“No; no; not a sixpence.”

— Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Letter to Timothy Pickering (October 27, 1797), relating the American response to a French request for a tribute or bribe, in State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States, 3d ed. (1819), vol. 3, p. 492. The French had seized several American ships. Often misquoted as "...not a penny".

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 30, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No; no; not a sixpence." by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney?

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney photo

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney 2

American politician 1746–1825

Related quotes

“Sing a song of sixpence.”

John Fletcher (1579–1625) English Jacobean playwright

Act V, scene 2.
The Tragedy of Bonduca (1611–14; published 1647)

“I give thee sixpence! I will see thee damned first.”

George Canning (1770–1827) British statesman and politician

The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“For a soldier I listed, to grow great in fame.
And be shot at for sixpence a day.”

Charles Dibdin (1745–1814) British musician, songwriter, dramatist, novelist and actor

Letters (c. 1774).

“Well, damn it all, it's only sixpence, I know, but I suppose he has to begin somewhere.”

Horatio Bottomley (1860–1933) English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament

Robert Graves & Alan Hodge The Long Week-end (London, 1940), ch. 5, p. 67.
Of one of his office-boys who had been caught stealing a small postal order.

“Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment--the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.”

Jasper Fforde book First Among Sequels

Source: First Among Sequels

“The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 3, lines 5-8

“To some people cricket is a circus show upon which they may or may not find it worth while to spend sixpence. To others it is a cult and a philosophy, and these last will neve be understood by the profanum vulgus, nor by the merchant-minded nor by the unphysically intellectual.”

Digby Jephson (1871–1926) English cricketer

Autobiography A Few Overs (1913)

“My mother had naturally spiced the pudding with sixpences and threepenny bits, called zacs and trays respectively. Grandpa had collected one of these in the oesophagus. He gave a protracted, strangled gurgle which for a long time we all took to be the beginning of some anecdote.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980), p. 13

“I got great voice training in St. Mary’s Church, Wavertree, in Liverpool, when I was a lad. Dressing up in cassocks was all part of the fun. I used to earn sixpence a week and although I don’t go to church very much any more, 'Once In Royal David’s City' is still my favourite hymn.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

Frankie go bang! http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=989 by Paul Simper at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

“We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.”

William J. Locke book The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne

The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), p. 97.