weaken Britain by leaving her coasts defenseless, and impoverish America; so that we need not fear any thing from that quarter. Then the united fleets of France and Spain with troops to appear in the channel, and make a descent, while my kinsman with thirty thousand men lands in Scotland, marches to London, and joins the others: What then can prevent the scheme ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock

... life," said Sampson sorrowfully; "but life is not the only good thing a man may be robbed of by those who steal his life-blood, and so impoverish and water the contints of the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... and floods and plagues and fires and premature deaths in those days of Yudhishthira devoted to virtue. And it was only for doing agreeable services, or for worshipping, or for offering tributes that would not impoverish, that other kings used to approach Yudhisthira (and not for hostility or battle.) The large treasure room of the king became so much filled with hoards of wealth virtuously obtained that it could not be emptied even in a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... inconsistent with his new dignity, and not with his previous experiences. This is the kind of person who is to direct Irish legislation more efficiently than the educated class, who unanimously object to Home Rule as detrimental to the interests of both countries, and as likely to further impoverish poor Ireland. The men who now represent the 'patriotic' party will feather their own nests. They care for ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... teaching, the property-owners as a class are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; work must be done to obtain ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... the keenest heed to that which is the most important in its influence on his life, not to that which is the most startling to his fancy. Now, it is unquestionably true, that while there is nothing which contributes so much to enrich or to impoverish us, to bless or to curse us, as our domestic relations, there is scarcely any thing which we take less pains to cultivate into all that it is capable of becoming. In most instances, the life of the home is so ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... which the old borderers threw into their feuds has not become extinct, but survives under more benignant aspects, exhibiting itself in efforts to enlighten, fertilize, and enrich the country which their wasteful ardour before did so much to disturb and impoverish. The heads of the Buccleugh and Elliot family now sit in the British House of Lords. The descendant of Scott of Harden has achieved a world-wide reputation as a poet and novelist; and the late Sir James Graham, the representative ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... Lady Louisa began in clear, emphatic tones. "We all know how you have spoiled Constance. She and Shotover have always been your favourites. But even you must admit that Shotover's wretched extravagance has impoverished you, and helped to impoverish all your other children. And you must also admit, notwithstanding ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... considerations cut disastrously across economic. In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labor, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness. It seems certain, calculating on the present passions and impulses of European capitalistic society, that the effective iron output ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... was a bishop of more than local celebrity. Like Langton, the archbishop, he withstood the demands which the papacy and Henry III. made in their endeavours to impoverish the Church in England. For this opposition the king removed him temporarily from the post of Chancellor of the Realm, a position he held from 1226 to 1240. His "fame rests more upon his repute as a statesman faithful in many perils, and a singular ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Chichester (1901) - A Short History & Description Of Its Fabric With An Account Of The - Diocese And See • Hubert C. Corlette

... no way out of it, even if I could have found you, without infringing one of the conditions I had previously laid down. The long desire of my heart has been not to impoverish you or mar your career. The new desire was to save myself and, still more, another yet unborn. . . . I have done a desperate thing. Yet for myself I could do no better, and for you no less. I would have sacrificed my single self to honesty, but I was not alone concerned. What woman ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... to impoverish and beggar a man. The Drunkard, says Solomon, shall come to poverty. {49b} Many that have begun the world with Plenty, have gone out of it in Rags; through drunkenness. Yea, many Children that have been born to good Estates, have yet been brought to a Flail & a ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... Venice— whether to an Italian we do not know— and when he left the city in 1745 to return to England he took a family along. He mentions "an impoverish'd Family" in the Essay, but beyond this we know nothing of his ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... of this shame, and have to thank themselves if they are maimed and killed, because they descend on railways for compensation with a ruthless hand; (shame to Government here, for allowing it!) and still further, impoverish their already over-taxed coffers. Compensation for injury is just, but compensation as it is, and has been claimed and awarded, is ridiculously unfair, as well ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... spoke warmly against the scheme; but their warnings fell upon dull, cold ears. A speculating frenzy had seized them as well as the plebeians. Lord North and Grey said the bill was unjust in its nature, and might prove fatal in its consequences, being calculated to enrich the few and impoverish the many. The Duke of Wharton followed; but, as he only retailed at second-hand the arguments so eloquently stated by Walpole in the Lower House, he was not listened to with even the same attention that had been bestowed upon Lord North and Grey. Earl Cowper followed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... lived a man of the highest caste, my friend Agelan. He was planning to kill one hundred tusked pigs in the near future, which would raise him to the highest caste far and wide, but would also impoverish him for the rest of his life. He lived quietly and comfortably, like a country squire, surrounded by his relatives and descendants. He seemed fond of good living, and his wife was an excellent housekeeper. In the midst of a somewhat colourless Christian population, wearing ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... his Majesty." To enforce the reverse principle is not only unjust, but impossible, "when three thousand miles of ocean lie between us and them. Seas roll and months pass between the order and the execution. We may impoverish the colonies and cripple our own most important trade, but it is preposterous to make them unserviceable, in order to keep them obedient." The motions were rejected; three years afterward, when it was too late, Burke's opponent, Lord North, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any natively interesting thing. The odd circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source, the objects taken together being more interesting, perhaps, than the originally ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... advantage in the democratic movement. Cobbett fought for the cause of the agricultural labourer, trodden under foot by squires and parsons. Owen believed that the grasping capitalist, with his steam machinery, would further degrade and impoverish the working classes. Godwin, who is merely mentioned by Mr. Stephen, was a peaceful anarchist, who proposed 'to abolish the whole craft and mystery of government,' to abandon coercion and rely upon just reasoning, upon the enlightened assent of individuals to the payment of taxes. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... and Captains, and others Recluses, who abstain from the world and aspire but to Him, for He it is who saith, 'I am the Harmer with adversity and the Healer with prosperity. I make whole and make sick. I enrich and impoverish. I kill and quicken; in my hand is everything and unto Me all things do tend.' Wherefore it behoveth all men to praise Him. Now, especially thou, O King, art of the fortunate, the pious, of whom it is said, 'The happiest of the just is he for whom Allah uniteth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... done, but we had lived under a government that guaranteed to protect our rights and property. No matter if slavery was wrong—was it right for one-half of the people of a country to insist the other half impoverish themselves—give ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... been treated by an exhaustive system of cultivation. In such a case it will be found impossible to restore the fertility of the soil, except very gradually. Farmers who farm in new countries, and in rich virgin soils, little realise sometimes how quickly they may impoverish the fertility of their soils by exhaustive treatment, and how slow the process of restoration is. Nor is this strange when we reflect on the relatively small quantities of fertilising ingredients we are in the habit of adding to the soil by the application of manures, and the nature of ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman

... nation's wealth, forward into the carnage; burn the homes of thrift and industry, for commerce will be enriched thereby; ravage the fields and despoil the cities, for this will insure vigorous national life; impoverish happy peoples, spread famine and pestilence through fertile valleys, mark the sites of contented villages with smoldering ruins, defy your Christian God, and kindle the fires of hell in human breasts; commit violence, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... If I choose to risk my money it is my own affair. I have no family to impoverish. And all business is a risk, a species of gambling. You stake your money against the demand for a certain line of goods, red, we will say. The ball rises and lo, it is white, but you whistle ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... the treasures of his heart for its coming mistress. Of her alone he thinks, and to her all his vows are made. The thought of license would be treasop to his sovereign lady, whose right to all the revenues of his being he joyfully owns. To rob her, to abate her high prerogatives, would be to impoverish, to insult, himself; for she is to be his, and her honor, her glory, are his own. Through all this time that he dreams of her by night and day, the exquisite reward of his devotion is the knowledge that she is aware of him as he of her, and that in the inmost shrine of a maiden heart his image is ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... claim their constitutional rights: bloodshed would almost certainly have followed. But the leaders of the militant women ordered (and were obeyed) that no attacks on life should be part of the Woman's militant programme. Property might be destroyed, especially such as did not impoverish the poor; but there were to be no railway accidents, no sinking of ships, no violent deeds dangerous to life. At the height and greatest bitterness of militancy no statesman's life was ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... if the colors are undimmed by age, like Persian enamel. In some of the temples which I visited, the colorings had been ruthlessly obliterated by coats of whitewash, but in those communities where Hinduism is still a living force, the inhabitants frequently impoverish themselves in order to provide the gold-leaf with which the interiors of the shrines are covered, just as the congregations of American churches praise God with carven pulpits and ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... know, is the first of large-leaved plants to grow afresh on ground that has been disturbed: fall of Alpine debris, ruin of railroad embankment, waste of drifted slime by flood, it seeks to heal and redeem; but it does not offend us in our gardens, nor impoverish us in our fields. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... legally surrendered without the consent of every person who had a right to elect and be represented in parliament. They affirmed, that the obligation laid on the Scottish members to reside so long in London in attendance on the British parliament, would drain Scotland of all its money, impoverish the members, and subject them to the temptation of being corrupted. Another protest was entered by the marquis of Annandale against an incorporating union, as being odious to the people, subversive of the constitution, sovereignty, and claim of right, and threatening ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... other joint, the King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he hath-done." Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the plight in which they found themselves. "Unhappy people!" he cried, "to have such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may rove on while he liveth, and careth neither for doing his own estate good nor his neighbour's state harm." Sir Edward added, however, in a philosophizing vein, worthy of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... industry is an illustration. The people have a vital interest in the conservation of their natural resources; in the prevention of wasteful practices; in conditions of destructive competition which may impoverish the producer and the wage earner; and they have an equal interest in maintaining adequate competition. I therefore suggest that an inquiry be directed especially to the effect of the workings of the antitrust laws in these particular ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... intellect, treated him with a certain deference. He could do as he liked, and they felt themselves to be slaves, bound down by the dulness of the Longestaffe regime. His freedom was grand to their eyes, and very enviable, although they were aware that he had already so used it as to impoverish himself in the midst of ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... then in ivory. All his accumulations would then go to the Zanzibar market, or else to slavers looking out off the coast. Slavery begets slavery. To catch slaves is the first thought of every chief in the interior; hence fights and slavery impoverish the land, and that is the reason both why Africa does not improve, and why we find men of all tribes and tongues on the coast. The ethnologist need only go to Zanzibar to become acquainted with all ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... big words into little words so that the employee can know what the employer is saying to him. The working man handles things. The professional man plies words. I learned things first and words afterward. Things can enrich a nation, and words can impoverish it. The words of theorists have cost this nation billions which must be paid for ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... The rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansion of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; this luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man."—"While the multitude of men degrade each other, and give currency to desponding doctrines, the scholar must be a bringer of hope, and must reinforce ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... that great enemy of agriculture, to impoverish and, over thousands of square miles, to destroy our farms. The Mississippi alone carries yearly to the sea more than 400,000,000 tons of the richest soil within its drainage basin. If this soil is worth a dollar a ton, it is probable that the total loss of fertility from soil-wash ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... am not discouraged by the objection, that the laborer, if encouraged to give time and strength to the elevation of his mind, will starve himself and impoverish the country, when I consider the energy and efficiency of mind. The highest force in the universe is mind. This created the heavens and earth. This has changed the wilderness into fruitfulness, and linked distant countries in a beneficent ministry to one another's ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Frank, is, I would not limit individual desire in any way. What right has society to punish us unless it can prove we have hurt or injured someone else against his will? Besides, if you limit passion you impoverish life, you weaken the mainspring of art, and narrow the realm ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... are sinful. The king that neglects to restrain them becomes himself sinful. He earns (as already said) a fourth part of their sins as he does a fourth part of their merits. The following faults of which I speak should be checked. They are such as impoverish everyone. What wicked act is there that a person governed by passion would not do? A person governed by passion indulges in stimulants and meat, and appropriates the wives and the wealth of other people, and sets a bad example (for imitation ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Many people consider this cheapening of new books as being detrimental to the interests of all but the most vulgarly popular authors. They believe it will increase the difficulty of new writers, and hopelessly impoverish just the finest element in our literary life, those original and exceptional minds who demand educated appreciation and do not appeal to the man in the street. This may or may not be true; the aspect of interest to Socialists is that here is a process ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... had at disposal should be used to supply to you her son such benefits as its annual product should procure. To this end, and to provide against wastefulness or foolishness on your part, or, indeed, against any generosity, howsoever worthy, which might impoverish you and so defeat her benevolent intentions regarding your education, comfort, and future good, she did not place the estate directly in your hands, leaving you to do as you might feel inclined about it. But, on the contrary, she entrusted the corpus of it in the hands of men whom she believed ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... extent by withdrawing from it a certain quantity of the elements to which its fertility is due. That this is the case has been long admitted in practice, and it has also been established that the exhausting effects of different species of plants are very different; that while some rapidly impoverish the soil, others may be cultivated for a number of years without material injury, and some even apparently improve it. Thus, it is a notorious fact that white crops exhaust, while grass improves the soil; but the improvement in the latter case ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson

... our advice—and say, that obedience to its just requirements would impoverish you? Infinitely better, that you be honestly poor than dishonestly rich. Infinitely better to "do justly," and be a Lazarus; than to become a Croesus, by clinging to and accumulating ill-gotten gains. Do you add to the fear of poverty, that of losing ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... possibility of unduly prolonging breast-feeding. Children should be weaned at the end of the tenth month. By prolonging the breast-feeding a mother can undermine the vitality and strength of her baby and so impoverish its blood as to invite disease. A bottle-fed baby should be put upon a mixed diet at the same time. To continue feeding a child exclusively on milk for a year or two after weaning, simply because "it will not ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... double heat renew their fires again. 'Twas this produced the joy that hurried o'er Such swarms of English to the neighbouring shore, To fetch that prize, by which Batavia made So rich amends for our impoverish'd trade. Oh! had you seen from Schevelin's[25] barren shore, (Crowded with troops, and barren now no more,) 220 Afflicted Holland to his farewell bring True sorrow, Holland to regret a king! While waiting him his royal fleet did ride, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... Hebrews' banish'd harps, unstrung, At Babylon upon the willows hung; Yours sounds aloud, and tells us you excel No less in courage, than in singing well; While, unconcern'd, you let your country know They have impoverish'd themselves, not you; 10 Who, with the Muses' help, can mock those fates Which threaten kingdoms, and disorder states. So Ovid, when from Caesar's rage he fled, The Roman Muse to Pontus with him led; Where he so sung, that we, through pity's glass, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... Ireland, and to manifest your sincere desire to assist with some Care and Judgment in the Cure; but you cou'd as well remove Mountains by your Faith, as the Ills we groaned under, by so adequate a Remedy, as your impoverish'd stinted Fund. ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous

... but two sides in the conflict that is being waged in this country today. On the one side are the allied hosts of monopolies, the money power, great trusts and railroad corporations, who seek the enactment of laws to benefit them and impoverish the people. On the other side are the farmers, laborers, merchants, and all others who produce wealth and bear the burdens of taxation. The one represents the wealthy and powerful classes who want the control of the Government to plunder the people. The other represents ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... might overreach another, or make haste to undersell his rival, or seize some advantage of him, or plot some profit to his loss. Nine-tenths of the railroads, which in the old times had ruinously competed, and then, in the hands of the Accumulation, had been united to impoverish and oppress the people, fell into disuse. The commonwealth operated the few lines that were necessary for the collection of materials and the distribution of manufactures, and for pleasure travel and the affairs of state; but the roads that had been built ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... of urgency in times like the present, when, as the result of the havoc of the war, destitution is widespread over Europe. Now obviously these advisers do not mean to recommend something which will impoverish the world next year and the year after and the benefit of which will accrue only in a distant future: it is the immediate urgency of the world's needs which is rather the substance of their case. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... up all the time. Take this sort of a case, for instance. The law only lets a man will away a certain proportion of his property to charity—says it isn't right for him to do so, if he leaves a family. Now suppose your father had given all his property to charity, would you feel obliged to impoverish yourself for the benefit of a Home ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... plentiful, and money was easily obtained by all creditable establishments. The peace, good order, and constitutional liberty by which these blessings were established, afforded England a source of prosperity amidst so much that was calculated to impoverish. The wrecks of many nations floated around her shores, but within her borders all was safe; the shadow of the thunder-cloud passed over her, and she heard its peals, as it burst in lightning and torrent on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... why did Christ tell the man inquiring about his soul to sell all he had and give everything to the poor? Is it necessary for one to impoverish himself in order ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... resolution was to put the valiant Constable to the most dreadful death which his tormentors could devise. But fame told him that Hugo de Lacy was a man of great power and wealth; and he has demanded a ransom of ten thousand bezants of gold. Your uncle replied that the payment would totally impoverish him, and oblige him to dispose of his whole estates; even then he pleaded, time must be allowed him to convert them into money. The Soldan replied, that it imported little to him whether a hound like the Constable were fat or lean, and that he therefore insisted upon the full amount ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... take out vast, many, and very, and the language becomes much more forcible. Again: "The very first effect of the —— taxation plan would be destructive to the interests of this great multitude [class]; it would impoverish our innumerable farmers, it would confiscate the earnings of [our] industrious tradesmen and artisans, it would [and] paralyze the hopes of struggling millions." What a waste of portly expletives is here! With them the sentence is high-flown and weak; take them out, and introduce ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... by a dragon;—these were the astonishment of visitors; and it was freely said that had not Mr. Buxton been exceedingly adroit he would have paid the penalty of his magnificence and originality by being forced to receive a royal visit—a favour that would have gone far to impoverish, if not to ruin him. The chancel of the parish-church overlooked the west end of his lime-avenue, while the east end of the garden terminated in a great gateway, of stone posts and wrought iron gates that looked out to the meadows and farm buildings of the estate, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... angel to my wondering sight; More present than earth gave thee to appear. Yet to the Cause Supreme thou art return'd: And left, here to dissolve, that beauteous veil In which indulgent Heaven invested thee. Th' impoverish'd world at thy departure mourn'd: For love departed, and the sun grew pale, And death then seem'd our ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... printing establishments confiscated, and in a short time fifty agitators had been expelled from Berlin alone. A reign of official tyranny and police persecution was established, and even the employers undertook to impoverish and to blacklist men who were thought to hold socialist views. Within a few weeks every society, periodical, and agitator disappeared, and not a thing seemed left of the great movement of half a million men that had existed a few weeks before. There have been many similar ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... beneficent disposition, restores a great fortune to a miser, or a seditious bigot, he has acted justly and laudably, but the public is a real sufferer. Nor is every single act of justice, considered apart, more conducive to private interest, than to public; and it is easily conceived how a man may impoverish himself by a signal instance of integrity, and have reason to wish, that with regard to that single act, the laws of justice were for a moment suspended in the universe. But however single acts of justice may be contrary, either to public or ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... purchases may be made, not with the habitual productions of a country, not with its revenue, not with the results of actual labor, but with its capital, with the accumulated savings which should serve for reproduction. A country may spend, dissipate its profits and savings, may impoverish itself, and by the consumption of its national capital, progress gradually to its ruin. This is precisely what we are doing. We give, every year, two hundred millions to ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... two Spirits—towering, gigantic Genii—who attend on man: one the Absorbing, the other the Imparting, Spirit. Both are active, energetic, untiring. The former, if it gains access to the soul, commences at once to narrow and impoverish it; while the latter enlarges and makes the soul rich. Herein is explained the old enigma which a dying man ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and animosity penetrated as far as the lowest class; it created fissures in the social subsoil in order to diffuse the proscription there; the local triumvirates, nicknamed "mixed mixtures," served it for that. Not one head escaped, however humble and puny. They found means to impoverish the indigent, to ruin those dying of hunger, to spoil the disinherited; the coup d'etat achieved this wonderful feat of adding misfortune to misery. Bonaparte, it seems, took the trouble to hate a mere peasant; the vine-dresser was torn from his vine, the laborer from his furrow, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo

... has been and is continually experienced in the kingdom owing to the lack of gold and silver coins; but to the Corean mind to make coins out of gold and to let them go out of the country amounts to the same thing as willingly trying to impoverish the fatherland of the treasures it possesses; wherefore, although rich gold-mines are to be found in Cho-sen, coins of the precious metal are not struck ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... great sources of ruin to the Scottish church, both connected with its relation to a powerful aristocracy. One was the extraordinary extent to which its high offices were used as sinecures for the favourites, and the sons of favourites, of nobles and of kings. This did not tend to impoverish the church; on the contrary, it made it an object to all the great families to keep up the wealth on which they proposed that their unworthy scions should feed. 'In proportion to the resources of the country the Scottish clergy were probably the ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes

... raw cotton grown in the State, to consume the provisions which the farmers raised, thus diversifying their employment and increasing their profits. "Would any man tell me," shouted the orator, his eyes blazing, and his arms uplifted, "that this would impoverish the country—would make paupers of the people? To increase the places where the laborer may sell his labor would never make him a pauper. Be controlled," said he, "in the administration of government and in all other ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... deportation of its population. Babylon, equally with Assyria, failed to win the affections of the subject nations, and, as a natural result, received no help from them in her hour of need. Her system was to exhaust and oppress the conquered races for the supposed benefit of the conquerors, and to impoverish the provinces for the adornment and enrichment of the capital. The wisest of her monarch's thought it enough to construct works of public utility in Babylonia Proper, leaving the dependent countries to themselves, and doing nothing to develop their ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... the sake of the slave, to secure his liberty or to establish his rights; but they believed most devoutly that it was done solely and purposely to injure the master, to punish the rebel, and to still further cripple and impoverish the South. It was, to them, an unwarrantable measure of unrighteous retribution inspired by the lowest ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... you none," Norris Vine answered. "All that I can tell you is that I found her a charming, simple-minded girl, in terrible trouble because of your anger, and the fear that you would impoverish her people; and goaded on by that fear to attempt things which, in her saner moments, she would never have dreamed of thinking of. Where she is now, what has become of her, I do not know; but I would not like to be the person on whom rests the responsibility of ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... poor independent planters. Moreover, the arbitrary rule of Governor William Berkeley, the corruption of the Assembly, the heavy and unjust taxes and the frequent embezzlement of public funds conspired to retard the advancement of the middle class and to impoverish its members. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... See book iv. ch. xxxvi.] and if it be true that one can do so, then a man ought to be grateful to himself, just as he is angry with himself; as he blames himself, SO he ought to praise himself; since he can impoverish himself, he can also enrich himself. Injuries and benefits are the converse of one another: if we say of a man, 'he has done himself an injury,' we can also say 'he has ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... dependent upon the college of agriculture for the methods by which he can survive as a farmer. Tradition, which dominated the agriculture of a former period, is a disappearing factor in husbandry of the soil. The changes in market conditions are such as to impoverish the farmer who learns only from the past. Tradition could teach the farmer how to raise the raw materials, under the old economy, in which the farmhouse and community were sufficient unto themselves. But in a time when the wool of the sheep ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson

... most of us is that, in our efforts to sell ourselves for selfish ends or for the most dollars, we impoverish our own lives, stifle our ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... Indies. But it was not wholly with satisfaction that either the Queen or her ministers watched the social change which wealth was producing around them. They feared the increased expenditure and comfort which necessarily followed it, as likely to impoverish the land and to eat out the hardihood of the people. "England spendeth more on wines in one year," complained Cecil, "than it did in ancient times in four years." In the upper classes the lavishness of a new wealth combined with a lavishness of life, a love of ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... disturbs the balance of supply and demand, and contributes to remove industrious hands from the production of what is useful or pleasurable and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things that are a weariness to the flesh. That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and ourselves. It is another question for each man's heart. He knows if he can enjoy what he buys and uses; if he cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, it he cannot, I contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man which he cannot use. Proprietor is connected with propriety; ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gambler. "No, no, no! It is that M. le Duc, impoverish', somewhat in a bad odor as he is, yet command the entree any-where—onless ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington

... advance in the Brazilian trade has arisen from imports instead of exports; whereas the trade of Great Britain has advanced in both; and particularly in her exports, which were already large; the tendency being to enrich Great Britain and to impoverish us: that until 1850 her exports were stationary, while ours were increasing; due, doubtless, to the superiority of our clipper ships at that period, which placed us much nearer than England to Brazil: that she is now taking the coffee-trade away from us, ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... row of soldiers, machine-made men. See the trumpets, I can almost hear their blast, and see the dust and life-blood of degrading, cruel wars, which impoverish and grind into filth the entire afflicted human race, though there are very excellent people of wealth, were there to wisely co-operate. There is some promise in this reading. If rich men could become active benefactors—see the little banners—wars ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara

... case, and as regards any national interest in warlike enterprise. It is doubtless true that all restraint of trade between nations, and between classes or localities within the national frontiers, unavoidably acts to weaken and impoverish the people on whose economic activities this restraint is laid; and to the extent to which this effect is had it will also be true that the country which so is hindered in its work will have a less aggregate of resources to place at the disposal of its ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... strawberry beds, cut off the strings, stir the earth between them, and water them once in two or three days. Dig up the borders near the fruit trees, and never plant any large kind of flowers or vegetables upon them. Any thing planted or sown near the trees, has a tendency to impoverish the fruit.—MAY. If any fresh shoots have sprouted upon the fruit trees, in espaliers, or against walls, take them off. Train the proper ones to the walls or poles, at due distances, and in a regular manner. Look over vines, and stop every shoot that has ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... bring a family into the world if you are so poor," said Miss Wilson severely. "Can you not see that you impoverish yourself by doing so—to put the matter on ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... company; credit in business is an equally inevitable outcome of the ramified mechanism of exchange. We are all gamblers to-day, insomuch as there is no stable relation between work and reward, and the failure of a bank in Calcutta may impoverish a shopkeeper in Camden Town. Our investments may rise or fall in value through the obscure machinations of unknown millionaires. And even the Anti-Gambling League has no word to say against those great gambling concerns, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... this deplorable condition is, as I have noticed (and as Judge Methuen has, too), that the human eye is diminishing in size and fulness, and is losing its lustre. By as much as you take the God-given grace of fancy from man, by so much do you impoverish his eyes. The eye is so beautiful and serves so very many noble purposes, and is, too, so ready in the expression of tenderness, of pity, of love, of solicitude, of compassion, of dignity, of every gentle mood and noble inspiration, that in that metaphor ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... together. Put aside all these artificial ententes and alliances. There are no two people whose ideals and whose aims and whose destiny are so close together as your country's and mine. It is for that very reason that these periods of distrust and suspicion continually occur, suspicions which impoverish two countries with the millions we spend on senseless schemes of defence. Away with them all. Stop the pendulum of your country. Declare your coal strike, your railway strike, your ironfounders' strike. Let the revolution come. I tell you then that ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... that Encyclopedical Scotchman—and he'll need to lock the door behind him, when he comes in; otherwise when he hears my proposed tariff his skin will probably crawl away with him. He is accustomed to seeing the publisher impoverish the author—that spectacle must be getting stale to him—if he contracts with the undersigned he will experience a change in that programme that will make the enamel peel off his teeth for very surprise—and joy. No, that last is what Mrs. Clemens thinks—but it's not so. The ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... create. It has been reserved to railroad managers to demonstrate to the public that a power has been allowed to grow up which has assumed the right to counteract the dispensations of Providence, to enrich the slothful, to impoverish the industrious, to curtail the profits of remunerative industries and revive by bounties those languishing for want of vitality, to humble proud and self-reliant marts of trade and to build up cities in the desert. It will scarcely be ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... world were heaped up in one man's possession, all others would be made poor. Sound fills the ears of many at the same time without being broken into parts, but your riches cannot pass to many without being lessened in the process. And when this happens, they must needs impoverish those whom they leave. How poor and cramped a thing, then, is riches, which more than one cannot possess as an unbroken whole, which falls not to any one man's lot without the impoverishment of everyone else! Or is it ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... to express the whole truth. This imparting of knowledge to others, not only does not impoverish the donor, but it actually increases his riches. Docendo discimus. By teaching we learn. A man grows in knowledge by the very act of communicating it. The reason for this is obvious. In order to communicate to the mind of another a thought which is in our own mind, we ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... Around him all the elements of revolution crystallized. He was sixty years old; seasoned and uncompromising in the pursuit of his one ideal, the independence of the South. His arguments were the same which he had used in 1844, in 1851: the North would impoverish the South; it threatens to impose a crushing tribute in the shape of protection; it seeks to destroy slavery; it aims to bring about economic collapse; in the wreck thus produced, everything that is beautiful, charming, distinctive in Southern life will be lost; let ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... it desirable that the black man should leave us, even if he wanted to. It would impoverish us in no small degree and cripple us in our advancement. He is the natural laborer of the South, and has added, as we shall see, immensely to its prosperity since the war, and he is to be one of the chief factors in securing the ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various

... comparatively slow release of its nutritive elements. Lime added to the peat will break it down rapidly and make it more available as a fertilizer, but until the decomposition reaches a certain point; its effect is to impoverish rather than to enrich the mixture. This seeming paradox can perhaps best be explained by some experiments I have been making with sawdust. A number of plots were prepared and given various treatments, including mixing one ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... coincidence as it might be deemed, for instance, by a jury. Juries are composed mainly of bald-headed men, men whose shining pates have been denuded of hair by years and experience, and these factors dry the heart as surely as they impoverish the scalp. Consequently, juries (in bulk, be it understood; individual jurors may, perhaps, retain the emotional equipment of a Chatterton) are skeptical when asked to accept the vagaries of the artistic temperament in extenuation ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... produces, when once it begins to operate, is a most powerful and effectual cause of decline; and, without the intervention of conquest, or any violent revolution, would of itself be sufficient to impoverish, in the first instance, and, in the second, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... unrighteous; and that the Buyers and Sellers are Enemies to the Peace and Freedom of the Commonwealth. For indeed the necessity of the People chose a Parliament to help them in their weakness. Hence when they see a danger like to impoverish or enslave one part of the people to another, they are to give warning and so prevent that danger. For they are the Eyes of the Land: and surely those are blind eyes that lead the People into Bogs to be entangled ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... now, as he told me, out of his mind, he had leisure for other projects to enrich himself; and he was determined to begin by reforming certain abuses, which had long tended to impoverish the royal treasury. I was at a loss to know whither this preamble would lead: at length, having exhausted his oriental pomp of words, he concluded by informing me that he had reason to believe he was terribly cheated ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... through the house,— Appealing to his clemency With reasons sound and fair. "Pray let me live; a mouse like me It were not much to spare. Am I, in such a family, A burden? Would my largest wish Our wealthy host impoverish? A grain of wheat will make my meal; A nut will fat me like a seal. I'm lean at present; please to wait, And for your heirs reserve my fate." The captive mouse thus spake. Replied the captor, "You mistake; To me shall such a thing be said? Address the deaf! address the dead! A cat to ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... eye of the law, at least in that of the English colonized in Ireland, to be a "Roman Catholic?" Is "souperism" so completely dead that it never can revive? How many means are still left in the hands of the Protestant minority to vex, annoy, and impoverish the supposed ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... best policy. There is no one but will agree with you; but such a statement, true though it be, helps matters very little. It is always hard to do right; blame Adam and Eve for it, and think of something more practicable. But must I impoverish myself? Not to the extent of depriving yourself of the necessaries of life. But you must deprive yourself to the extent of settling your little account, even if you suffer something thereby. But how shall I be able to refund ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... care soon afterwards to express her conviction of their falsehood. But being at last satiated with this ludicrous tyranny, she told her lover, when he pressed for the reward of his services, that she was very sensible of his merit, but was resolved not to impoverish an ancient family. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... fortune in this country doubles itself without any effort on the part of the owner. Few of us marry for money; and when we do, we at least have the manhood to keep the letter of our bargain. We do not beat the wife, nor impoverish her, nor thrust opera-singers into the house ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... shall the cheese made thereof be neither Roquefort nor Stilton, but rough and flavourless and uneatable, "like a Banbury cheese, nothing but paring." Now, the influence of a woman's intelligence on the male intellects about her is as the churn to the cream: it can either enrich and utilise it, or impoverish and waste it. It is not too much to say that it almost invariably, in the present decadence of the salon and parrot-jabbering of the suffrage, has the latter ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... it very difficult to exclude from my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and mourning under his supervision, and will frequently impoverish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges very high. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... fair also to state as a fact, that when my father for the second time refused his baronetcy, I, as eldest son, gave the casting vote against myself, not to impoverish my four younger brothers,—all now gone before me to the better world,—and that, for reasons mentioned above, I certainly could not take it now. Let this suffice as my reply to ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... evening," continues the chaplain, "the General, with his Rehoboam counsellors, came over to line out a fort on the rocky hill where our breastwork was last year. Now we begin to think strongly that the grand expedition against Canada is laid aside, and a foundation made totally to impoverish our country." The whole army was soon intrenched. The chaplain of Bagley's, with his brother Ebenezer, chaplain of another regiment, one day walked round the camp and carefully inspected it. The tour ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... shocked at her sister's coarseness, replied that he had been actuated by the noblest of motives—the desire not to impoverish Catherine. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... fade, languish, decline, flag, fail, have one leg in the grave. render weak &c. adj.; weaken, enfeeble, debilitate, shake, deprive of strength, relax, enervate, eviscerate; unbrace, unnerve; cripple, unman &c. (render powerless) 158; cramp, reduce, sprain, strain, blunt the edge of; dilute, impoverish; decimate; extenuate; reduce in strength, reduce the strength of; mettre de l'eau dans son vin[Fr]. Adj. weak, feeble, debile|; impotent &c. 158; relaxed, unnerved, &c. v.; sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... neighbors, he imported the same loyal spirit. "Certain of his council used to tell him," reports Joinville, "that he did not well in not leaving those foreigners to their warfare; for, if he gave them his good leave to impoverish one another, they would not attack him so readily as if they were rich. To that the king replied that they said not well; for, quoth he, if the neighboring princes perceived that I left them to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... amount of intellectual capacity, of that peculiar kind which raises a man from throne to throne and lets him die loaded with honours without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a single man. Wilfrid Lambert, the youth with the nose which appeared to impoverish the rest of his face, had also contributed little to the enlargement of the human spirit, but he had the honourable excuse of ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... art. It is purposed to be the holy dwelling-place of God, but I can so abuse it as to make it the agent of degradation. Instead of hallowing the life it will debase and impoverish it. ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... the man thus driven into exile, for having been the friend of his country, be received in every other place as a confessor of liberty; and let the tools of power be taught in time, that they may rob, but cannot impoverish." In 1761, Dr. Lucas was elected representative for Dublin. He died in 1771, and a statue to his honour is erected in the Royal Exchange ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... never to settle into an injurious habit. The single feature of a sixty years' service, as no other instance of it has yet occurred in our country, so it probably never may again. And should it occur, even once and again, it will not impoverish your treasury, as it takes nothing from that, and asks but a simple permission, by an act of natural right, to do ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... in the world, that they are not the children of God. Christianity is no blot, though it be in reproach among men, but it is really the glory and excellency of a man; but the want of it, alas! how doth it abase many high and noble, impoverish many rich, and infatuate many wise! Ye think all of you are the children of God, because ye are in the church, and partake of the ordinances and sacraments; and so did this people. But Moses did not flatter these Jews, but told both princes and people in their face, that ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... these states would be highly advantageous to Britain, from the extensive commercial intercourse that the relative situation of the two countries required. Neither should we see at this day the French English nations seeking to impoverish and extirpate each other; each of them entertaining the erroneous and absurd opinion that its own prosperity is to be increased by the adversity of its neighbor. We should have learned long ago from the plain dictates of reason, ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... adventures are generally such as these: first, that they stock-starve the tradesman, and impoverish him in his ordinary business, which is the main support of his family; they lessen his strength, and while his trade is not lessened, yet his stock is lessened; and as they very rarely add to his credit, so, if they lessen the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... to secure them against gusts of wind, as to enable them to draw from the earth a more abundant nourishment. When the tobacco began to put forth suckers, I plucked them off, because they would have shot into branches, which would impoverish the leaves, and for the same reason stopped the tobacco from shooting above the twelfth leaf, afterwards stripping off the four lowermost, which never come to any thing. Hitherto I did nothing but what was ordinarily done by those who cultivate ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... see," he says, "why men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will be awarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure, impoverish the country much; and if it is the custom of the State to reward by money, or titles of honour, or stars and garters of any sort, individuals who do the country service,—and if individuals are gratified at having 'Sir' or 'My lord' appended to their names, or stars and ribbons ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... in the family that both men and women must find their deepest supplementary values. Sex antagonism can do much to impoverish and ruin individual lives; but the monogamic and persistent union of lovers, surrounded by their children, will easily survive all the mistakes of a time of transition. In the meantime, those who would uphold the finest ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes

... remember the deprivation, and limit the extent of their gatherings to a bare competency. With men, most unquestionably, such an annual division, unless they were perfect, would derange the whole course of affairs, and speedily impoverish any community in which it might be attempted. I always prefer to take away a considerable quantity of honey from my stocks, which have too generous a supply, and to replace it with empty combs suitable ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... encountered calamity, nullity or death; but they will have entered into a thing so fair, so great, so happy and bathed in such certainties that they will for ever prefer it to all the prodigious chances of an infinity which nothing can impoverish. ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck

... obliged to deposit one copy of every book published in the national library. But this copy at present is sent to the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. Signor Castellani hopes that the privilege may be transferred, as seems but reasonable, to Rome. But I do not see why it should be necessary thus to impoverish Florence to enrich the capital. In England the law requires eleven copies which are distributed to the great libraries of the three kingdoms. It is true that this exaction has sometimes been complained of, and it is said that in the case of very costly illustrated works the tax is a very ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various

... topmost banisters, dropping you showers of kisses. Yes, the river you mentioned does produce a veritable 'garden of the Lord.' God send you the same, dear. And now, sit well back, and lower your veil. Ah, I remember, you don't wear them. Wise girl! If all women followed your example it would impoverish the opticians. Why? Oh, constant focussing on spots, for one thing. But lean back, for you must not be seen if you are supposed to be still in Cairo, waiting to go up the Nile. And, look here"—the doctor put his head in at the carriage window—"very plain luggage, mind. The sort of thing ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... cure? turn toward us hearts estranged? will gold, on solid centers empires fix? 'Tis toil world-wasted to toil in mines. Were all the isles gold globes, set in a quicksilver sea, all Mardi were then a desert. Gold is the only poverty; of all glittering ills the direst. And that man might not impoverish himself thereby, Oro hath hidden it, with all other banes,—saltpeter and explosives, deep in mountain bowels, and river- beds. But man still will mine for it; and mining, dig his doom.— Yoomy, Yoomy!—she we seek, lurks not ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... know something about the use and abuse of money and to be able to take care of themselves. If they borrow money, and then waste it or spend it in riotous living, they know that they will presently impoverish themselves, and that they will be the sufferers. But in the case of a young country, with all its financial experience yet unbought, there is little or no reason for supposing that its rulers are aware that they cannot eat their cake ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers



Words linked to "Impoverish" :   disestablish, break, deprive, decline, bankrupt, pauperize, beggar, reduce, ruin, enrich, impoverishment, pauperise, worsen



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org