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Thrifty   /θrˈɪfti/   Listen
Thrifty

adjective
(compar. thriftier; superl. thriftiest)
1.
Careful and diligent in the use of resources.
2.
Mindful of the future in spending money.  Synonym: careful.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Thrifty" Quotes from Famous Books



... Though thrifty enough in most matters, the German had become a liberal contributor to the High School athletic fund, to the great dismay of his good wife, who feared that his new outdoor fads would yet land ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock

... astern, as the steamer gains on the whale. Even a steamer, however, has been charged, stove, and sunk. And a fighting humpback in the Gulf of St Lawrence is no easy game to tackle with a hand-lance in a pram. Norwegians are thrifty folk, and bomb harpooning is expensive. So when the whale and steamer meet, at the end of the chase, a tiny pram is launched with two men rowing and a third standing up in the stern to wield the fifteen-foot ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... Johannesburg, as in Pretoria, the last ten years have seen the development of special locations where the lowest class of Dutch people reside. For the most part these are the families of landless Boers. Until recent years they lived as squatters on the farms of their more thrifty compatriots. Their life then was one of progressive degradation. Under the Kruger policy hundreds of such families were encouraged to settle in the neighbourhood of the towns. Plots of ground were given them, and there they built rough ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... across the empty, close-gleaned corn-field, across the railway track, and, plunging into the orchard on the other side, where here and there among the trees the torrents of apples were being already caught in boxes by the thrifty husbandman, began to breast the hill intersected ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... were getting riches from the cleared fields, instead of from the backs of beavers in the sunless forests; who were raising sheep and multiplying cattle, instead of hunting deer and buffaloes; who were beginning to trade with European ports not as mere voyageurs but as thrifty merchants; who were vitally concerned about their own salvation first, and then interested in the fate of the savage; and who, above all, were learning in town meetings to govern themselves, instead of having all their ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... was a comfortable mixture of Irish and English. Her people were so thrifty that she had but a common-school education. She was the only child, her industrious mother let her go the way of least resistance, and were we tracing responsibility of the criminality behind our tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... like Savinien, her nephew, and kept all her sweetness for the son of one of their old neighbors in the Rue Neuve-Coquenard, a small haberdasher, who had not been able to get on, but continued humbly to sell thread and needles to the thrifty folks of the neighborhood. The haberdasher, Mother Delarue, as she was called, had remained a widow after one year of married life. Pierre, her boy, had grown up under the shadow of the bakery, the cradle of ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... Coutances was proud of its fete. But Coutances was also a thrifty city. Once the cortege had passed, it was high time to snuff out the tapers. Who could stand by and see good candles blowing uselessly in the wind, and one's money going along with ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... it was larger and better than most houses in the region. Its owner was the last of her family; but why she lived alone, or what became of her at last, or of her money or her goods, or who were her relatives in the town, my friend did not know. She was a thrifty, well-to-do old soul, a famous weaver and spinner, and she used to come to the meeting-house at the Old Fields every Sunday, and sit by herself in a square pew. Since I knew this, the last owner of my farm has ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... persisted in haggling and huckstering over every dollar, and in tricking his friends in the smallest and most underhand ways. Friends in the true sense of the word he had none; those who regarded themselves as such were of that thrifty, congealed disposition swayed largely by calculation. But if they expected to gain overmuch by their intimacy, they were generally vastly mistaken; nearly always, on the contrary, they found themselves caught in some unexpected snare, and riper in experience, but poorer in pocket, they were ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... here as the Count Moranzone, Lord of a barren castle on a rock, With a few acres of unkindly land And six not thrifty servants. But I was one Of Parma's noblest princes; more than that, I was your ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... the fire, filled his pipe, looked steadily at it, and then laid it on the mantel-piece. 'No, no, Master Joe. You must be thrifty now. You have smoked twice since—I can afford to say—since dinner-time, for you haven't dined. It is strange, now that the sense of hunger has passed off, what a sense of excitement I feel. Two hours back I could have been a cannibal. I believe I could ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... journeyman weaver—one who is obliged to toil for the subsistence of the day that is passing over him, and whose sole dependence is on the labour of his hands. By no means. Thomas had been all his days a careful, thrifty man, and had made his hay while the sun shone;—when wages were good, he had saved money—as much as could keep him in a small way, independent of labour, should sickness, or any other casualty, render ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... year, with which clover is sown for mowing and stall-feeding, yielding two or three cuttings. The green crops are so timed as to give a full supply for house-feeding throughout the year. Nothing is neglected by those skilful and thrifty farmers; the county is famous for orchards, and when I was in the city of Armagh, last autumn, I saw in the market square almost as many loads ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... Maupertuis, intensely watching Nature, has discovered, That the key of her enigma (or at least the ultimate central DOOR, which hides all her Motional enigmas, the key to WHICH cannot even be imagined as discoverable!) is, that "Nature is superlatively THRIFTY in this affair of motion;" that she employs, for every Motion done or do-able, "a MINIMUM OF ACTION;" and that, if you well understand this, you will, at least, announce all her procedures in one proposition, and have found the DOOR which leads to everything. Which will be a comfort ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... both very desirable nuts, I always carried a few scions and kept placing them frequently as I placed other varieties. Many Vests were placed at the same time as the Fairbanks, which shows 73.3% catches. The one Vest that did catch, however, made a very thrifty growth, showing that it is possible apparently to do well on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fourteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... hand, it has been necessary to demonstrate to the white man in the South that education does not 'spoil' the Negro, as it has been so often predicted that it would. It was necessary to make him actually see that education makes the Negro not an idler or spendthrift, but a more industrious, thrifty, law-abiding, and useful citizen than he otherwise ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... at a penny a ride, from Charing Cross to the Horse Guards; this, by his own confession, was the fifteenth trip! Sparkle, highly exasperated, was about to apply the discipline of the whip to the shoulders of the thrifty speculator, when Tallyho, interceding in his behalf, he was ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... of struggle for liberty had rendered the necessaries of life in many cases luxuries. As early as seventeen hundred and seventy-five, during the siege of Boston, provisions and articles of dress had reached such prices that we find thrifty Mrs. John Adams, in Braintree, Massachusetts, foreseeing a worse condition, writing her husband, who was one of the Council assembled in Philadelphia, to send her, if possible, six thousand pins, even if they should cost five pounds. Prices continued to rise and currency to depreciate. ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... was the eldest of five children, and her parents, though poor, were kept removed from want by constant frugality and industry. Her father labored for the neighboring farmers, and her mother was a thrifty, notable housewife, somewhat addicted to loud talking and scolding, but considered a very good ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... little money, and saved none; all the economy and planning of thrifty "Mamma Letitia" did not keep things from falling behind, and even the help of Uncle Lucien the canon was ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... citizens. His pleasure in the gala affairs of the time was doubled by the presence of his wife, who one day arrived quite unexpectedly in the company of some Tennessee friends. Mrs. Jackson was a typical frontier planter's wife—kind-hearted, sincere, benevolent, thrifty, pious, but unlettered and wholly innocent of polished manners. In all her forty-eight years she had never seen a city more pretentious than Nashville. She was, moreover, stout and florid, and it may be supposed that ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... the nobility standing behind them as silent partners. The business habits of the United States and the examples of rapid fortunes in this country have quite turned the head of John Bull, and he is very fast becoming a sharp, thrifty, money-getting Yankee. A business and commercial people have no leisure for the cultivation of that feeling and romance which is the foundation of gallantry. The activities of human nature seek other more practical and more useful channels ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... naturally informed him that my judgment had died with me unless I had left a will in favor of my father. But when my father died intestate and there were no known heirs, Loustalot doubtless felt that at last the curse had been lifted and probably began doing business in his own name. He's a thrifty fellow and, I dare say, he made a great deal of money on sheep during the war. I hope he has. That old judgment has been accumulating interest at seven per cent. for more than a quarter of a century, and in this state I believe the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... there was less to see, too—you took more time to it. You came to Sacramento on the river boat. Then if you were rich, you bought a horse or a mule and rode for the rest of your journey. If you were poor, or thrifty perhaps, you walked, or tried to get a ride on one of the ox-freight teams which plied their way across Haggin Grant to Auburn and Dutch Flat, ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... Farther inland, there are great forests and lakes, and ranges of mountains where bears, wolves, and herds of wild reindeer make their home. No people could live in such a country unless they were very industrious and thrifty. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... State, "we may behold numerous fine houses, once the abode of intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or else tenantless and dilapidated; that we may see fields, once fertile, covered with foxtail and broom-sedge—moss growing on the walls of once thrifty villages, and may find that 'one only master grasps the whole domain' which once furnished homes for a ...
— Slavery: What it was, what it has done, what it intends to do - Speech of Hon. Cydnor B. Tompkins, of Ohio • Cydnor Bailey Tompkins

... after a customer had spent his ingenuity and breath in half-an-hour's "prigging." The advantages to be obtained at Messrs. Campbell's establishment soon became known, and although it required a great effort to induce thrifty housewives to desist from attempting to cheapen and "prig" down their goods, Messrs. Campbell ultimately succeeded in putting a stop to the practice, so far at least as their own establishment was concerned. Since ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... which they came and laid in my lap, with their eyes shining like a cat's in the dark. And when I held it up to the light, it turned out to be two new jackets, one for Sammy and one for Johnny, that their good, thrifty mother had made out of an old coat that ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... to his fingers, and by the time the summer was over most of his money would be gone, with the government mortgage on his farm still unlifted. His habits of life wrought a kind of wildness in him which set him apart from the thrifty, steady-going people among whom he lived. True, the shanty-men were his stanch friends and admirers, but then the shanty-men, though well-doing, could hardly be called steady, except the boss of the Macdonald gang, Macdonald Bhain, who was a regular attendant ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... red snoods, some wt blew. On the sieng of this I was very sollicitous to know what it might mean. Having made my selfe understood about it I was told that when any honest women died she might leive a rock full of tow to be hung up in the church as a symboll that they ware vertuous thrifty women. This put me in mind of Dorcas whose coats and thrift the women showed to Paull after she was died. Mass being ended I went and fell in discours with the Cure. We was not long together when we fell hot be the ears: first we was on the Jansenists opinion about Praedestination, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... totality; hence very little indeed of the sage's multifariousness will be portrayed in a simple narrative like the present. This casual private intercourse with Israel, but served to manifest him in his far lesser lights; thrifty, domestic, dietarian, and, it may be, didactically waggish. There was much benevolent irony, innocent mischievousness, in the wise man. Seeking here to depict him in his less exalted habitudes, the narrator feels more as if he were playing with one of the sage's worsted hose, than reverentially ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... trees are as bare as bean-poles. One day I saw Mr. Bates walking along, and I hailed him: "Bates, those are your cows there, I believe?" "Yes, sir; nice ones, ain't they?" "Yes," I replied, "they are nice ones. Do you see that tree there?"—and I pointed to a thrifty peach, with about as many leaves as an exploded sky-rocket. "Yes, sir." "Well, Bates, that red-and-white cow of yours yonder ate the top off that tree; I saw her do it." Then I thought I had made Bates ashamed of himself, and had wounded his feelings, perhaps, too much. I was afraid he ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... day, Mr. William Morris, Blake insisted that each page of text, all his delicate illustrations, every cover even, should pass through his own fingers, or through those of his careful and submissive helpmeet. The expense of their paper was the chief one to the light purse of the queerly assorted, thrifty pair. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... of Sepoy blood is still in evidence. The Chinese have been growing in importance in the Philippines. Their men marry the women of the islands and have large families, the boys of this class being wonderfully thrifty. The children of Englishmen by the native women are often handsome, and of strong organization. The females ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... truth. And the lie they preach is "thrift." An instant will demonstrate it. In overcrowded London, the struggle for a chance to work is keen, and because of this struggle wages sink to the lowest means of subsistence. To be thrifty means for a worker to spend less than his income—in other words, to live on less. This is equivalent to a lowering of the standard of living. In the competition for a chance to work, the man with a lower standard of living will underbid the man with a higher standard. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... gown was very fine for those days; but fine as she was, and adopted daughter though she was, Ann did not omit her thrifty ways for once. This identical morning Mrs. Polly and she carried their best shoes under their arms, and wore their old ones, till within a short distance from the meeting-house. Then the old shoes were tucked away under a stone wall for safety, and the best ones put on. Stone ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... imposing in the outlook here; but the late rains have clothed the whole smiling face of nature with a bright, refreshing green, that fails not to awaken a thrill of pleasure in the breast of one fresh from the verdureless streets of a large sea- port city. Broad fields of pale-green, thrifty-looking young wheat, and darker-hued meads, stretch away on either side of the road; and away beyond to the left, through an opening in the hills, can be seen, as through a window, the placid waters of the bay, over whose glittering, sunlit ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... from the living world,—of plants and animals, of man in the perfection of physical strength, of woman in the unapproachable loveliness of grace of form. As the world becomes pagan, intellectual, thrifty, we see the architecture of the Greeks in palaces, banks, halls, theatres, stores, libraries; when it is emotional, poetic, religious, fervent, aspiring, we see the restoration of the Gothic in churches, cathedrals, schools,—for Philosophy and Art did all they could to civilize the world before ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... tell. He lives alone, only coming occasionally to the village for supplies, and though he is poorer than poverty, he despises every soul within a ten-mile radius of him, and looks upon us as no better than an order of thrifty, well-trained lower animals." ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... changed their expression only in growing more cold and hard. The rest of his person seemed all bows, smirks, and smiles, but it was noticed that these latter diminished and his eyes grew harder as he wished to remind some lagging patron that his little account needed settling. This thrifty citizen of Pushton was soon in polite attendance on Edith, but was rather taken back when she asked sharply what he meant by sending such a good-for-nothing man to plow ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... neutralised by her unfortunate figure, which, owing, as we understood, to a fall in her childhood, was hopelessly deformed, though still strongly set and muscular. Albeit, a sum of money—about fifty pounds—scraped together by thrifty self-denial during a dozen years of servitude, amply compensated in the eyes of several idle and needy young fellows for the unlovely outline of her person; and Anne, with an infatuation too common with persons of her class and condition, and in spite ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various

... of knowledge," Susanna answered, with a movement of the head, "for which, I fear, one would have to go to a meta-physical and thrifty land like Germany. We are not in the least metaphysical or thrifty in my part of Italy. We allow the sparkling minutes to slip between our fingers, like gold between the fingers of a spendthrift. But—but we rather enjoy ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... burst of music, touching all The keys of thrifty life,—the mill-stream's fall, The engine's pant along its quivering rails, The anvil's ring, the measured beat of flails, The sweep of scythes, the reaper's whistled tune, Answering the summons of the bells of noon, The woodman's hail along the river shores, The steamboat's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... England, and that of his father who acquired lands in Litchfield and New Milford, went out, as that of many of their descendants does to-day, in the west, for "more land." He and his brother Joshua, and other thrifty citizens of Wethersfield, fixed upon the province of Maine as the field of their enterprise. Timothy and Joshua owned the tract of land, thirty miles from north to south, and twenty-eight from east to ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman

... troops in the pay of the stadtholder, for the most part now followed their example. Holland fraternised with France. A requisition of clothes and provisions for the use of the republican army, to the amount of one million and a half sterling, cooled the ardour of the thrifty Dutchmen for a moment; but it soon returned, on considering the blessings they were to obtain for their money. They were flattered by a convocation of a representative assembly, on the principles of equality and liberty: an assembly which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... over the two elder girls went to their spinning, for in the kitchen stood the big and little wheels, and baskets of wool-rolls, ready to be twisted into yarn for the winter's knitting, and each day brought its stint of work to the daughters, who hoped to be as thrifty as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... admirable, con- venient, and secure depository for the savings of the industrial classes and of others. Its value to the thrifty and timid investor is incalculable, for here he may rest satisfied that he has abso- lute security, and the system is so hedged about with safeguards that it is difficult to discover any means by which loss can be sustained. The interest allowed is not high, ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.

... edge, there were a few tufts of carex gone to seed; and a little way back up the rocky bank at the foot of a crumbling wall so inclined as to absorb and radiate as well as reflect a considerable quantity of sun-heat, was the garden, containing a thrifty thicket of Cowania covered with large yellow flowers; several bushes of the alpine ribes with berries nearly ripe and wildly acid; a few handsome grasses belonging to two distinct species, and one goldenrod; a few hairy lupines and radiant spragueas, ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... pay their full share of public taxes and assessments and give largely in charity. Their buildings are well built and well kept, their farms and lands worked to the best advantage; in short, they are industrious and thrifty. ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... POOREST DWELLING, presided over by a virtuous, thrifty, cheerful, and cleanly woman may thus be the abode of comfort, virtue and happiness; it may be the scene of every enobling relation in family life; it may be endeared to man by many delightful associations; furnishing a sanctuary for the heart, a refuge from the storms ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... my head and eyes erect to above sixty feet; and then I went to take her up with one hand by the waist. I looked down upon the servants, and one or two friends who were in the house, as if they had been pigmies, and I a giant. I told my wife, "she had been too thrifty, for I found she had starved herself and her daughter to nothing." In short, I behaved myself so unaccountably that they were all of the captain's opinion when he first saw me, and concluded I had lost my ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... emphatically madam, now. Well, old Ben Mordecai he was a mighty rich man, had a bank many, many years, and lots and piles of gold. In fact, he was my banker at one time in my life, and to-day he can testify as to whether Michael Moran was or wasn't a thrifty man and the Good Cheer House a paying institution. Some years ago though, I moved my business to another bank, ahem!" Here the old man eyed Leah sharply, to see if these hints respecting his pecuniary status did not impress her profoundly. Then he continued, "Well, I was ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... Christian ministry. Of this provision a self-constituted guardian got hold, and embarked it in his own sinking business. His failure soon followed, and ingulfed the little fortune of his ward; and, as the hereditary plate of the thrifty householders was sold along with the bankrupt's effects, if he had ever felt the pride of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the poor scholar must have felt some pathos in seeing both spoon and tankard ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... Hoher Aladar, and Ilona was noted for being the most thrifty housewife in a country where most housewives are thrifty, and for being a model cook in a land where ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... was right. At a distance of thirty-five or forty feet from the street the vaulted passage opened into a paved patio, or court,—a sort of large, square well,—in the center of which stood a green, thrifty, broad-leaved banana-tree, fifteen or twenty feet in height. From the corners of this court, on the side opposite the street entrance, two broad flights of steps led up to what seemed to be a hanging garden of greenery and flowers, shut in on all sides by piazzas and galleries. Climbing one ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... day Manning arrived at Bismarck, a thrifty and growing little town on the banks of the muddy Missouri. As the train left the more thickly populated country and emerged into the region of this as yet comparatively undeveloped west, the detective was surprised to witness ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... separate qualities. Because not less marked than his idealism and mysticism is his shrewd common sense, his practical bent, his definiteness,— in fact, the sharp New England mould in which he is cast. He 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. ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... neighborly, sociable, genial, complaisant, affable. Frighten, affright, alarm, terrify, terrorize, dismay, appal, daunt, scare. Frown, scowl, glower, lower. Frugal, sparing, saving, economical, chary, thrifty, provident, prudent. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... confidently to some rural neighborhood, and to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer, doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I had ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... settling and organizing everywhere, Ships coming in from the whole round world, and going out to the whole world, To India and China and Australia and the thousand island paradises of the Pacific, Populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers, the railroads, with many a thrifty farm, with machinery, And wool and wheat and the grape, and diggings of ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... sides, he tacked up explicit written orders, which must have provoked many a smile. Above the bin of sifted ashes he nailed a card which instructed "Those who use this closet must strew two shovelfuls of ashes into the vault." Above the pad of clean paper he tacked the thrifty proverb: "Waste not, want not;" and above the paper bag he suspended a card bearing this warning: "All refuse paper must be put into this bag; not a scrap of clean or unclean paper must ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 821, Sep. 26, 1891 • Various

... and many of the richer ones own them and import Sumatra ponies to draw them. To say that the Chinese make as good emigrants as the British is barely to give them their due. They have equal stamina and are more industrious and thrifty, and besides that they are always sober, can bear with impunity the fiercest tropical heat, and can thrive and save where Englishmen would starve. The immense immigration of Chinese, all affiliated to clubs or secret societies, might be a great risk to the peace of the State were it not that ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... was so great that he could not give the time necessary to walk, but jumped in a cab. He was too thrifty to use one when it could possibly be avoided. He stood outside the shop for a minute or two. The thought came to him that perhaps she had left, and in terror he walked in quickly. He saw her at once. He sat down and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... brings. In middle age, when he has learnt his business, and succeeded in it; when he has fought his battle with the world, and conquered more or less; when he has made his way up, and seems to himself safe, and comfortable, and thriving; when he feels that he is a shrewd, thrifty, experienced man, who knows the world and how to prosper in it—Then how easy it is for him to say in his heart—as Moses feared that those old Jews would say—'My might and the power of my wit has gotten me this wealth,' and to forget the ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... took was a ten-cent tin; it was enough. I believe I will tell the story of that tramp before I get through. For I saw more game in the ten days than I ever saw before or since in a season; and I am told that the whole region is now a thrifty farming country, with the deer nearly all gone. They were plenty enough thirty-nine years ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... these triumphs and this large expense It 's fit, like thrifty husbands, we inquire What 's laid ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... from the nest in which these little animals sleep, and if forgotten, or accidentally left unused, the nuts, seeds, &c., often taken root and grow. Many a spreading chestnut, sturdy oak, and shady beech, to say nothing of hazel copse, owes life to these thrifty little folk, and thus the tiny woodlanders give back to nature a thousandfold more than they take. More than a bushel of raw potatoes was once found laid up by a water-rat in his winter ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... his kind into workmen. They are good, misunderstood people, who now suffer perhaps more severely than any others. The Society of Jews will, moreover, busy itself from the outset with their training as artisans. Their love of gain will be encouraged in a healthy manner. Jews are of a thrifty and adaptable disposition, and are qualified for any means of earning a living, and it will therefore suffice to make small trading unremunerative, to cause even present peddlers to give it up altogether. This could be brought about, for example, ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... exercises dominance over its inhabitants, mental as well as physical, the present state of North Queensland offers interesting problems. Save for a fast-disappearing remnant, gone are the original occupiers of the land. The most listless, the least thrifty of the old peoples, have given place to representatives of the most adventurous, the most successful—men and women of British blood, of progressive ideas, vaunting and independent spirit, but with slight respect for the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... with rapture that she claimed her own simplicity. And with what a moderation, how temperately, and how seldom she used her mastery! To the last she has an occasional attachment to her bonds; for she was not only fire and air. In one passage of her life she may remind us of the little colourless and thrifty hen-bird that Lowell watched nest-building with her mate, and cutting short the flutterings and billings wherewith he would joyously interrupt the business; Charlotte's nesting bird was a clergyman. He came, lately affianced, ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell

... he would furnish him with ships and money to return to Greece, and would reinstate him in his kingdom. He granted him a yearly pension of four and twenty talents; a little part of which sum supplied his and his friends' thrifty temperance; and the rest was employed in doing good offices to, and in relieving the necessities of the refugees that had fled from Greece, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the initial planting than could be derived from the sale of the trees for the wood they contain. There will come a time in the life of any tree when it is no longer a profitable producer and should be replaced by a younger, more thrifty tree. When that time comes, the tree to be removed will have no economic value unless it contains products that industry can use. With the thought in mind that the wood from the tree is to have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... owned them even in the last century. Terror of the Revolutionists caused most of the small nobility of the country to forsake their homes and lands, which were consequently sold by the State rvolutionnairement, and they who acquired them were thrifty, sagacious people of the agricultural, mercantile, or official class, whose political principles bent easily before the wind that was blowing, and whose savings enabled them to profit by the misfortunes of those who had so long enjoyed the advantages of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... here sleeps, there's none, Sara, Rebecca, Rahel, three in one: Religious, pious, thrifty, wise, fayre, and chast: Soe many goods in one, who finds ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... done its deadly work. With the negro quarters empty, the elders were too old to change their ways, the young would not accept the new and hard conditions, and as mortgages slowly ate up farm after farm, quiet, thrifty, hard-working old Hiram would gradually take them in, depleting the old Stonewall neighborhood of its families one by one, and sending them West, never to come back. The old man, John Burnham knew, had bitterly opposed the marriage of his daughter with a ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... were the tales Master Cabot had to tell that the folk of Bristol would hardly have believed him (for he was a poor man and a foreigner) had not his crew of honest Bristol men vouched for the truth of all he said. Every one was delighted. Even thrifty King Henry was so much pleased that he gave Cabot 10. It seems a small enough sum for one who had found "a new isle." But we must remember that it was worth more than 100 would be ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... haven't any right to waste it or destroy it, or hog it up so that all can't enjoy it. Why, when you start to savin' an' draw in what ought to be circulatin', you steal from them what haven't had the chance 'at you've had. It's wicked to be thrifty." ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... caused by the Fugitive Slave law were kicking up plenty of trouble during Buchanan's administration. South Carolina had already seceded. Major Anderson was keeping the Union flag flying at Fort Sumter, but latest reports said that there was no immediate danger of hostilities when Pierre Pinckney, thrifty Virginia planter of French extraction, went into conference with his neighbors and decided to move while the ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... letters in his hand. He is a well set up young man, rather blunt in his manner, and a trifle careless in his dress. After a pause, he goes back into the office, leaving the door ajar. Presently CATHERINE enters. In spite of her youth and girlish appearance, she is a good, thrifty housekeeper. She wears a simple summer gown, and carries a bunch of gay tulips and an old silver pitcher, from which she presently pours water into the Harlequin Delft vase on PETER GRIMM'S desk. She peeps ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... Christians. It was not until the reign of Philip III. and his disgraceful favourite Lerma, himself the most bigoted of Valencian "Christians," that, by the advice of Ribera, the Archbishop of Valencia, these industrious, thrifty, and harmless people were ruthlessly driven out. They had turned Valencia into a prolific garden,—even to-day it is called the huerta,—their silk manufactures were known and valued throughout the world; their industry and frugality were, in fact, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady, industrious, quiet, sober, thrifty, quick to learn, and tolerably honest. From the point of view of the old Political Economy, they are the very people to be encouraged, for they turn out the largest quantity of wealth at the lowest cost of production. If it is the chief end for ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... candidly he was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic de rigueur off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... feelings in the most practical fashion, by subscribing freely to carry on the religious primary schools, and refusing to let their children attend the lay schools, which are kept up by the Government out of the taxes paid by themselves. This, with a thrifty and rather parsimonious population, like that which increases and multiplies so steadily in Artois, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... almost as little known and valued as Alaska was last year. But the discovery of gold in Sutton's mill-race changed the whole aspect of affairs in California, and it is now a State with a large and thrifty population, and its western shore is connected with the Atlantic seaboard by railroads, towns and cities. The discovery of gold made the change. The recent discoveries on the Yukon River in Alaska are ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 1, March, 1898 • Various

... Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues: nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... collecting the wounded, burying the dead, grazing the horses, and reading the Richmond journals, two small newsboys with commendable enterprise having come within our lines from the Confederate capital to sell their papers. They were sharp youngsters, and having come well supplied, they did a thrifty business. When their stock in trade was all disposed of they wished to return, but they were so intelligent and observant that I thought their mission involved other purposes than the mere sale of newspapers, so they were held till we crossed the ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... bonny lass," thought he contemplatively, dwelling on the charms of the young cook at the farmhouse he had left just past midnight, "bonny and thrifty, and as fond o' a laugh as I am mysel. That bit shop as ye come out o' Hexham, with red roses growing up the front o't, and fine-scented laylock bushes at the back, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... what he meant, and went away down the hill, as sober as the cricket when he was departing from the door of the thrifty ant. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... young and fundless he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing timid at the time he had means ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... the jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as it begins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curdled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife—or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl—has lighted ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... of my bark! Thrifty men who sit beside the blazing hearth when my branches throw up a clear bright flame, and follow the example of their fathers in making their own shoes and those of their families, tan the hides with my bark. Kamschadales ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church

... you on this subject, for the world's attention is directed to that information, and perhaps, reader, you are as well posted on that subject as your humble writer. For the western country, as a hardy and profitable stock of thrifty hogs, the Berkshire mixed or crossed with the Poland China, would be my choice, but every man has his own notions concerning the breed of his stock. The main point is to keep them healthy. Please fathom these ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... to her lodging cost half-a-crown, and this waste of money frightened her thrifty nature, inherited through centuries of working folk. The waste, however, had ceased at last, and it was none too soon, she thought, as she sat in the room she had taken near the hospital, in a little eight-roomed house, kept by an old woman ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... coronation, and a certain number of persons were to represent the different parishes throughout the land. Sheep, geese, and hens were ordered in enormous quantities to be collected by the royal stewards for the festival. These the thrifty monarch arranged should be provided by the parishes themselves. Lest the Dalesmen, already somewhat irritated, should have new cause for discontent, Gustavus wrote them that they need not take part in the contribution, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... to a halt in the Flying W ranchhouse yard, Ruth Harkness' first emotion was one of a great happiness that the Harknesses had always been thrifty and neat, and also that Uncle William had persisted in these habits. She had greatly feared, for during the last day of her ride on the train she had passed many ranchhouses and she had been appalled and depressed by the dilapidated appearance of their ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... partly so. And in line with it, and in addition to it, prices are high because the working class is no longer thrifty. If our working class saved as the French peasant does, we would sell more in the world ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London

... what has been said, my first point is this: We who have to deal with the young, we all who love our fellow-men, we all who desire that our times, our city, our country, should be thrifty, happy, and content, must each in his place and way give high honor to labor. We, especially, who are teachers and parents, should see to it that the young get "hand-craft" while they are getting "rede-craft." How can ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the quiet, thrifty, affable man of business became a wreck. By nothing is the inmost quality of a man made more manifest than by the manner in which he meets misfortune. One, when the sky darkens, having strong impulse and weak will, rushes into suicide; another, with a large ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... being first-class and an extra two or three sous, was deserted. These thrifty people would as soon think of burning down their cottages, as of wasting two sous in a useless luxury—all honour to them for the principle. But we, surveying human nature from an elevation, felt ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... the years that followed, for he was a thrifty, hard-working man. The child, whom they had named Josepha, grew to girlhood, and reached young womanhood as a sprite of the camps—a gypo queen. The Modocks were uneducated people, but knew it, and strove to make amends by educating the girl ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins

... they had been in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done something for them, for they knew how to work and they had adopted in part the language, habits, religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery had not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglass said of the Negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of the conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was free from the individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet. He ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... neither the Acts of Trade nor the dictates of nature, had every year carried their provisions and fish to the foreign islands, receiving in exchange molasses, cochineal, "medical druggs," and "gold and silver in bullion and coin." With molasses the thrifty New Englanders made great quantities of inferior rum, the common drink of that day, regarded as essential to the health of sailors engaged in fishing off the Grand Banks, and by far the cheapest and most effective instrument for ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... farming. Death had put an end to the settler's industry, and the property had come, at a low figure, into Solano's hands; whereupon everything industrious lapsed, neglect and discomfort usurping the place of thrifty comfort. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... captain, owing to his English education, had avoided straight lines, and formal paths; giving to the little spot the improvement on nature which is a consequence of embellishing her works without destroying them. On each side of this lawn was an orchard, thrifty and young, and which were already beginning to show signs of putting ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... pleasures of a poultry yard Were by a swan and gosling shared. The swan was kept there for his looks, The thrifty gosling for the cooks; The first the garden's pride, the latter A greater favourite on the platter. They swam the ditches, side by side, And oft in sports aquatic vied, Plunging, splashing far and wide, With ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... that that first signal volley was about all the fireworks ever indulged in in Green Valley. This little town, nestling in the peaceful shelter of gentle hills and softly singing woods, naturally disliked harsh, ugly sounds and was moreover far too thrifty, too practical and sane a community to put firearms and flaming death into the hands of its children. Green Valley patriotism was of ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... The thrifty Jean was far from pleased when, on the morning after his lucky moose-shot, he found that the sled-team was short of one dog. As it happened, Jake was the first to note the absence of Bill, the ex-leader; and while he looked this way ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... elder were hard-working, thrifty lads, who had no care except as to how they might better themselves in the world. But the youngest, whose name was Boots, was not thrifty at all. He was a do-nothing and was quite content to sit in the chimney corner and warm his shins and think ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... a pretty, thrifty little woman, with a mass of rather untidy fair hair. She was still in the tea-gown which, apparently, she had been wearing all the day, whilst her foot-gear consisted of a pair of Japanese slippers; and yet the whole effect was charming, possibly because she was entirely unaffected ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... were an honest, faithful people. They were not rich, neither were they poor; but being thrifty and economical, they lived with comfort. Stern integrity was the predominant quality of the farmer's home into which John Adams was born in 1735. It must be remembered, throughout his life it was the ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... of the way. Carelessness is but a sorry excuse, for letting bees establish this habit of dishonesty. Should any stocks be weak from disease, the consequences would be even more disastrous than bad habits; the reasons why such impure honey should not go into thrifty stocks, have already been given. If we want the least possible trouble with our bees, none but the best should be selected for winter. But what constitutes a good stock, seems to be but partially understood; if we judge from ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... potatoes were the principal crop raised; a ready sale for them being obtained among the shipping touching at Papeetee. There was a small patch of the taro, or Indian turnip, also; another of yams; and in one corner, a thrifty growth of the sugar-cane, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... I think," said Miriam. "I am a thrifty soul. I saved ten dollars out of my last month's allowance. It was really extra money that I had asked Mother for. I intended to buy a sweater and then ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... ate her frugal dinner (consisting chiefly of purslain, and some other garden herbs, which her thrifty aunt had prepared for boiling), and went away as usual to her school; for Aunt Keziah, as aforesaid, had never encouraged the tender ministrations of Rose, whose orderly, womanly character, with its well-defined orb of daily and civilized duties, had always appeared to strike her as tame; and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnuts on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, I see, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer there. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas: the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all summer. I close the outer windows as we go along, ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger

... improvement for both the children and the older people. It was all good. Down in the little meadow grew the dreaming trees, their round crowns rising as from a sea not quite to the level of the bungalow, their thrifty leaves glistening in the moonlight. Across the pretty bridge lay the silent little campus with its twentieth-century temple facing its chief priest. It was all good, without and within. He went ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... were in sheaf, the parson's cart came up, driven by the sumner, the parson's official servant. The gate of the field was thrown open, and honestly and religiously one sheaf out of every ten was thrown into the cart. But the husbandman had been thrifty in advance. The parson's sheaves had all been grouped thick about the gate, and they were the shortest, and the thinnest, and the blackest, and the dirtiest, and the poorest that the field had yielded. Similar were the doings at the digging of the potatoes, but the scenes of recrimination which ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine



Words linked to "Thrifty" :   sparing, saving, stinting, wasteful, penny-wise, scotch, frugal, thriftiness, thrift, economical, provident



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