"Avaricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself to take it; but he could not so completely master his feelings as not to betray some marks of the pleasure he felt at the possession of so precious a gage. Gomez Arias, however, erroneously attributed these symptoms to the avaricious disposition of the wretch who appeared willing to undertake any service for gold. He again cast a contemptuous glance on the Moor, and making a sign to Roque, abruptly left the place. The renegade gave a loose to the joy which swelled tumultuously in his bosom; he kissed the ring with wild ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... discourse him concerning the sending Charlot to the Monastery, which Work he desir'd to see perform'd, before he declar'd his Intentions to Atlante: for among all his other good Qualities, he was very avaricious; and as fair as Atlante was, he thought she would be much fairer with the Addition of Charlot's Portion. This Affair of his with Monsieur De Pais, gave Charlot an opportunity of delivering her Letter to her Sister; who no sooner ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... hunger for power such as has never been seen in the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter. She cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... submission to the Sicilian code woke in him an almost hot pugnacity. She would be given, perhaps, to some hard brute of a fisherman who had scraped together more soldi than his fellows, or to some coarse, avaricious contadino who would make her toil till her beauty vanished, and she changed into a bowed, wrinkled withered, sun-dried hag, while she ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... interest all the while. He sent for a case, and made a youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them. And still as he went back to his own work new names would occur to him, and full of the scholar's avaricious sense of the shortness of time, he would shake his head and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had already passed, grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the spread of Monasticism in Gaul, and Heaven knows what besides, half a mile from the man and the library which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... often lay by considerable sums of money, so that they might, if they chose, live with a certain degree of comfort, yet they cannot leave off the habit of begging after having indulged it for many years. They get to be avaricious, and cannot bring their minds to spend the money they have. The other day, an old beggar, who used to frequent the steps of the Ges, when about to die, ordered the hem of her garment to be ripped up, saying that there was money in it. In fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... will prove that the followers of Allah are but amateurs in the art of outrage. Doubtless any other people, brutalized by centuries of bondage, then turned loose without king or country, with only ignorant prophets for guides and avaricious priests for law-givers, would have become equally cruel—would have adopted a divinity devoid of mercy and a stranger to justice. The god of a people is, and must of necessity ever be a reflection of themselves, an idealization of their ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... never can consent to rank him amongst the herd of peculators who prey upon the publick. He has been negligent in the economy and management of his office—he has paid too little attention to the management of his own money affairs. Had he been avaricious and greedy of wealth how many years has he been in official situations wherein he might have enriched himself—and is yet as poor as poverty, for I have it from good authority that his patent of Nobility was several ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... climate is healthful, for those who live temperately. The culture of rice is described, and the fertility of the soil praised. Much interesting information is given regarding the characteristics, habits, and customs of the people; he regards most of them as drunken, licentious, and idle, and avaricious and murderous. The governor has rebuilt the ruined fort at Cebu; but he thinks that a settlement there is useless and expensive. He asks for oared vessels, with which to navigate among the islands; and he is anxious to seize the Moluccas for Spain. He complains of the reckless manner in ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... sowed the seeds of the French Revolution. Two dissolute women, notorious on the page of history, each, in their turn, governed him and France. The Marchioness du Pompadour was his first favorite. Ambitious, shrewd, unprincipled, and avaricious, she held the weak-minded king entirely under her control, and spread throughout the court an influence so contaminating that the whole empire was infected with the demoralization. Upon this woman he squandered almost the revenues of the kingdom. ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... at the Italians, for he perceived that neither of the players was happy; the pianist was avaricious, while the violinist's natural and habitual jealousy destroyed his peace ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... Humphreys was appointed a commissioner to treat with the dey or governor of Algiers concerning his corsairs; but that semi-barbarian—proud, haughty, and avaricious—was not disposed to relinquish his share of the profitable sea-robberies carried on under his sanction. "If I were to make peace with everybody," he said, "what should I do with my corsairs? What should I do with my soldiers? They would take off my head ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... was absent assisting at the birth of a prince whose parents are under my protection, and I forgot myself while playing tricks upon a wicked old maid of honor and an old chamberlain who was cruel and avaricious, both of them friends of my sister, the fairy Furious. But I arrived in time to save the princess Violette, only daughter and heiress of King Indolent and Queen Nonchalante. She was playing in the garden while the king Ferocious was seeking her with his poniard ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... The avaricious old woman did not deny the fact, but she fell to cursing and swearing in an awful manner, and wished so much evil to the lad, that, with the superstitious fear so common to the natives of his country, he left her under the impression that she was gifted with the evil eye, and ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... In former ages courteous ladies were, Who worshipt virtue, and not worldly gear. Women in this degenerate age are rare, To whom aught else but sordid gain is dear; But they who real goodness make their care, Nor with the avaricious many steer, In this frail life are worthy to be blest, — Held glorious and immortal ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... punished where I had hoped to be rewarded," Michael said to me just now. "I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has given me an ambitious and avaricious one! I had always said to myself that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us, to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts. His mother was always thinking of getting him married, and having children again to care for. You know women always will busy themselves ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Case (says she) that Leander, one of the finest young Gentlemen of Naples, should be sacrific'd to a mercenary Wretch, a Wretch, that in the midst of plenty is poor and miserable, and who, tho' he has all Things to compleat his Happiness, his avaricious Temper will not permit him to enjoy the common Necessaries of Life: The Pleasures of living he's a Stranger to, he lives despis'd, and will die unpitied: But such is the inequality of Fortune's Favours, that Merit must stoop and Ideots be advanc'd to the highest Pomp and Magnificence. ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... nature, he was cruel by habit; without being naturally avaricious, he was a universal spoiler; and without savagely hating mankind, he spurned the feelings, the sufferings, and the life of man. He was hollow, fierce, and remorseless, where his own objects were concerned, and whether he cheated his party in the state, or rode ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... then be said to be at its zenith; and but for certain untoward circumstances, and the growing influence of his enemies, Sir Reginald would have been elevated to the peerage. Like most reformed spend-thrifts, he had become proportionately avaricious, and his mind seemed engrossed in accumulating wealth. In the meantime, his second wife followed her predecessor, dying, it was said, of vexation ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The thirst for gain increases with its gratification, as I could quote more Latin to prove; and not only does gratification increase the appetite, but it seems to pucker up the heart, and contract the muscles of the hand, for your very rich man is almost invariably a very close and avaricious one, except when making public donations to institutions already bursting with wealth, when they know that their names and sums given will go the rounds of the public prints under the head of "munificent donations." How delicious is ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... in the natural order of things that Ludovico Gonzaga, one of the sons of Francesco and pupils of Vittorino, should have been proud to receive at his court the sycophantic and avaricious poet Filelfo, and to suffer under his systematic begging. He discharged his debt to the world of art with greater insight when in 1456 he invited to his court the great painter Mantegna. He offered the artist a substantial salary and in 1460 the master went to reside at Mantua. ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... could remember of the sermon, seeing that he meant to inform his princely grace the Duke of Pomerania of the blasphemous lies which I had vomited against him, and which must sorely offend every Christian heart. Item, what an avaricious wretch I must be to be always wanting something of him, and to be daily, so to say, pestering him in these hard times with my filthy letters, when he had not enough to eat himself. This he said should break the parson his neck, since his princely grace did all ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... into myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is comen upon me. I have been (as your Majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty or intolerable or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be? For these are the things that use to raise ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... another, by not committing adultery, or speaking evil of one another, or cherishing envy; but by being continent, compassionate, and good. We ought also to sympathize with one another, and not be avaricious. By such works let us confess Him, and not by those that are of an opposite kind. And it is not fitting that we should fear men, but rather God. For this reason, if we should do such things, the Lord ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... such as had been issued prior to the order, and to issue new ones only on the oath of allegiance being taken by the recipient. There was also a charge of five dollars for the passport, which was to be renewed after a year. Charlotte was, amongst her other qualities, avaricious, and though wealthy and ostentatious she rebelled at expenditure which did not show, and when it came time for her to leave Rome for the summer, and her passport came for visa, I stopped it and notified her to take ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... this powerful country had seized a great part of the new found land. There was no love lost between the Spaniards and the men from the cold, northern British Isles and thus Francis Drake spent his entire career battling with the black-haired, rapacious, and avaricious adventurers who flew the banner of King Philip of Arragon. Sometimes he was defeated, more often he was successful. Hark, then, to the tale of his many desperate encounters upon the wide ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... sacrifice. Books and pictures he had cared for once, but as he now put it, he had 'no use for them.' It seemed that all his eighty thousand pounds was destined to be flung upon the great roulette table of stock and share speculations. It was not that he was avaricious; few men cared less for money in itself; but he could not live without the excitement of speculation. 'I prefer the air of Throgmorton Street to any air in the world,' he observed. 'I am unhappy if I leave it for a ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... court of chancery in London. In spite of his numerous engagements, Burnell found time to aggrandize his bishopric, to provide liberally for his nephews and other kinsmen, and to pursue his cherished but futile aim of founding a great family. Licentious and avaricious, he amassed great wealth; and when he died on the 25th of October 1292 he left numerous estates in Shropshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Kent, Surrey and elsewhere. He was, however, genial and kind-hearted, a great lawyer ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... lively imagination, Sir Alexander. I did love that woman, though she was old enough then to have been my mother. It was a boy's rash, blind love; but I was too proud to make her my wife, and she was too cunning and avaricious to be mine on any other terms. Your suspicions, on that head at least, ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... just the trouble, commander-in-chief; not only did she know it, but she herself put her name under the note. I myself asked the judges about it yesterday. They say that the woman is known to be avaricious, greedy, and mean, and they would not have given judgment against her if there had not been sworn evidence to the effect that she herself signed the note. They add that she is rich enough to pay back the thousand florins which her husband certainly borrowed ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... estraro. Authority auxtoritato. Autocrat auxtokrato. Automatic auxtomata. Automobile auxtomobilo. Autumn auxtuno. Auxiliary helpanto (noun), helpa (adj.). Avalanche lavango. Avarice avareco. Avaricious avara. Avaunt for de tie cxi! Avenge vengxi. Avenue aleo. Average (n.) mezonombro. meza kvanto. Averse antipatia, kontrauxa. Aversion antipatio, kontrauxo. Avert deturni. Avidity avideco. Avid avida. Avoid eviti. Avow konfesi. Avowal konfeso. Await atendi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... anatomy, but should have been trained in dietetics, materia medica, and minor surgical manipulations, such as version. She should be free from all corrupt and criminal practices, temperate, and not superstitious or avaricious. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... loved him. He was laboring under a misapprehension, of course. Billy Louise had permitted him to misunderstand her interest in the matter. If he had known that she was pleading solely for Marthy—poor, avaricious, gray, old Marthy—perhaps his mercy would have been less tinged with that smoldering resentment which was directed not so much at the wrongdoer, as at fate ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... this group of stories, says Bolte, "are either village companions, or unacquainted marketers, or a rich and an avaricious brother." In addition to the episodes enumerated above, might be mentioned two others not ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reputed to be fickle and changeable, and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, vicious and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous; the Sicilians, tyrannical and cruel; the inhabitants of Brabant, men of blood, incendiaries, brigands and ravishers; the Flemish, fickle, prodigal, gluttonous, yielding as butter, and slothful. After ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... all, By striving all to gain, I need no witness call But him whose thrifty hen, As by the fable we are told, Laid every day an egg of gold. "She hath a treasure in her body," Bethinks the avaricious noddy. He kills and opens—vexed to find All things like hens of common kind. Thus spoil'd the source of all his riches, To misers he a lesson teaches. In these last changes of the moon, How often doth one see Men made as poor as he By force of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... Gradelle's fortune she again examined herself, and felt ready to throw the money into the river if such a course should be necessary to remove the blight which had fallen on the pork shop. No, she was not avaricious, she was sure she wasn't; it was no thought of money that had prompted her in what she had just done. As she crossed the Pont au Change she grew quite calm again, recovering all her superb equanimity. On the whole, it was much better, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... beneath the volcanoes; her anger is the storm; and the pallor of her face has made the moon white. She ripens the harvests; she swells out the rinds; she makes the beard grow. Give her something, for she hates the avaricious!" ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... state of mind. She had many comforts about her house when she died which were not in it when I called to see her at the time when she was first ill; but her purchasing the large Bible on account of the print was to me a satisfactory proof that she had no longer such avaricious feelings." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were rich and industrious, and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the cupidity of the indolent and avaricious Mussulmans. These latter, whenever a long drought had destroyed vegetation, and the strenuous prayers offered up in the mosques had proved unavailing for its removal, were accustomed to argue—and a mighty convenient argument it was—that it was the foul ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... God seated on the right hand of His Father, who rose up greatly irritated against sinners, holding three darts in His hand, for the extirpation of the proud, the avaricious, and the voluptuous. His holy Mother threw herself at His feet, and prayed for mercy, saying that she had persons who would remedy the evil; and she at the same time introduced to Him Dominic and Francis, as being proper persons for reforming ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... 'has left me alone in the world, laden with years, filled with infirmities, a stranger and without friends.' All those whom he loved had preceded him to their tombs, and the only relative at his death-bed was an avaricious nephew, eager ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (That I should be So avaricious of his ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... said the old lady, hesitating, for, like most avaricious persons, she was captivated by the prospect of making ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... The gift was conferred; and her great-grandson still continued to exercise it when Mr. Stewart was collecting the materials for his work on the superstitions of the Highlanders, published in 1823. In like manner the Mohel, to whose adventure I have already referred, and who was originally an avaricious man, received the grace of benevolence to the poor, which caused him to live a long and happy life with his family, a pattern unto the whole world. The gift was symbolized by the restoration to him of his ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... this instance-when master and slave are both incited to a noble purpose-Grabguy is a wealthy alderman, and Nicholas-the whiter of the two-his abject slave. The master, a man of meagre mind, and exceedingly avaricious, would make himself distinguished in society; the slave, a mercurial being of impassioned temper, whose mind is quickened by a sense of the injustice that robs him of his rights, seeks only freedom and what may ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... effort at reform was directed to this class of buildings. By presenting the idea of taxation, this measure encountered the opposition of one of the strongest passions of the age. Not only the sordid and avaricious, but even those whose virtue of frugality, by the force of habit, had been imperceptibly sliding into the vice of parsimony, felt the alarm. Men of fortune without children, and men who had reared a family of children and borne ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... right, about the means of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants; by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate; by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it; and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... he discovered a warder who had been in some trouble with the authorities, a man who was avaricious and was even then on the brink of being discharged from the service for trafficking with prisoners. The bribe he offered this man was a heavy ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... I'm getting avaricious and want to go home with my wallet full. Then I'm tired of my job. I suppose it's a foreman's privilege to insult his gang, but the brute we've got is about the limit. He's truculent but not very big, and some day, if I stop on, I'll pitch the hog into the river. Then I'll ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... last there was not one. I now look back on my acts of this day with wonder, for I had forgotten all my habitual knowledge of vessels, in the desire to save the paltry dollars. For the first and only time in my life I felt avaricious, and lost ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... appears to have been the first English Sovereign who regarded art, not merely as an aid to the splendour of the throne, but for its own sake. As Walpole says, 'Queen Elizabeth was avaricious with pomp, James the First lavish with meanness.' To neither had the position of the painter been a matter of the slightest concern. But from Charles the First dates truly the dawn of a love of art in England, the proper valuing of the artist-mind, and the first introduction into the country of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... distributes the riches of the nation, and the gifts of his sovereign at his own choice; while he is in possession of every motive that can influence the mind, enforce secrecy, and confirm fidelity; while he can bribe the avaricious, and intimidate the fearful; while he can increase the gratification of luxury, and enlarge the prospects of ambition. For, my lords, if it be considered from whom this evidence must be drawn, it will soon appear that no very important ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... Verona, Padua, and Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that time,—fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send against him. As lord of Padua ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... and patriotism, are about taking their flight, and the law of the land stands on tip-toe; the constitution, that admirable fabric, that work of ages, the envy of the world, is deflower'd indeed, and made to commit a rape upon her own body, by the avaricious frowns of her own father, who is bound to protect her, not to destroy.—Her pillars are thrown down, her capitals broke, her pedestals demolish'd, and her foundation nearly destroy'd.—Lord Paramount and his wretched adviser Mocklaw baffle all our efforts.—The statutes of the land ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... This morning I might have doubted, but now, thanks to that vain idiot who goes by the name of Wilkie, I am sure, perfectly, mathematically sure of success. Maumejan, who is entirely devoted to me, and who is the greediest, most avaricious scoundrel alive, will draw up such a complaint that Marguerite will sleep in prison. Moreover, other witnesses will be summoned. By what Casimir has said, you can judge what the other servants will say. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... statesman Peter de Vineis, Dante learns that at the judgement they will recover their bodies, like others, but will not be allowed to reassume them. The body will be hung on the tree to which it belongs. Here, as in the case of the avaricious and the wrathful, the spirits of other sinners take a part in the infliction of the punishment. The wood is inhabited by the souls of those who had wasted their substance in life, and these are constantly chased through it by hounds, with much ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... when the attention of Cora was drawn to a collection of stragglers by the sounds of contention. A truant provincial was paying the forfeit of his disobedience, by being plundered of those very effects which had caused him to desert his place in the ranks. The man was of powerful frame, and too avaricious to part with his goods without a struggle. Individuals from either party interfered; the one side to prevent and the other to aid in the robbery. Voices grew loud and angry, and a hundred savages appeared, as it ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... be the slave of glory? Glory, the casual gift of thoughtless crowds! Glory, the bribe of avaricious virtue! Be but my country free, be thine the praise; I ask no witness, but attesting conscience, No records, but the records ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... that you will have to do, you might be persuaded to hate and maltreat those of us others, of the towns as well as of the noblesse, who will always love you heartily and serve you faithfully. And be assured that the number thereof will be so great that, if there rise up amongst them any avaricious, ambitious, and factious, who would fain do the contrary, these will be constrained by the others to return to their duty. What would, in my opinion, be very necessary, would be to prevail upon the zealous Catholics to change that belief which they are so anxious to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... established governmental authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into domestic as well as international affairs a new spirit of disorder. It is an evil thing to permit the principle of "self-determination" to continue to have the apparent sanction of the nations when it has ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... from the wet stone into the gloomy rift, and a faint monotonous splashing rose up from far below. Melhuish, however, was watching Thurston too intently to notice anything else. He was a middle-aged man, with a pale, puffy face and avaricious eyes. He was well-known to speculative financiers, who made much more than the shareholders of certain ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the best hotel in the place, ordered his supper, and hastened to Meiser's house. His friends at Berlin had given him accounts of that charming family. He knew that he would have to deal with the richest and most avaricious of sharpers: that was why he assumed the cavalier tone that may have seemed strange to more than one ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... whirr! three times round, and that was full; and so he went on till the morning, when all the straw had been spun, and all the bobbins were full of gold. At sunrise came the king, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and very much rejoiced, for he was very avaricious. He had the miller's daughter taken into another room filled with straw, much bigger than the last, and told her that as she valued her life she must spin it all in one night. The girl did not know what to do, so she began to cry, and then the door opened, ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... bowstring. His character was blackened by ingratitude, an instinctive vice in oriental rulers. Obstinate as he was suspicious, deceitful as he was cunning, he could not rule his own passions, much less could he control the corrupt morals of his people. He was to an extraordinary degree avaricious, a quality everywhere odious, but especially in a land where generosity measures love—where in the highest and in the lowest stations liberality is the moving spring. While he mistook parsimony for economy, he did not scruple to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Martin Murphy's windows—Murphy was one of the directors of Clery's—and reminding them that it was he, Boss Murphy, was the real enemy of the people—"the man who caused the lock-out in the days of Jim Larkin"; but the looters, having tasted the blood of theft, were far too avaricious by this time to think of politics in their orgy, and instead began to make a raid on a tobacco-shop, and next a small jeweller's. One could see small boys, too, going to the outskirts of the crowd to sell the booty, so that those who had not the pluck to steal salved their consciences ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... and immortal ideas which have alone inspired even these, the human race, and rendered the revolutions of the People worthy of the regard of posterity, and of the blood of man. The Eighteenth Century must have been a time when avaricious Nature shut up her bosom, and the earth brought forth neither fruit nor harvests, that this great intellectual People, formerly called the French People, should have forgotten their souls for a morsel of bread, their immortality for an income, and their ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine
... hastened to comply with the request. So that three years after their marriage these two ill-assorted beings returned to their original estate, each equally pleased and happy to do so. The moneyed man, possessing eighteen hundred thousand francs, returned with all the more eagerness to his old avaricious habits because he had momentarily quitted them. His two clerks and the office-boy were better lodged and rather better fed, and that was the only difference between the present and the past. His wife had a cook and maid (two indispensable servants); but except for the actual ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... wife and children. From this, self-love springs. For when we raise a son to riches and dignities, and leave an heir to much wealth, we become either ready to grasp at the property of the State, if in any case fear should be removed from the power which belongs to riches and rank; or avaricious, crafty, and hypocritical, if anyone is of slender purse, little strength, and mean ancestry. But when we have taken away self-love, there remains ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... an exemplar of the simple life practical in the midst of unbounded success. He goes to his office every morning regularly at nine o'clock. In the midst of opulence he eats a frugal lunch in a room which supplies the one thing of which he is avaricious—big windows and plenty of fresh air. For light and air spell for him, as for the rest of us, health and sound judgment. He possesses, indeed, one terrible and hidden secret—a kind of baron's ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... to Francis Fesch, a Swiss, captain in the Genoese navy. Of this union, Joseph, later Cardinal Fesch, was the child. Although well born, the mother of Napoleon had no education and was of peasant nature to the last day of her long life—hardy, unsentimental, frugal, avaricious, and sometimes unscrupulous. Yet for all that, the hospitality of her little home in Ajaccio was lavish and famous. Among the many guests who were regularly entertained there was Marbeuf, commander in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... evils which I am going to mention, were all brought in upon us in the worst of times, under the late Earl of Oxford's administration, during the four last years of Queen Anne's reign. That wicked minister was universally known to be a Papist in his heart. He was of a most avaricious nature, and is said to have died worth four millions, sterl.[178] besides his vast expenses in building, statues, gold plate, jewels, and other costly rarities. He was of a mean obscure birth, from the very dregs of the people, and so illiterate, that he ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... she was a wise woman, courageous and chaste; and had her palaces on the Bosphorus; and took good care of her beauty, and indulged in the pleasures of a good table; had ministers who kissed her feet; a crowd of women and eunuchs in her secret chambers, whose passions she indulged; was avaricious and sometimes cruel; and founded a convent for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex, some of whom liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the sea in despair; and when she died was an irreparable loss to her emperor. So that it seems to me it is a pity ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... gentleman from the clown with us as do these broader lines which mark these two classes among all other nations. They think that it is the grand characteristic of Columbia's children to be prejudiced, opinionated, selfish, avaricious, and unjust. It is vain to tell them that such are not specimens of American gentlemen. They will answer, "They call themselves gentlemen, and you receive them in your houses as such." It is utterly impossible for foreigners to thoroughly comprehend and make due allowance for ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... physically, those who did not at a moment's notice agree with him. He was a man who would at once make up his mind that the world was wrong when the world condemned him, and who would not in compliance with any argument allow himself to be so. But he was not avaricious, nor cruel, nor self-seeking, nor vindictive. In his anger he could pronounce all manner of ill things against his enemy, as he had pronounced some ill things against Herbert; but it was not in him to keep up a sustained wish that those ill things should really come to pass. This ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... An insatiable, avaricious desire to accumulate riches, cooperating with a spirit of luxury and injustice, seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... high-minded and disinterested course to take," said Kai Lung with great conviction, as Lin Yi paused. "Without doubt evil will shortly overtake the avaricious-souled person ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... untold business interests. Just look out there! [pointing out across the expectant audience] look there, and see the countless minions toiling servilely at your dread mandates. And yet—ha! ha! See! see!— They recognize the avaricious greed that would thus grind them in the very dust; they see, alas! they see themselves, half-clothed—half-fed, that you may glut your coffers. Half-starved, they listen to the wail of wife and babe, and with eyes upraised in prayer, they see ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... perfect silence. In the meantime, Aramis had continued his close observation of the man. Vanel's narrow face, his deeply sunken eyes, his arched eyebrows, had revealed to the bishop of Vannes the type of an avaricious and ambitious character. Aramis's method was to oppose one passion by another. He saw that M. Fouquet was defeated—morally subdued—and so he came to his rescue with fresh weapons in his hands. "Excuse me, monseigneur," he said; "you forgot ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... BOSWELL. 'I have heard old Mr. Sheridan maintain, with much ingenuity, that a complete miser is a happy man; a miser who gives himself wholly to the one passion of saving.' JOHNSON. 'That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable[948]. No, Sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... himself avaricious, though he had all his life known how to protect his interests. He loved money, but he loved also to spend it, especially in such a way as to make a great show with it. It was not true, however, that Saracinesca was miserly. He spent a large ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... interior—quite unlike those of the big towns in or near the coast—were sullen people, with no conversation—or else too much—no interest in anything, no art, no imagination. They were timid and vain to an incredible degree, suspicious, avaricious, and easily offended, so that the greatest tact had to be used with them. They were ignorant of everything even in their own immediate neighbourhood. Yet, mind you, with all that, extraordinarily kind and ultra-polite ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and in turn nourishing selfishness and fatally tainting every thing with that central vice. To desire to live everlastingly as an identical individual, it has been said, is the ecstasy and culmination of avaricious conceitedness. Man, the vain egotist, dives out of sight in God to fish up the pearl of his darling self. He makes his poor individuality the measure of all things, his selfish desire the law of endless being. Such a rampant proclamation of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... advantages I had enjoyed there were the society of Cardinal Salviati and the Cardinal of Ravenna, and the friendship of some ingenious musicians; [4] no one else had been to me of any good: for the Ferrarese are a very avaricious people, greedy of their neighbours' money, however they may lay their hands on it; they are all ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... irregular nor conducted with more wisdom and regard for the public interest. King Robert had not succeeded in keeping his first wife, Bertha of Burgundy; and his second, Constance of Aquitaine, with her imperious, malevolent, avaricious, meddlesome disposition, reduced him to so abject a state that he never gave a gratuity to any of his servants without saying, "Take care that Constance know nought of it." After Robert's death, Constance, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... an elder brother; and he must have been less avaricious than the rest of them, as he sacrificed a fortune for love. It was quite a little romance, you know. He and his brother Hugh were both in love with the same lady. The father did not approve, and gave his sons their choice between love without a fortune or a fortune without ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... married a handsome peasant girl (frequently copied in his works), and settled there for life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several of his etchings at Venice, to make them more saleable, led some of his biographers to believe ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... apparel, sat placidly behind the tea-board, erect and grizzly, contemplating the unhappiness of her brother with a mind at ease, and content, in her amiable disregard of self, to sit there all night, witnessing the torments which his avaricious and grovelling nature compelled him to endure and forbade him to resent. And this, it must be observed, or the illustration would be incomplete, although in a business point of view she had the strongest sympathy with Mr Sampson, and would have been ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... December," says the Abbe, "they (the Americans) crossed the Delaware, and fell accidentally upon Trenton, which was occupied by fifteen hundred of the twelve thousand Hessians, sold in so base a manner by their avaricious master, to the King of Great Britain. This corps was massacred, taken, or dispersed. Eight days after, three English regiments were in like manner driven from Princeton; but after having better supported their reputation than the foreign ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them. In reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with mine. Notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore request that your Excellency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this Seigneury and all in it and on it should be mine. I know it was intended so. The law gives it you instead. Your technical claim has overridden my rights—you have a gift for making successful technical claims. But these old personal relics, of no monetary value—you should waive your avaricious and indelicate claim to them." He added the last words with a malicious smile, for the hardening look in Racine's face told him his request was hopeless, and he could not resist the temptation to put the matter with cutting force. Racine rose to the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... pupils who were unfortunate enough to fall under her harsh rule was a certain little girl whose name was Adele Rougeant. She was the daughter of an avaricious farmer who lived at "Les Marches," in ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... comes easily to the laboring man who has nothing beyond his daily wage, vanishes from the pillow of the merchant, who on stormy nights thinks uneasily of the vessels which carry his wealth far out at sea. We must stand clear of the ambitions of the world, of the fear or favor of man, of the avaricious craving for wealth, or the fear of poverty. We must put the cross of Christ between us and the world, which was judged at Calvary. We must be able to say truly that our treasure is in heaven and our heart also, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... given to him, and he returned to his house, well contented with the King. Next morning, the King repaired as usual to his council-chamber, and the amirs and viziers and chamberlains took their places round him. Now he had among his viziers one who was forbidding of aspect, sordid, avaricious and envious: a man of ill omen, naturally inclined to malevolence: and when he saw the esteem in which the King held Douban and the favours he bestowed on him, he envied him and plotted evil against him; for, as says the byword, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... America protested against the practice of slave dealing. The governors appointed by England were instructed to encourage it, and when the assemblies enacted laws to prohibit the inhuman traffic, they were annulled by the vetoes of the governors. With such encouragement, the reckless and avaricious among the colonists engaged in the trade, and the slaves were purchased when brought to the colonies by those who were blind to the evil, or preferred present ease or profit to all future good. Paley, the moralist, thought ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... heaved his flanks, the captain, left to more freedom of thought, reflected on the prodigious genius of Aramis, a genius of acumen and intrigue, a match to which the Fronde and the civil war had produced but twice. Soldier, priest, diplomatist; gallant, avaricious, cunning; Aramis had never taken the good things of this life except as stepping-stones to rise to giddier ends. Generous in spirit, if not lofty in heart, he never did ill but for the sake of shining even yet more brilliantly. Towards the end of his career, at the moment of reaching the goal, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... both wicked and avaricious, and it was not her way to make presents. She therefore made a dash at the little hand, wished the guardian of the well evil, and ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... his portrait as "beautiful, like the old heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified, intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at the age of twenty-eight; he was then suffering from that bitter domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart." We have engraved this portrait in the head-piece to this subject (p. 187), along with those of his wife and of ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... republished after five hundred years of oblivion. After relating his life, this poet informs Dante the harlot Rahab was admitted to this heaven in reward for saving Joshua's spies. This spirit concludes his interview by censuring the present papal policy, declaring it far too worldly, avaricious, and time-serving to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... easy to see that you are a stranger to these waters, or you would not need to ask for information respecting that fiend Morillo," answered the Spaniard. "He is a cruel, avaricious, and bloodthirsty pirate, sparing neither man nor woman, friend nor foe. But little is really known about him, senor, for those who meet him rarely survive to tell the tale; but there have been one or two who, by a miracle, have escaped him, and it is from ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... the heart is cowed And dares not use her strength, Hears the kind impulse plead Against the common avaricious fear, Grants it but life, though sovereignty was due Or doles it sway but one day out of seven Or ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... congratulated themselves that it was not murder, and that they were not villains, because it was for justice. Precious disclosures we have in this scene. It is this very Cassius, this patriot, who had as lief not BE as submit to injustice; who brings his avaricious humour, 'his itching palm,' into the state, and 'sells and marts his offices for gold, to undeservers.' Brutus does indeed come down upon him with a most unlimited burst of patriotic indignation, which looks, at first, like a mere frenzy of honest disgust at ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... an inventory of the immense wealth amassed by the old Orientalist, Don Juan became avaricious. Had he not two human lives in which he should need money? His deep, searching gaze penetrated the principles of social life, and he understood the world all the better because he viewed it across a ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... from the exhilaration they occasioned, and the opportunity they gave for the gratification of the activity of his nature. He pursued the object of getting possession of the ministry house and land with such desperate pertinacity, not, I think, from avaricious motives, but for the sake of the power it would give him as a considerable landholder. His love of form and public excitement led him to operate as he did with his church. He kept it in continual action during the few years of his ministry. He had at least seventy-five special ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would purchase for ever the constant labour of from above sixty to eighty men, would have avoided the hazards of trade.—Yet in England it is not so—the avaricious spirit of commerce despises all mediocrity—care is preferred to enjoyment—and the ends of life are sacrificed to the means! It has always been the foible of man not to be contented with the good he possesses, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Orange for forming a junction between the two councils and that of finance, and forming them into one body. The object of this measure was at once to give greater union and power to the provisional government, to create a central administration in the Netherlands, and to remove from some obscure and avaricious financiers the exclusive management of the national resources. The Count of Egmont, chosen by the council for this important mission, set out for Madrid in the month of February, 1565. Philip received him with profound hypocrisy; loaded him with ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... ages there have been those whom nature has qualified for a better life, who wish to live in harmony, and turn with weariness and disgust from the present forms of avaricious strife, rivalry, and fraud. If the best of these could be gathered in one community, a better state of society ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... house in the storm, under an apprehension of its falling upon him, and was returning through his own garden when this fortunate accident happened. The word fortunate here requires some explanation. This chief was a man of a very avaricious and oppressive disposition, and though he had no family, the natives of the island were half starved by his oppressive and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... now remain, though the traces of their former existence are everywhere to be seen, showing that at one time they must have been very numerous. They have been destroyed in vast numbers by the severity of their relentless and avaricious taskmasters. Thousands and tens of thousands of poor Indians have perished from famine, the sword, and the pestilence, or have died with hearts broken by the loss of liberty, or from being compelled to labour in the gold-mines with constitutions ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... The Sabbath feast was over. It never was long, for it was scanty and passed in gloomy silence, interrupted only by quarrelling and the biting remarks of the father of the family. It was known that Reb Jankiel was avaricious. He gathered much money, but he did not care for the comfort of the house, because he was seldom there, being busy with whisky distilleries, with dram-shops in the neighbouring villages, returning to the town only when religious affairs required his presence. His ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... as avaricious of hoarding a few moments of agreeable society, as if I had coveted a few more trumpery guineas in my strong-box! and then I have the assurance to tell you I am not superannuated! Oh! but ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... damsel, in her modest simplicity, is tolerant of freedoms not altogether consistent with occidental notions of propriety, and is generally ready enough to flee her tribe with a lover who happens to be unable to pay the dowry demanded by a too avaricious father or guardian, on becoming a married woman she takes the veil and retires from the gaze of men almost as effectually as she would do by shutting herself up in a convent. Now when she goes abroad, all her gay colors are covered by the white mantle which envelops her ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... the Avars in Hungary had been successfully closed, owing to his bravery, his adherents besought the king to bestow upon this knight some reward. Charlemagne, whom many of these later chansons de gestes describe as mean and avaricious, refused to grant any reward, declaring that were he to add still further to his vassal's already extensive territories, Aymon would soon be come ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... in your good deeds. Let your voice be heard in the high court of which you will be a member, whenever the artizan and the laborer need a defender from the foul enactments that are there consummated. Let your passions be subjected to the control of religion and morality—let no avaricious knave oppress the hard-toiling farmer in your name, but see to these things yourself. Let your ear be easy of access, and your heart be open, and then, my Lord, I shall be more than repaid, you will have had a nobler vengeance than any man could give you, and will earn in truth a right to bear ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... project had been crowned with complete success, the old libertine was overjoyed beyond measure; but when Mike demanded the one hundred dollars, his face lengthened—for he was avaricious as well as villainous, and his recent loss of five thousand dollars, in favor of the Chevalier and the Duchess, made him exceedingly loth to part with a cool hundred so easily.—Not exactly knowing the sort of a man he had to deal with, he assumed a stern tone ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... country, they spread abroad tidings that the new people of America had gained a treasure richer a thousand-fold than those which had gilded the triumphs of Cortes or Pizarro—the inestimable prize of liberty. Then the down-trampled millions of France arose, and with avaricious haste strove for a like treasure. They won a specious imitation, so soiled and stained, however, that many of the wisest among them could not at once detect its nature. They played with the coarse bawble for a time, then lost it in ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... could not picture a father treating a dying child as tyrannically and wickedly as I afterwards learned Heathcliff had treated him, to compel this apparent eagerness: his efforts redoubling the more imminently his avaricious and unfeeling plans were threatened with ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... poring over the 'Republic' of Plato to heading a charge of the Gothic cavalry. But his acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature had done nothing to ennoble his temper or expand his heart. A cold, hard, avaricious soul, he had been entirely bent on adding field to field and removing his neighbour's landmark, until the vast possessions which he had received from the generosity of Theodoric should embrace the whole of the great Tuscan plain. It will be seen by referring ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; "my daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs thy cruelty threatens. No silver will I give thee unless I were to pour it molten down thy [v]avaricious throat—no, not a silver penny will I give thee, [v]Nazarene, were it to save thee from the deep damnation thy whole life has merited. Take my life, if thou wilt, and say that the Jew, amidst his tortures, knew how ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... pockets of his new waistcoat, 'is for you, to buy presents with for them at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper. Last of all take notice, Pa, that it's not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't make ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... two, in Latin, were compiled by Dr. Johnson at a daily wage, and the third and fourth (which are a repetition of the first two), in English, are by Oldys. A charge of 5s. was made for the first two volumes, which caused a good deal of grumbling among the trade, and was resented 'as an avaricious innovation,' but Osborne replied that the volumes could be either returned in exchange for books or for the original purchase-money. He was also charged with rating his books at too high a price, but a glance through the catalogue will prove ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... such time as the distemper ceased.[12] During the public calamity, St. Gregory seemed to have forgot the danger he was in of being exalted to the pontifical throne; for he feared as much to lose the security of his poverty as the most avaricious can do to lose their treasures. He had been informed that his letters to Constantinople had been intercepted; wherefore, not being able to go out of the gates of Rome, where guards were placed, he prevailed with certain merchants ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... doctor of Salamanque, by whom the bachelor is supported after his father's death, is avaricious—so is Gil Blas's uncle, the canon of Oviedo, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... say so were you calmer," said Errington, in a curious hesitating manner. "Why—why did you not come and tell me your need for your uncle's money? Do you think I am so avaricious as to retain the fortune, or all the fortune, that ought to have been yours, when I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... discretion. Fully to comprehend it, recollect the character we have given of Felix. He was covetous, luxurious, and governor of Judea. St. Paul selected three subjects, correspondent to the characteristics. Addressing an avaricious man, he treated of righteousness. Addressing the governor of Judea, one of those persons who think themselves independent and responsible to none but themselves for their conduct, he treated of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... wicked, abandoned, and irreligious set of people had never been brought together before in any part of the colony. The hope of their amendment seemed every day to lessen. The spirit of trade (not that liberal spirit which characterises the British trader, but a mean, selfish, avaricious passion, that hesitated not at any means to be gratified) proved the source of every evil under which the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... that keen discriminating power, which can give at first glance the full numerical value of all exterior objects. The owner of "Gladswood" belonged to that "come-easy-go-easy" class, who, unless circumstances come to their relief, are ever being duped or made a prey to the avaricious. But Mr. Montgomery had a source of never-failing strength in his wife. "Had William Montgomery married a different kind of wife he would have become a poor man," had grown into a proverb regarding matters at "Gladswood." All ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... them: "The prestis that seyn hemsilf holy, and besien hem aboute siche pleyis, ben verry ypocritis and lyeris." All bounds have been overstepped; it is no longer a taste, but a passion; men are carried away by it; citizens become avaricious and grasping to get money in view of the representations and the amusements which follow: "To peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche, and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothinge grucche." Merchants and tradesmen "bygilen ther neghbors, in byinge and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... was, was a mere yeoman with nothing spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey's house had been a shock ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Jews were regarded) and strengthen the Hellenistic element in the country. The Jews were soon to feel the heavy hand and suffer the insatiate greed of Rome. National risings were put down with merciless cruelty, the Temple treasury was spoiled in 56 B.C.E. by the avaricious Crassus, one of the triumvirate that divided the Roman Empire, when he passed Jerusalem on his way to fight against the Parthians; even the annual offering contributed voluntarily by the Jews of the Diaspora to the Temple was seized by a profligate governor of Asia. The Roman aristocrats during ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... university, and eradicate sound letters. Yet why do I speak of healthy literature? I ought to have said good and wholesome doctrine, the which is verily mortal to that Company' (ibid. p. 162). 'Every species of vice finds its patronage in them. The avaricious trust their maxims, for trafficking in spiritual commodities; the superstitious, for substituting kisses upon images for the exercise of Christian virtues; the base fry of ambitious upstarts, for cloaking every act of scoundreldom with a veil of holiness. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... considerations weigh even with the noblest nations, how vain are the strongest appeals to justice, humanity, and national honour, unless when the public mind is under the immediate influence of the cheerful or vehement passions, indignation or avaricious hope. In the whole class of human infirmities there is none that make such loud appeals to prudence, and yet so frequently outrages its plainest dictates, as the spirit of fear. The worst cause conducted in hope is an overmatch for the noblest managed by despondency; in both ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... according to his own calculations, necessitate the disbursement on my part of the modest amount of ten thousand pounds sterling, a sum which, as I explained to him over and over again, it was utterly beyond my power to raise. It was not that Dominguez was grasping or avaricious; it was simply that he regarded a certain course of action necessary to his own safety and well-being, in the event of his consenting to yield to my wishes; and as he had no intention of suffering any ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... after mid-day, and the sun was streaming into the gully, the air was heavy with the odour of wild musk, and the Bush was as silent as if no life remained in the intense heat. Ryder had risen, and was looking at Wallaroo standing with his nose in the shade of a gum-butt, fighting the avaricious flies with his tail. At that instant a loud report rang along the gully, and Ryder staggered a few paces, and fell with his back to one of the boulders, stunned. A bullet ricocheting from the rock had struck him in the neck. Yarra threw himself forward, face downward, at a space ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson |
