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Then, again, we are penny-wise and pound-foolish with our children when we train them up into all the proprieties and etiquettes of family and social life, and at the same time pay so little attention to their inward life of opening thought and quickening desire and awakening passion.
Not a little, too, of Sir George's economy was of "the penny-wise and pound-foolish" kind.
But to give you a more direct answer. He loseth then, he loseth greatly that getteth after this fashion. This is the man that is penny-wise and pound-foolish; this is he that loseth his good sheep for a half-penny-worth of tar; that loseth a soul for a little of the world. And then what doth he get thereby but loss and damage? Thus he getteth or rather loseth about the world to come.
The levellers, whose muckworm minds, and love of the arts is only shown in that of money-getting maintained that the demolition of the Chapel would be "a pecuniary saving;" but theirs was a penny-wise and pound-foolish spirit; for, by removing the Chapel, a greater expense would be incurred than in its restoration.
Moreover, Colonial England has caught the disease of non-interference and the infection of economy, the spawn of Liberalism; while her savings, made by starving her establishments, are of the category popularly described as penny-wise and pound-foolish. France has adopted the contrary policy.
Perhaps there is no species of extravagance more common, than that often practised by well-disposed people, which consists of being "penny-wise, pound-foolish;" they will save a hundred cents on as many different occasions, and throw away twenty dollars on one object. It happens that such persons often succeed in persuading themselves that they are models of prudence, and self-denial.
Enlightened, far-seeing, all-benefiting selfishness will then take the place of short-sighted, suicidal, penny-wise pound-foolish cunning; and that barricade of hypocrisy, duty, that most fallible of all guides, conscience, and ‘virtue’ and ‘vice,’ those most unscientific and mischievous expressions that have ever crept into the vocabulary of human folly, will be obsolete.”
The great loss of hairpins did not proceed so much from the carelessness of women in fastening their hair, as from their 'pennywise and pound-foolish' system of buying cheap hairpins with few and inefficient 'twists. These cheap hairpins never 'caught' properly in their coiled-up tresses.
I did not proportion my religious things aright. The laird of Brea does not say in as many words that he was wise in the penny and foolish in the pound, but that is exactly what he means. Then, again, the narrowness, the partiality, the sickliness, and the squeamishness of our consciences, all that makes us to be too often penny-wise and pound-foolish in our religious life.
Experience has given the world the knowledge needed to build bridges of iron which shall in all possible contingencies be safe, and there is no excuse for a penny-wise and pound-foolish policy when it leads to disaster. The crystal peaks of the Andes were behind our explorers: before, were their eastward-stretching spurs and their eastward-falling rivers.
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