Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Covetous" Quotes from Famous Books



... fault of a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel has ever struck out a generous fire. No wind that blows is more bitter than he, no falling snow is more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. And his name is ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. They differ both in their customs ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... noble blood in thy veins — the blood of princes and kings; thou hast much that men covet to call their own; but thou art surrounded by foes who are jealous of thee, and by kinsmen who have already cast covetous eyes ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... flowed the Ohio River, along which white men were pushing their way, and settling on land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee, and looking with covetous eyes on the land between that river and the lakes, but which the Indians claimed had been reserved to them by treaty. The shrewder among the Indian leaders foresaw the time when they would have to fight and overwhelm the intruders or submit to their hunting ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... of Morton was a man of no small natural endowments, but a man of a covetous and lecherous disposition. While chancellor, he got the Fulcan bishopricks erected[272], that the bishops might have the title and honour; but the nobility got the profit or church revenues. After he became regent, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... the crucible caught fire from a wisp that thrust up into it from the brazier, flared up of a sudden and lighted every corner of the old cellar. It revealed the craning neck and slack jaw of Gregory, the covetous glittering eyes and incredulous smile of Prince John, the scared faces of the huddling peasants. Then there was a crash that shook the earth. Battlements rocked, pavements cracked, blocks of stone leaped into the air like a fountain of masonry. When fire encounters high explosives ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... the heart Rested not there, and yet no prouder height Lur'd on the climber: wherefore, of that life No more enamour'd, in my bosom love Of purer being kindled. For till then I was a soul in misery, alienate From God, and covetous of all earthly things; Now, as thou seest, here punish'd for my doting. Such cleansing from the taint of avarice Do spirits converted need. This mount inflicts No direr penalty. E'en as our eyes Fasten'd below, nor e'er to loftier clime Were lifted, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... lodging, good food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy self-love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say, into the presence of God,—for there are grades among the saints. But the covetous desire for the apartment which the Abbe Birotteau was now inhabiting (a very harmless desire in the eyes of worldly people) had been to the abbe nothing less than a passion, a passion full of obstacles, and, like more guilty passions, full of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... returns. All these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater extent. Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them. Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their way about the world—to the cities which they established round the Mediterranean—they collected in their new homes great store of ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... prescient statesman, to a height such as neither Pitt, nor Fox, nor even Chatham was capable of reaching. There might be seen in Banks's fine bust of him, the cause why Warren Hastings, though he was endowed with many good qualities which endeared him to his friends, was, nevertheless, covetous, self-willed, domineering, unjust, and, in some instances, pitiless, as Governor-General of India. What a contrast to this did the bust of the Marquis of Wellesley, by Nollekens, present. Not only did it indicate that the disposition of that distinguished statesman was ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... daily gain righteously; no covetous, money-loving spirit prevailed; with pious intent they gave liberally; there was not a ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various

... or connected with all lesser tracks. The love of money and the thirst for that distinction which attaches to power, are then so closely intermixed in the same souls, that it becomes difficult to discover whether men grow covetous from ambition, or whether they are ambitious from covetousness. This is the case in England, where men seek to get rich in order to arrive at distinction, and seek distinctions as a manifestation of their wealth. The mind is then seized by both ends, and hurried into trade and manufactures, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... again into the fields, and the covetous wolf said to the fox: "Get me something to eat now, or ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... row,—trees of healing, of fragrance and romantic charm. No child ever sought the old home to beg pears and mulberries, or to fill the school-house pail at its dark-bosomed well, without bearing away a few of the leaves in a covetous grasp. Sweet treasure-trove these, to be pressed to fresh young faces, and held and patted in hot little palms, till they grew flabby but evermore fragrant, still diffusing over the dusty schoolroom that warm odor, whispering to those who read no corner but their own New England, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... by proprietors? Would laboring men, who respect—much to their own detriment—the pretended rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would the impossibility of demanding increase, of taxing another's labor, be a source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic. But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Epistle to Timothy in the third chapter St. Paul writes: This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... can hold, no promise bind? Truth is all duty: as the soul, It quickens and supports the whole. The good respect this duty: hence Its sacred claims I reverence. The Warrior's duty I despise That seeks the wrong in virtue's guise: Those claims I shrink from, which the base, Cruel, and covetous embrace. The heart conceives the guilty thought, Then by the hand the sin is wrought, And with the pair is leagued a third, The tongue that speaks the lying word. Fortune and land and name and fame To man's best care ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... make an Indian very covetous, is it?" said he, eyeing in admiration the magnificent black hair that fell ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... profligate Devil in a Buckingham; a lying, artful, or politick Devil in a Richlieu; a treacherous Devil in a Mazarin; a cruel, merciless Devil in a Cortez; a debauch'd Devil in an Eugene; a conjuring Devil in a Luxemburg; and a covetous Devil in a M————-h: In a word, tell me the Man, I tell you the Spirit that reign'd ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... the obvious good humour, the animal hilarity of it all, was absorbingly amusing. The trappers gazed with pleasure that showed how near akin are naturalist and hunter. Of course, they had some covetous thought connected with those glossy hides, but this was September still, and even otter were not yet prime. Shoot, plump, splash, went the happy crew with apparently unabated joy and hilarity. The slide ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... liegeman, that, for a feud, fled the country." He swung the armlet aloft on his sword—it was of red gold, bright and shining—that they might ferry him over to Gelfrat's march. At this the haughty boatman himself took the oar, for he was greedy and covetous of gain, the which bringeth oft to a bad end. He thought to win Hagen's red gold, but won, in lieu thereof, a ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... us the condition that the church of God should be in, in the last days. "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come." In the second verse, he tells us the reason why these times should be such hard and dangerous times; "for men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous," &c. The reason is not drawn from the miseries and calamities of the last times, but from the sins and iniquities of the last times. It is sin and iniquity that make times truly perilous. Sin, and sin only, takes away God's love and favour from a nation, and makes God turn an enemy to it. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... dwell tearfully—possibly profitably—upon the moral of the adventure, had I not left Lucy Bray all this time on my mother's lap, and myself fingering the oiled calico in covetous admiration. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... cast a covetous glance toward the poor Syrian traveler, who was generally called the hakeem because of the medicines which he gave, and the many cures ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... Though you had Venus apples to seduce My covetous eyes. Henceforth Ide have you ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... Comrade. Father, said Zadig, What is all this that I have seen? You seem to me to act in a quite different Manner from the Generality of Mankind. You plunder One, who entertain'd you with all the Pomp and Profusion in the World, to enrich a covetous, sordid Wretch, who treated you in the most unworthy Manner. Son, said the old Man, that Grandee, who receives Visits of Strangers, with no other View than to gratify his Pride, and to raise their Astonishment at the Furniture of his Palace, will henceforward ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... with covetous spirit we sold, Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day, Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold, [1] Could we but have been ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... regret not getting more than we can possibly make use of." And so the matter ended. The fifty-eight acres were never claimed, and there was, I think, a very general impression that asking for our just rights in the case would have a very grasping, covetous look. How much wiser five-and-twenty years ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... contrary; prove it. How is it the interest of the English clergy to corrupt religion? The more justice and piety the people have, the better it is for them; for that would prevent the penury of farmers, and the oppression of exacting covetous landlords, &c. That which hath corrupted religion, is the liberty unlimited of professing all opinions. Do not lawyers render law intricate by their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... stature, of an evil presence, and an extraordinarily compound character, of great wickedness, mixed with great generosity. Although cruel men are for the most part cowards, he was at the same time exceedingly cruel, and very valiant; and though tyrants are generally covetous, he was extremely liberal; being barbarous in some parts of his conduct, and generous and benevolent in others. Not satisfied with putting thieves and robbers to ordinary deaths, he was in use to have them torn in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... Superfluities of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free- hearted and Generous, and where is the Injury of taking ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay

... these poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance, carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of the law. But their great trouble arose from the frequent seizure of their wardrobe by the covetous soldiers. The clothes worn by the players upon the stage were of superior quality—fine dresses were of especial value in times prior to the introduction of scenery—and the loss was hard to bear. The public, it was feared, would be loath to believe in the merits of an actor ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... love money, to seek after the means of acquiring it: alas! does not every thing tell me, that in this world money is the greatest blessing; that it is amply sufficient to render me happy? In the country I inhabit, do I not see all my fellow-citizens covetous of riches? but do I not also witness that they are little scrupulous in the means of obtaining wealth? As soon as they are enriched by the means which you censure, are they not cherished, considered, and respected? By what authority, then, do you object to my amassing treasure? what right ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... ingratitude in not being thankefull but forgettfull that by his mercye we were delivered from such bondage and calamitie as before time we had suffered. Justly likewise were we punished for our greedy desires of present gaine and proffit, wherin many showed themselves insatiable and covetous; we beinge too secure in trustinge of a treacherous enimie, the Salvadges, they, whilest we entertained them frendley in our houses, tooke their opportunities and suddenly fell uppon us, killing and murdering very many of our people, burninge and devastinge their houses and plantations, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... was one of the secretaries of the Emperor, always near him and much in his confidence. This seemed strange to those who knew both, for Menestheus did not possess those qualities which Aurelian esteemed. He was selfish, covetous, and fawning; his spirit and manner those of a slave to such as were above him—those of a tyrant to such as were below him. His affection for the Emperor, of which he made great display, was only for what it would bring to him; and his fidelity to his duties ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... the works mentioned above, he painted many church-banners. And since he practised art more to pass the time than from necessity, he worked at his ease, always consulting his own convenience, and avoiding discomforts as much as he was able, more than any other man; and yet, without being covetous of the goods of others, he always preserved his own. Allowing but few cares to oppress him, he was a merry fellow, and took his pleasures with a glad heart. He lived sixty-seven years, at the end of which he finished ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... ambitious and covetous, was never wanting in courage, energy, intelligence or versatility, turned the more obstinately to his task. Concealing his natural anxieties, he rode about from post to post in morion and buff coat, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... him; he has often served me, and is very adroit, indeed. But do not forget to pay him well in order to be sure of his fidelity, for fortunately he has a failing which renders it easy for us to control him. He is exceedingly covetous, and has a pretty wife who spends a great deal of money. Pay him well, therefore, and he will do us good service. And now, farewell, my dear count. I believe we understand each other perfectly, and know what we ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... are five good principles of action to be adopted: To benefit others without being lavish; to encourage labor without being harsh; to add to your resources without being covetous; to be dignified without being supercilious; and to inspire awe without being austere. Also, we should not search for love or demand it, but so live that it will flow ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... at the sword, and the writing, and knew it was the sword of the stone, and marvelled how young Arthur had possessed himself thereof; and being of a covetous and sour mind he thought how he might make advantage for himself. He went to his father, Sir ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... became apparent that the clerk of the weather had done his worst, and the supply of rain was running short. Clad in aquascutic garments, and surmounted by an ungainly two-rupee bazaar umbrella (my dapper British one having been annexed by a covetous Mangi)— ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... Ow, the covetous owld rip, and him wid a dozen wives at laste, to want our darlin'. What'll I do?—what'll I do? Faix, I'll ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... my sight, That it like those by looking might be blest. But whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze, Finding their objects over-soon depart, These now the other's happiness do praise, Wishing themselves that they had been my heart, That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes, As covetous the other's use to have. But finding nature their request denies, This to each other mutually they crave; That since the one cannot the other be, That eyes could think of ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... "Why should not I call you child?" "Because—because—I don't know;—but I wish you would stand out of my light, Cecilia, for you are trampling upon all my strawberries." "I have not touched one, you covetous little creature!" "Indeed—indeed, Cecilia, I am not covetous. I have not eaten one of them—they are all for your friend Leonora. See how unjust you are." "Unjust! that's a cant word you learned of my ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth

... well have sent me to a Roundhead to learn how to be generous, or to a Quaker to be taught good manners, as to a Papist to be taught honesty." "Fell ruin seize my mother," shrieked a third, "whose covetous pride refused me a husband at my need, and so drove me to obtain by stealth what I might have honestly obtained." "Hell, a double hell to the raging bull of a nobleman who first tempted me," cried another, "had he not by fair and foul broken through ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... father of all greediness," as the Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother, the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French Princess Renee; Charles bid higher by offering his ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... What they ought to foresee.—Here comes Bosola, The only court-gall; yet I observe his railing Is not for simple love of piety: Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants; Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud, Bloody, or envious, as any man, If he had means to be so.—Here's ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... at the least, if they should presently be sold. What shall we then think of the navy royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me? It is possible that some covetous person, hearing this report, will either not credit at all, or suppose money so employed to be nothing profitable to the queen's coffers; as a good husband said once, when he heard that provisions should be made for armor, wishing the queen's money to be rather laid out to some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... privilege of proving to a covetous, discontented world that man can by the grace of God he contented ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr

... first; Weak, sickly, full of pains, in every breath Railing at life, and yet afraid of death; Putting things off, with sage and solemn air, From day to day, without one day to spare; 220 Without enjoyment, covetous of pelf, Tiresome to friends, and tiresome to himself; His faculties impair'd, his temper sour'd, His memory of recent things devour'd E'en with the acting, on his shatter'd brain Though the false registers of youth remain; From morn to evening babbling forth vain praise ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... things was to come to an end; her freedom, on which she looked as her most precious possession, was to be taken roughly from her. One of the men whom she had despised, one of that set of libertines, of idle voluptuaries who had dangled round her skirts whilst casting covetous eyes upon her fortune, was to become her master, her supreme lord, and she—a slave to his desires and to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the penmen dear to the servants' hall more truly portray it than Henry James ever hoped to do or Meredith attempted. The art of to-day is the art of deliberate avoidance of the violent, and many critics persist in confusing it with truth. There is nothing precious about selfish, covetous, lustful humanity; therefore, good literature creates a refined humanity of its own, which converses in polished periods ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... sister of his uncle, Okusaka. He despatched Ne no Omi, a trusted envoy, to confer with the latter, who gladly consented, and, in token of approval, handed to Ne no Omi a richly jewelled coronet for conveyance to the Emperor. But Ne no Omi, covetous of the gems, secreted the coronet, and told the Emperor that Okusaka had rejected the proposal with scorn. Anko took no steps to investigate the truth of this statement. It has been already seen that such investigations ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... was a cunning, sly fellow, quite the reverse of John in many particulars; covetous, frugal, minded domestic affairs, would pinch his belly to save his pocket, never lost a farthing by careless servants or bad debtors. He did not care much for any sort of diversion, except tricks of High German artists and legerdemain. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... of mind or body may produce hallucination in a form depending on the character and instincts of the individual. Thus, an ambitious man labouring under monomania will imagine himself to be a king; a covetous man will be plunged in despair, believing himself to be penniless, or exult at the vastness of the treasure which he imagines that ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... in answer, did the time Give scope, but now one thing is mine to say. I am known to vary with the varying need; And when 'tis tried, who can be just and good, My peer will not be found for piety. But though on all occasions covetous Of victory, this once I yield to thee, And willingly. Unhand him there. Let go! Leave him to stay. What further use of thee, When we have ta'en these arms? Have we not Teucer, Skilled in this mystery? ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... will pardon that hardness of heart which it has created in man, and which the affairs of the world seem almost to require; but that it will extend no such forgiveness to the feminine creation. It may be necessary that a man should be stiff-necked, self-willed, eager on the world, perhaps even covetous and given to worldly lusts. But for a woman, it behoves her to crush herself, so that she may be at all points submissive, self-denying, and much-suffering. She should be used to thorns in the flesh, and to thorns in the spirit ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... who assumed the cloak and hooked staff in order to live in idleness and sensuality; avaricious friars, selling their religion for money; cheating pardoners; covetous priests; ambitious bishops; lawyers who loved gain better than justice; "barons and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... returned to the hotel, and found the servants busily counting their money, occasionally casting covetous looks toward the stairs, as if they hoped ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... I haven't noted your covetous glances," she flashed. "I've been talking very fast, because I knew this interruption was coming. But we've finished, thank you, so I'll leave ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... coast. Low lands with islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains, hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro, no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his first vision of the Indies. A storm-bound coast, a relentless climate and a reluctant soil-these were the treasures of the New World ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... covetous of spoil and gain, And ill-bested withal in stipend, know That better means are wanted to maintain So many paramours, than shaft and bow; And leaving thus alone the wretched train, Thence, with their riches charged the adventurers go For Puglia's pleasant land: ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... handsome pattern (or, perhaps, got it at the store in exchange for BASKET), the worth of which might be half-a-dollar. If the poor squaw longed for the turnip, the value of which could scarcely reach a copper, the covetous European had fixed as longing a glance upon the china bowl, and she was determined to gratify her avaricious desire and obtain it on the most easy terms. She told the squaw, with some disdain, that her man did not grow turnips to give away to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... and intends it to be developed and cultivated. If, therefore, its training has made it indolent and dissipated, it only proves its education to be spurious. You might, by a parity of reasoning, blindfold the eye that it might not he covetous, or tie up the hand lest it pick a man's pocket, or hobble the feet lest they run into evil ways, as to keep the mind in ignorance ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... I knew to be untrue, so I calmly said that I would remain seated where I was until food was sold to me, and at the same time produced one or two silver coins, the display of which to the covetous eyes of the Tibetans was always the means of hastening the transaction of business. In small handfuls, after each of which the Tibetans swore that they had not another atom to sell, I managed, with somewhat of a trial to my patience, to purchase some twenty ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... usually ascribed to Archimattheas, and it certainly gives a vivid picture of the medical customs of the time. The instruction for the immediate coming of the physician to his patient runs as follows: "When the doctor enters the dwelling of his patient, he should not appear haughty, nor covetous, but should greet with kindly, modest demeanor those who are present, and then seating himself near the sick man accept the drink which is offered him (sic) and praise in a few words the beauty of the neighborhood, the situation of the house, and the well-known generosity ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... added unto [77]it, it would equal, if not exceed many of our European Countries; the Vallyes were every where intermixt with running streams, and no question but the earth {{22 }} hath in it rich veins of Minerals, enough to satisfie the desires of the most covetous. ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... coming alongside, they pulled round the ship, singing most loudly and merrily. Though Captain Owen was on shore, they were taken into the cabin, and entertained until his return, after which he gave a present to each of them. Notwithstanding this liberality, the principal chief fixed his covetous eye upon an axe, and expressed a most eager desire to become possessed of it. Captain Owen, however, notwithstanding his wish to conciliate the natives as much as possible, did not think proper to gratify his cupidity; but he promised, that it should be presented to the King at the next interview ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... which Mademoiselle Cormon lived, build in Henri IV.'s time, by Pierre Cormon, the steward of the last Duc d'Alencon, had always belonged to the family; and among the old maid's visible possessions this one was particularly stimulating to the covetous desires of the two old lovers. Yet, far from producing revenue, the house was a cause of expense. But it is so rare to find in the very centre of a provincial town a private dwelling without unpleasant surroundings, handsome in outward structure and convenient within, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... legal restraint is put upon the exercise of the will and intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men, these differences become ultimately enormous. But as soon as they become so distinct in their extremes as that, on one side, there shall be manifest redundance of possession, and on the other manifest pressure of need,—the terms "riches" and "poverty" ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... natives of this district. Their ancestor had filled a minor office in the capital, and had, in years gone by, been acquainted with lady Feng's grandfather, that is madame Wang's father. Being covetous of the influence and affluence of the Wang family, he consequently joined ancestors with them, and was recognised ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... wretched married beings? And why? He had not, at any rate as yet, sacrificed for money or social gains any of the instincts of his nature. He had been fickle, foolish, vain, uncertain, and perhaps covetous;—but as yet he had not been false. Then he took out Mary's last letter and read ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... I know He loved thee as a son, and always strove To fit thee for the place within our State Which one day should be thine. Sometimes I think, Since he has gone, I have been covetous Of thy dear love, and kept thee from the labour Of State-craft, and the daily manly toils Which do befit thy age; and I have thought, Viewing thee with the jealous eyes of love, That I have marked some shade of melancholy Creep on when none else saw thee, and desired ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... is a popular belief in Norway that there is a race of fairies or magicians living underground, who are very covetous of cattle; and that, to gratify their taste for large herds and flocks, they help themselves with such as graze on the mountains; making dwarfs of them to enable them to enter crevices of the ground, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... so much to get, which has so little power to satisfy, which must always be less than the wish of the covetous man, which costs so much to keep, which stuffs pillows with thorns, is surely vanity. Honest work is rewarded by sweet sleep. The old legend told of unslumbering guards who kept the treasure of the golden fruit. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... him, in a watch-pocket! It is to be noticed there were no clocks and watches in the much-vaunted days before the flood. It follows, of course, there were no appointments, and punctuality was not yet thought upon. "Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure," says Milton, "he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot deprive him of his covetousness." And so I would say of a modern man of business, you may do what you will for him, put him in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as Jesus told you, and know God to be infinite Mind, and evil to be only the suppositional opposite, without reality, without life, without power—unless you give it these things in your own consciousness. You don't have to take thought for your life. You don't have to be covetous, or envious, or fearful, or anxious. You couldn't do anything if you were. These things don't help you. Jesus said that of himself he could do nothing. But—as soon as he recognized God as the infinite principle ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... he turned a deaf ear, and finally, glaring at me, said that nothing would ever induce him to part with it. The people would never allow the image to be taken away, as the life of the tribe was bound up with it Seeing that he was not to be moved, I desisted, though a covetous look in his eye when I offered a beautiful colored rug in exchange gave me hope, Rocanandiva was, like most idolatrous priests, very fanatical. When he learned that I professed and taught a different religion, his jealousy was most marked, and he often told me to go from them, I was not ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... false that she had blown upon the children; the silly fool Prechln had imagined it all—nothing was too absurd for stupidity like his to believe; and what then? Can't people die but by witchcraft? Did St. Peter bewitch that covetous knave Ananias (Acts v.) when he fell down dead at his feet for having lied to the Holy Ghost? Let the honourable convocation answer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... so happened that he was overheard by a certain covetous Jew money-lender. This man was of a malicious disposition; and the poverty of the Khoja was a satisfaction to him. When he heard what the Khoja said he chuckled to himself, saying, "Truly this Khoja is a funny fellow, and it would be a droll thing to see him refuse nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... have travelled by rail, but this mode did not even occur to Bambo. For one thing, he was penniless, except for a few coppers that had escaped Moll's covetous eyes and grasping fingers the last time she rifled his pockets, when she supposed him to be asleep; and for another, he was not used to railway journeys. He had never, in fact, been inside a railway carriage in all his life, and he would have ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... nat longe be mayster therof. The one is possessed and doth nat possesse; and the other within a shorte whyle leueth the possession of riches."—Erasmus De Contemptu Mundi, 1533, fol. 17 (Paynel's translation). So also, in the Rule of Reason, 1551, 8vo, Wilson says:—"Is a covetous man poore or not? I may thus reason with my self. Why should a couetous man be called poore, what affinitie is betwixt them twoo? Marie, in this poynct thei bothe agree, that like as the poore man ever lacketh and desireth to have, so the covetous manne ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... since, thanks to a still inexplicable crime, they had suddenly found themselves in possession of an immense fortune. Perhaps in this wild pursuit of pleasure, in the haste they displayed to satisfy their covetous longings, they hoped to forget or silence the threatening voice of conscience. Such was Mademoiselle Marguerite's conclusion; but she was not long left to undisturbed meditation. By the lieutenant's departure the restrictions which had been placed ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... good: so that, in consequence, every appetitive movement is both specified and named from its proper end. For if anyone were to describe covetousness as love of work because men work on account of covetousness, this description would be incorrect, since the covetous man seeks work not as end but as a means: the end that he seeks is wealth, wherefore covetousness is rightly described as the desire or the love of wealth, and this is evil. Accordingly worldly love ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... now for corroboration of that noble picture to the history of this same Ferrante. A shock awaits us. We find, in this bastard of the great and brilliant Alfonso a cruel, greedy, covetous monster, so treacherous and so fiendishly brutal that we are compelled to extend him the charity of supposing him to be something less than sane. Let us consider but one of his characteristics. He loved to have his enemies under his own supervision, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... mine 'at I'm goin' to tell you about was called the Creole Belle," he sez. "For a longtime it didn't pay to amount to anything, an' then it began to pay; an' the two friends got covetous, an' first George had Jack killed an' then he ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... thousands hung upon his words with intense feeling; numerous converts were by his means added to the church; the proud became broken-hearted, and the lowly were raised, and blessings abounded; the drunkards were made sober; thieves and covetous were reclaimed; the blasphemers were made to sing the praises of God; the desert bid fair to blossom and bring forth fruit as a garden. But, alas! his early labours were contrary to acts of parliament; the spirit of intolerance and persecution soon troubled, and eventually ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... her to raise a thousand crowns in twenty-four hours. She must, therefore, he thought, cancel her debt by her hand. This was the alternative to which he had been manoeuvring to bring her; therefore he entered her salon the next day with the air of a victor. He was no longer covetous of wealth; he had prospered in his own speculations, and was immensely rich; the hand of Leonide, even without her heart, was ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... The Well-behaved Little Boy. The Attentive, Inattentive, Covetous Dilatory, Exact, Quarrelsome, and Good Little Boy. By S. Lovechild 1s. sewed,—Square size, with ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous

... beats fast. To look on the children whom one's own hand has arrayed, the pure skin brightly veined with blue, that one has bathed, laved, and sponged and decked with gay colors of silk or velvet—why, there is no poem comes near to it! With what eager, covetous longing one calls them back for one more kiss on those white necks, which, in their simple collars, the loveliest woman cannot rival. Even the coarsest lithograph of such a scene makes a mother pause, and I feast my eyes daily ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... deported in 597, were the good figs of his vision and those who remained the bad. The latter were of the breed that had turned Temple and Sacrifice into fetishes, for as such they now treated the Prophet, the greatest whom God ever sent to Israel. Covetous of having him with them they eagerly asked him for a Word of the Lord, promising to obey it, in the expectation of their kind that it would be according to their own ignorant wishes; but when it declared against these, they scolded Jeremiah as disappointed barbarians do their idols, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... in the case of the love of books. As to the mean, we have seen that it is the virtue of the true book-lover, while the defect constitutes the sin of the Robustious Philistine. But the extreme is found in covetousness, and the covetous man who is in the extreme state of book-loving, is the biblioklept, or book-stealer. Now his vice shows itself, not in contemplation (for of contemplation there can be no excess), but in action. For books are procured, as we say, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... society of this nature is a purely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. What we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way the process whereby they themselves ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... away, if untrue; and if true, some way would be opened by which she might put a stop to all increase of predilection on his part, and yet retain him as a friend for Leonard—that darling for whom she was far-seeing and covetous, and miserly of every scrap of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that of this unconquerable passion of love. Any and all of our passions are unconquerable, whenever we shall be weak enough to think them so. Does not the gamester plead the unconquerableness of his passion? The drunkard, the man of anger, the revengeful, the envious, the covetous, the jealous, have they not all the same plea? With the selfish and the feeble passion succeeds to passion as different habits give birth to each, and the last passion proves more unconquerable than its predecessor. How frequently do we see people ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... I publish'd my Satires, I was thoroughly prepar'd for that Noise and Tumult which the Impression of my Book has rais'd upon Parnassus. I knew that the Tribe of Poets, and above all, Bad Poets, are a People ready to take fire; and that Minds so covetous of Praise wou'd not easily digest any Raillery, how gentle soever. I may farther say to my advantage, that I have look'd with the Eyes of a Stoick upon the Defamatory Libels that have been publish'd against me. Whatever Calumnies ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very rich, and of a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhanded—a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him—a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... him turn to bed: he lov'd her more, To see the love Leander Hero bore: Examples profit much; ten times in one, In persons full of note, good deeds are done. Day was so long, men walking fell asleep; The heavy humours that their eyes did steep Made them fear mischiefs. The hard streets were beds For covetous churls and for ambitious heads, That, spite of Nature, would their business ply: All thought they had the falling epilepsy, Men grovell'd so upon the smother'd ground; And pity did the heart of Heaven confound. The Gods, the Graces, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman

... Rome. [Sidenote: Further claims to temporal authority.] Later, instead of advisers they claimed to be absolute judges in ecclesiastical matters, and when the temporal possessions of the Popedom made the chair of St. Peter an object of ambition to covetous, designing men, the character of Bishop was too often merged in that of Prince, and spiritual power ceased to satisfy those who thought it their duty or their interest to enforce what was in fact an ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... struggle of politics. If he found abundant time for study, who may not? Frederick the Great, too, was busy in camp the greater part of his life, yet whenever a leisure moment came, it was sure to be devoted to study. He wrote to a friend, "I become every day more covetous of my time, I render an account of it to myself, and I lose none of it ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... regard to the merchants, for they are the better class of people, and those who are most interested, because of their property. So great security was not felt about the others, even though they were Christians; because, as they are a poor and covetous people, they would be inclined to any act of meanness. However, it was always thought that it would be difficult for them to cause any commotion, unless a strong fleet came from China, on which they could rely. Talk continued to increase daily, and with it suspicion; for some of ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... will that you should die, and I, his servant, am sent to tell you his decree. You have been cruel and covetous—you have wished an innocent man's death, and his death caused that of a multitude of victims to the barbarous passions of a great western nation. Man's life must be sacred for every man. God only can ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... time when he was upon the Bench had the credit, I do not know how well deserved it was, of not being much given to hospitality. He was never covetous, and he was very fond of society and conversation. But I fancy he had some fashions of his own in housekeeping which he thought were not quite up to the ways of modern life. At any rate, he was, so far as I know, never known to invite any of his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... and perhaps the Methodists a hundred years ago,—gained the hearts of the people and stimulated religious life; but in the fourteenth century they were a nuisance. They sold indulgences, they invented pious frauds, they were covetous under pretence of poverty, they had become luxurious in their lives, they slandered the regular clergy, they usurped the prerogatives of parish priests, they enriched their convents, they accommodated themselves ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... more extensive and successful scale than in Persia; all classes and conditions of people are exposed to the danger, and it is only by an assumed air of poverty that a certain amount of security is obtained. A miserable-looking house, it was explained by a Persian, does not attract the covetous eye of the passer-by; an unusually beautiful one does. "It is a fatal mistake," he added, "to let anybody's eye rest on one's possessions, whether he be the Shah, a minister, or a beggar. He will want to rest his hands upon them next, and then everything is gone. Besides," he ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... return he had called them to the door of his tent, opened one of his trunks, and out of a bag, containing two or three hundred rupees, paid them liberally for their trouble; one of the party he noticed appeared to eye the bag with a greedy, covetous eye, but he said nothing, and the party left, seeming well satisfied with what they had received. After indulging in a bath he was ready for the evening meal, which consisted of chicken, curry or broiled partridge with several etceteras, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... the trusted military commander of the Gothic garrisons in Morocco, as Musa, the oft-defeated Saracen leader, knew to his cost. As this Musa was one day looking with covetous eyes across at the Spanish Peninsula, he was suddenly surprised by a visit from Count Julian; and still more astonished when that commander offered to surrender to him the Gothic strongholds Tangier, Arsilla, and Ceuta in return for the assistance of the Saracen ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... by a single button; his collar was greasy; he kept his hat on his head as he spoke; he wore low shoes, an open waistcoat gave glimpses of a homely shirt of coarse linen. Good-nature was not wanting in the round countenance, with its two slits of covetous eyes; but there was likewise the vague uneasiness habitual to those who have money to spend and hear constant applications for it. Yet, to all appearance, he was plain-dealing and easy-natured, his business shrewdness was so well wadded round ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... had a covetous thought," she said, "it has been when I looked at Ivy Cottage. And to think it is to be mine! The ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur

... pair of shoes with two heels; for I had lost one, and the shoes were so decayed that they were not worth mending. You see by this that those who are the most generous of their own, can be the most covetous for others. I hope you will be so good to me as to use your interest with her (for what ever she says, you seem to have some) to indulge me with the ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... by my faith, he is covetous. Why, that you may even understand it the better,—when he's sacrificing at any time to his own Genius [10], the vessels that are needed for the sacrifice he uses of Samian ware, lest the Genius himself should steal them; ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... careful than these two brothers, one of whom was called Clutch, and the other Kind. Though brothers, no two men could be more unlike in disposition. Clutch thought of nothing but how to make some profit for himself, while Kind would have shared his last morsel with a hungry dog. This covetous mind made Clutch keep all his father's sheep when the old man was dead, because he was the eldest brother, allowing Kind nothing but the place of a servant to help him in looking ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... that we should view with charity, and treat with forbearance, those who have fallen into an aberration of non-fundamental importance either from the faith or the practise of the Bible and the Augsburg Confession; and on the other hand, that we are bound 'not to eat with a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner,' but to 'put away from among us such wicked persons,' and that 'a man that is an heretic,' who denies a fundamental doctrine, a doctrine essential to the Christian scheme, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... voluptuousness to the whole kingdom. Here too, he ruled it with principles the most daring; holding men, in general, in great contempt, and conceiving them to be all as insidious, as servile, and as covetous as those by whom he was surrounded. With the superiority of his character, he made a sport of governing this mass of individuals, as if the task was unworthy of his genius. The fact is illustrated by ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... country will never flourish under the present government. The country must be provided with godly, honorable and intelligent rulers, who are not very indigent, and who are not too covetous. The mode in which this country is now governed is intolerable. Nobody is secure in his property longer than the Director pleases, who is generally strongly inclined to confiscating. A good population would be the consequence of a good government. Many would be allured here by the pleasantness, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not, and they were but trifles, though, indeed, of great ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... a handful of gold and silver. Francis looked at it with covetous eyes for a minute or two, then thrust his brother's hand aside with a jerk which almost sent the coins into ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... time. Meanwhile, a party of Crusaders, headed by Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, and a famous knight named Tancred, had been sent forward to clear a passage for the army. Tancred subdued the city of Tarsus; but his victory was usurped by Baldwin, whose ambitions and covetous nature bore no resemblance to that of his brother. Tancred, a man after Godfrey's heart, surrendered this conquest for the sake of peace; but, when Baldwin showed symptoms of repeating his injustice, resisted by force. Tancred was defeated, but a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... interminable feud with France, and by intrigues on behalf of James both at home and abroad; he died by a fall from his horse at Kensington just as a great war with France was impending; he was through life the adversary of the covetous schemes of Louis, and before his death he had prepared the materials of that coalition which, under Marlborough and Prince Eugene, brought Louis to the brink of ruin; his reign forms one of the great epochs in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... it his duty to cross-examine Mrs. Dyson closely as to their authorship. He asked her to write out a passage from one of them: "You can give me something as a keepsake if you like, but I don't like to be covetous, and to take them from your wife and daughter. Love to all!" Mrs. Dyson refused to admit any likeness between what she had written and the handwriting of the letter in question. Another passage ran: "Will see you as soon as I possibly can. I think ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... have some symptoms of this moral disease in common. The miser is sometimes rich, nevertheless the covetous spirit is so strong in him that he gloats over a sixpence, has profound interest in gaining it, and mourns over it if lost. You, being well off with a rich and liberal father, yet declare that the interest of a game is much decreased if there are no ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... afterwards should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin. I pray God we may once see the skin in England." "I am sure," says he, in another sermon, "this is scala inferni, the right way to hell, to be covetous, to take bribes, and pervert justice. If a judge should ask me the way to hell, I would show him this way. First, let him be a covetous man; let his heart be poisoned with covetousness. Then let him go a little further, and take bribes; and, lastly, pervert judgment. Lo, here is the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... smoke lovingly upon the table, there is nothing for you but to submit to your Fates, or to give up your house-keeping. But with country cozens, those provincials who are not bone of your bone, and who nevertheless at every visit to town call upon you with an eager look and covetous smile, as if to say, 'Ask us to dinner, we once invited you to tea,' there is but one method to pursue; the cut—the firm, unwavering, direct cut. Do not pretend not to see them, or to look fixedly in another direction, but ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... CANAVANS: A covetous miller, his clever wandering brother, and some pleasant absurdity about the popular worship of Queen Elizabeth by her loyal ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... his early years to the indefatigable pursuit of gain. He was frugal and abstemious, though not covetous, and amassed a large property. This property he intended to divide between his two children, and to secure my portion to his nephew, whom his parents had left an orphan in his infancy, and whom my father had taken and treated as ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown

... style, and note of gods, Through all the provinces, were wild ambition. And no less pride: yea, even Augustus' name Would early vanish, should it be profaned With such promiscuous flatteries. For our part, We here protest it, and are covetous Posterity should know it. we are mortal; And can but deeds of men: 'twere glory enough, Could we be truly a prince. And, they shall add Abounding grace unto our memory, That shall report us worthy our forefathers, Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... a man of his word, was George Bross; not for anything would he have gone back on his promise to keep secret that afternoon's titillating discovery; likewise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the promised treat; withal he was human (after his kind) and since reprisals were not barred by their understanding, he began then and there to ponder the same. One way or another, that day's humiliation must be balanced; else he ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... woman, that they were not designed for her, hardly looked at them, and almost immediately passed them on to Madame. The latter, and even more minutely, Monsieur, gave the bracelets a long look of anxious and almost covetous desire. She then handed the jewels to those ladies who were near her, pronouncing this single word, but with an accent which was ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Thereupon the covetous Traveller determined to trust him, and waded into the pool, where he soon found himself plunged in mud, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... describing what shall come to pass in what he calls "the last days," ever touched any people so closely as they do those of our times and country. "Men," he says, "shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... with the praetorian prefect in the public interest, I fought the case at the king's judgment-seat, and succeeded in preventing the enforcement of the sale. I rescued the consular Paulinus from the gaping jaws of the court bloodhounds, who in their covetous hopes had already made short work of his wealth. To save Albinus, who was of the same exalted rank, from the penalties of a prejudged charge, I exposed myself to the hatred ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... Knights of the Legion of Honour. As they really deserved it, the choice caused considerable astonishment and general rejoicing; and the three warriors, happy to see three decorations reach them intact after having passed through so many covetous hands, were loud in praise ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois

... country. Much pleased with the things, Kamrasi ordered the tent to be pitched before all his court, pointed out to them what clever people the white people are, making iron pots instead of earthen ones. Covetous and never satisfied, however, instead of returning thanks, he said he was sure I must have more beads than those I sent him; and, instead of granting the leave asked for, said he would think about it, and send the Kamraviona in the evening with his answer. This, when it came, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre: but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; not a novice, but holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump

... it will be plain sailing so long as the rest of the things last," said Pawson, handling the piece with a covetous touch. He too liked a day off when he could get it. "Who will you sell the gun ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Song to obtain, O sweet reward, And walk the garden of the Bard?— But thy employ, the year throughout, Is wandering the White Tower about, Moulding and stamping coin with care, The farthing small and shilling fair. Let for a month thy Mint lie still, Covetous be not, little Will; Fly from the birth-place of the smoke, Nor in that wicked city choke; O come, though money's charms be strong, And if thou come I'll give thee song, A draught of water, hap what may, Pure air to make thy spirits gay And welcome ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... of an unselfish from a selfish love, even in this life, consists in this, that the latter depends on our transferring our present passion or appetite, or rather on our dilating and stretching it out in imagination, as the covetous man does;—while in the former we carry ourselves forward under a very different state from the present, as the young man, who restrains his appetites in respect of his future self as a tranquil and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... scrupled to rifle the Deerhurst vineyards of their most attractive vines, and the cluster of fruit on which Mabel had fixed a covetous eye was certainly a tempting one. The rays from two Chinese lanterns, hung near it, brought out its juicy lusciousness with even more than daylight clearness, and Mabel's mouth fairly watered ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... took great pains to correct this evil, especially on Ellen's account; for as Matilda was not covetous, she was ever ready to share with her only companion the raisins and almonds, figs, gingerbread, biscuits, or comfits, which she was continually munching; and this Mrs. Harewood had a particular objection to, not ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... through mistake or on purpose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, or about eight cents. This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest of Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the latter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous old man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen thousand dollars, at which it was then valued. When Euergetes sent Athenion as ambassador to claim it, and even threatened to send a body of troops ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... on the Zurweld, they dwelt together in peace. Their flocks grazed the same bills, their herdsmen smoked out of the same pipe; they were brothers until the herds of the Amakosa (Caffres) increased so much as to make the hearts of the Dutch boors sore. What those covetous men could not get from our fathers for old buttons, they took by force. Our fathers were men; they loved their cattle; their wives and children lived upon milk; they fought for their property; they began to hate the colonists, who coveted ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... 1. Gnatch.—"The covetous man dares not gnatch" (Hammond's Catechism). From this, and the examples in Halliwell's Dictionary, the sense seems to be "to move." Is it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various

... Germany's covetous attitude toward the colonial possessions of other nations led to several serious international disagreements in the years before the Great War. More than once it almost brought her into conflict with the government of the United States. An agreement ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... founded by a woman, and flourished under her rule. A Tyrian princess, Dido—or Elisa, as she is indiscriminately named in history—was in jeopardy from the tyranny and oppression of an unnatural brother, who, not content with what he had inherited from his father, had cast covetous eyes upon the immense possessions of his sister's husband, whose death he compassed. All the powers of mind which had hitherto lain dormant within her, being roused by the horrid act of her brother, Dido at once set about rescuing her treasure from his grasp, and her retainers from his unbridled ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... and held up the shining object, blades open, corkscrew curling attractively before the covetous eyes of the Shaman. When he could endure the temptation no longer his two black claws shot out, but Nicholas intercepted the much-envied object, while, as it seemed, he drove a more advantageous bargain. Terms finally settled, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... you in the epistle not to associate with fornicators; [5:10] not altogether the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and rapacious, or idolaters, since then you would have to go out of the world. [5:11]But now I have written to you not to associate, if any one called a brother is a fornicator, or covetous, or an ...
— The New Testament • Various

... judgment of the conference that to have erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's defenders to attack from the rear. And the mill district suffered comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and restaurants, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... those who would be so very devout that they would neither speak to them authoritatively nor admonish them with kindness to any effect. The Lord has caused us to see this example that we might know that these people are still covetous, and that almost all of them are attached to the world and to themselves—that is, they are worldly people, which shows the holiness of the spirit by which they are actuated! As regards Anna Salters, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... tall fellow of yours," said Sir Peter, jerking up his chin with that peculiar motion common to the brief in stature, when they are covetous of elongation. "He looks military:—has he been in the army? Ay, I thought so; one of the King of Prussia's grenadiers, I suppose? Faith, I hear ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... public should be such as will at once stamp my character and respectability. On this account, therefore, I think that your Play would be more advantageous to me than to any other bookseller; and as 'I am not covetous of Gold,' I should hope that no trifling consideration will be allowed to prevent my having the honour of being Mr. Colman's publisher. You see, sir, that I am endeavouring to interest your feelings, both as a ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... at point of sword, To rise above their country: might their law: Decrees are forced from Senate and from Plebs: Consul and Tribune break the laws alike: Bought are the fasces, and the people sell For gain their favour: bribery's fatal curse Corrupts the annual contests of the Field. Then covetous usury rose, and interest Was greedier ever as the seasons came; Faith tottered; thousands ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... are ripening, the temperature may be allowed to rise to 90, with sun heat, and to decline to 60 at night. In the succession-houses thin the bunches, and do not be covetous to over-crop the Vines, as it is the cause of many bad effects. Stop laterals, and use the syringe ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... mass. Roger had never so much as conceived it possible that there could be wealth like this: it was a fairy-land of Mammon in his eyes: he stood gasping like a man enchanted; and in the contemplation of these little hills of gold—in their covetous longing contemplation, he forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned aside to see, and thirsted for that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... yet she hearkens to and hears the mourning which the emperor makes, and the wailing with which the hall is full. And o'er all the city the folk wail who weep and say: "God! what a sorrow and a calamity has accursed death dealt us! Greedy death! Covetous death! Death is worse than any she-wolf, for death cannot be sated. Never couldst thou give a worse wound to the world. Death, what hast thou done? May God confound thee who hast extinguished all beauty. Thou hast slain the choicest creature and the fairest picture—if she ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael ardently looked forward to a comfortable ill-gotten revenue at the hands of the man, who—through a skilful manipulation of the German janitor of the Western Trading Company's office—had obtained the place of office boy, "with substantial ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... the awakening of mutual need. Then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each toward the other. The impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession of the beloved, is a consuming hunger. It is a covetous grasping, a recognition that the other is indispensable. Out of this comes a union, and from then on, the two grow not only together, but also their common fellowship grows, becoming their way ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... all was the thought that if he did not capture Nellie now, he might do so later on, when he had separated from the spy. Ever since he had first seen the beautiful girl he had been covetous of making her his squaw. Indian fashion, he felt he could compel Nellie to choose him, even if he had to whip her ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so left that she could be made absolute regent during the Dauphin's minority, it was those adventurers who would become through her the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and gratify to the full their covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his safety lay in opposing this coronation—already fixed for the 13th May—which Maria de' Medici was so insistent should take place before his departure for the wars. The matter so preyed upon his mind that last he ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... me. And now to be called "ignorant!" Just as though I could not reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman! The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... possible from the rich mines in that neighbourhood. Carvajal was willing to communicate to Gonzalo a portion of the wealth he expected to acquire in that district, for defraying the expences of the war; but he proposed especially to enrich himself on this occasion, being exceedingly covetous, as has been already remarked. He accordingly went to La Plata, which submitted without resistance, and remained there for a considerable time amassing wealth, till obliged to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... the head, and I shall instantly fall at thy feet, transformed into an image of gold. From this take as much as thou shalt have occasion for; and every member that shall be separated from the image shall instantly be replaced by another of the same precious metal."[FN398] In the morning a covetous neighbour named Hajm visited the merchant, and soon after the apparition presented itself. Abd-el-Malik at once arose and after striking it several blows on the head with a stick, it fell down and was changed into an image of gold. He took what sufficed for the day's needs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... the simplest books; the so-called classical ones. They should be amply provided with means of preparing their own playthings. The worst feature of our system are the playthings which imitate the luxury of grown people. By such objects the covetous impulse of the child for acquisition is increased, his own capacity for discovery and imagination limited, or rather, it would be limited if children with the sound instinct of preservation, did not happily smash the perfect playthings, which give them no creative opportunity, and themselves ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... the galley slaves. Another mask of goddesses and huntresses, with Turks, was performed on the following Shrovetide; and one of six Hercules, or men of war, coming from the sea with six Mariners to their torch-bearers, was played a little later. Besides which, we find mention of a masque of covetous men with long noses—a masque of men like Argus—a masque of women Moors—a masque of Amazons—one of black and tawney tinsel, with baboons' faces—one of Polanders, and one of women with ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... increased their pride and cruelty. Woman seems now above all vanity grown, Still boasting of her great unknown Platonic champions, gain'd without one female wile, Or the vast charges of a smile; Which 'tis a shame to see how much of late You've taught the covetous wretches to o'errate, And which they've now the consciences to weigh In the same balance with our tears, And with such scanty wages pay The bondage and the slavery of years. Let the vain sex dream ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... guilt of selfish use of worldly possessions is equally great whatever is the amount of possessions. Doing nothing when Lazarus lies at our gate is doing great wickedness. These truths have a sharp edge for us as well as for the 'Pharisees who were covetous'; and they are wofully ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the difference of an unselfish from a selfish love, even in this life, consists in this, that the latter depends on our transferring our present passion or appetite, or rather on our dilating and stretching it out in imagination, as the covetous man does;—while in the former we carry ourselves forward under a very different state from the present, as the young man, who restrains his appetites in respect of his future self as a tranquil and healthy old man. This last requires as great an effort of ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... notorious fact in Charleston, that although the negro, whether he be a black or white one, is held in abject obedience to the white man proper, no matter what his grade may be, yet such is the covetous and condescending character of these groggery keepers, that they become courteous to the negro and submit to an equality of sociability. The negro, taking advantage of this familiarity, will use the most insulting and abusive language to this class of ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... Majesty's service to the confinement of a prison: but, at the moment, they felt too indignant at having been captured by the frigate to listen to the proposal, and refused to a man. Captain M—- turned away disappointed, surveying the fine body of men with a covetous eye, as they were ranged in a line on his quarter-deck. He felt what a prize they would be to him, if he could have added them to his own ship's company; for at that time it was almost impossible to man the number of ships which were ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... parts of Ireland, however, a fresh stream of English adventurers continued to flow, as aggressive and covetous as their means and prudence permitted; calling so much of the country as they were able to wrench from the Irish "the English Pale", which fluctuated in extent with their fortunes; and, when compelled to pay tribute to Irish chiefs, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

... it is also true that this greed may possess one who has little or nothing. It may be found in unrestrained excess under the rags of the pauper and beggar. They who aspire to, or desire, riches with avidity are covetous whether they have much, little, or nothing. Christ promised His kingdom to the poor in spirit, not to the poor in fact. Spiritual poverty can associate with abundant wealth, just as the most depraved ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... remote period of antiquity—probably soon after the dispersion at Babel—it was said that the Mountain-men had said to the Raturans, that it had been reported to them that a rumour had gone abroad that they, the men of Ratura, were casting covetous eyes on the summit of their mountain. The Raturans replied that it had never entered into their heads either to covet or to look at the summit of their mountain, but that, if they had any doubts on the subject, they might send over a deputation to meet a Ratura ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... mistaken in anything. The Pope can sin just the same as anyone else; he could be a very bad man if he wanted to be so, and take the punishment God would inflict for his sins. Could he not be very angry, entirely neglect prayer, or pray with willful distraction; could he not be proud, covetous, etc.? And these are sins. Therefore he could sin; and hence he has to go to confession and seek forgiveness just as we do. Therefore remember this: whether the Pope be a bad man or a good man in his private life, he must always tell ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... Methodists a hundred years ago,—gained the hearts of the people and stimulated religious life; but in the fourteenth century they were a nuisance. They sold indulgences, they invented pious frauds, they were covetous under pretence of poverty, they had become luxurious in their lives, they slandered the regular clergy, they usurped the prerogatives of parish priests, they enriched their convents, they accommodated themselves to the wishes of the great, and were marked by those ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... was to the Armory Hospital, the neatness, comfort, and convenience of which makes it an honor to its presiding genius, and arouses all the covetous propensities of such nurses as came from ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... son of Menhens, invited Aretas [to take the government], and made him king of Celesyria. This man also made an expedition against Judea, and beat Alexander in battle; but afterwards retired by mutual agreement. But Alexander, when he had taken Pella, marched to Gerasa again, out of the covetous desire he had of Theodorus's possessions; and when he had built a triple wall about the garrison, he took the place by force. He also demolished Golan, and Seleucia, and what was called the Valley of Antiochus; besides which, he took the strong fortress of Gamala, and ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... insanity, and I have not known how to answer it. At my "Saturday Club" in Boston I sat at dinner by an English lord,—whose name I have forgotten,—from whom I tried to learn what laws Parliament had passed for the repairs of old religious Foundations, that could make them the victims of covetous Architects. But he assured me there were none such, and that he himself was President of a Society in his own County for the protection of such buildings. So that I am left entirely in the dark in regard to the fact ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... money-lender in the garden hidden among the marigolds'— the child looked at the ball of crumpled blossoms in its hands—'ay, among the yellow marigolds, and he heard the Gods talking. He was a covetous man, and of a black heart, and he desired that lakh of rupees for himself. So he went to the mendicant and said, "O brother, how much do the pious give thee daily?" The mendicant said, "I cannot tell. ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... by the gentle Lake, happy in their own serene joys and graceful leisure; shunning alike ambition and its trials, action and its sharp vicissitudes; envying no one, covetous of nothing; making around them, in the working world, something of the old pastoral and golden holiday. If Camilla had at one time wavered in her allegiance to Sidney, her good and simple heart has long since been entirely regained by his devotion; and, as might ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... That it like those by looking might be blest. But whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze, Finding their objects over-soon depart, These now the other's happiness do praise, Wishing themselves that they had been my heart, That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes, As covetous the other's use to have. But finding nature their request denies, This to each other mutually they crave; That since the one cannot the other be, That eyes could think of that my ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith

... township; while the great park at Windsor Castle, being upwards of fifty miles around, might well make the boldest pedestrian hesitate. My first excursion was to Hampton Court, an old royal residence, where I spent a delicious October day wandering through Bushy Park, and looking with covetous, though admiring eyes upon the vast herds of deer that dotted the plains, or gave way before me as I entered the woods. There seemed literally to be many thousands of these beautiful animals in this park, and the loud, hankering sounds of the bucks, as they pursued or circled around the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... casting covetous eyes at the bishop's pretty ewe lamb," Colonel Beston observed to Mrs. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... talent for intrigue, the matchless courage that shrank from nothing, and the energy which sufficed for everything? Sarah had, besides, filled his imagination with such magnificent hopes, and opened before his covetous eyes such a vast horizon of enjoyment, that he had come to look upon things as pitiful, which would formerly have satisfied his highest wishes. Should he, after having dreamed of those glorious achievements ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... upon a share of whose enormous estate, commonly estimated at $15,000,000, these conspirators had set their covetous eyes, was William Sharon, then a Senator from the State of Nevada. The woman with whom he had terminated his relations, because he believed her to be dangerous to his business interests, was Sarah Althea Hill. Desirous of turning to the best ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... proof against Martin's jibes. In '84 his brother of York had been mixed up in a shocking scandal; in '85 the Bishop of Lichfield was accused of simony; Bishop Aylmer was continually under suspicion of avarice, dishonesty, vanity and swearing; and the Bench as a whole was universally reprobated as covetous, stingy ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... will in all probability take place before the Arabs will be reconciled to the loss of a territory which has for a long time been of no use to them, but which, under its present masters, bids fair to introduce mines of wealth into an impoverished country. The Pasha of Egypt had long cast a covetous eye upon Aden, and its occupation by the British took place at the precise period requisite to check the ambitious designs of a man thirsting for conquest, and to allay the fears of the Imaum of Muscat, who, naturally enough, dreaded encroachments ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... my blood for drachmas, than to wring From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash By any indirection.—I did send To you for gold to pay my legions, Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius? Should I have answered Caius Cassius so? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, To lock such rascal counters from his friends, Be ready, gods, with an your thunderbolts; Dash him to pieces! Cas. I denied you not. Bru. You did. Cas. I did not: he was but a fool that brought My answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart: A friend should ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... every one of us. It knows the rich man and knows what his wealth has made of him. It knows whether it has made him selfish. Shall I say it? He, the Christ, the present Christ, knows whether the rich man's riches have made him selfish and base and mean, covetous and poor and little-souled, or whether he has been glad to rise to the greatness of his privilege, and be the very utterance of the beneficence of God upon the earth. He knows the poor man and his struggles, he knows the poor man and his self-respect. ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... Cassim the Covetous, whose god was gold, Once, by strange chance, found riches manifold Hid in a rocky cavern, where a band Of robbers who were ravaging the land Kept their bright spoils. Cassim had learnt the spell By which the dazzling heaps were guarded well. Two cabalistic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... and purpled since their first encounter, five years earlier, but his features had not matured. His face was still the face of a covetous bullying boy, with a large appetite for primitive satisfactions and a sturdy belief in his intrinsic right to them. It was all the more satisfying to Undine's vanity to see his look change at her tone from command to conciliation, and ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... the pattering of many little feet; from the thickets the hogs came; each hurrying with might and main to be foremost, they rushed, grunting, squealing, crowding to the fence, where, standing with upturned faces and small covetous eyes, they awaited the feast of golden grain which the old man hastened to scatter amongst them. Then, leaning upon the fence, he noted each greedy grunter as he wriggled his small tail in keenest enjoyment and cracked the ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux

... monarchical and in aristocratic one, such manners can exist in the higher ranks, without inducing a total depravity of general thought, and perversion of the power of mind. Talent, often the most venal of venal things, follows in the wake of corruption. Covetous of gain, thirsting for patronage, it fans, instead of lowering, the passions by which all hope to profit. Whenever prevailing vices have set in upon a nation, be they such as spring from a monarchical, an aristocratic, or a democratic regime, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... and business; and a scene which is always present is supposed to be within our knowledge, or at least within our power. But in a foreign country, curiosity is our business and our pleasure; and the traveller, conscious of his ignorance, and covetous of his time, is diligent in the search and the view of every object that can deserve his attention. I devoted many hours of the morning to the circuit of Paris and the neighbourhood, to the visit of churches and palaces conspicuous by their architecture, to the royal manufactures, collections ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon

... was false that she had blown upon the children; the silly fool Prechln had imagined it all—nothing was too absurd for stupidity like his to believe; and what then? Can't people die but by witchcraft? Did St. Peter bewitch that covetous knave Ananias (Acts v.) when he fell down dead at his feet for having lied to the Holy Ghost? Let the honourable convocation answer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?' said the man, seating himself deliberately. 'I wonder they don't murder you! I would if I was them. If I'd been your 'prentice, I'd have done it long ago, and—no, I couldn't have ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... Of the covetous man saith St. Paul, "They that long to be rich do fall into temptation and into the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and harmful desires, which drown men into death and destruction." Lo, here in the middle ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... a Goose that laid him a golden egg every day. Being of a covetous turn, he thought if he killed his Goose he should come at once to the source of his treasure. So he killed her and cut her open, but great was his dismay to find that her inside was in no way different from that ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... a strong magnifying glass, "here's a connoisseur whose revelations you may trust. Examine these facets with its help," and again the Sepoy placed the sapphire within reach of the covetous Raikes, who promptly availed ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... wealth and resources of the monarchy during his reign are best evinced by the expeditions he was enabled to fit out; but being no less covetous than ambitious he contrived to make the expenses fall upon his subjects, and at the same time filled his treasury with gold by pressing the merchants and plundering the neighbouring states. An intelligent person (General Beaulieu), who was for some time at his court, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... of affection the naturall man bestowes upon his dearest darling, what unsatiable thirst the covetous worldling upon his Mammon, the ambitious upon his honour, the voluptuous upon his pleasure; the same the Christian striveth in equall, yea, (if possible) farre exceeding tearmes to convert and conferre upon God and ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... love announces the awakening of mutual need. Then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each toward the other. The impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession of the beloved, is a consuming hunger. It is a covetous grasping, a recognition that the other is indispensable. Out of this comes a union, and from then on, the two grow not only together, but also their common fellowship grows, becoming their way ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... accustoms himself, as very many do, to think of nothing but money, money, money from Monday morning to Saturday night, he thinks of money a great part of Sunday likewise. And so, after a while, the man lowers his soul, and makes it mean and covetous. He forgets all that is lovely and of good report. He forgets virtue—that is manliness; and praise—that is the just respect and admiration of his fellow-men; and so he forgets at last things true, honest, and just likewise. He lowers his soul; and therefore when he is tempted, he ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... good humour, the animal hilarity of it all, was absorbingly amusing. The trappers gazed with pleasure that showed how near akin are naturalist and hunter. Of course, they had some covetous thought connected with those glossy hides, but this was September still, and even otter were not yet prime. Shoot, plump, splash, went the happy crew with apparently unabated joy and hilarity. The slide improved with use and ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the waters there appeared only a forbidding and scarcely habitable coast. Low lands with islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains, hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro, no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his first vision of the Indies. A storm-bound coast, a relentless climate and a reluctant soil-these were the treasures of the New World as ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock

... time she was never merely dazzled; and never, for one moment, covetous or envious. He was struck with her simple dignity and independence; and he perfectly understood that a being so profoundly in love, and so overshadowed by a great fear, could only lend, so to speak, her outer mind to Carton or the persons in it. He gathered roses for her, and ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... party of Crusaders, headed by Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, and a famous knight named Tancred, had been sent forward to clear a passage for the army. Tancred subdued the city of Tarsus; but his victory was usurped by Baldwin, whose ambitions and covetous nature bore no resemblance to that of his brother. Tancred, a man after Godfrey's heart, surrendered this conquest for the sake of peace; but, when Baldwin showed symptoms of repeating his injustice, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... were delivered from such bondage and calamitie as before time we had suffered. Justly likewise were we punished for our greedy desires of present gaine and proffit, wherin many showed themselves insatiable and covetous; we beinge too secure in trustinge of a treacherous enimie, the Salvadges, they, whilest we entertained them frendley in our houses, tooke their opportunities and suddenly fell uppon us, killing and murdering ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... the district of Lille, a worthy man who was a labourer and tradesman, and who managed, by the good offices of himself and his friends, to obtain for a wife a very pretty young girl, but who was not rich, neither was her husband, but he was very covetous, and diligent in business, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... the rich mines in that neighbourhood. Carvajal was willing to communicate to Gonzalo a portion of the wealth he expected to acquire in that district, for defraying the expences of the war; but he proposed especially to enrich himself on this occasion, being exceedingly covetous, as has been already remarked. He accordingly went to La Plata, which submitted without resistance, and remained there for a considerable time amassing wealth, till obliged to take the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr

... of negotiation, sub rosa or official, was not going on. The order of procedure was pretty much what it had always been: a promise that the remaining land should be the Indian's, undisturbed by white men and protected by government guarantee, forever; encroachment by enterprising, covetous, and lawless whites; conflict between the two races, the outraged and the aggressive; the advent of the schemer, the man with political capital and undeveloped or perverted sense of honor, whose vision was such that he saw the Indian owner as the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... description of him. IV. Bracciolini gave way to the impulses of his age. V. The Claudius, Nero and Tiberius of the Annals personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century. VI. Schildius and his doubts. VII. Bracciolini not covetous of martyrdom: communicates his fears to Niccoli. VIII. The princes and great men in the Annals the princes and great men of the XVth century, not of the opening period of the Christian aera. IX. Bracciolini, and not Tacitus, a disparager ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... is God, the Spirit of Righteousness, who is ever seated within the hearts of men combating the lusts of the flesh, the promptings of the brute animal nature of mankind. Disobedient man may know him not, because covetous flesh, the promptings of self-love, hath deceived him, and "so he looks abroad for a God, and so doth imagine or fancy a God in some particular place of glory beyond the skies; or else, if men do look for a God within them, yet are they led by the notions of King Flesh, and ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens

... they procured the gold, they answered by signs that they had it from the south, where there was a king who possessed abundance of pieces and vessels of gold; and they made our people to understand that there were many other islands and large countries to the south and southwest. They were very covetous to get possession of anything which belonged to the Christians, and being themselves very poor, with nothing of value to give in exchange, as soon as they got on board, if they could lay hold of anything which struck their fancy, though it were only a piece of a broken glazed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... unjust. Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, and the last Prince of the House of York, was beheaded by him for attempting his escape, after being imprisoned from nine years old; for which cruel act Henry's name will be hated for ever. As he grew old, he grew covetous, and to increase his treasure, he caused all penal laws to be put in execution. His chief instruments herein were Empsom and Dudley, who afterwards paid dear for their extortion. He built the chapel at Westminster which is at this day called Henry the Seventh's. The 48 gentlemen of ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... Traveller, 'wherefore did he leave A flock that knew his saintly worth so well?' 'Why,' said the Landlord, 'Sir, it so befell He heard unluckily of our intent To do him a great honour; and you know He was not covetous of fame below, And so by stealth one night away ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... all the earth." The service of God in the old dispensation, under the law of Moses, was hard and wearisome. Many and divers sacrifices had men to offer, of all that they possessed, both in house and in field, which the people, being idle and covetous, did grudgingly or for some temporal advantage; as the prophet Malachi saith, chap. i., "who is there even among you that would shut the doors for naught? neither do ye kindle fires on my altars for naught." But where there is such an idle and grudging heart ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... what they ought to do, It is a noble duty to inform them What they ought to foresee.—Here comes Bosola, The only court-gall; yet I observe his railing Is not for simple love of piety: Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants; Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud, Bloody, or envious, as any man, If he had means to be so.—Here's ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... understood!— To nurse with tender care the thriving arts, Watch every beam philosophy imparts: To give religion her unbridled scope, Nor judge by statute a believer's hope; With close fidelity and love unfeign'd, To keep the matrimonial bond unstain'd; Covetous only of a virtuous praise, His life a lesson to the land he sways. Blest country where these kingly glories shine! Blest England, if ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... expression) hence gave the signal of voluptuousness to the whole kingdom. Here too, he ruled it with principles the most daring; holding men, in general, in great contempt, and conceiving them to be all as insidious, as servile, and as covetous as those by whom he was surrounded. With the superiority of his character, he made a sport of governing this mass of individuals, as if the task was unworthy of his genius. The fact is illustrated by the ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... will come of it, but evil. The day will arrive [this is the Prophecy, almost IN IPSISSIMIS VERBIS], the day perhaps is not so far off, when this glorious Republic will get torn into shreds, hither, thither; be stuffed into the pockets of covetous neighbors, Brandenburg; Muscovy, Austria; and find itself reduced to zero, and abolished from the face of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a covetous man. He had a passion for money-making and he had availed himself of all the opportunities which the country afforded. He had about as much property as his friend. He began to think he had been plodding along in a very slow, unsatisfactory manner. He would make careful ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger

... situation that most people thought. Lord Chetwynd and myself were the only persons at all acquainted with her affairs, and they were far from being even easy to her. It is due to her memory to say, that I never saw more strict honour and justice. She bore knowingly the imputation of being covetous, at a time that the strictest economy could by no means prevent her exceeding her income considerably. The anguish of the last years of her life, though concealed, flowed from the apprehension of not satisfying her few wishes, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... trenchant historical parallels between them and Achitophel, Shebna, and Judas. Later, young Mr. Mackail, applying the same method to the ministers of Charles II., was hanged. "What wonder is it then," said Knox, "that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly councillors? I am greatly afraid that Achitophel be councillor, that Judas bear the purse, and that Shebna be scribe, comptroller, and ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... daunted her suitors and they left her alone, until but one remained, the Baron Niel MacCorquodale, whose lands bordered on Glenurchy, and who had long cast covetous eyes on the glen and its fair lady, and longed no less for the wealth she was reputed to possess than for the power this ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... well; knew how rare are the good ones; knew the prize he had won, and valued it—yes, he was sure he always valued it as it deserved. What was the use? Had she not far better have been like the others—petulant, wilful, capricious, covetous of admiration, careless of affection, weak-headed, shallow-hearted, and desirous only of that which could not possibly be her own? Such were most of the women amongst whom he had been thrown in his youth; but O, how unlike her who was lying ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... proposition both now and in the calculable future. What we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... and giants, there dwelt in barren lands, not very remote from our outer reef, but since submerged, a band of evil- minded, envious goblins, furlongs in stature, and with immeasurable arms; who from time to time cast covetous glances upon our blooming isles. Long they lusted; till at last, they waded through the sea, strode over the reef, and seizing the nearest islet, rolled it over and over, toward ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... in a watch-pocket! It is to be noticed there were no clocks and watches in the much-vaunted days before the flood. It follows, of course, there were no appointments, and punctuality was not yet thought upon. "Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure," says Milton, "he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot deprive him of his covetousness." And so I would say of a modern man of business, you may do what you will for him, put him in Eden, give him the elixir of life—he has still a flaw at heart, he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... thought of his boyish loves and sensualities—of the girls who had provoked them—of some of the ugly facts connected with them. A great astonishment, a great sickening, came upon him. He felt the burden of the flesh, the struggle of the spirit. And through it all, the maddest and most covetous yearning!—welling up through schemes and hopes, that like the moonlit ripples on the Greet, dissolved as fast ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... to the boy, who knew that he had been instrumental in hiding the threatened monk, and that if by some gruesome chance the secret were to be discovered, their bitter enemy would make it an excuse for prosecuting his malicious and covetous purpose towards Chad with redoubled ardour, and with every prospect of success. At present the prior was standing neutral betwixt the two foes; at present the king was well disposed towards Sir Oliver. But should it be proved beyond dispute that he had set the Church at defiance, and ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... sure you did, and will. After all, Frank, I think that the pious godly people have the best of it in this world. Let them be ever so covetous, ever so false, ever so hard-hearted, the mere fact that they must keep up appearances, makes them comfortable to those around them. Poor papa was not comfortable to me. A little hypocrisy, a little sacrifice to the feelings of the world, may ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... sake!—sacks full of gold in a few days?" cried Lihoa, who, like all Chinamen, was covetous of great wealth. "Speak, Lohe, tell us, can we get some of the gold,—at least a handful or two? It is just as you say, our village is the last and the very least in the world, and not a soul has come to us with the good news. Tell us the ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... study, who may not? Frederick the Great, too, was busy in camp the greater part of his life, yet whenever a leisure moment came, it was sure to be devoted to study. He wrote to a friend, "I become every day more covetous of my time, I render an account of it to myself, and I lose none of it but ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... their duty; It is undeniably true, that many of the evils wherewith this Kirk and Kingdome hath been afflicted in our age, have come to passe because of the negligence of some, and corruptions of others of the Ministry; Whilest some fell asleep, and were carelesse, and others were covetous and ambitious, the evil man brought in Prelacy, and the Ceremonies, & had farre promoted the Service-Book, and the Book of Cannons; and the course of backsliding and revolting was carried on, untill it pleased God to stirre up the spirits of these few, ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... was the same day where Michael Flannery (turns to him) came in an' told me of you being grown so covetous you had made away with your dog, by reason you begrudged ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... voice had an undeniable ring of power. It was deeply bass, evidently the voice of a passionate, reckless, brutal man. The covetous caress of his thick hand upon her arm indicated that he was wholly sure of ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... handsomely dressed, like Crebillon the tragical, he would suddenly affect extreme indifference as to what he wore; he was sometimes seen in a carriage, and sometimes on foot. By turns rough and kind, harsh and covetous on the surface, but capable of offering his whole fortune to his exiled masters—who did him the honor of accepting it for a few days—no man ever gave rise to such contradictory judgements. Although to obtain a black ribbon, which ...
— The Atheist's Mass • Honore de Balzac

... man is so defensible. Of course it would have been ridiculous of him to have sheltered me. Who was I? I had no introduction. What was I? I might have robbed him in the night ... or murdered. I was ill-dressed and poor, therefore no doubt covetous of his fine clothes and wealth. They would only have themselves to blame if they sheltered me and I did them harm. Besides, was there not the tavern close by? All reason pointed to ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... Chaldaeans; but there is reason to believe that this was a branch of industry in which they particularly excelled. We know that as early as the time of Joshua a Babylonian garment had been imported into Palestine, and was of so rare a beauty as to attract the covetous regards of Achan, in common with certain large masses of the precious metals. The very ancient cylinder figured above must belong to a time at least five or six centuries earlier; upon it we observe flounced and fringed garments, delicately ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson

... achievement of causing a gold mine to float is held to be more praiseworthy than to pass a competitive examination or to compose a poem of inimitable brilliance, and where one wearing gilt buttons and an emblem in his hat proves upon ingratiating approach not to be a powerful official but a covetous and illiterate slave of inferior rank? Thus, through their own narrow-minded inconsistencies, even the most ceremoniously-proficient may at times present an ill-balanced attitude. This, without reproach to himself, concerns the inward cause whereby the one who is placed to you ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... and mother, at their meagre fare. His manner changed. He became more cordial. "Good sir, the affair is not to be taken thus! Sentence has been given, but...." He laughed—"it can be revoked. Already in the inner room the master is in consultation with the agent of Takai Yokubei San (Mr. Highly Covetous), Aikawa Dono,—the honoured yo[u]nin of Aoyama Sama. A round bribe, and the girl will be released...." The words were not out of his mouth when the father was on his feet. Led by the banto[u] he made the rounds of all—pimps, bawds, and bouncers—soliciting ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... have confess'd that he is thine, And I myself am mortgaged to thy will. {425} Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still. But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind. He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... really true that she is unconscious of her blindness, and consequently begs her attendant to go elsewhere, because the house is dark. But you may be sure that this, at which we laugh in her, happens to us all; no one understands that he is avaricious or covetous. The blind seek for a guide; we wander about without ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... meanes lay on mee, 95 Which I can strangely make. My last lands sale, By his great suite, stands now on price with him, And hee (as you know) passing covetous, With that blinde greedinesse that followes gaine, Will cast no danger where her sweete feete tread. 100 Besides, you know, his lady, by his suite (Wooing as freshly as when first love shot His faultlesse arrowes from her rosie eyes) Now lives with him againe, and shee, I know, Will joyne ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... not scrupled to rifle the Deerhurst vineyards of their most attractive vines, and the cluster of fruit on which Mabel had fixed a covetous eye was certainly a tempting one. The rays from two Chinese lanterns, hung near it, brought out its juicy lusciousness with even more than daylight clearness, and Mabel's mouth fairly watered for these ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond

... task; and ere Vivian could ask for the goblet, Rudesheimer, with a fell laugh, had handed it to Grafenberg. The greedy ass drank his portion with ease, and indeed drank far beyond his limit. The cup was in Vivian's hand, Rudesheimer was roaring supernaculum louder than all; Vivian saw that the covetous Grafenberg had providentially rendered his task comparatively light; but even as it was, he trembled at the idea of drinking at a single draught more than a pint of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... limited one, but he exhausted it on the head of the Advocate. He lacked at last words and breath to utter what was like him. He pronounced his former friend "a very dangerous man, altogether hated of the people and the States;"—"a lewd sinner, nursled in revolutions; a most covetous, bribing fellow, caring for nothing but to bear the sway and grow rich;"—"a man who had played many parts, both lewd and audacious;"—"a very knave, a traitor to his country;"—"the most ungrateful wretch alive, a hater of the Queen and of all the English; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... The shifty, covetous eyes ranged from the treasure in his hand to the threatening east. A puff of wind caught the sail and sent the boom athwartships, like a mighty flail. Both men ducked instinctively, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... the revealing night—in the darkness that tries the hearts, in the night useless for the work of men, but in which their gaze, undazzled by the sunshine of covetous days, wanders sometimes as far as the stars. The perfect stillness around him had something solemn in it, but he felt it was the lying solemnity of a temple devoted to the rites of a debasing persuasion. The silence within ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... they have read the first four staves of the carol in a general way, they will be in a better position to study intensively the last stave, or chapter, which is the lesson in the Reader. They will understand the causes that have changed this "covetous old sinner" to the man "who knew how to keep Christmas Day well". This lesson should be taken up near Christmas. The pupils will discuss Stave I, after ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education

... other and are fairly connected, but do not compose a history so much as a chronicle. In character, despite his intense verisimilitude, he is not very individual. Robinson himself, Moll, Jack, William the Quaker in Singleton, even Roxana the cold-blooded and covetous courtesan, cannot be said not to be real—they and almost every one of the minorities are an immense advance on the colourless and bloodless ticketed puppets of the Middle Fiction. But they still want something—the snap of the fingers of the artist. ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... stay of ten weeks at this port, they sufficiently experienced all the artifices of this covetous and fraudulent people, from whom Captain Clipperton had no way to defend himself, and was therefore obliged to submit to all their demands. Towards the end of September, the season and their inclinations concurred to deliver them from this place; for by this time, even the common men began ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... conycatching,[223:1] and all other shifts and sleights; a cracking boaster, proud, insolent, a secret back-biter, a contentious wrangler, a common jester and liar, a runagate wanderer, a cogging[223:2] sychophant and covetous exactor, a wringer of his patients. In a word, a man, or rather monster, made of ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... in their trade and profession, can even pine themselves at their works, and neglect their bodies and their food for it; and doest thou less honour thy nature, than an ordinary mechanic his trade; or a good dancer his art? than a covetous man his silver, and vainglorious man applause? These to whatsoever they take an affection, can be content to want their meat and sleep, to further that every one which he affects: and shall actions tending to the common good of human society, seem more vile ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... alive; she neither stirs nor says a word, and yet she hearkens to and hears the mourning which the emperor makes, and the wailing with which the hall is full. And o'er all the city the folk wail who weep and say: "God! what a sorrow and a calamity has accursed death dealt us! Greedy death! Covetous death! Death is worse than any she-wolf, for death cannot be sated. Never couldst thou give a worse wound to the world. Death, what hast thou done? May God confound thee who hast extinguished all beauty. Thou hast slain the choicest creature and ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes

... The excellent Husband, and joyn Farm to Farm, Suffer no Lordship, that in a clear day Falls in the prospect of your covetous eye To be anothers; forget you are a Grandee; Take use upon use, and cut the throats of Heirs With cozening Mortgages: rack your poor Tenants, Till they look like so many Skeletons For want of Food; and when that Widows curses, The ruines ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... and covetous, that he never allowed to his attendants, in his travels and expeditions, any salary, but their diet only. Once, indeed, he treated them liberally, at the instigation of his step-father, when, dividing them into three classes, according to their rank, he gave ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... it back to him from whom you unjustly took it. But to hide their malice, they change the name usury into milder words, calling it interest or moderate profit, like the heathens, who called their furies by the soft name Eumenides." He relates that a rich usurer of Nyssa, so covetous as to deny himself and children necessaries, and not to use the bath to save three farthings, dying suddenly, left his money all hid and buried where his children could never find it, who by that means were all ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... again had he tip-toed up in the dark to rifle it. Now it was his own. And at harvest time it became literally crammed with the huge rolls of banknotes his father-in-law paid over in exchange for the oranges of the Brull orchards. And Rafael had a covetous eye on what don Matias had in the banks; for all that, too, would come to him when the old man died. Acquisitiveness—money and land—had become his one, his ruling passion. Monotony, meanwhile, had turned him into an accurate, methodical, meticulous machine; ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... great pains to correct this evil, especially on Ellen's account; for as Matilda was not covetous, she was ever ready to share with her only companion the raisins and almonds, figs, gingerbread, biscuits, or comfits, which she was continually munching; and this Mrs. Harewood had a particular objection to, not only because it is bad for the health, and lays the foundation for innumerable evils ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland

... Northolt down, Song to obtain, O sweet reward, And walk the garden of the Bard?— But thy employ, the year throughout, Is wandering the White Tower about, Moulding and stamping coin with care, The farthing small and shilling fair. Let for a month thy Mint lie still, Covetous be not, little Will; Fly from the birth-place of the smoke, Nor in that wicked city choke; O come, though money's charms be strong, And if thou come I'll give thee song, A draught of water, hap what may, Pure air to make thy spirits gay And welcome from an honest heart, That's free from ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... "I never was covetous, Jane," she replied; "but I have six children and have buried three, and I didn't marry into money. The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteen—so I leave you to guess. And stock always short, and land most awkward. But if ever I've begged ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... was an eccentric and self-willed person, claiming justice for himself and giving it to others, and never covetous of what was not his own. He would never give anyone credit in the payment of his works, and always insisted on having his earnest-money. For this reason Lorenzo de' Medici called him Il Caparra,[28] and he was ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... who have made such rottenness of a good old house and two diadems; and there also shall the Portuguese and the Norwegian be known for what they are, and the coiner of Dalmatia, who beheld with such covetous eyes the Venetian ducat. O blessed Hungary, if thou wouldst resolve to endure no longer!—O blessed Navarre, if thou wouldst but keep out the Frenchman with thy mountain walls! May the cries and groans of Nicosia and Famagosta be an earnest of those happier days, proclaiming as they do the vile ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... went along with the Nis to Fugleriis to steal corn. The Nis took as much as he thought he could well carry, but the boy was more covetous, and said— ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... their gifts and achievements there were certain great evils in Babylonian life. For one thing they were inclined to be greedy and covetous. They lived on a soil almost incredibly rich, and they were constantly increasing their wealth by trade. Babylonian merchants or their agents were to be found in almost every city and town of western Asia and perhaps even as far east as China. ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... sceptre to his grandson Mautenar, the son of Marasar, who had probably died before his father. Two young and inexperienced princes confront one the other in the two neighbour lands, each distrustful of his rival, each covetous of glory, each hopeful of success if war should break out. True, by treaty the two kings were friends and allies—by treaty the two nations were bound to abstain from all aggression by the one upon the other: but such bonds are like the "green withes" that bound Samson, when the desire ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... the real Judas was. We can, however, by dispassionate examination of the facts determine their sole import, and if we indulge in inferences we can deduce those which are fairly probable. As Judas was treasurer, he must have been trusted. He could hardly have been naturally covetous, for he had given up in common with the other disciples much, if not all, to follow Jesus. The thirty pieces of silver—some four or five pounds of our money—could not have been considered by him as a sufficient bribe for the ignominy of a ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... was her motive for suddenly saying it. He had assured her he was perfectly sensible of her goodness in so plotting out his future, but was also sorry if he had put it into any one's head—most of all into the girl's own—that he had ever looked at Biddy with a covetous eye. He wasn't in the least sure she would make a good wife, but liked her quite too much to wish to put any such mystery to the test. She was certainly not offered them for cruel experiments. As it happened, really, he wasn't thinking of marrying any one—he had ever so many grounds for ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... said the Baron. "Bag and baggage, and armed to the eyes. Each eye is a gatling-gun, each lip a lunette behind which lies an unconquerable legion of smiles and rows of ivory bayonets, each ear a hardy spy, and every nut-brown strand a covetous dastard on the warpath not for a scalp but for a crown. Napoleon was never so well prepared for battle as she, nor Troy so firmly fortified. Yes, highness, the foe is at our gates. We ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... enjoyment in spending, as a covetous man does in getting, and both are treated at a witch's feast, where nothing feeds but only the imagination, and like two madmen, that believe themselves to be the same prince, laugh at one another. He values his pleasures as they do honour, by the difficulty ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... all the fault of a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel has ever struck out a generous fire. No wind that blows is more bitter than he, no falling snow is more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. And his name ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... a very rich citizen; a 'squeezing, grinding, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.' He has lost all recollection of what he once was, and what he once felt; is dead to all kindly impulses, and proof against the most moving tale. He is almost as keen and gruff as old RALPH NICKELBY, to whom he bears a strong family resemblance, and uses his ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... finally, glaring at me, said that nothing would ever induce him to part with it. The people would never allow the image to be taken away, as the life of the tribe was bound up with it Seeing that he was not to be moved, I desisted, though a covetous look in his eye when I offered a beautiful colored rug in exchange gave me hope, Rocanandiva was, like most idolatrous priests, very fanatical. When he learned that I professed and taught a different religion, his jealousy was most marked, and he often told me to go from them, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... and simple like Gilling, his brother. He was cunning and he was covetous. Once they were in his hands the Dwarfs had no chance of making an escape. He took them and left them on a rock in the sea, a rock that the tide ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... old man, who lived off the road, did not like it. 'Twas a Popish custom; and said, "I always fast on Christmas." His family knew they did, and many a day besides; for he was so covetous that he grudged the water ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker

... Felicia, after a first eager grasping at pretty things, as a child holds out covetous hands for toys and sweets, had shown sudden scruples, an ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... carrying on the traditions of Ferrara, added Veronese's works to the treasures of the house of Este. The last ten years of his life were given up to visiting churches on the mainland and on the little islands round Venice, all covetous to possess something by the brilliant Veronese, whose name was in every mouth. Torcello, Murano, Treviso, Castelfranco, every convent and monastery loaded him with commissions, and it is significant of the spirit of the time, that in spite of the disapproval of the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... infidel sat with hanging head and every mark of dejection. Terutak' streamed with sweat, his eye was glazed, his face wore a painful rictus, his chest heaved like that of one spent with running. The man must have been by nature covetous; and I doubt if ever I saw moral agony more tragically displayed. His wife by his ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... evil-doing in the heart and centre of the most powerful of all the churches. His translation of Farini, followed by his article on the same subject in the Edinburgh in 1852, was his first blast against 'the covetous, domineering, implacable policy represented in the term Ultramontanism; the winding up higher and higher, tighter and tighter, of the hierarchical spirit, in total disregard of those elements by which it ought to be checked ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... has no money is poor, but one who has nothing but money is poorer. He only is rich who can enjoy without owning; he is poor who though he have millions is covetous. There are riches of intellect, and no man with an intellectual taste can be called poor. He is rich as well as brave who can face compulsory poverty and misfortune ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... With the continued style, and note of gods, Through all the provinces, were wild ambition. And no less pride: yea, even Augustus' name Would early vanish, should it be profaned With such promiscuous flatteries. For our part, We here protest it, and are covetous Posterity should know it. we are mortal; And can but deeds of men: 'twere glory enough, Could we be truly a prince. And, they shall add Abounding grace unto our memory, That shall report us worthy our forefathers, Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers, And not afraid of any private frown For ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... Cacique of Cueva. They had been hospitably received and adopted into the tribe. In requital for their entertainment, they offered to betray the Indians if Vasco Nunez, the new governor, would condone their past offenses. They filled the minds of the Spaniards, alike covetous and hungry, with stories of great treasures and what was equally valuable, abundant provisions, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... goad of godless Midianite, driving him on and on through burning sands and 'neath a blazing sun, far from his tearful mother and mourning sire. How cruel the fates to consign to slavery one born to be a king! His master is a hard man and covetous, but her pleadings shall yet purchase sweet liberty for old Jacob's son, that he may fulfill the high dreams of which he has told her—may answer the midnight messages of Israel's God and triumph over those wicked brethren. Perhaps—who knows?—in his ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin. If we are mark'd to die, we are enow To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more. By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires; But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God's peace! ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... abrupt and short. It deals with part only of the man's error, the rest of which, being an error to which we are all exposed, and which was the root of the part special to him, is dealt with in the parable that follows. Because the man was covetous, he could see in Jesus nothing more than a rabbi who might influence his brother. Our sense of want largely shapes our conception of Christ. Many to-day see in Him mainly a social (and economical) reformer, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... this there is nothing of a self-seeking or covetous kind. The common man who so lends himself to the aggressive enhancement of the national Culture and its prestige has nothing of a material kind to gain from the increase of renown that so comes to his sovereign, his ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... the Ohio River, along which white men were pushing their way, and settling on land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee, and looking with covetous eyes on the land between that river and the lakes, but which the Indians claimed had been reserved to them by treaty. The shrewder among the Indian leaders foresaw the time when they would have to fight and overwhelm the intruders or submit ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane

... God's gracious dealings which we find therein. Through comfort of the Scriptures, but also through patience. Ah, my friends, of that too we must think; we must, as St. James says, "let patience have her perfect work," or else we shall not be perfect ourselves. If we are hasty, self-conceited, covetous, ready to help ourselves by the first means that come to hand; if we are full of hard judgments about our neighbours, and doubts about God's good purpose toward the world; in short, if we are not PATIENT, the Bible will teach us little or nothing. It may make us superstitious, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley









Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar