Quotes & Sayings About Miserly

While reading the (acceptance) letter, I thought about Paul White. Having an advocate on the inside - someone who had gotten to know me on a personal level - had obviously helped. It made me think deeply about the way privilege and preference work in the world, and how many kids who didn't have "luck" like mine in this instance would find themselves forever outside the ring of power and prestige. So many opportunities in this country are apportioned in this arbitrary and miserly way, distributed to those who already have the benefit of a privileged legacy. — Wes Moore

Plenty of white space and generous line spacing,and don't make the type size too miserly. Then you will be assured of a product fit for a king. — Giambattista Bodoni

The hallucinations are innumerable. That's what has always been the matter with me, in fact: no belief in history, obliviousness of principles. I shall say no more about this: poets and visionaries would be jealous. I am a thousand times the richest, let's be as miserly as the sea. — Arthur Rimbaud

Sometimes it's more generous to take than give,
he said.
"How?" Caroline asked.
"To let the other person give you what he has to offer. If you're always the one giving, you never have to feel disappointed, because you don't expect anything in return. But it's miserly in its own way. Because you never leave yourself open or give the other person a chance. — Luanne Rice

They are miserly, the princes of Austria, you need not grieve about it; they may not donate anything, but they allow themselves tobe fleeced, the good lords. — Franz Grillparzer

Posh is a way of living that can often be quite miserly and not about money. — Kate Reardon

Plunge a sponge into Lake Erie. Did you absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did you suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a tree in Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest of foliage? Watch an ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one? Of course there will. No sooner will one wave crash into the sand than another appears. Then another, then another. This is a picture of God's sufficient grace. Grace is simply another word for God's tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection. It comes at us not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We've barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another. — Max Lucado

Always keep the thought of God's abundance in mind. If any other thought comes, replace it with that of God's abundance. Remind yourself every day that the universe can't be miserly; it can't be wanting. It holds nothing but abundance, or as St. Paul stated so perfectly, "God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance." Repeat these ideas on abundance until they radiate as your inner truth. — Wayne W. Dyer

More than that, though, it gained a definite spiritual chill. Malevolent energy hovered around us, slow and thick like half-frozen honey. There was a gloating, miserly quality to it, bringing to my mind images of old Smaug lying in covetous slumber upon his bed of treasure. — Jim Butcher

Thank you,' I answered, unsure of the proper American response to her gracious enthusiasm. In the Arab world, gratitude is a language unto itself. "May Allah bless the hands that give me this gift"; "Beauty is in the eyes that find me pretty"; "May Allah never deny your prayer"; and so on, an infinite string of prayerful appreciation. Coming from such a culture, I have always found a mere "thank you" an insufficient expression that makes my voice sound miserly and ungrateful." (169). — Susan Abulhawa

The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness. — Andre Gide

We are 'GENEROUS' with criticism, open-minded about 'JUDGEMENT',
'DOUBTFUL' if self correction 'MISERLY' about praise & appreciation!
How about SHUFFLING it all..
'GENEROUS' with praise and appreciation..'MISERLY' with Criticism..
'OPEN MINDED' about Self Correction..'DOUBT' our own judgement..
SIMPLE BUT GENIUS...YES....Life changes with this SHUFFLE ! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

The clue is not to ask in a miserly way-the key is to ask in a grand manner. — Ann Wigmore

I see the pain of miserly love in young people,' I say. 'You don't have that kind of melancholy on your face. But I'm careful not to step on your feet when I speak with you. It's not like dancing. It's like a stone walkway with a little grass between the cracks. It's strong but I will try to tread carefully and not ruin it. In Muslim homes you leave your shoes outside. This is how I behave with you. — Erri De Luca

When the number of children goes over one, God becomes miserly in granting intelligence; he takes it from the living child and gives it to the child to be born. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

We each decide whether to make ourselves learned or ignorant, compassionate or cruel, generous or miserly. No one forces us. No one decides for us, no one drags us along one path or the other. We are responsible for what we are. — Maimonides

We should be able to time travel," he said. "Back to an age when society was kinder to the Rubenesque woman."

"Hmph." I wasn't able to say much.

"I'd love that. I love softness. Love curves. The more, the better."

"D'you really?"

"Why wouldn't I? Think of all the words associated with a bit of extra flesh. Generous. Ample. Voluptuous. Bountiful. Beautiful, sensual words. Contrast them with their opposites. Mean. Insufficient. Meager. Miserly."

I snuffled into his velvet jerkin or doublet or whatever it was and looked up at him. "You should be a professional morale booster," I told him. "You're very kind to say all this but --"

"Kind?" he burst out. "No, I'm not kind! I don't feel sorry for you. I want you. — Justine Elyot

If I seem to be over-interested in junk, it is because I am, and I have a lot of it, too - half a garage full of bits and broken pieces. I use these things for repairing other things. Recently I stopped my car in front of the display yard of a junk dealer near Sag Harbor. As I was looking courteously at the stock, it suddenly occurred to me that I had more than he had. But it can be seen that I do have a genuine and almost miserly interest in worthless objects. My excuse is that in this era of planned obsolescence, when a thing breaks down I can usually find something in my collection to repair it - a toilet, or a motor, or a lawn mower. But I guess the truth is that I simply like junk. — John Steinbeck

Do not spend in excess like one who is careless of what is good, nor be miserly; the mean is best in every case. — Pythagoras

And gratitude is the solution. Being grateful for what we have today doesn't mean we have to have that forever. It means we acknowledge that what we have today is what we're supposed to have today. There is enough, we're enough, and all we need will come to us. We don't have to be desperate, fearful, jealous, resentful, or miserly. We don't have to worry about what someone else has; they don't have ours. All we need to do is appreciate and take care of what we have today. The trick is, we need to be grateful first - before we get anything else, not afterward. — Melody Beattie

If, for example, you are miserly by nature, you will never go beyond a certain limit; only generous souls attain greatness. — Robert Greene

Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on. — Mary Balogh

Miserly curmudgeons may help themselves, but considerate and generous believers the Lord will help. As you have done unto others, so will the Lord do unto you. Empty your pockets. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Nature is a miserly accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing the smallest extravagance. — Richard Dawkins

Yes, I said; and men of this stamp will be covetous of money, like those who live in oligarchies; they will have, a fierce secret longing after gold and silver, which they will hoard in dark places, having magazines and treasuries of their own for the deposit and concealment of them; also castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which they will spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom they please. That is most true, he said. And they are miserly because they have no means of openly acquiring the money which they prize; they will spend that which is another man's on the gratification of their desires, stealing their pleasures and running away like children from the law, their father: they have been schooled not by gentle influences but by force, for they have neglected her who is the true Muse, the companion of reason and philosophy, and have honoured gymnastic more than music. Undoubtedly, — Plato

The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target
you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target
not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things. — Osho

Sometimes I am a collector of data, and only a collector, and am likely to be gross and miserly, piling up notes, pleased with merely numerically adding to my stores. Other times I have joys, when unexpectedly coming upon an outrageous story that may not be altogether a lie, or upon a macabre little thing that may make some reviewer of my more or less good works mad. But always there is present a feeling of unexplained relations of events that I note, and it is this far-away, haunting, or often taunting, awareness, or suspicion, that keeps me piling on. — Charles Fort

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Men are tight-fisted in keeping control of their fortunes, but when it comes to the matter of wasting time, they are positively extravagant in the one area where there is honour in being miserly. — Seneca.

Be generous but not extravagant, be frugal but not miserly. — Anonymous

The most useful and honorable science and occupation for a woman is the science of housekeeping. I know some that are miserly, very few that are good managers. — Michel De Montaigne

Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made!
Why not other elements besides fire, air, earth and water? There are four of them, just four, those foster parents of beings! What a pity! Why aren't there forty elements instead, or four hundred, or four thousand? How paltry everything is, how miserly, how wretched! Stingily given, aridly invented, heavily made! — Guy De Maupassant

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover — Clifton Fadiman

See how the light tenderly love the apricots, it takes them over completely, enters into their pulp, light them from all sides! But it is miserly with the peaches and light only one side of them. — Paul Cezanne

I picked up one and then a second and then a third of these stones, finding them at about the rate of one stone to the acre. And here is where my adventure became magical, for in a striking foreshortening of time that embraced thousands of years, I had become the witness of this miserly rain from the stars. the marvel of marvels was that there on the rounded back of the planet, between this magnetic sheet and those stars, a human consciousness was present in which as in a mirror that rain could be reflected. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

For the army is a school in which the miser becomes generous, and the generous prodigal; miserly soldiers are like monsters, but very rarely seen. — Miguel De Cervantes

I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffett, and I certainly do not see point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A great man who is vicious will only be a great doer of evil, and a rich man who is not liberal will be only a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it - and not by spending as he please but by knowing how to spend it well. To the poor gentleman there is no other way of showing that he is a gentleman than by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered and helpful; not haughty, arrogant or censorious, but above all by being charitable ... and no one who sees him adorned with the virtues I have mentioned, will fail to recognize and judge him, though he know him not, to be of good stock. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute. — Thornton Wilder

In our own days we have seen no princes accomplish great results save those who have been accounted miserly. — Niccolo Machiavelli

A real spirituality must be rooted in earthliness. Any spirituality that denies the earth, rejects the earth, becomes abstract, becomes airy-fairy. It has no more blood in it; it is no more alive. Yes, Jews are very earth-bound. And what is wrong in having money? One should not be possessive; one should be able to use it. And Jews know how to use it! One should not be miserly. Money has to be created and money has to be used. Money is a beautiful invention, a great blessing, if rightly used. It makes many things possible. Money is a magical phenomenon. — Rajneesh

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: "Indeed, an ignorant man who is generous is dearer to God than a worshipper who is miserly." — Muhammad Ibn Isa At-Tirmidhi

The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It is strange people should be so greedy when they are alone in the world! — Emily Bronte

If you feel that you are a miserly stingy parsimonious guy,
at least let not that impression formed in the minds of others. — Toba Beta