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paltry
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  • Hated him for being young, for being excellent, for having made their victories look paltry and weak.†   (source)
  • But their experience at the lumbermill had been so very dreadful that they didn't care much that they were leaving Paltry — ville.†   (source)
  • How strange and paltry it seemed at the time, and now, looking back, what an abundance of good protein had been sacrificed in our honor.†   (source)
  • My plan seemed a paltry thing now.†   (source)
  • I'd soon be cutting into my paltry stash of U.S. dollars.†   (source)
  • But for years, I had this running fantasy of my scientist father in a laboratory carrying out vital experiments—the imagination ofa paltry kid who wanted so much to break away from the constraints of a society which expected my father to be a janitor or a laborer — when I wanted a father who transformed the world.†   (source)
  • Galbatorix cannot be mad enough to believe he can destroy us with such a paltry force!†   (source)
  • All the same, Dewey could not accept the theory that the family had been slaughtered for paltry profit-"a few dollars and a radio.†   (source)
  • It was a heady feeling, even though my gifts were paltry next to those of Justice, who inherited an entire herd.†   (source)
  • I lick my lips, already thirsty, and hunch beneath the paltry shade of the Jack tree to consider my predicament.†   (source)
  • Luma had spent hours looking for quality leather soccer shoes that were affordable under the team's paltry budget, so that her players didn't have to play in the cheap, uncomfortable plastic shoes she knew the YMCA would likely purchase for them if given no guidance.†   (source)
  • Although there was no enemy or other danger to be perceived, they felt the apprehension and doubt of those who have come unawares upon some awe-inspiring place where they themselves are paltry fellows of no account.†   (source)
  • The paltry magic of your statue cannot contain me.†   (source)
  • This leaves only about 30 percent of the users with "average" looks, including a paltry 1 percent with "less than average" looks—which suggests that the typical online dater is either a fabulist, a narcissist, or simply resistant to the meaning of "average.†   (source)
  • In contrast, total international development assistance from all countries for maternal and neonatal health was a paltry $530 million in 2004.†   (source)
  • Grog had fared even worse, racing thirty-seven times before being claimed for a paltry $1,500.†   (source)
  • But sadly, I'm going to have to sail through under my own paltry steam.†   (source)
  • Illiterate high-altitude porters in Pakistan's Karakoram have put down their packs to make paltry wages with him so their children can have the education they were forced to do without.†   (source)
  • It is a great distance to go to learn such paltry tricks.†   (source)
  • So often the material he had to work with was thin and paltry, and he had to patch something together with a few superlatives, cliches, and false notes of glory in order to commemorate the life, and bolster a sense of loss over the death.†   (source)
  • When she glared back at him with her paltry defiance, he twisted harder, digging his fingers into her arm.†   (source)
  • Jean said that fifty children would not be able to wear all the clothes and play with all those toys, but Blanca's only amusement was to scour the paltry downtown stores, where she purchased every pink baby item she could find.†   (source)
  • The wall is a paltry play by administrators to boost the top students' self-esteem-a tired mantra here and at urban schools everywhere.†   (source)
  • The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain.†   (source)
  • To distract myself, I unscrew my crappy piece of paper for the thousandth time and read through my paltry notes.†   (source)
  • Of the thousand prophecies Nostradamus published, only fifty or so are still quoted today, making for a paltry 5 percent success rate.†   (source)
  • That's a pretty paltry reason to stick around.†   (source)
  • She apologized for the bottle of wine—a cheap red from California— and they had a good laugh over the paltry selections in the local liquor stores.†   (source)
  • Since the onset of civil war, Burundi's per capita gross domestic product had fallen from roughly $180 per year to about $80, the lowest in the world, and of course that paltry figure understated the general penury.†   (source)
  • To love a man for his virtues is paltry and human, it tells you; to love him for his flaws is divine.†   (source)
  • She squirmed, a paltry protest.†   (source)
  • "Brought some more today," chuckled Nix, gesturing at a stack of crates, "but they seem a little paltry compared to what you've been squeezing out of the Broadbrims.†   (source)
  • "She's a romantic soul, our Iona, but flowers are paltry considering the insult."†   (source)
  • Celtigar, Velaryon, Bar Emmon, the whole paltry lot of them.†   (source)
  • She'll decide to be thrifty and offend Frey with a paltry sacrifice.†   (source)
  • It seemed like such a waste to have spent all that time and effort for so paltry a salary.†   (source)
  • They bought me, me with your paltry money.†   (source)
  • With the Horvath control of your heavy metals, which were paltry anyway, your world has virtually nothing to trade.†   (source)
  • Then she remembered, and it seemed too paltry to speak of, and she waited until all that she saw in her mind was again clear and full of its own weight; then again she spoke, "I think what's very much more likely is, that he was already dead when the man just phoned, and that he couldn't bear to tell me, and I don't blame him, I'm grateful he didn't.†   (source)
  • I say, only then realizing how paltry a defense it is.†   (source)
  • Three good ships should be worth more than a few paltry eunuchs.†   (source)
  • The words seemed paltry when compared with the depth of his emotion.†   (source)
  • That paltry rabble I see there huddled under the castle walls?†   (source)
  • He sent her what comfort he could, but it seemed paltry when compared to her loss.†   (source)
  • 'How can I exchange this gnomish copper stewpot for two such paltry vases?' he'd say.†   (source)
  • It all seemed to Clumly a foolish waste of mind, these paltry illusions, magic tricks.†   (source)
  • It will be a shore fish, a species too paltry and tasteless to have been coveted and sold and exterminated, or else a bottom-feeder pimply with toxins, but Snowman couldn't care less, he'll eat anything.†   (source)
  • A paltry gesture.†   (source)
  • "Do not think to blame this attack upon mine clan based upon such paltry evidence!" exclaimed Vermund, bolting upright.†   (source)
  • For the paltry sum of all our precious metals they provide us with protection and the occasional clearing up of our orbital systems.†   (source)
  • After ten months of puttering around a small quiet office and watching the paltry traffic on Main Street, Rufus was bored, defeated, depressed, and going out of his mind.†   (source)
  • It was a paltry education compared with that you would have received of old, but given how events press on us, we are fortunate to have been able to teach you as much as we did.†   (source)
  • They had a permanent unemployed underclass approaching thirty percent, their military was paltry for their size, absorbing less than point zero three percent of their GDP, and their trade imbalance was becoming astronomical.†   (source)
  • Most of the spectators were guardsmen in the gold cloaks of the City Watch or the crimson of House Lannister; of lords and ladies there were but a paltry few, the handful that remained at court.†   (source)
  • She was as angry as the river, repelled by his pettiness and pedantry, his flight from the furious truth of the place to the name of a paltry trickle.†   (source)
  • He struggled to clear the images out of his brain, but against the undertow of his weariness his effort was paltry.†   (source)
  • He had not meant to get into legal collection: all the force of his past, all the force of his personal kindness, stood against the paltry business of debtor chasing.†   (source)
  • The mare breathed deep and sighed, letting her back sag, infinitely weary of all man's paltry machinations, and Ben Hodge, servant of sunlit visions, whose heart was set on holiness--like the girl in the story his father told, who threw roses in the air--was silent.†   (source)
  • How paltry and mean my actions sounded, even to myself.†   (source)
  • Certainly not for no little paltry sawbuck.†   (source)
  • I could say, I do not know, could give ten thousand paltry reasons, all untrue, and be believed—that I stayed for food, who could have combed ditch-banks and weed-beds, made and worked a garden as well at my own home in town as here, not to speak of neighbors, friends whose alms I might have accepted, since necessity has a way of obliterating from our conduct various delicate scruples regarding honor and pride; that I stayed for shelter, who had a roof of my own in fee simple now…†   (source)
  • And the second son watched the money and the gifts that came in, and he gave to the slaves and servants the least that could be given them, so that Cuckoo sneered when into her hand he put a paltry two pieces of silver and she said in the hearing of many, "Now a truly great family is not so careful of its silver and one can see that this family does not rightly belong in these courts."†   (source)
  • All this torture, all this pressing need, all these glimpses into the paltriness and worthlessness of my own self, the frightful dread lest I succumb, and the fear of death.†   (source)
  • My head was a long way from being clear in this lionish place, the paltry, ritzy den of a parlor, and he maybe was not as bold and easy as he sounded.†   (source)
  • And it was a shame to him that when he must set his name to the contract another, even a paltry clerk, lifted his eyebrows in scorn and, with his brush pointed on the wet ink block, brushed hastily the characters of Wang Lung's name; and greatest shame that when the man called out for a joke, "Is it the dragon character Lung or the deaf character Lung, or what?†   (source)
  • Riding in this dusk and semiwinter, it was the way paltry and immense were so mixed, perhaps, the jointed spine of train racing and swerving, the steels, rusts, bloodlike paints extended space after space in the sky, and then other existence, space after space.†   (source)
  • These infinitesimal distinctions between man and man are too paltry for an Omnipotent Being.†   (source)
  • It seemed as if this paltry sum would delay the desired culmination longer than all the rest had.†   (source)
  • There came over him a look of meanness and of paltriness.†   (source)
  • … (Correcting himself—contemptuously): —They are paltry enough!†   (source)
  • My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem.†   (source)
  • His father, getting an old man, and lame from his accidents, was given a paltry, poor job.†   (source)
  • DE GUICHE: I know you love to fight against five score; You will not now complain of paltry odds.†   (source)
  • The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque.†   (source)
  • And now he looked paltry and insignificant.†   (source)
  • But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.†   (source)
  • He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher—in a word, a poor thing in every way.†   (source)
  • And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from DUTY and HUMANITY!†   (source)
  • To enjoy,—what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition!†   (source)
  • 'tis a paltry king in his ways with men of letters, and one who commits very barbarous cruelties.†   (source)
  • 'Here are proper fish!' he exclaimed, 'none of your paltry fry.†   (source)
  • I am not going to be sat upon by Farfrae, or any of the rest of the paltry crew!†   (source)
  • My love would have been devoted — would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!'†   (source)
  • What was pride in the former becomes puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter.†   (source)
  • His garden or his poultry-yard—very paltry places it may be—tells him many pleasant anecdotes.†   (source)
  • He is simply a devil—a paltry, trivial devil.†   (source)
  • "I knowed it ud' turn again' you to look at such paltry articles as I carry.†   (source)
  • Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education?†   (source)
  • How can you deliberately get up such paltry falsehoods?†   (source)
  • You are much mistaken if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this.†   (source)
  • I'll pit him against that paltry creature, unless it bestir itself briskly.†   (source)
  • _ Don't pay attention: he is a paltry, pitiful devil," he added suddenly.†   (source)
  • Her love for him had been paltry and weak, easily crushed by her own pride; and she, too, had worn a mask in assuming a contempt for him, whilst, as a matter of fact, she completely misunderstood him.†   (source)
  • Paltry, isn't it?†   (source)
  • The King continued to struggle in the woman's strong grasp, and now and then cried out in vexation— "Unhand me, thou foolish creature; it was not I that bereaved thee of thy paltry goods."†   (source)
  • "That little limping devil up front already handed me my paltry correspondence," Settembrini said, shoving a hand down into the side pocket of his ineluctable petersham coat.†   (source)
  • Sometimes at Lynn's they affected him in the same way, and he looked at them file past him with horror; they were so ugly and there was such meanness in their faces, it was terrifying; their features were distorted with paltry desires, and you felt they were strange to any ideas of beauty.†   (source)
  • I was, perhaps, after all, a paltry victim to the spirit of mental and social restlessness that makes so many unhappy in these days!†   (source)
  • The old man gazed around the room, glanced at each face in turn, and finally said— "I see none here but paltry knaves, scum o' the streets.†   (source)
  • To the fury of Herr Settembrini, who would have loved to have escorted his pupil from the room or at least to have held his ears shut, Naphta declared matter to be much too paltry a substance for the Spirit ever to be realized within it.†   (source)
  • The paltry sum of thirteen hundred and some odd dollars set against the need of rent, clothing, food, and pleasure for years to come was a spectacle little calculated to induce peace of mind in one who had been accustomed to spend five times that sum in the course of a year.†   (source)
  • "Then go, ye paltry cowards, and arm yourselves and guard the doors, whilst I send one to fetch the watch!" said Hugh.†   (source)
  • And suddenly there were only three or four paltry days left, a remnant hardly worth considering, though given some weight by the two upcoming periodical deviations in the daily routine, but already filled with thoughts of packing and farewell.†   (source)
  • "So long as you don't feel life's paltry and a miserable business, the rest doesn't matter, happiness or unhappiness."†   (source)
  • What are thy paltry domains, thy trivial interests, contrasted with matters which concern the weal of a nation and the integrity of a throne?†   (source)
  • Conversely, rich and interesting events are capable of filling time, until hours, even days, are shortened and speed past on wings; whereas on a larger scale, interest lends the passage of time breadth, solidity, and weight, so that years rich in events pass much more slowly than do paltry, bare, featherweight years that are blown before the wind and are gone.†   (source)
  • They wandered hither and thither for some time, Hugo watching for opportunities to do a stroke of business, but finding none—so he finally said— "I see nought to steal; it is a paltry place.†   (source)
  • …below and in room 34, it was very close to five o'clock; and by the time Joachim had returned from his third obligatory walk and had dropped in on his cousin again, it was so close to six o'clock that, once you rounded it off a little, the time left in the rest cure until supper was reduced to just one hour—and it was child's play to drive such paltry forces of opposing time from the field of battle, particularly if you had thoughts in your head and an orbis pictus on the nightstand.†   (source)
  • She wore a white blouse and navy skirt, and somehow, wherever she was, seemed to make things look paltry and insignificant.†   (source)
  • The collier's small, mean head, with its black hair slightly soiled with grey, lay on the bare arms, and the face, dirty and inflamed, with a fleshy nose and thin, paltry brows, was turned sideways, asleep with beer and weariness and nasty temper.†   (source)
  • The Lord Protector called out fiercely— "Cast the beggar into the street, and scourge him through the town—the paltry knave is worth no more consideration!"†   (source)
  • "—holding the garment up and viewing it admiringly—"they have a grandeur and a majesty that do cause these small stingy ones of the tailor-man to look mightily paltry and plebeian— " 'She loved her husband dearilee, But another man he loved she,—'†   (source)
  • The King was cordially ashamed of himself for having gotten all that fright and misery out of so paltry a matter as a slumbering calf; but he need not have felt so about it, for it was not the calf that frightened him, but a dreadful non-existent something which the calf stood for; and any other boy, in those old superstitious times, would have acted and suffered just as he had done.†   (source)
  • Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the incidents—paltry in his eyes, but really important—of his country life.†   (source)
  • It's galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three thousand.†   (source)
  • For be a man's intellectual superiority what it will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over other men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and entrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.†   (source)
  • God gave me that freedom; but man put God's image in the scales with the paltry sum of three hundred dollars.†   (source)
  • But after that—I mean after three months (for its absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four paltry weeks)—what do you mean to do with her?†   (source)
  • Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography.†   (source)
  • He was going a-fishing before dawn, with Pembroke Howard, and if I got the twins into the common calaboose—and I thought sure I could—I never dreamed of their slipping out on a paltry fine for such an outrageous offense—well, once in the calaboose they would be disgraced, and uncle wouldn't want any duels with that sort of characters, and wouldn't allow any.†   (source)
  • …rubbish of the herald's office,--the blazonry of coat armor, the crests and devices of illustrious families, pedigrees that extended back, like lines of light, into the mist of the dark ages, together with stars, garters, and embroidered collars, each of which, as paltry a bawble as it might appear to the uninstructed eye, had once possessed vast significance, and was still, in truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral or material facts by the worshippers of the gorgeous past.†   (source)
  • Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.†   (source)
  • The favorite of a great lady will not be allowed to be inconvenienced for such a paltry sum as he owes you.†   (source)
  • —When I returned with my dear-bought honours, purchased by toil and blood, I found her wedded to a Gascon squire, whose name was never heard beyond the limits of his own paltry domain!†   (source)
  • 'Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it's told!' cried Monks impatiently; 'and which has been lying dead for twelve years past or more!'†   (source)
  • This was the occasion on which fair dames who came on pillions sent their bandboxes before them, supplied with more than their evening costume; for the feast was not to end with a single evening, like a paltry town entertainment, where the whole supply of eatables is put on the table at once, and bedding is scanty.†   (source)
  • It suddenly seemed to me that this commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all that had happened, and I blushed crimson.†   (source)
  • They're paltry times, these are.†   (source)
  • "And to think, only to think that a man's life should be ruined for the sake of that paltry three thousand!" he cried, contemptuously.†   (source)
  • So insignificant at that moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.†   (source)
  • Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you.†   (source)
  • The most trivial, paltry, insignificant part; the merest commonplace; not a tolerable speech in the whole.†   (source)
  • There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.†   (source)
  • In one shop there were a great many crowns of laurel and myrtle, which soldiers, authors, statesmen, and various other people pressed eagerly to buy; some purchased these paltry wreaths with their lives, others by a toilsome servitude of years, and many sacrificed whatever was most valuable, yet finally slunk away without the crown.†   (source)
  • We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of life that flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon House.†   (source)
  • Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level.†   (source)
  • "There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale."†   (source)
  • If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.†   (source)
  • If he has a friend here, he will save him the disgrace of the paltry attempt to conceal his name—and utterly useless one—for I will find it out, nor leave him until I have.'†   (source)
  • I have cared for them, instructed them, watched over them, and know all their little cares and joys, for years; and how can I ever hold up my head again among them, if, for the sake of a little paltry gain, we sell such a faithful, excellent, confiding creature as poor Tom, and tear from him in a moment all we have taught him to love and value?†   (source)
  • Yes, they changed my twenty, but I judged it strained the bank a little, which was a thing to be expected, for it was the same as walking into a paltry village store in the nineteenth century and requiring the boss of it to change a two thousand-dollar bill for you all of a sudden.†   (source)
  • No doubt M. Danglars has sacrificed them to the selfish consideration of gaining some thousands of paltry francs.†   (source)
  • "My lineage, proud Norman," replied Athelstane, "is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard.†   (source)
  • …despair I pictured to myself how coldly and disdainfully that "scoundrel" Zverkov would meet me; with what dull-witted, invincible contempt the blockhead Trudolyubov would look at me; with what impudent rudeness the insect Ferfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry favour with Zverkov; how completely Simonov would take it all in, and how he would despise me for the abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit--and, worst of all, how paltry, UNLITERARY, commonplace it would all be.†   (source)
  • Do you think you bring your paltry money here as a favour or a gift; or as a matter of business, and in return for value received?†   (source)
  • I know you are not rich, Madame Coquenard, and that your husband is obliged to bleed his poor clients to squeeze a few paltry crowns from them.†   (source)
  • Aye," lighting from the boat to the deck, "thus I trample on thee, thou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and destroy thee!"†   (source)
  • Why had he brought his cheap regard and his lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange?†   (source)
  • He had no right to be a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks, have been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have planned for itself,—it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,—if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come tempered to such a man.†   (source)
  • Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.†   (source)
  • Oh, merely a paltry fifty louis.†   (source)
  • The king has made him a baron, and can make him a peer, but he cannot make him a gentleman, and the Count of Morcerf is too aristocratic to consent, for the paltry sum of two million francs, to a mesalliance.†   (source)
  • She'll never again think me anything but a paltry pretence—too nice to take heaven except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any devil's change by the sly.†   (source)
  • The man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile and a malicious fellow.†   (source)
  • What low, poor, paltry, hypocritical people an argument on religion will make of the pure and chosen souls.†   (source)
  • The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.†   (source)
  • Grant that I had doubled it—made cent. per cent.—for every sovereign told another—there would not be one piece of money in all the heap which wouldn't represent ten thousand mean and paltry lies, told, not by the money-lender, oh no! but by the money-borrowers, your liberal, thoughtless, generous, dashing folks, who wouldn't be so mean as save a sixpence for the world!'†   (source)
  • 'Now,' said he, with curbed ferocity, 'I'm getting angry and if you don't command that paltry spirit of yours — DAMN you! get up directly!'†   (source)
  • (he called me by this name when he was in good humor); 'do you think I am going to change the life I lead for your mode of existence—my agreeable indolence for the hard and precarious toil you impose on yourself, exposed to the bitter frost at night, and the scorching heat by day, compelled to conceal yourself, and when you are perceived, receive a volley of bullets, all to earn a paltry sum?†   (source)
  • I have a horror of a paltry wedding.†   (source)
  • This appears to me sufficiently to explain why men in democracies, whose concerns are in general so paltry, call upon their poets for conceptions so vast and descriptions so unlimited.†   (source)
  • Not because I couldn't, or because I shouldn't dare, or because it would be damaging, for it's all a paltry matter and absolutely trifling, but—I won't, because it's a matter of principle: that's my private life, and I won't allow any intrusion into my private life.†   (source)
  • And who has not seen the tragedy of imprudent genius struggling for years with paltry pecuniary difficulties, at last sinking, chilled, exhausted and fruitless, like a giant slaughtered by pins?†   (source)
  • The value which was set upon the forms of language at that period, and the paltry strife about words with which dramatic authors were assailed, are no less surprising.†   (source)
  • When he had leased this paltry building for the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this would cast a graceful shadow on "his spouse," and would result in what the English call respectability for his house.†   (source)
  • A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience.†   (source)
  • They strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this cannot fail speedily to limit their discernment and to circumscribe their powers.†   (source)
  • And when now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the secret;—how then? is the bird flown?†   (source)
  • …society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of the moral and intellectual level, at coining science, at putting ideas into circulation, at increasing the mind in youthful persons, and he feared lest the present poverty of method, the paltriness from a literary point of view confined to two or three centuries called classic, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines should end by converting our colleges into artificial oyster beds.†   (source)
  • …and sealed scrap of paper float around the globe in a pine ship and come safe to the eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming population, let him likewise feel the admonition to integrate his being across all these distracting forces, and keep a slender human word among the storms, distances and accidents that drive us hither and thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of one man reappear to redeem its pledge after months and years in the most distant climates.†   (source)
  • Their manners have in almost all cases remained below the height of their station; the consequence is that they frequently carry very low tastes into their extraordinary fortunes, and that they seem to have acquired the supreme power only to minister to their coarse or paltry pleasures.†   (source)
  • The Reflexion is awful—and in this point of view, How trifling, how ridiculous, do the little, paltry cavillings, of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.†   (source)
  • My hopes of success, as I told him, were founded on this, that the then only newspaper, printed by Bradford, was a paltry thing, wretchedly manag'd, no way entertaining, and yet was profitable to him; I therefore thought a good paper would scarcely fail of good encouragement.†   (source)
  • But it appearing a paltry thing to serve under others, he resolved, with the aid of some citizens of Fermo, to whom the slavery of their country was dearer than its liberty, and with the help of the Vitelleschi, to seize Fermo.†   (source)
  • …when they consume
    Odysseus' worldly goods, blind in their violence,
    telling themselves that he'll come home no more.
    But all the rest of you, how you rouse my fury!

    Sitting here in silence ….
    never a word put forth to curb these suitors,
    paltry few as they are and you so many."
    "Mentor!"
    Euenor's son Leocritus rounded on him, shouting,
    "Rabble-rousing fool, now what's this talk?
    Goading them on to try and hold us back!
    It's uphill work, I warn you,
    fighting a force like…†   (source)
  • I'm proud to boast his blood, that man
    revered like a god throughout all Crete those days,
    for wealth, power and all his glorious offspring.
    But the deadly spirits soon swept him down
    to the House of Death, and his high and mighty sons
    carved up his lands and then cast lots for the parts
    and gave me just a pittance, a paltry house as well.
    But I won myself a wife from wealthy, landed people,
    thanks to my own strong points.†   (source)
  • Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages.†   (source)
  • …or chickensoup with some of that opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry handkerchiefs about 6/— in all sure you cant get on in this world without style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing…†   (source)
  • …the year I was born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or something where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put him up on a throne to count the money all the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir…†   (source)
  • …push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co. It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife.†   (source)
  • And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow, Long kept in Britagne at our mother's cost?†   (source)
  • [Aside to MRS. FORD] Look who comes yonder: she shall be our messenger to this paltry knight.†   (source)
  • "Why, what are you thinking about?" said the other; "do you take me for some paltry squire?†   (source)
  • About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring That she did give me, whose posy was For all the world like cutlers' poetry Upon a knife, 'Love me, and leave me not.'†   (source)
  • Many exquisite viands might be rejected by the epicure, if it was a sufficient cause for his contemning of them as common and vulgar, that something was to be found in the most paltry alleys under the same name.†   (source)
  • I don't choose to discuss scandal out loud: A woman laughs at these masculine foibles, And never plagues her mate with paltry troubles.†   (source)
  • A very dishonest paltry boy, and more a coward than a hare: his dishonesty appears in leaving his friend here in necessity, and denying him; and for his cowardship, ask Fabian.†   (source)
  • 'tis paltry to be Caesar; Not being Fortune, he's but Fortune's knave, A minister of her will: and it is great To do that thing that ends all other deeds; Which shackles accidents and bolts up change; Which sleeps, and never palates more the dug, The beggar's nurse and Caesar's.†   (source)
  • For my part I have long since renounced those paltry entertainments which constitute the glory of modern Italy, and are purchased so dearly by sovereigns.†   (source)
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