Misers

Misers (also known as cheapskates, snipe-snouts, penny pinchers, pikers, scrooges, skinflints, or tightwads) are people who are reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities. Old people were commonly portrayed as being miserly but this stereotype is less common since support programs such as Social Security have resulted in less poverty in old age.

Sourced

• And were it not that they are loath to lay out money on a rope, they would be hanged forthwith, and sometimes die to save charges.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 3. Subsec. 12.

• A mere madness, to live like a wretch, and die rich.
  • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part I, Section II. Memb. 3. Subsec. 13.

• Hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill;
  Yet still he sighs, for hoards are wanting still.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764).

• Quærit, et inventis miser abstinet, ac timet uti.
  • The miser acquires, yet fears to use his gains.
  • Horace, Ars Poetica (18 BC), 170.

• The unsunn'd heaps
  Of miser's treasures.
  • John Milton, Comus (1637), line 398.

• He sat among his bags, and, with a look
  Which hell might be ashamed of, drove the poor
  Away unalmsed; and midst abundance died—
  Sorest of evils!—died of utter want.
  • Robert Pollok, The Course of Time (1827), Book III, line 276.

• 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ
  To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy;
  Is it less strange the prodigal should waste
  His wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste?
  • Alexander Pope, Moral Essays (1731-35), Epistle IV, line 1.

• Decrepit miser; base, ignoble wretch;
  I am descended of a gentler blood.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (c. 1588-90), Act V, scene 4, line 7.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 517.

• If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, Poor man, said I, you pay too much for your whistle.
  • Benjamin Franklin, The Whistle.

• Abiturus illuc priores abierunt,
  Quid mente cæca torques spiritum?
  Tibi dico, avare.
  • Since you go where all have gone before, why do you torment your disgraceful life with such mean ambitions, O miser?
  • Phaedrus, Fables, IV. 19. 16.

• Tam deest avaro quod habet, quam quod non habet.
  • The miser is as much in want of what he has, as of what he has not.
  • Syrus, Maxims.