United States or Bahamas ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In living as he did, the notary consulted his taste. He detested society, pomp, pleasures dearly bought; had it been otherwise, he would have, without hesitation, sacrificed his most lively wishes to the appearances which it was important to give himself. Some words on the character of this man. He was a son of the grand family of misers. Avarice is, above all, a negative, passive passion.
The king ordered the crowns to be arranged upon a table, and well lighted up, so that they shone like the eyes of the company which lit up involuntarily, and made them laugh in spite of themselves. They did not wait long for the three misers, whom the varlet led in, pale and panting, except Cornelius, who knew the king's strange freaks.
There was a ballroom in the house, and the proprietor allowed them to erect a temporary stage there and give a performance, the guests in the house promising to attend in a body. One of the plays was an old French farce, known to English audiences as "The Hole in the Wall." The principal comedy part was a clerk to two old misers, who starved him outrageously.
Having been at home, or at least guests, in many realms of the spirit, having escaped again and again from the gloomy, agreeable nooks in which preferences and prejudices, youth, origin, the accident of men and books, or even the weariness of travel seemed to confine us, full of malice against the seductions of dependency which he concealed in honours, money, positions, or exaltation of the senses, grateful even for distress and the vicissitudes of illness, because they always free us from some rule, and its "prejudice," grateful to the God, devil, sheep, and worm in us, inquisitive to a fault, investigators to the point of cruelty, with unhesitating fingers for the intangible, with teeth and stomachs for the most indigestible, ready for any business that requires sagacity and acute senses, ready for every adventure, owing to an excess of "free will", with anterior and posterior souls, into the ultimate intentions of which it is difficult to pry, with foregrounds and backgrounds to the end of which no foot may run, hidden ones under the mantles of light, appropriators, although we resemble heirs and spendthrifts, arrangers and collectors from morning till night, misers of our wealth and our full-crammed drawers, economical in learning and forgetting, inventive in scheming, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night-owls of work even in full day, yea, if necessary, even scarecrows and it is necessary nowadays, that is to say, inasmuch as we are the born, sworn, jealous friends of SOLITUDE, of our own profoundest midnight and midday solitude such kind of men are we, we free spirits!
Amaryllis the Daughter of a wealthy Merchant and no less admir'd for her Beauty than the lovely Theodora; she was made up of Perfections, and whomsoever she saw unguarded, she was sure to captivate: These two Ladies were both of them cross'd in their amorous Inclinations; Theodora, before she was thirteen Years of Age, had made a powerful Conquest over the Affections of a Youth of Gallantry, his Name was Leander, and he was the eldest Son of a Nobleman of Naples; but Theodora's Father having no regard to the Happiness of his Daughter, after Leander had made his Addresses, he forbad him his House, not approving the Circumstances or the Character of the young Gentleman; for the Father of Theodora was a mercenary Courtier, having no regard to any but such as were in their Nature Misers and sanctified Hypocrites, and Leander being a Gentleman inclin'd to Extravagancy.
One evening that the king was with Beaupertuys, in a good humour, having drunk heartily, joked heartily, and offered early in the evening his prayer in Madame's oratory, he said to Le Daim his crony, to the Cardinal, La Balue, and to old Dunois, who were still soaking, "Let us have a good laugh! I think it will be a good joke to see misers before a bag of gold without being able to touch it.
Christ promised His kingdom to the poor in spirit, not to the poor in fact. Spiritual poverty can associate with abundant wealth, just as the most depraved cupidity may exist in poverty. Another prejudice, favorable to ourselves, is that only misers are covetous, because they love money for itself and deprive themselves of the necessaries of life to pile it up.
The storing of provisions by the ants is an exercise of acquisitiveness, the faculty which with us makes rich men and misers. A vast number of curious devices, by which insects provide for the protection and subsistence of their young, whom they are perhaps never to see, are most probably a peculiar restricted effort of philoprogenitiveness.
There is no good thing, nor any good advice, but what may be abused, if used or taken without qualification. There may be misers in regard to time, as well as money; and no one can become miserly in the one respect without soon becoming so in the other.
Misers amidst their heaps are raising new, And think they oft their old hid treasure view. And huntsmen the imagin'd chace pursue. The merchant dreams of wrecks, the ship wou'd save, Or now, by sinking it, himself preserve.
Word Of The Day