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Thrift   /θrɪft/   Listen
Thrift

noun
1.
Any of numerous sun-loving low-growing evergreens of the genus Armeria having round heads of pink or white flowers.
2.
Extreme care in spending money; reluctance to spend money unnecessarily.  Synonyms: parsimoniousness, parsimony, penny-pinching.



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"Thrift" Quotes from Famous Books



... centuries, and inhabited by thriving, industrious races, the energetic Roman men of business had spread and settled themselves, gathering into their hands the trade, the financial administration, the entire commercial control of the Mediterranean basin. They had been trained in thrift and economy, in abhorrence of debt, in strictest habits of close and careful management. Their frugal education, their early lessons in the value of money, good and excellent as those lessons were, led them, as a matter of course, to turn to account their extraordinary opportunities. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... honest woman, "I loot the brandy burn as lang as I dought look at the gude creature wasting itsell that gate—and then, when I was fain to put it out for very thrift, I did take a thimbleful of it, (although it is not the thing I am used to, Dr. Quackleben,) and I winna say but ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... potato, 'Twas a more enduring gift Than the wisdom of a Plato To our poverty and thrift. That respected root has flourished Nobly for a nation's need, But our brightest dreams are nourished ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... best town and its people are the best and kindest people in the world. If I have done anything to win your praise I am glad. This community is bound to prosper, for it is founded, not upon industry and thrift alone, but upon faith and honor and helpfulness; and these, my good friends, are the things ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... colonies, those difficulties were greatly augmented, in New South Wales, by the character of the first settlers. The offenders who were transported in the past century to America, were sent to communities the bulk of whose population were men of thrift and probity; the children of improvidence were dropped in by driblets amongst the mass of a population already formed, and were absorbed and assimilated as they were dropped in. They were scattered and separated from each other; some acquired habits of honest industry, and all, if not reformed by ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... Samminiato, 150 Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, Perfect till the nightingales applauded. Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, Hard to greet, she traverses the houseroofs, Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, Goes dispiritedly, glad ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... wide service and greater variety of instruments by which to mold the destiny of nations and save life. Proud are we that we, too, are American, as was Ida Lewis, and we can give interest as consecrated and sincere to the work at our hand to-day as she gave, whose daily precepts were work and thrift, and who said, in her quaint way, of the light which had been her beacon of inspiration for so ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... the old plantation days! Alas! for the easygoing spirit that marked the times! The long, pitiless, hot sun-days were not inspirers of extraordinary energy. Yankee thrift was as pigmy play to these owners of bursting coffers. The hurry and bustle of our Northern neighbors was an unknown quantity in their economy. It is to the forcible wresting from the South of their inherited institutions, of the machinery which made ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... by the rapid commercial advance of northern Illinois. Yankee enterprise and thrift worked wonders in a decade. Governor Ford, all of whose earlier associations were with the people of southern Illinois, writing about the middle of the century, admits that although the settlers in the southern part of the State were twenty, thirty, forty, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... necessary art of modern life. Instead of the usual drill and practice and exercises, this class passed through the drudgery stage without realizing that school was a prison. This was during the autumn of the Armistice. Food conservation and thrift were in the air. These children were presented with a quantity of garden vegetables, but there was more than they could use themselves, so the suggestion was made that they could have the surplus for future use. The children, under guidance, did all the work connected with cold-pack ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg

... young man warmed and shamed me. He had more fire in his little toe than I had in my whole carcass; he was stuffed to bursting with the manly virtues; thrift and courage glowed in him; and even if his artistic vocation seemed (to one of my exclusive tenets) not quite clear, who could predict what might be accomplished by a creature so full-blooded and so inspired with animal and intellectual energy? So, when he proposed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of philanthropists that are inclined to make light of thrift, and to class both industry and thrift among the merely "economic virtues." To this school must belong the settlement worker who spoke of thrift as "ordinarily rather demoralizing." [1] But another objection ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... during a railroad journey from southern to northern Ireland. As we entered the fertile fields of Lord Dunraven's estate near Athlone, I expressed sympathy for other countries impoverished of soil, of wealth, and of thrift. My instructor replied: "It would pay the government to bring them all to this land free once a year, just to show them what they are missing." That his idea of an investment is sound has been proved ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... England continued to be constituted of works of exploration, description, colonial affairs, with some sprinkling of crude science and doctrines of wealth; but it yields no distinguished names or remembered titles. Franklin's character subsumes the spirit of it. In him thrift and benevolence were main constituents; scientific curiosity of a useful sort and invention distinguished him; after he had secured a competence, public interests filled his mature years. In him was the focus of the federating impulses of the time, and as the representative of the colonies ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... colonies would buy the tea. No one in the government supposed that the Americans would be blind to their own interests. This much, indeed, was admitted by the leaders among the Whigs, that once the tea was on sale Yankee principle might be sorely tempted by Yankee thrift. Indignant at the insidious temptation, determined that no such test should be made, and resenting the establishment of a practical monopoly throughout the colonies, the leaders resolved that the tea ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... is the master Yankee, the centennial flower of that thrifty and peculiar stock. More especially in his later writings and speakings do we see the native New England traits,—the alertness, eagerness, inquisitiveness, thrift, dryness, archness, caution, the nervous energy as distinguished from the old English unction and vascular force. How he husbands himself,—what prudence, what economy, always spending up, as he says, and not down! How alert, how attentive; what an inquisitor; always ready with some test question, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... happiness is continuous. Just as it is in mending. Short-sighted, superficial, unreflecting people have a way—which in time fossilizes into a principle—of mending everything as soon as it comes up from the wash, a very unthrifty, uneconomical habit, if you use the words thrift and economy in the only way in which they ought to be used, namely, as applied to what is worth economizing. Time, happiness, life, these are the only things to be thrifty about. But I see people working and worrying over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the fairy's gift, Helped him to right the wrong, Encouraged diligence and thrift, And "opened with a pong;" But though its magic powers were great It could not quite ejaculate A word so proud and strong And beautiful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various

... he knows I am given to large expence, And therefore lays up for me: could you believe else That he, that sixteen years hath worn the yoke Of barren wedlock, without hope of issue (His Coffers full, his Lands and Vineyards fruitful) Could be so sold to base and sordid thrift, As almost to deny himself, the means And necessaries of life? Alas, he knows The Laws of Spain appoint me for his Heir, That all must come to me, if I out-live him, Which sure I must do, by the course of Nature, And the ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... of this chapter does not discourage industry and thrift, far from it. After the Lord Christ had fed the five thousand, all the leavings were carefully collected so that nothing should be wasted. This is in accord with Universal law. There is a law of economy both in the ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin

... and Russell, and Lowell, and scores of others, that we might have a free and united country—that message would be: 'Tell them that the sacrifice was not in vain. Tell them that by the way of the shop, the field, the skilled hand, habits of thrift and economy, by way of industrial school and college, we are coming. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up. Often through oppression, unjust discrimination, and prejudice, but through them all we are coming up, and ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... the rural mise-en-scene; instead of pink hawthorn hedges we were in the midst of young forest trees. Why is it that a forest is always a surprise in France? Is it that we have such a respect for French thrift, that a real forest seems a waste of timber? There are forests and forests; this one seemed almost a stripling in its tentative delicacy, compared to the mature splendor of Fontainebleau, for example. This forest had ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... robbers, and brought every thing to ruin. At no time since the Spanish Conquest has the country been as orderly, as prosperous, or as populous as they found it. It has fallen to a much lower condition. Industry and thrift have been supplanted by laziness and beggarly poverty. Ignorance and incapacity have taken the place of that intelligence and enterprise which enabled the old Peruvians to maintain their remarkable system of agriculture, complete their great works, and made them so industrious and ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin

... of Philip V., Marie Louise was devoted to her husband's cause, and developed a strong character as she grew older; but in 1714, just as quiet had come and the country under the new administrative scheme had begun to win back some of its former thrift and prosperity, death came to her suddenly, and Philip was left alone with the resourceful Orsini, who rarely failed in her undertakings. So complete was her influence over him, that Hume says she "ruled Spain unchecked ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... brief prayer they silently marched out in double file to the fields. From Easter until October they were thus occupied from six in the morning until ten o'clock, and sometimes until noon. Thus they promoted thrift, and as their settlement extended it became the centre of a rich agricultural colony, for they often, as their lands expanded, let them out to farmers. A short distance from Abingdon is Radley, which was formerly the manor of the abbey, and contains a beautiful ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... several acres of gloomy forest were replaced by smiling fields. A young orchard was in sturdy growth, a small herd of cattle found ample pasturage on the borders of the lake, and on all sides were evidences of thrift and plenty. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... GRANGE, Committee on Agriculture: Many of the towns in our State invite the misuse of forests by overtaxation. This should be guarded against. By reasonable thrift we can produce a constant wood and timber supply beyond our own need, and with it conserve the usefulness of our streams for water supply, navigation and power, and at the same time increase the ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... the river Zaan, about five miles from Amsterdam, lies the picturesque little town of Zaandam, with its cottages of blue, green, and pink, half hidden among the trees, while a multitude of windmills surround the town like so many monuments to thrift and enterprise. Here, two centuries ago, ship-building was conducted on a great scale, the timber being sawed by windmill power, while the workmen were so numerous that a vessel was often on the sea in five weeks after the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... Julius the second, however he serv'd himself of the name of Liberal, to get the Papacy, yet never intended he to continue it, to the end he might be able to make war against the King of France: and he made so many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax, because his long thrift supplyed his large expences. This present King of Spain could never have undertaken, nor gone through with so many exploits, had he been accounted liberal. Wherefore a Prince ought little to regard ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... excellent in character and conduct. They hold up for imitation all those cardinal virtues of love and self-sacrifice,—which is the ultimate criterion of character,—of courage, loyalty, kindness, gentleness, fairness, pity, endurance, bravery, industry, perseverance, and thrift. Thus fairy tales build up concepts of family life and of ethical standards, broaden a child's social sense of duty, and teach him to reflect. Besides developing his feelings and judgments, they also enlarge ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready

... By a close thrift that often bordered on miserliness King Frederick William I managed to increase his standing army from 38,000 to 80,000 men, bringing it up in numbers so as to rank with the regular armies of such first-rate ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson

... Banks were established in Japan as far back as 1875. The object, as in this country, was to encourage thrift among the mass of the people. The maximum deposit in one year of any depositor is limited to 500 yen (about L50). The Post Office Savings Bank has been largely utilised, and both the number of depositors and the sums deposited continue to grow on a scale which shows that the utility and ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... confess that their suspicions were allayed, that the house was perfect, even overshadowed with the mystery of a lower price than it was worth. That, however, was an additional perfection in the opinion of the Townsends, who had their share of New England thrift. They had lived just one month in their new house, and were happy, although at times somewhat lonely from missing the society of Townsend Centre, when the trouble began. The Townsends, although they lived in a fine house in a genteel, almost fashionable, part of the city, were true to their antecedents ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... has widely differing species, and yet in her heart she doubted whether Mrs. Minthrop, with money to anticipate every wish of her only son, loved him a whit more than frugal, self-denying Mother Ponsonby had loved her Simeon. Lavishness or thrift, alike they proved a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... from thee, That no revenue hast, but thy good spirits, To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candid tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice, And could of men distinguish her election, She hath sealed thee for herself; for thou hast been As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing; ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... Mrs. Hawkins' boarding house into a hotel had been due to two causes: First, the thrift and economy of the lady herself, which had enabled her to put by a good sum in the bank. This she expended in building an ell with extra sleeping rooms, painting the structure cream colour with brown trimmings, and replacing old furniture with that of modern ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... Happiness which Mr. Roebuck praised; the economic laws that were working so faultlessly in Fever Alley; the wealth that was accumulating so rapidly in Bleeding Heart Yard. But, above all, he didn't like the mean side of the Manchester philosophy: the preaching of an impossible thrift and an intolerable temperance. He hated the implication that because a man was a miser in Latin he must also be a miser in English. And this meanness of the Utilitarians had gone very far—infecting many ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... thrift in ships, but thrift in the lives of my wounded comes first; my conscience is clear and I have answered sticking to my point,—firmly! They say the thing is impossible; I have retaliated by saying ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... cause and from many others, such as thrift, fear, and ill-concealed jealousy, has sprung the custom of the sleeping together of the married couple; and this custom has given rise to punctuality and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... whitened ceiling were clusters of nuts, twisted hemp, strings of yellow maize, and chaplets of golden pippins tied with straw, all harmonizing in the dim light, and adding increased fulness to the picture of thrift and abundance. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... capital that dared or could take the place of that of the companies. Elsewhere, in Paris for instance, new districts have been erected and embellishments have been carried out with the capital of the country—the money saved by dint of thrift. But in Rome all was built on the credit system, either by means of bills of exchange at ninety days, or—and this was chiefly the case—by borrowing money abroad. The huge sum sunk in these enterprises is estimated ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... a time when all men should realize that, in the words of Governor Coolidge himself, "Laws must rest on the eternal foundations of righteousness"; that "Industry, thrift, character are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil." It is a time when we must "have faith in Massachusetts. We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in the people,—a faith that men desire to do right, that the Commonwealth ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge

... sea-lingo with horrid oaths and appalling blasphemies, he made the responses required by the services of his Church with all the superstitious awe and tender piety of a child. Inconspicuous for his thrift or "forehandedness," it was nevertheless a common circumstance with him to have hundreds of pounds, in pay and prize-money, to his credit at his bankers, the Navy Pay-Office; and though during a voyage he earned ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... stretching its little hands towards the candle; in the schoolboy, filling up, if alone, his play-hour with the mimic toils of after age; and so on, through every stage and condition of life; from the wealthy spend-thrift, beggaring himself at the gaming-table for employment, to the poor prisoner in the Bastile, who, for the want of something to occupy his thoughts, overcame the antipathy of his nature, and found his companion ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston

... unlimited and democratic war loan was popularized, appealing to all classes, including the poorest, and advertising the sale through the Post Office of vouchers for as low as 5 shillings to be turned into stock. His speech was intended also to initiate a movement for saving and thrift among the people as the only secure means against national impoverishment ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... brother and sister were first turned in that direction. It appeared just as they expected. Moderate in size, built of logs somewhat after the fashion on the frontier at an earlier date, with outbuildings and abundant signs of thrift, it was an excellent type of the home of the sturdy American settler of ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis

... Reuben Vanderpoel, who in early days of danger had traded with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of stories of thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had been irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere exchange and barter. ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... overtook their bright and exuberant existence. During this first period of the war, Paris assumed the aspect of a Scottish Sabbath. Feverish pursuit of pleasure, earnest hard work, luxury, elegant distinction, thrift, thronged boulevards, crowded theaters, clamorous music halls, frisky supper parties, tango teas, overflowing gaiety, sparkling wit, boisterous fun, and sly humor, have all vanished. The machinery of Parisian life is working at quarter speed. Streets ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... MARY (WOLLSTONECRAFT) (1759-1797).—Miscellaneous writer, was of Irish extraction. Her f. was a spend-thrift of bad habits, and at 19 Mary left home to make her way in the world. Her next ten years were spent as companion to a lady, in teaching a school at Newington Green, and as governess in the family of Lord Kingsborough. In 1784 she assisted her sister to escape from a husband who ill-treated ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... hand for saving. I believe in it. I'll preach thrift, and I'm no ashamed to say I've practiced it. I like to see it, for I ken, ye'll mind, what it means to be puir and no to ken where the next day's needs are to be met. And there's things worth saving ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... the mother of a large family, who washes, irons, cooks, bakes, patches and darns, takes care of the children, labors from early dawn to midnight in her own home, is not supposed to earn anything, hence owns nothing, and all the labors of a long life, the results of her thrift and economy, belong absolutely to the husband, so that when he dies they call it liberality for the husband to make his partner an heir, and give her one-third of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... of foresight, prudence, thrift, and intelligence in dealing with public matters, for the same reasons and in the same way that we each use foresight, prudence, thrift, and intelligence in dealing with our own private affairs. It proclaims the right and duty of the people to ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... school opened for the children. Papa, he thought, would have done something for them long ago. There would have been a little schoolhouse and a teacher. A new wharf, he was sure, would have taken the place of the rickety old thing; and by degrees the women would have learned thrift and neatness, and the men energy and industry. To be sure, it seemed a great deal to do for such dull, apathetic people, who seemed not to have a particle of energy and ambition about them; but papa, he thought, could have done it, and would have done it, had he lived here ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... System is the foster-mother of the caste idea, and it is cheering to see native Christians increasingly abandoning that system for the Western idea of home which encourages thrift, independence and liberty among the various members of ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones

... of departed summer. On a calm, bright morning it is quite alive with nursery-maids and their playful little charges. Hither also resort a number of ancient ladies and gentlemen, who, with the laudable thrift in small pleasures and small expenses for which the French are to be noted, come here to enjoy sunshine and save firewood. Here may often be seen some cavalier of the old school, when the sunbeams have warmed his blood into something like ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... naturally to our minds when we begin to think of the lessons that we should take to heart. Up to the time of the war and since, we have been a prodigal people, confusing extravagance with generosity, thrift with meanness. The Indians in the old days killed off the buffalo for the sport of killing, and left the carcases to rot, never thinking of a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the North Country kill the caribou for the sake of their tongues, which ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... to bathe; how to care for their teeth and clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of mere ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... girls. She was very fond of social intercourse, especially later in life when my father knew her, but this intercourse was confined to a small circle. Doctor Greene speaks of her timidity also. I know of no traditions about her girlhood. As an example of the thrift of the Smiths, or perhaps I should say, their exactness in all business dealings, my father says that Austin Smith never asked his sisters to sew a button or do repairs on his clothing without paying them a small sum for it, and he always received six cents for doing ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... retorted; "we educated them, taught 'em thrift. While you are promoting idleness and loose-living.... But this is only an opening for what I wanted to say.—I had a letter last week from the Tennessee and Northern people, the Buffalo plan has matured, they're pushing the construction ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... globe. His hand might be pointing to a microscope set for examining the internal constitution of a beetle: but for the moment his eye should be seen wandering through the open window, to admire the blessings of thrift and liberty manifest in the people so worthily busy in the market-place, wrong as many a monkish notion might be that still troubled their poor heads. From them his enlarged thoughts would easily pass to the stout carved ships in the river beyond, intrepidly setting sail for the Indies, or for savage ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... table near the door, and I ask every girl to sign it and to wear the violet ribbon that will be given her. It is the badge of the new temperance cause. The freedom of the world depends at the present time on the food thrift and self-restraint of our civilians, no less than on the courage of our soldiers. Please take some of the leaflets which you will find on the table, and read them. They have been sent here for us by the Food ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... man had listed hundreds of the truths in his book. I will not try to tell you of all of them. There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... at least that degree of order essential to the existence of a camp. It was not in vain that John Smith sought to correct the early laxness at Jamestown by the stern edict: "He that will not work, neither shall he eat." Dutch and Quaker colonies taught the same inexorable maxim of thrift. Soon there was work enough for all, at good wages, but the lesson had been taught. It gave Franklin's "Poor Richard" mottoes their flavor of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... income from capital or from property that is theirs by reason of years of frugality, industry, and thrift are penalized by being denied the right to vote. They are placed in the class with criminals, while the profligate, the tramp who works enough to obtain the means by which he can hold body and soul ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... hamlet bore evidence of peace and thrift. It was a settlement of Norsemen—the first Greenland settlement, established by Eric the Red of Iceland about the year 986—nearly twenty years before the date of the opening of our tale—and the hairy creatures above referred to had gone ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... Mr. Heatherbloom, the while his brain worked rapidly. Betty Dalrymple must have paid the youth well for serving her thus far. Thrift, as well as sentiment, seemed to shine from Francois' eloquent dark eyes. Could he be induced to ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... yields. In the growth ratings of varieties on different stocks, the varieties on their own roots were rated in vigor at 40; on St. George, at 63.2; on Gloire, at 65.2; on Clevener, at 67.9. There is no way of deciding how much the thrift of the vines depends on adaptability to soil, and how much on other factors. Since all of the varieties were more productive and vigorous on grafted vines than on their own roots it may be said that a high degree of congeniality exists between the stocks ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... that Price's Left Wing surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning. As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... has convinced him that the human race is composed, for the most part, of hopelessly improvident people and that a great part of the globe would be depopulated through starvation and disease if it were not for the foresight, ability, and thrift of the handful of leaders whom Divine Providence has provided. He looks upon himself as one of the instruments of Providence and he sincerely believes that the policies which he has supported since his early experience with the reformers are responsible ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... the Minor's tether, Free to mortgage or to sell, Wild as wind, and light as feather, Bid the sons of thrift farewell. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... employing business in which the man or woman has worked, or it may be a threefold provision contributed to from the savings of the laborer, the quota from the employer, and the state subsidy. Since no insurance system that discourages thrift, or fails to encourage it, is socially sound, the latter seems the best ideal. There may be, in addition, or as a substitute, a family provision on the plan so well suggested by Mr. Taber in his book, The Business of the Household, a plan that calls for the definite setting apart of an "Old-age ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... concluded that divorce must long since have eliminated Mr. Newell; but he now saw how he had underrated his friend's faculty for using up the waste material of life. She had always struck him as the most extravagant of women, yet it turned out that by a miracle of thrift she had for years kept a superfluous husband on the chance that he might some day be useful to her. The day had come, and Mr. Newell was to be called from his obscurity. Garnett wondered what had become of him in the interval, ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... his whole temper and spirit turned to practice. His thrift of time, his just and regulated thrift in money, his hatred of waste, were only matched by his eager and minute attention in affairs of public business. He knew how to be content with small savings of hours and of material resources. He was not downcast if progress ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... may be vastly different from the method necessary in peace. But when money must be had quickly in vast quantities there is no time to debate on just how you are going to get it. Sir Thomas White's raid upon the pockets of Canada was a financial spectacle not to be judged by standards of thrift, for the very good reason that the people were nauseated with thrift talk, were looking for something easy, and White had the instinct to know that the easier and the more spectacular he could make ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... two somewhat similar descriptions of Santa Fe written in that long ago when New Mexico was almost as little known as the topography of the planet Mars, so that the intelligent visitor of to-day may appreciate the wonderful changes which American thrift, and that powerful civilizer, the locomotive, have wrought in a very few years, yet it still, as one of the foregoing writers has well said, "has the charm of foreign flavour, and the soft syllables of the Spanish language ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... as you chose. Though the Society was chiefly nourished by respectable artisans with stiff chins, nobody in the district would have considered membership to be beneath him. The Society was an admirable device for strengthening an impulse towards thrift, because, once you had put yourself into its machinery, it would stand no nonsense. Prosperous tradesmen would push their children into it, and even themselves. This was what had happened to Edwin in the dark past, before he had left school. Edwin ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... Mistress Marjorie, who must have been much younger, made him a good wife, and when he died, in 1685, he left a son and a daughter, besides an estate valued at several thousands of pounds, accumulated with true Scottish thrift. It was this daughter who named the estate Riverview, and though the house was afterwards remodeled, the name was never changed. The Stewarts continued to live there, marrying and giving in marriage, and growing ever wealthier, for the next half century, at ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... daily toil and care; the whole household squalid, cheerless, and utterly void of elevating inspirations... Only when the family had "moved" into the malarious backwoods of Indiana, the mother had died, and a stepmother, a woman of thrift and energy, had taken charge of the children, the shaggy-headed, ragged, barefooted, forlorn boy, then seven years old, "began to feel like a human being." Hard work was his early lot. When a mere boy he had to help in supporting the family, either on ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... every cent caount there, Barney. If them folks want anything that costs a dime and they kin git along any way without it, they git along without it and save the dime. That's what they call New England thrift. My dad had to scratch gravel pretty hard to send me to school. I helped aout some myself, but I'd never gut my schoolin' if he hadn't pinched and saved for me. Naow here I be, wuth more money in my ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... mind of the good-natured sergeant. He forthwith spoke of the want of Gerard to an officer, by whom they were communicated to Orange himself, and the Prince instantly ordered a sum of money to be given him. Thus Balthazar obtained from William's charity what Parma's thrift had denied—a fund for carrying out ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... can observe, in my own experience, a great change to have taken place amongst Scotch people generally on this subject. The old aversion to the "unclean animal" still lingers in the Highlands, but seems in the Lowland districts to have yielded to a sense of its thrift and usefulness[26]. The account given by my correspondent of the Fife swinophobia is ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... in this happy commonwealth all men enjoyed the blessings of liberty, I believed that by utilizing my capital I might make a little income, and I began to lend money, on security. Relying on my thrift, my judgment, and my, knowledge of the world, I chose this business in preference to all others. I rented a small house in the neighbourhood of the Royal Canal, and having furnished it I lived there in comfort ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... I saw a young colored man, who had spent several years in school, sitting in a common cabin in the South, studying a French grammar. I noted the poverty, the untidiness, the want of system and thrift, that existed about the cabin, notwithstanding his knowledge of French and other academic subjects. Another time, when riding on the outer edges of a town in the South, I heard the sound of a piano coming from a cabin of the same kind. Contriving ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... which must be provided, in addition to that already incurred for the support of those by whom they were to be employed. And 3. because the Trustees were desirous that the settlers should acquire the habits of labor and industry, of economy and thrift, by personal application.[1] ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... of the severer virtues that will live upon a diet of this kind. Endurance, industry, a negative purity, thrift, integrity—these can live, and do live, after a sort, on a plain and scanty diet, and these, as we know, abound in New England. But generosity, hospitality, charity, liberality—all those qualities that enrich the character, and all those virtues that enlarge it and give it fulness ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... crime, Possible gallows-birds,—they with wan faces late cleansed from the rookery's hideous grime, Snatched from the gutter whilst boyhood bears hope with it, gathered and tended with vigilant care. Servants of soul-thrift their volunteer champions! Weeds of the slum, with fresh soil and sweet air, Grow into grace and fair fruitage. These pariahs, "Southwark Boys," strays from the slime-sodden east, FEGAN takes forth in gay troops to the meadows, in freshness of nature to frolic and feast, Climb in the woodlands ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... these things by teachers and friends, the grand cause of this evil will be removed. Women will be trained to secure, as of first importance, a strong and healthy constitution, and all those rules of thrift and economy that will make domestic ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... awed feeling of one who participates in a miracle. He felt, like Herbert Parker, that the righteous was not forsaken. It was the sort of thing that restored a fellow's faith in human nature. For nearly a week he went about in a happy trance: and when, by thrift and enterprise—that is to say, by betting Reggie van Tuyl that the New York Giants would win the opening game of the series against the Pittsburg baseball team—he contrived to double his capital, what it amounted to was simply that life had nothing ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... directions, to develop her interest in the mill-workers. His own schemes involved a complete readjustment of the relation between the company and the hands: the suppression of the obsolete company "store" and tenements, which had so long sapped the thrift and ambition of the workers; the transformation of the Hopewood grounds into a park and athletic field, and the division of its remaining acres into building lots for the mill-hands; the establishing of a library, a dispensary and emergency hospital, and various ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... out. You will never make a good merchant of yourself by reversing the order in which the Lord decreed that we should proceed—learning the spending before the earning end of business. Pay day is always a month off for the spend-thrift, and he is never able to realize more than sixty cents on any dollar that comes to him. But a dollar is worth one hundred and six cents to a good business man, and he never spends the dollar. It's the man who keeps saving up ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... are on exhibition over in the Court House. The orchard was not given any special cultivation at the time this photograph was taken. The nuts from the trees, of course, are very ununiform, being seedlings, and the bearing of the trees is not especially large, but the apparent thrift and vigor of these trees gives a good deal of ground for looking forward to a walnut industry in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... lodging anywhere he gets, And takes his family thereto Weeping, and other relics few, Allow'd, by them that seize his pelf, As precious only to himself. Yet the sun shines; the country green Has many riches, poorly seen From blazon'd coaches; grace at meat Goes well with thrift in what they eat; And there's amends for much bereft In better thanks for much that's left! Jane is not fair, yet pleases well The eye in which no others dwell; And features somewhat plainly set, And homely manners leave her ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... at that time an excellent system of teaching young folks the value of thrift. This consisted in saving for some purpose or another the Saturdays penny—one penny being our weekly allowance of pocket-money. The feats we could perform in the way of procuring toys, picture-books, or the materials for constructing flying ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... man the habit of work, but it cannot imbue him with the natural thrift that long years of self-dependence brings. There were times when Jerry's freedom tugged too strongly at his easy inclination, drawing him away to idle when he should have toiled. What was the use of freedom, asked an inward voice, if one might not rest when one would? ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... or been preserved in highly civilized communities, will extend more of a fatherly care to the masses than liberalism. This cannot be otherwise; for liberalism sets itself to educate the masses to self-responsibility, and each individual to thrift and self-reliance. The sight of an able-bodied beggar is, to a genuine liberal, a source of anger first, and only on further contemplation, of pity. He will exert all his energies to remove every obstacle from out of the way of his poorer brethren; he will ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... hand, From under the sheltering trees, The farmer sees His pastures and his fields of grain, As they bend their tops To the numberless beating drops Of the incessant rain. He counts it as no sin That he sees therein Only his own thrift and gain. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... specific for neuralgia, from which dread malady he had been informed—quite incorrectly, by the way—that I occasionally suffered. The thirty shillings thus subscribed, together with a few odd coins which he himself had contrived to scrape together during a long life of thrift, would secure the services of a skilled advocate, who would doubtless be able to prove to the satisfaction of justice that no high-class Herbalist would ever dream, save in the way of kindness, of putting tartaric acid into a ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay

... the confidence of Council in the newcomer, had sold him tools on time; and as he was really an able farmer, he soon had round him many evidences of his care and thrift. At the advice of Council he had taken the farm for three years, with the privilege of re-renting or buying at the end ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... present paper, the design of which is simply to show the existing state of the food-question among the poor. Of these, poor Irish form far the larger proportion, a German or French pauper being almost an anomaly. Thrift seems the birthright of both the French and German peasant, as well as of the middle class, and their careful habits, joined to the better rate of wages in America, soon make them prosperous and well-to-do citizens. It is in the tenement-houses that we must seek for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... the chimney-jamb, roasting chestnuts and "popping" corn; Sandy, with the characteristic thrift of his countrymen, set about repairing a broken whip-stock and fitting it with a new lash; Tom Loker idly whittled a stick, and Miss Katharine drew up her low rocking-chair beside her father, and proceeded to ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... possessed of thrift quite American in quality, and were making the most of the rush over the trail. "The grass is improving each day," they said to the goldseekers, who were disposed to feel that the townsmen were anything but disinterested, especially the hotel keepers. Among ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... had a new-fangled plan For feeding ancient sheep. The man Posed as a true Arcadian, With a great gift For zeal humanitarian, Combined with thrift. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... did this, but Edward Conway had not been one of them. For where whiskey sits he holds a scepter whose staff is the body of the Upas tree, and there is no room for the oak of thrift or the wild-flower of ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... gall in the middle of an old field all grown up in sassafras, was not a very inviting-looking place; a few hens loitering about the new hen-house, a brood of half-grown chickens picking in the grass and watching the door, and a runty pig tied to a "stob," were the only signs of thrift; yet the face of the woman cleared up as she gazed about her and afar off, where the gleam of green made a pleasant spot, where the corn grew in the river bottom; for it was her home, and the best of all was she thought ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... feeling of insecurity they had just abandoned their new locations in this region, and had come thus far on their way, having resolved to return to the more safe and quiet homes they had left at the east. But beholding the enterprise of Mr. Morris, and the business and thrift that prevailed here on every side, they inferred that their situation could not be so very precarious, and wisely concluded to return and carry forward the improvements ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard

... wants: the book, however good, Thou shouldst not purchase, let it go unbought; And fashion's vests by thee be all unworn. Soon luxuries become necessities, But self-denying thrift more joy affords Than all the pleasures of extravagance. A cottage, free from clamorous creditors, Is better than a mansion dunned; a coat, However darned, if paid for, hath an ease, And a respectability beside: Gay, ill-afforded ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... glad to own such a home, a semi-detached cottage or villa standing in a pretty garden with flowers and trees and plots of turf. Some of the cottages are models of trimness and taste, others of course are less well kept, a few have a neglected appearance. The general aspect, however, is one of thrift and prosperity, and it must be borne in mind that each dwelling and plot of ground are the property of the owner, gradually acquired by him out of his earnings, thanks to the initiative of M. Dollfus and his ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... temperament and a true friend of his people. So Joseph considered that the time was now come when he might return to his native land with his wife and his tall, slender son. His basket-making, through industry and thrift, had, almost without his noticing it, put so much money into his pocket that he was able to treat with a Phoenician merchant regarding the journey home. For they would not go back across the desert: Joseph wanted to show his family the sea. He took willow twigs with him ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... a system, admirable as it was in many particulars, practically placed a premium upon idleness. Under such communal rights and privileges a potent spur to industry and thrift is wanting. ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... her one daughter, "the bonny like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow slipped into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless, doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling womenfolk, she brought the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... saints, but it can punish evil-doers and counteract the forces of lawlessness which threaten the social order. It cannot legislate within the domain of motive, but it can encourage self-restraint and thrift, honesty and temperance. It cannot actually intermeddle with the sanctity of the home, or assume the role of paternal authority, but it can insist upon the fulfilment of the conditions of decency and propriety; it can condemn insanitary dwellings, suppress traffic ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... punctilious and accurate, the result of his early training in making both ends meet. The habits of thrift, industry, energy and absolute honesty had made him a marked man—there is not so much competition along ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... black. It is further true that the sooner such laws, when adopted, are applied with exact equality and justice to the two races, the better for the moral tone of state and community concerned. Negroes should be given an opportunity equally with whites, by education and thrift, to meet the requirements of eligibility which the State Legislatures in their wisdom shall lay down in order to secure the safe exercise of the electoral franchise. The Negro should ask nothing other than an equal chance to qualify himself for the franchise, and when that is granted ...
— The South and the National Government • William Howard Taft

... youth to age. The world has gone on since then—it is a world of education, books, and wider sympathies. In all this they must and ought to share. The problem is how to enjoy the intellectual progress of the century and yet not forfeit the advantages of the hand labour and the thrift of our ancestors? How shall we sit up late at night, burning the midnight oil of study, and yet rise with the dawn, strong from sweet sleep, to guide the plough? One good thing must be scored down to the credit of the country girls of the day. They have ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... to thrift also. The government needed billions of dollars, needed them so badly that the pennies of the poorest man must be sought for. Few of the workmen had the faintest idea of saving. The wives of some of them were humbly provident, but many ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... the black population was to be found, the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewildered freedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which were bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern Negroes did not furnish the expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in the South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the Negroes and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whites kept the latter uneasy and furnished ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... unbroken swells covered the long backbone of the cape; in the few giant old trees, and, more than all, in its character of freedom, loneliness, and isolation, there was a savage charm and dignity that the thrift and cultivation, the usefulness and comfort of civilisation's ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... a product of civilization, so much like the result of development on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee. Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public-spiritedness, their thrift, their complex economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand, the "burly, dozing bumblebee," ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... reached—a big home-like structure, large enough for us all, and the entertainment most lavish. The estate was an extensive one, and the innumerable outbuildings and well-stocked barns gave evidence of wealth and thrift. A long drive between rows of lofty poplars led to the main entrance, and the view from the front of the house down to the river was superb. There were servants in abundance, and nothing had been overlooked to insure our comfort. The stables were the attraction for most of our party, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald



Words linked to "Thrift" :   subshrub, Armeria, suffrutex, frugality, genus Armeria, Armeria maritima, frugalness, cliff rose, parsimoniousness, sea pink



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