"Venal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... opinion, which may be shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong ties of public and private interest. For, if all men who act in a public situation are equally selfish, corrupt, and venal, what reason can be given for desiring any sort of change, which, besides the evils which must attend all changes, can be productive of no possible advantage? The active men in the state are true samples of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... have been considered as disaffection if anyone had refused to purchase these empty and disgraceful honors, with the greatest part of his fortune. In the lucrative provincial employments the minister shared with the governor the spoils of the people. The execution of the laws was venal and arbitrary. A wealthy criminal might obtain not only the reversal of the sentence by which he was justly condemned, but might likewise inflict whatever punishment he pleased on the accuser, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... rivals said as much,[1] But that I deemed their spite, Was't but my money he desired to clutch? I lent it—with delight! Were his mere venal vows? His bonds but such As SAMSON snapped ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... and the boroughs were venal. The Irish parliament was, in fact, an Oligarchy, and Edgeworth realised this danger. He, however, wished the reform to be carried on 'through the intervention of parliament,' while the more extreme ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... be sought; That by our own right hands it must be wrought, That we must stand unpropp'd, or be laid low. O Dastard whom such foretaste doth not chear! We shall exult, if They who rule the land Be Men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal Band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... because, being a princess of the first rank, she might be offered and accepted to grace the harem of his brother; a mere prisoner of state, watched by the baleful eye of jealousy, and traduced by the venal tongues of courtiers; dwelling in a torment of uncertainty as to the fate to which his brother's explosive temper and irresponsible power might devote him, hoping for no repose or safety but in his funeral-urn,—he began to grow hard ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... a most amiable, moral, and peaceable man has been wantonly and cruelly killed while in the performance of his regular and responsible duties as a teacher of youth; and, notwithstanding the verdict of a corrupt and venal jury, the deliberate judgment of the heart and conscience of this community pronounces that killing to be murder." The committee appointed by the meeting also requested Mr. Wolfe, one of the counsel for the prisoner, to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... hands of the Carthaginians (516). In this instance, even more than in the affair of the Mamertines, the Romans were justly liable to the reproach that the great and victorious burgesses had not disdained to fraternize and share the spoil with a venal pack of mercenaries, and had not sufficient self-denial to prefer the course enjoined by justice and by honour to the gain of the moment. The Carthaginians, whose troubles reached their height just about the period of the occupation of Sardinia, were silent for the time being ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... divine And wrote the judgment-sign, And Babylon fell!—So now, in that his place Of Tudor-Stuart pride, The golden gallery wide, 'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... forbidding its introduction into China. This did not check the trade, its only effect being to convert legitimate into smuggling traffic. The trade went on as briskly as before, the smugglers being openly aided by venal officials not only at Canton but at other points along the coast. By 1838 the disregard of the law, and the quantity of opium smuggled into the empire by small boats on the Canton River, had become so great that ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... at the two women, one after the other, and was forced to acknowledge that in his opinion Dame Nature had made a mistake in their formation. To the great lady she had given a heart vile and venal; to the SOUBRETTE she had given ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... candidates in the same light; and should think myself a traitor to the constitution of my country, if I voted for either. If every elector would bring the same consideration home to his conscience, we should not have such reason to exclaim against the venality of p—ts. But we all are a pack of venal and corrupted rascals; so lost to all sense of honesty, and all tenderness of character, that, in a little time, I am fully persuaded, nothing will be ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to relate, in a continuous narrative, all our military operations of this year, let me say what passed in other directions. The siege of Barcelona made no progress. Our engineers were so slow and so ignorant, that they did next to nothing. They were so venal, too, that they aided the enemy rather than us by their movements. According to a new rule made by the King, whenever they changed the position of their guns, they were entitled to a pecuniary recompense. Accordingly, they passed all their ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... down again on a bench. The carriages were still rolling by. He thought: "I should have done better not to come here; I feel all upset." He began to think of all this venal or passionate love, of all these kisses, sold or given, which were passing by it front of him. Love! He scarcely knew it. In his lifetime he had only known two or three women, his means forcing him to live a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... been self-seeking and made the most of my position, as was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until now, when at a stroke ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... most simple thing, for your entire character is described in these four words: venal, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... have no herds, no fleecy care, No fields that wave with golden grain, No meadows green, or gardens fair, A damsel's venal heart to gain. Then all in vain my sighs must prove, For I, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... that the exploded androgyne system was worked in modern France, and when he added the development of the Palladium as the climax to the mystery of iniquity, it is small wonder that his book achieved notoriety to the extent of five thousand copies. He was assailed as a venal pamphleteer and his past achievements in literature were freely disinterred for his own benefit and for public instruction, but he was more than compensated by the approbation of Mgr. Fava, bishop of Grenoble, with ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Genoa. Brignole Sale: Portraits of Men; Santa Conversazione. Hampton Court. Madonna and Donors. London. Daphnis and Chloe; Portrait of Lady. Bridgewater House: Holy Family. Milan. Brera: Descent of Holy Spirit; Baptism; S. Dominio presented to the Saviour by Virgin; Madonna and Saints; Venal Love. S. Maria pr. Celso: Madonna and S. Jerome. Munich. Portrait; Man counting Jewels. Paris. Portraits. Rome. Colonna: Holy Family and Saints. Treviso. Madonna and Saints. Duomo: Adoration of Shepherds; ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... father, "if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pitt "blend Ireland with the industry and capital of Great Britain." Cupped by his finance she gave the venal blood of her industry to strengthen the predominant partner, and to help him to exclude for a time from these islands that pernicious French Democracy in which all states and peoples have since found redemption. Such was the first chapter ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Englishmen who think that when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here! I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool! Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago with a ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... pale they would turn! how they would tremble, and clasp their hands in agony at the precipice on which they are disporting! Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime; it taints the course of life in all its dreams. Hence so many unhappy marriages, so many prostituted pens, and venal politicians! It hath a small beginning, but a giant's growth and strength. When we make the monster we make our master, who haunts us at all hours, and shakes his whip of scorpions for ever in our ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to one another, why should we linger here, if Moses has played this trick upon us? Why not go back to Egypt, where at least we can get something to eat? So they decided to bribe Aaron, who was venal and would do anything ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... breast, which I see kindling in your eyes, my lord and king! My obedience to you, my husband and my ruler, shall be that of a slave, but I can never stoop to sue for the favor, or obey the orders of a venal servant, the most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... situated in the Rue Mouffetard. It has long since disappeared with many a haunt of my youth's revelry. The tide of frolic has set northward, and Montmartre, which to us was but a geographical term, now dazzles the world with its venal splendour. But the Moulin de la Galette and the Bal Tabarin of the present day lack the gaiety of the Bal Jasmin. It was not well frequented; it gathered round its band-stand people with shocking reputations; the sight of a man in a dress coat would have transfixed the assembly like some blood-curdling ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness; aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all its good influences: such things as these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... in venal praise, Unstained with flattery's art; Who loves simplicity of lays Breathed ardent from the heart; While gratitude and joy inspire, Resumes the long-unpractised lyre, To hail, O HAY, thy natal Morn; No gaudy wreath of flowers she weaves, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... to the homes of decent, semi-educated families, and for such society he was altogether unfitted. The licence of the streets but seldom allured him. After his twenty-fourth year he was proof against the decoys of venal pleasure, and lived a life of asceticism exceedingly rare in young and lonely men. When Christian Moxey returned to London and took the house at Notting Hill, which he henceforth occupied together with his sister, a possibility of social intercourse ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... fight in the House over a bill as to which there was a bitter contest between two New York City street railway organizations, I saw lobbyists come down on the floor itself and draw venal men out into the lobbies with almost no pretense of concealing what they were doing. In another case in which the elevated railway corporations of New York City, against the protest of the Mayor and the other ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... 'Republican' minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Menehould, Mr. Carlyle's 'bold old dragoon,' who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and naturally enough turned up under the empire as an obsequious sub-prefect ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... was venal, selfish, corrupt; it only defended in the king's person the sources of its vanities,—profitable exactions. The clergy, with Christian virtues, had no public virtues: a state within a state, its life was apart from the life of the nation, its ecclesiastical establishment seemed to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... swarming with haggard slaves. We declare that to be President of the United States is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough in the past, and concede ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... a venal race, Who think you cheat the sky With every pharisaic face And simulated lie; Round Freedom's lair, with weapons bare, We greet the light divine Of those who throned the goddess there, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. It is the publisher's business to send out books to the editors of critical papers, but never mind that. Go on telling critics that you know praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that you are no member of a coterie nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made, and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. You will thus have done what ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... indignantly. Did I think justice was to be bought in Switzerland? It was the law I had outraged, not an individual merely. Besides—money is all powerful in this venal country—how could I pay, a poor devil like me, the necessary price? what could I produce in cash on the nail? My bond would not be worth the ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... out, after they are made. Bad men can abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions. Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... seized an entire railroad under cover of what was the merest parody of purchase and opposed both to law and to public policy, afterward defending their outrage in the courts through the brazen aid of venal judges and bringing to Albany (headquarters of their attempted theft) a great carload of New York ruffians, each with a proxy in his soiled and desperate hand—an instrument almost as illegal as the pistol which those hands had doubtless too often fingered if not fired amid ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... spoken of at all); and how the neighboring ravenous Powers, on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become satellites of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... and what loud declaiming! What lying, drinking, bawding, swearing, gaming! Friendship so cold, such warm incontinence; Such griping av'rice, such profuse expense; Such dead devotion, such a zeal for crimes; Such licens'd ill, such masquerading times; Such venal faith, such misapplied applause; Such flatter'd guilt, and such inverted laws; Such dissolution through the whole I find, 'Tis not a world, but chaos of mankind. Since Sundays have no balls, the well-dress'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... to what hinders our agreeing. [Me,] whom fine garments and dressed locks adorned, whom you know to have pleased venal Cynara without a present, whom [you have seen] quaff flowing Falernian from noon—a short supper [now] delights, and a nap upon the green turf by the stream side; nor is it a shame to have been gay, but not to break off that gayety. There there is no one who reduces my possessions ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Americans that their press is very largely controlled by capitalists, and that its columns are often venal. On such points as these I venture to make no assertion. To prove them would require either a special knowledge of the back-lobbies of journalism or so intimate an understanding of the working of American institutions ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... honest Muse Walks forth Vindictive through a venal land; In vain Corruption sheds her golden dews, In vain Oppression lifts her iron hand; He scorns them both, and arm'd with Truth alone, Bids Lust and Folly tremble ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... fellow-citizens, marked the gravest crisis in the affairs of our grand old state that an intelligent constituency had ever been called upon to vote down, but that he felt they were on the eve of a sweeping victory that would sweep the corrupt hell-hounds of a venal opposition into an ignominy from which they would never be swept by any base act of his while they honoured him with their suffrages, because his life was an open book and he challenged any son-of-a-gun within sound of his voice to challenge this ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... has the proprietor of this regenerated journal submitted without complaint and without reply to the cowardly insinuations with which a venal press insults all citizens who, strong in their convictions, refuse to pass beneath the Caudine Forks of power. Long enough has a man, who has already given proofs of devotion and abnegation in the important functions of the aedility of Paris, allowed ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Mr. Rosewell was eminent for loyalty and devoted attachment to the Government. Alas! he was a Dissenting teacher of high standing, of extensive acquirements, and of great earnestness in seeking the salvation of sinners; and, under the direction of that brutal judge, the venal jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hung. This frightful sentence would have been executed but from a singular interposition of Providence. Sir John Talbot was present during the trial, and a stranger to Mr. Rosewell; but he was so struck with the proceedings, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... ask, require, exact, run up; distrain; run up a bill &c. (debt) 806; have one's price; liquidate. amount to, come to, mount up to; stand one in. fetch, sell for, cost, bring in, yield, afford. Adj. priced &c. v.; to the tune of, ad valorem; dutiable; mercenary, venal. Phr. no penny no paternoster[Lat]; point d'argent point de Suisse[Fr], no longer pipe no longer dance, no song no supper, if you dance you have to pay the piper, you get what you pay for, there's no such thing as a free lunch. one may have ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and daughters do. Then, if he is weak, he finds his way into the pocket of some Trust Company or Railroad Corporation, and his desire for re-election—to retain his brilliant position— multiplies his shackles; for if he proves himself useful, the Trust will buy his Legislature—if it happens to be venal—and keep him in his place. But these instances I know must be rare, for I know the personal character of every man in the Senate. One Senator who is nearing the end of his first term told me the other day that he should not return, for his experience in the Senate had given him such a keen desire ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... for him to work against them through bribery and perjury, so in ensuing struggles they might render it more and more difficult for him or his agents to suborn the men elected to office. The subservient and venal councilmen whom he now controlled might be replaced by men who, if no more honest, would be more loyal to the enemy, thus blocking the extension of his franchises. Yet upon a renewal period of at least twenty and ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... employments for which he was unfit and from which he was compelled to retire in disgrace, getting a 'competent private fortune' by dishonest practices, which he lavished in overcoming the virtue of timid and venal men, his name is the shame of England. Nugent says of him: 'His shrewdness in judging of men was employed only to enable him to found his influence upon their weaknesses and vices; so that, when opposed to men of capacity, or thwarted by what remained of public virtue in the country, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... venal and sordid of all the superstitions that have swept and darkened our globe may, indeed, like African locusts, have consumed the green corn in very extensive regions, and may return periodically to consume it; but the strong, unwearied labourer who sowed ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... clasping his hands together with intensity of fervour, 'when all is rotten to the core, venal, unjust, tyrannical, how endure without an endeavour at a remedy? Yet it may be that an imposing attitude will prevail! Self-defence without ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... influence with members of their own party; of men of good address and easy conscience, familiar alike with the subject under consideration and legislative procedure, and last, but not least, of confidential agents authorized and prepared to enter into secret negotiations with venal members. The lobby which represents the railroad companies at legislative sessions is usually the largest, the most sagacious and the most unscrupulous of all. Its work is systematic and thorough, its methods are unscrupulous and its resources ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... seasonable presents.... (Inspecting parcels.) Are my arrangements complete? The bundle of choice cigars, in each of which a charge of nitro-glycerine has been dexterously inserted? The lip-salve, made up from my own prescription with corrosive sublimate by a venal chemist in the vicinity? The art flower-pot, containing a fine specimen of the Upas plant, swathed in impermeable sacking? The sweets compounded with sugar of lead? The packet of best ratsbane? Yes, nothing has been omitted. Now to summon my faithful MONKSHOOD.... ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... the nation, in order that no rash resolution of the people, or senate, or judge might be executed. And this response, given in an audible voice, was final and supreme, and not like the Grecian oracles, venal and mendacious. This oracle of the Hebrew God "was a wise provision to preserve a continual sense of the principal design of their constitution—to keep the Hebrews from idolatry, and to the worship of the only true God as their immediate protector; ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... itself relished without the mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy, where there is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, being venal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and hazard are set ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Shrove-Tuesday, which had begun so gloriously for the young artist. Titian's "well done" no longer sounded cheerfully in his ears, the "go, go," of the venal woman echoed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... calculated with certainty, as well from the policy of the measure at this time as from the positive assurances of Wilkinson, who seemed to have the power to force it in his own hands. This continued to be the object of Colonel Burr until he heard of the venal and shameful bargain made by Wilkinson at the Sabine river; this information he received soon after the attempt to arrest him in Frankfort. He then turned his attention altogether towards strengthening himself ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... tottering democratic papers, using his summer journeyings to try to attach not abilities in the countries he passed through, and his stay at the waters to draw up a great speech, with which he toured on his return. And now a new cry! The cowardly venal Press must be swept away. "As true as you are here, hanging on my lips, eager and transported, as true as my soul trembles with the purest enthusiasm in pouring itself wholly into yours, so truly does the certainty penetrate me that a day will come when we shall launch the thunderbolt which ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... pleasure. It is recorded (to the confusion of those who think primitive barbarism is virtue) that the corruption of those rude and brutal old times was great, that all classes were sunk in vice, and that the clergy were especially venal and abominable. After the death of Charlemagne, in the ninth century, wars broke out all over Italy between the factions supporting different aspirants to his power; and we may be sure that Mantua had ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is wholly ignorant of human nature, or grossly abuses his better judgment. Between customer and tradesman the balance is adjusted; between man and man there is an account which money will not settle. It is not indeed to be desired, that any class of men should be possessed With such a spirit of venal servility, as to be really insensible to the folly and oppression which enters into the exactions of fashionable caprice; or that, however compelled to be obsequious in manner, they should altogether lose their perception of what is due to common ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... the trade of writing for bread, so he also is charged with venal flattery, than which nothing can be more ignoble and base. To praise a blockhead's wit because he is great, is too frequently practised by authors, and deservedly draws down contempt upon them. He ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... immediate succours of five hundred men to Chalcis, and five hundred to the Piraeus; for affairs at Athens were in a state not far from a civil war, in consequence of the endeavours, used by some, to seduce the venal populace, by hopes of largesses, to take part with Antiochus. But at length Quinctius was called thither by those who were of the Roman party; and Apollodorus, the principal adviser of a revolt, being publicly charged ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... papers. In every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... and Gabinius, when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne—no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of money—suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal Senators—and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius possessed, so that the knight-banker ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... some, at any rate, of the great established bodies have the sap of life in their members. In France not even the judiciary, usually the last to part from its ancient roots, was sound and quick. 'The administration of justice,' says Arthur Young, 'was partial, venal, infamous. The conduct of the parliament was profligate and atrocious. The bigotry, ignorance, false principles, and tyranny of these bodies were generally conspicuous.'[7] We know what the court was, we know what the noblesse was, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... and nail over the costs. The judges gave me one hundred and sixty pounds damages, but, as I lost the demurrer with costs, the balance will doubtless be small. But, if the pecuniary result is small, the victory over the pirates and the venal part of the press ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... the dark and dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent tho more foolish acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the avenging furies of shame and remorse; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... all public care, all venal strife, To try the still, compared with active, life; To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe; That ev'n calamity, by thought refined, Inspirits and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... not appertain, as well, To altered caitiff on the drop; No wit that would not likewise pass For wisdom in the famished ass Who breaks his neck a weed to crop, When tethered in the luscious grass. And now, thank God, his hateful name Shall never rescued be from shame, Though seas of venal ink be shed; No sophistry shall reconcile With sympathy for Erin's Isle, Or sorrow for her patriot dead, The weeping of this crocodile. Life's incongruity is past, And dirt to dirt is seen at last, The worm of worm afoul doth fall. The ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... correctly High. Both chief in Honour, and in Learning's Grace, Of Ancient Spirit, and of Ancient Race. Who, when withdrawn from Business, and Affairs, Their Minds unloaded of tormenting Cares, With soothing Verse deceiv'd the sliding Time, And, unrewarded, Sung in Noble Rhyme. Not like those Venal Bards, who Write for Pence, Above the Vulgar were their Names and Sense, The Critick judges what the Muse indites, And Rules for Dryden, like a Dryden, Writes. 'Tis true their Lamps were of the smallest Size, But like the Stoicks[4], ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... lack-lustre eyes, the heart-sick souls of your painted goddesses. We love not the fetid air, thick and hot with human breath, and reeking with tobacco smoke, of your modern Parnassus—a Parnassus whose crags were reared and shaped by the hands of the stage-carpenter! Your studied dalliance with your venal muses is little to our taste. Your halls are too stifling with carbonic acid gas; for us, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... undoubtedly produced much evil; puerile critics and venal drudges manufacture reviews; hence that shameful discordance of opinion, which is the scorn and scandal of criticism. Passions hostile to the peaceful truths of literature have likewise made tremendous inroads in the republic, and every literary virtue has been lost! In "Calamities of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a corrective in the days of hired advocates, and a bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made it dependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... be employed to extort, or the hire of the venal to buy, that engagement which the Tartar comes under to his prince, when he promises, "That he will go where he shall be commanded; that he will come when he shall be called; that he will kill whoever is pointed out to him; and, for the future, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... voters came down to the gardens of Pompeius where they received the money, so that the thing became notorious and Pompeius had an ill name for making that office which was the highest of all and which he obtained for his services, venal for those who were unable to attain to it by merit. "These reproaches however," said Cato to the women, "we must take our share of, if we become allied to Pompeius." On hearing this the women agreed that he formed a better ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... the hands of his would-be captors, is excusable in the estimation of many and even meritorious according to some. The world again is agreed that if an adulterer be called into the witness box, perjury would be a venal offence compared with the meanness of betraying the honour of a confiding woman. Hence, the exclusion of such a witness (according to almost every system of law) in trials for adultery. The Rishis wrote for men and not angels. The conduct referred to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the epithet of miscreants; and treats the whole of their labors as mere cant and slang; I suppose it must mean compared with its own dignified and masterly pages. The majesty of the people is truly a monstrous Deity in the eye of venal and sell-created consequence. It is merely for repeating some of the sentiments expressed at these meetings, that the editor of the Journal is assailed as the arch-disturber ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric Paris, and Woman and A Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious 50 obscure? Are these the men who, in their venal good-nature, presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... follow the same course; and two circumstances contributed to make that course easy. One was the great length of coast line on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes over which a surveillance had to be exercised, making it difficult to catch the interlopers. The other was the venal connivance of the governors of the ports, who often tolerated and even encouraged the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.[36] The subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel wished ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... 1791 and 1792 against the royal family and the whole cause of monarchy. An influential member of the commune of Paris, he was largely instrumental in crystallizing public opinion in favor of republicanism, Danton was rough and courageous, but neither venal ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... when Dryden held office no Laureate has been appointed so distinctly pre-eminent above all his contemporaries, so truly the king of the poets, as he upon whose brows now rests the Laureate crown. Dryden's grandeur was sullied, his muse was venal, and his life was vicious; still in his keeping the office acquired a certain dignity; after his death it declined into the depths of depredation, and each succeeding dullard dimmed its failing lustre. ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... guerdon for the toils, the anxieties, and, too often, the peculations of a life. Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... have been dispersed through Europe as relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg—they call it his arm. And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed in my hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... without absolutely condemning the Revolution, implied that South Carolina had been moved to her limited share in it against her direct interests, by a high-spirited patriotism and sympathy with the at present ungrateful and venal North. I do not think that the fact of my nationality influenced him in this; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the outside of a great bustling railway station. But the Porta del Popolo had annoyances of its own that seemed hardly less incongruous. One had to run the gauntlet of the custom-house here, and to practise unheard-of briberies upon the venal douaniers of the Pope before being allowed to pass on to his hotel. And the first glimpse of the city from this point did not come up to one's expectations, being very much like that of any commonplace modern capital, without a ruin visible, or any sign or suggestion of the mistress of the world. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... they're too hard for me—spend a lot of money on their own pleasure, and sometimes cut a dash with a big donation, where they think it will be properly trumpeted. But they haven't got warm hearts. I don't care for Americans. Still, if you know any about, you can say I am quite venal; and if any one of them restores my organ, I am prepared to admire the whole lot. Only they must give a little water-engine for blowing it into the bargain. Shutter, the organist of Carisbury Cathedral, has just had ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... will never be the venal maxim of those who understand the nature of philosophic prudence. The worth of money is to be estimated by the number of real pleasures which it can procure: there are many which are not to be bought by gold;[110] ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... realize that much of the political corruption of our large cities may be traced to the simple fact that the poor man is like ourselves: he follows the leaders personally known to him, and to whom he is personally known. He is sometimes a venal voter, but more often he is only an ignorant voter, who, while innocently following the man that has taken the trouble to do him a favor or to be socially agreeable to him, is handicapping himself and his children with dirty streets, an unsanitary home, an overcrowded ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... uncanny, that fascination. If he had chosen to exert it in the interests of his shop he could presumably have cleaned those friendly young men out any day. But he never did exert it. Surrounded by wares whose very appearance was a venal solicitation, he never hinted by so much as the turn of a phrase that there was anything about him to be bought. And after what had passed between them, they felt that to hint it themselves—to him—would have been the last indelicacy. If they ever asked the price of a book it was to propitiate ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... even public morality altogether of its pristine tone. The prospect of material prosperity had introduced a degree of luxury; and luxury had brought ambition and mean longings. Venality had become possible; and clever and venal men had a motive for enlisting the selfish and the stupid, and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... is loudest against the Chancellor, who I doubt is not to blame for our unreadiness, having little power of late over the King. Oh, there has been iniquity upon iniquity, and men know not whom most to blame—the venal idle servants, or the master ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the darkest page of Scottish history, which we owe to the vindictive cruelty of the Covenanters—a party venal in principle, pusillanimous in action, and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the less disgust, since that very savage spirit which planned the woful scenes connected with the final tragedy of Montrose, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... killing the goose with the golden eggs has not been evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a chance, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... soul, joined to superiority of talent, ignores the art of cringing; it is even impossible that merit can lead to fortune in a corrupted and venal country: on the contrary, it becomes a cause of exclusion. Virtue elevates the soul, and can neither fawn nor buy credit, nor flatter vice and incapacity. "If such is the military constitution of a State," says M. Gaubert, in his Treatise of Tactics, "of which the Sovereign (the ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... shall be stripped away. The grime shall be removed and the foulness of inference, of surmise, of deliberate and cold-blooded malice, with which centuries of scribblers, idle, fantastic, sensational, or venal, have coated the substance ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... refusal. Duprat resolved to strike a great blow. An edict of January 31, 1522, created within the Parliament a fourth chamber, composed of eighteen councillors and two presidents, all of fresh, and, no doubt, venal appointment, though the edict dared not avow as much. Two great personages, the Archbishop of Aix and Marshal de Montmorenci, were charged to present the edict to Parliament and require its registration. The Parliament demanded ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a tutor now controlled the regent; who was supposed to control the shogun; who was supposed to be the vassal of the emperor; who in turn was generally a child under the control of a corrupt and venal court. Truly government in Japan had sunk to its lowest point, and it was ...
— Japan • David Murray
... air 710 From uncontaminate wells of ether drawn And never-broken secrecies of sky, Freedom, with anguish won, misprized till lost, They keep thee not who from thy sacred eyes Catch the consuming lust of sensual good And the brute's license of unfettered will. Far from the popular shout and venal breath Of Cleon blowing the mob's baser mind To bubbles of wind-piloted conceit, Thou shrinkest, gathering up thy skirts, to hide 720 In fortresses of solitary thought And private virtue strong in self-restraint. Must we too forfeit thee misunderstood, Content ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... incredible as it may seem. With the Romanists, who are three fourths of the Christian world, it is a most prominent doctrine, everywhere vehemently proclaimed and acted on: that is the meaning of the sacrament of extreme unction, whereby, on submission to the Church and confession to a priest, the venal sins of the dying man are forgiven, purgatory avoided or lessened, and heaven made sure. The ghost of the King of Denmark complains most of the unwarned suddenness of his murder, not of the murder ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... assertion, and the injustice it imposes upon that great actress herself, who in many other situations of the drama, sustains an eminence above all rivalship; physical defects may often be lessened or concealed; but they will sometimes be too stubborn for the force of art, and thus, in the language of venal compliment, the poet said "Pritchard's genteel and Garrick's six feet high" it cannot be denied that the former was eclipsed by the easy elegance of Mrs. Woffington, and the latter overborne by the majestic ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... states, as well as all the other States to whose interests and rights under the Constitution she has always been true; and when disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bonds which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and party that have plundered her revenues, taken away the power of self- government and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... world-wearied men; a sanctuary undisturbed by the fears of the weak or the passions of the strong. All reasonable wants are gratified here; nothing is hoped for any more. The poor burglar burdened with unsaleable "grab" and the reproaches of a venal world sorrowfully seeks an asylum here. He brings nothing in his hand; he seeks nothing but rest. He ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... The praise attending pomp and power, The incense given to kings, Are but the trappings of an hour — Mere transitory things! The base bestow them: but the good agree 10 To spurn the venal gifts as flattery. But when to pomp and power are join'd An equal dignity of mind — When titles are the smallest claim — When wealth and rank and noble blood, 15 But aid the power of doing good — Then all their trophies last; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... his own day, at least to the unexhausted astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning of all these inquiries, and to what ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solitude about the grave may be but ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... pomp was seen to rise, And break the artless bosom's holy ties; Blast with his touch affection's op'ning flower, 75 And chill the hand that rear'd her blissful bower. Fortune, light nymph! still bless the sordid heart, Still to thy venal slave thy gifts impart; Bright in his view may all thy meteors shine, And lost Peruvia open every mine; 80 For him the robe of eastern pomp display, The gems that ripen in the torrid ray; Collected may their guilty lustre stream Full on the eye that courts the ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... still of what money could buy; he now hankered after revenge as the sweetest morsel that his hoarded ducats could procure for him. That the Sultan was well disposed to him he had every reason to think; none the less did he spend royally among the venal favourites of the Court in order that nothing might be left undone to inflame the ardour of Soliman against those whom he considered to be ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... cried, "I spoke to you as men and Christians—as free-born Britons and fellow-citizens; but I perceive you are a pack of venal, infamous scoundrels, and I will treat you accordingly." So saying, he brandished his lance, and riding into the thickest of the concourse, laid about him with such dexterity and effect, that the multitude was immediately dispersed, and he ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... rebellion it was an object of open contempt, if not indeed of actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far on the revolutionary side, had never weaned of pouring contempt upon it. In his eyes it was the great opponent of progress, the venal slave which had not only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak, and whose endeavour had been to keep Ireland under the heel of her tyrant. To him the opposition as little deserved the name of patriot as the veriest place-men. Grattan, throughout his ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... voice reached those hidden sensibilities of his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Fame justly plac'd Their power above their work.—Now, with wide gaze Of much indignant wonder, she surveys To the life-labouring oar assiduous haste A glowing Bard, by every Muse embrac'd.— O, WARTON! chosen Priest of Phoebus' choir! Shall thy rapt song be venal? hymn the THRONE, Whether its edicts just applause inspire, Or PATRIOT VIRTUE view them with a frown? What needs for this the golden-stringed Lyre, The snowy Tunic, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... variety, diversity venal, venial vengeance, revenge verse, stanza vindictive, revengeful visit, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... in the usual style of dedication, to thank you for past favours: that path is so hackneyed by prostituted learning that honest rusticity is ashamed of it. Nor do I present this address with the venal soul of a servile author, looking for a continuation of those favours: I was bred to the plough, and am independent. I come to claim the common Scottish name with you, my illustrious countrymen; and to tell the world that I glory in the title. I come to congratulate ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... to be a ball for the tenantry in the evening of the wedding-day, in a marquee on the lawn. The gardens were to be illuminated in a style worthy of the chateau of Vaux, when Fouquet was squandering a nation's revenues on lamps and fountains and venal friends. Lady Mabel protested against all ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon |
