"Covetous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... And for iron hath less of airy and watery moisture than other metals: therefore it is hard to resolve and make it again to be nesh in fire. Use of iron is more needful to men in many things than use of gold: though covetous men love more gold than iron. Without iron the commonalty be not sure against enemies, without dread of iron the common right is not governed; with iron innocent men are defended: and fool-hardiness of wicked men ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... producing a strong magnifying glass, "here's a connoisseur whose revelations you may trust. Examine these facets with its help," and again the Sepoy placed the sapphire within reach of the covetous Raikes, who promptly availed ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... thee. Thou knowest C—, of the Convention,—he has power, and he is covetous. 'Qu'on me meprise, pourvu que je dine' (Let them despise me, provided that I dine.), said he, when reproached ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... She had all Winton's dandyism, and just so much more as was appropriate to her sex. With her dark hair, wonderfully fluffed and coiled, waving across her forehead, her neck bare for the first time, her eyes really "flying," and a demeanour perfectly cool—as though she knew that light and movement, covetous looks, soft speeches, and admiration were her birthright—she was more beautiful than even Winton had thought her. At her breast she wore some sprigs of yellow jasmine procured by him from town—a flower of whose scent she was very fond, and that he had never seen worn in ballrooms. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discouraged from Industry by the Tyranny they are under.] For what indeed should they do with more than Food and Rayment, seeing as their Estates encrease, so do their Taxes also? And altho the People be generally covetous, spending but little, scraping together what they can, yet such is the Government they are under, that they are afraid to be known to have any thing, lest it be taken away from them. Neither have they any encouragement for their industry, having no Vend by Traffic and ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... fault of a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel has ever struck out a generous fire. No wind that blows is more bitter than he, no falling snow is more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. And his name is ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. They differ both in their customs ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... noble blood in thy veins — the blood of princes and kings; thou hast much that men covet to call their own; but thou art surrounded by foes who are jealous of thee, and by kinsmen who have already cast covetous eyes ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... flowed the Ohio River, along which white men were pushing their way, and settling on land in what is now Kentucky and Tennessee, and looking with covetous eyes on the land between that river and the lakes, but which the Indians claimed had been reserved to them by treaty. The shrewder among the Indian leaders foresaw the time when they would have to fight and overwhelm the intruders or submit to their hunting ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... of Morton was a man of no small natural endowments, but a man of a covetous and lecherous disposition. While chancellor, he got the Fulcan bishopricks erected[272], that the bishops might have the title and honour; but the nobility got the profit or church revenues. After he became regent, ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the crucible caught fire from a wisp that thrust up into it from the brazier, flared up of a sudden and lighted every corner of the old cellar. It revealed the craning neck and slack jaw of Gregory, the covetous glittering eyes and incredulous smile of Prince John, the scared faces of the huddling peasants. Then there was a crash that shook the earth. Battlements rocked, pavements cracked, blocks of stone leaped into the air like a fountain of masonry. When fire encounters high explosives ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... the heart Rested not there, and yet no prouder height Lur'd on the climber: wherefore, of that life No more enamour'd, in my bosom love Of purer being kindled. For till then I was a soul in misery, alienate From God, and covetous of all earthly things; Now, as thou seest, here punish'd for my doting. Such cleansing from the taint of avarice Do spirits converted need. This mount inflicts No direr penalty. E'en as our eyes Fasten'd below, nor e'er to loftier clime Were lifted, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... lodging, good food, clean garments, shoes with silver buckles, a sufficiency of things for the needs of the animal, and a canonry to satisfy self-love, that inexpressible sentiment which follows us, they say, into the presence of God,—for there are grades among the saints. But the covetous desire for the apartment which the Abbe Birotteau was now inhabiting (a very harmless desire in the eyes of worldly people) had been to the abbe nothing less than a passion, a passion full of obstacles, and, like more guilty passions, full of ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... returns. All these feelings operated with the Greeks to a much greater extent. Investments in consols and railway shares were not open to them. Money they used to lend at usury, no doubt, but with a great chance of losing it. The Greek colonists were industrious, were covetous, and prudent. From this it had come to pass that, as they made their way about the world—to the cities which they established round the Mediterranean—they collected in their new homes great store of ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... prescient statesman, to a height such as neither Pitt, nor Fox, nor even Chatham was capable of reaching. There might be seen in Banks's fine bust of him, the cause why Warren Hastings, though he was endowed with many good qualities which endeared him to his friends, was, nevertheless, covetous, self-willed, domineering, unjust, and, in some instances, pitiless, as Governor-General of India. What a contrast to this did the bust of the Marquis of Wellesley, by Nollekens, present. Not only did it indicate that the disposition of that distinguished statesman was ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... daily gain righteously; no covetous, money-loving spirit prevailed; with pious intent they gave liberally; there was not a ...
— The Essence of Buddhism • Various
... or connected with all lesser tracks. The love of money and the thirst for that distinction which attaches to power, are then so closely intermixed in the same souls, that it becomes difficult to discover whether men grow covetous from ambition, or whether they are ambitious from covetousness. This is the case in England, where men seek to get rich in order to arrive at distinction, and seek distinctions as a manifestation of their wealth. The mind is then seized by both ends, and hurried into trade and manufactures, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... again into the fields, and the covetous wolf said to the fox: "Get me something to eat now, or ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... row,—trees of healing, of fragrance and romantic charm. No child ever sought the old home to beg pears and mulberries, or to fill the school-house pail at its dark-bosomed well, without bearing away a few of the leaves in a covetous grasp. Sweet treasure-trove these, to be pressed to fresh young faces, and held and patted in hot little palms, till they grew flabby but evermore fragrant, still diffusing over the dusty schoolroom that warm odor, whispering to those who read no corner but their own New England, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... by proprietors? Would laboring men, who respect—much to their own detriment—the pretended rights of the idler, violate the natural rights of the producer and the manufacturer? What! if the husbandman forfeited his right to the land as soon as he ceased to occupy it, would he become more covetous? And would the impossibility of demanding increase, of taxing another's labor, be a source of quarrels and law-suits? The economists use singular logic. But we are not yet through. Admit that the proprietor is the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Epistle to Timothy in the third chapter St. Paul writes: This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... can hold, no promise bind? Truth is all duty: as the soul, It quickens and supports the whole. The good respect this duty: hence Its sacred claims I reverence. The Warrior's duty I despise That seeks the wrong in virtue's guise: Those claims I shrink from, which the base, Cruel, and covetous embrace. The heart conceives the guilty thought, Then by the hand the sin is wrought, And with the pair is leagued a third, The tongue that speaks the lying word. Fortune and land and name and fame To man's best care ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... make an Indian very covetous, is it?" said he, eyeing in admiration the magnificent black hair that fell ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... profligate Devil in a Buckingham; a lying, artful, or politick Devil in a Richlieu; a treacherous Devil in a Mazarin; a cruel, merciless Devil in a Cortez; a debauch'd Devil in an Eugene; a conjuring Devil in a Luxemburg; and a covetous Devil in a M————-h: In a word, tell me the Man, I tell you the Spirit that reign'd ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... the obvious good humour, the animal hilarity of it all, was absorbingly amusing. The trappers gazed with pleasure that showed how near akin are naturalist and hunter. Of course, they had some covetous thought connected with those glossy hides, but this was September still, and even otter were not yet prime. Shoot, plump, splash, went the happy crew with apparently unabated joy and hilarity. The slide ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... liegeman, that, for a feud, fled the country." He swung the armlet aloft on his sword—it was of red gold, bright and shining—that they might ferry him over to Gelfrat's march. At this the haughty boatman himself took the oar, for he was greedy and covetous of gain, the which bringeth oft to a bad end. He thought to win Hagen's red gold, but won, in lieu thereof, a ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... us the condition that the church of God should be in, in the last days. "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come." In the second verse, he tells us the reason why these times should be such hard and dangerous times; "for men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous," &c. The reason is not drawn from the miseries and calamities of the last times, but from the sins and iniquities of the last times. It is sin and iniquity that make times truly perilous. Sin, and sin only, takes away God's love and favour from a nation, and makes God turn an enemy to it. ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... dwell tearfully—possibly profitably—upon the moral of the adventure, had I not left Lucy Bray all this time on my mother's lap, and myself fingering the oiled calico in covetous admiration. ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... cast a covetous glance toward the poor Syrian traveler, who was generally called the hakeem because of the medicines which he gave, and the many cures ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... Though you had Venus apples to seduce My covetous eyes. Henceforth Ide have you ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Comrade. Father, said Zadig, What is all this that I have seen? You seem to me to act in a quite different Manner from the Generality of Mankind. You plunder One, who entertain'd you with all the Pomp and Profusion in the World, to enrich a covetous, sordid Wretch, who treated you in the most unworthy Manner. Son, said the old Man, that Grandee, who receives Visits of Strangers, with no other View than to gratify his Pride, and to raise their Astonishment at the Furniture of his Palace, will henceforward ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... with covetous spirit we sold, Those beautiful fields, the delight of the day, Would have brought us more good than a burthen of gold, [1] Could we but have been ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... regret not getting more than we can possibly make use of." And so the matter ended. The fifty-eight acres were never claimed, and there was, I think, a very general impression that asking for our just rights in the case would have a very grasping, covetous look. How much wiser five-and-twenty years ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... contrary; prove it. How is it the interest of the English clergy to corrupt religion? The more justice and piety the people have, the better it is for them; for that would prevent the penury of farmers, and the oppression of exacting covetous landlords, &c. That which hath corrupted religion, is the liberty unlimited of professing all opinions. Do not lawyers render law intricate by their ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... stature, of an evil presence, and an extraordinarily compound character, of great wickedness, mixed with great generosity. Although cruel men are for the most part cowards, he was at the same time exceedingly cruel, and very valiant; and though tyrants are generally covetous, he was extremely liberal; being barbarous in some parts of his conduct, and generous and benevolent in others. Not satisfied with putting thieves and robbers to ordinary deaths, he was in use to have them torn in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Superfluities of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free- hearted and Generous, and where is the Injury of taking ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... these poor players, and, nevertheless, to interrupt their performance, carrying them off to be imprisoned and punished for their breach of the law. But their great trouble arose from the frequent seizure of their wardrobe by the covetous soldiers. The clothes worn by the players upon the stage were of superior quality—fine dresses were of especial value in times prior to the introduction of scenery—and the loss was hard to bear. The public, it was feared, would be loath to believe in the merits of an actor ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... love money, to seek after the means of acquiring it: alas! does not every thing tell me, that in this world money is the greatest blessing; that it is amply sufficient to render me happy? In the country I inhabit, do I not see all my fellow-citizens covetous of riches? but do I not also witness that they are little scrupulous in the means of obtaining wealth? As soon as they are enriched by the means which you censure, are they not cherished, considered, and respected? By what authority, then, do you object to my amassing treasure? what right ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... ingratitude in not being thankefull but forgettfull that by his mercye we were delivered from such bondage and calamitie as before time we had suffered. Justly likewise were we punished for our greedy desires of present gaine and proffit, wherin many showed themselves insatiable and covetous; we beinge too secure in trustinge of a treacherous enimie, the Salvadges, they, whilest we entertained them frendley in our houses, tooke their opportunities and suddenly fell uppon us, killing and murdering very many of our people, burninge and devastinge their houses and plantations, ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... was one of the secretaries of the Emperor, always near him and much in his confidence. This seemed strange to those who knew both, for Menestheus did not possess those qualities which Aurelian esteemed. He was selfish, covetous, and fawning; his spirit and manner those of a slave to such as were above him—those of a tyrant to such as were below him. His affection for the Emperor, of which he made great display, was only for what it would bring to him; and his fidelity to his duties ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... the works mentioned above, he painted many church-banners. And since he practised art more to pass the time than from necessity, he worked at his ease, always consulting his own convenience, and avoiding discomforts as much as he was able, more than any other man; and yet, without being covetous of the goods of others, he always preserved his own. Allowing but few cares to oppress him, he was a merry fellow, and took his pleasures with a glad heart. He lived sixty-seven years, at the end of which he finished ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... ambitious and covetous, was never wanting in courage, energy, intelligence or versatility, turned the more obstinately to his task. Concealing his natural anxieties, he rode about from post to post in morion and buff coat, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... him; he has often served me, and is very adroit, indeed. But do not forget to pay him well in order to be sure of his fidelity, for fortunately he has a failing which renders it easy for us to control him. He is exceedingly covetous, and has a pretty wife who spends a great deal of money. Pay him well, therefore, and he will do us good service. And now, farewell, my dear count. I believe we understand each other perfectly, and know what we ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... are five good principles of action to be adopted: To benefit others without being lavish; to encourage labor without being harsh; to add to your resources without being covetous; to be dignified without being supercilious; and to inspire awe without being austere. Also, we should not search for love or demand it, but so live that it will flow ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... at the sword, and the writing, and knew it was the sword of the stone, and marvelled how young Arthur had possessed himself thereof; and being of a covetous and sour mind he thought how he might make advantage for himself. He went to his father, Sir ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... became apparent that the clerk of the weather had done his worst, and the supply of rain was running short. Clad in aquascutic garments, and surmounted by an ungainly two-rupee bazaar umbrella (my dapper British one having been annexed by a covetous Mangi)— ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Ow, the covetous owld rip, and him wid a dozen wives at laste, to want our darlin'. What'll I do?—what'll I do? Faix, I'll ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... my sight, That it like those by looking might be blest. But whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze, Finding their objects over-soon depart, These now the other's happiness do praise, Wishing themselves that they had been my heart, That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes, As covetous the other's use to have. But finding nature their request denies, This to each other mutually they crave; That since the one cannot the other be, That eyes could think of ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... "Why should not I call you child?" "Because—because—I don't know;—but I wish you would stand out of my light, Cecilia, for you are trampling upon all my strawberries." "I have not touched one, you covetous little creature!" "Indeed—indeed, Cecilia, I am not covetous. I have not eaten one of them—they are all for your friend Leonora. See how unjust you are." "Unjust! that's a cant word you learned of my ...
— The Bracelets • Maria Edgeworth
... well have sent me to a Roundhead to learn how to be generous, or to a Quaker to be taught good manners, as to a Papist to be taught honesty." "Fell ruin seize my mother," shrieked a third, "whose covetous pride refused me a husband at my need, and so drove me to obtain by stealth what I might have honestly obtained." "Hell, a double hell to the raging bull of a nobleman who first tempted me," cried another, "had he not by fair and foul broken through ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... father of all greediness," as the Austrians called him, was particularly influential because his brother, the Archbishop of Mainz, was also an elector and he required an especially exorbitant bribe. He was ambitious as well as covetous, and the rivals endeavoured to satisfy his ambitions with matrimonial prizes. He was promised Ferdinand's widow, Germaine de Foix; Francis sought to parry this blow by offering to the Margrave's son the French Princess Renee; Charles bid higher by offering his ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... What they ought to foresee.—Here comes Bosola, The only court-gall; yet I observe his railing Is not for simple love of piety: Indeed, he rails at those things which he wants; Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud, Bloody, or envious, as any man, If he had means to be so.—Here's ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... at the least, if they should presently be sold. What shall we then think of the navy royal, of which some one vessel is worth two of the other, as the shipwright has often told me? It is possible that some covetous person, hearing this report, will either not credit at all, or suppose money so employed to be nothing profitable to the queen's coffers; as a good husband said once, when he heard that provisions should be made for armor, wishing the queen's money to be rather laid out to some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... privilege of proving to a covetous, discontented world that man can by the grace of God he contented ...
— Food for the Lambs; or, Helps for Young Christians • Charles Ebert Orr
... first; Weak, sickly, full of pains, in every breath Railing at life, and yet afraid of death; Putting things off, with sage and solemn air, From day to day, without one day to spare; 220 Without enjoyment, covetous of pelf, Tiresome to friends, and tiresome to himself; His faculties impair'd, his temper sour'd, His memory of recent things devour'd E'en with the acting, on his shatter'd brain Though the false registers of youth remain; From morn to evening babbling forth vain praise ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... things was to come to an end; her freedom, on which she looked as her most precious possession, was to be taken roughly from her. One of the men whom she had despised, one of that set of libertines, of idle voluptuaries who had dangled round her skirts whilst casting covetous eyes upon her fortune, was to become her master, her supreme lord, and she—a slave to his desires and to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the penmen dear to the servants' hall more truly portray it than Henry James ever hoped to do or Meredith attempted. The art of to-day is the art of deliberate avoidance of the violent, and many critics persist in confusing it with truth. There is nothing precious about selfish, covetous, lustful humanity; therefore, good literature creates a refined humanity of its own, which converses in polished periods ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... sister of his uncle, Okusaka. He despatched Ne no Omi, a trusted envoy, to confer with the latter, who gladly consented, and, in token of approval, handed to Ne no Omi a richly jewelled coronet for conveyance to the Emperor. But Ne no Omi, covetous of the gems, secreted the coronet, and told the Emperor that Okusaka had rejected the proposal with scorn. Anko took no steps to investigate the truth of this statement. It has been already seen that such investigations ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... was a cunning, sly fellow, quite the reverse of John in many particulars; covetous, frugal, minded domestic affairs, would pinch his belly to save his pocket, never lost a farthing by careless servants or bad debtors. He did not care much for any sort of diversion, except tricks of High German artists and legerdemain. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of mind or body may produce hallucination in a form depending on the character and instincts of the individual. Thus, an ambitious man labouring under monomania will imagine himself to be a king; a covetous man will be plunged in despair, believing himself to be penniless, or exult at the vastness of the treasure which he imagines that ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... in answer, did the time Give scope, but now one thing is mine to say. I am known to vary with the varying need; And when 'tis tried, who can be just and good, My peer will not be found for piety. But though on all occasions covetous Of victory, this once I yield to thee, And willingly. Unhand him there. Let go! Leave him to stay. What further use of thee, When we have ta'en these arms? Have we not Teucer, Skilled in this mystery? ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... will pardon that hardness of heart which it has created in man, and which the affairs of the world seem almost to require; but that it will extend no such forgiveness to the feminine creation. It may be necessary that a man should be stiff-necked, self-willed, eager on the world, perhaps even covetous and given to worldly lusts. But for a woman, it behoves her to crush herself, so that she may be at all points submissive, self-denying, and much-suffering. She should be used to thorns in the flesh, and to thorns in the spirit ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... who assumed the cloak and hooked staff in order to live in idleness and sensuality; avaricious friars, selling their religion for money; cheating pardoners; covetous priests; ambitious bishops; lawyers who loved gain better than justice; "barons and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... returned to the hotel, and found the servants busily counting their money, occasionally casting covetous looks toward the stairs, as if they hoped ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... I haven't noted your covetous glances," she flashed. "I've been talking very fast, because I knew this interruption was coming. But we've finished, thank you, so I'll leave ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... coast. Low lands with islands fringed the shore. Behind them great mountains, hacked and furrowed in their outline, offered an uninviting prospect. There was here no Eldorado such as, farther south, met the covetous gaze of a Cortez or a Pizarro, no land of promise luxuriant with the vegetation of the tropics such as had greeted the eyes of Columbus at his first vision of the Indies. A storm-bound coast, a relentless climate and a reluctant soil-these were the treasures of the New World ...
— The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier • Stephen Leacock
... covetous of spoil and gain, And ill-bested withal in stipend, know That better means are wanted to maintain So many paramours, than shaft and bow; And leaving thus alone the wretched train, Thence, with their riches charged the adventurers go For Puglia's pleasant land: ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... handsome pattern (or, perhaps, got it at the store in exchange for BASKET), the worth of which might be half-a-dollar. If the poor squaw longed for the turnip, the value of which could scarcely reach a copper, the covetous European had fixed as longing a glance upon the china bowl, and she was determined to gratify her avaricious desire and obtain it on the most easy terms. She told the squaw, with some disdain, that her man did not grow turnips to give away to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and intends it to be developed and cultivated. If, therefore, its training has made it indolent and dissipated, it only proves its education to be spurious. You might, by a parity of reasoning, blindfold the eye that it might not he covetous, or tie up the hand lest it pick a man's pocket, or hobble the feet lest they run into evil ways, as to keep the mind in ignorance ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... I knew to be untrue, so I calmly said that I would remain seated where I was until food was sold to me, and at the same time produced one or two silver coins, the display of which to the covetous eyes of the Tibetans was always the means of hastening the transaction of business. In small handfuls, after each of which the Tibetans swore that they had not another atom to sell, I managed, with somewhat of a trial to my patience, to purchase some twenty ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... usually ascribed to Archimattheas, and it certainly gives a vivid picture of the medical customs of the time. The instruction for the immediate coming of the physician to his patient runs as follows: "When the doctor enters the dwelling of his patient, he should not appear haughty, nor covetous, but should greet with kindly, modest demeanor those who are present, and then seating himself near the sick man accept the drink which is offered him (sic) and praise in a few words the beauty of the neighborhood, the situation of the house, and the well-known generosity ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... added unto [77]it, it would equal, if not exceed many of our European Countries; the Vallyes were every where intermixt with running streams, and no question but the earth {{22 }} hath in it rich veins of Minerals, enough to satisfie the desires of the most covetous. ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... coming alongside, they pulled round the ship, singing most loudly and merrily. Though Captain Owen was on shore, they were taken into the cabin, and entertained until his return, after which he gave a present to each of them. Notwithstanding this liberality, the principal chief fixed his covetous eye upon an axe, and expressed a most eager desire to become possessed of it. Captain Owen, however, notwithstanding his wish to conciliate the natives as much as possible, did not think proper to gratify his cupidity; but he promised, that it should be presented to the King at the next interview ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... which Mademoiselle Cormon lived, build in Henri IV.'s time, by Pierre Cormon, the steward of the last Duc d'Alencon, had always belonged to the family; and among the old maid's visible possessions this one was particularly stimulating to the covetous desires of the two old lovers. Yet, far from producing revenue, the house was a cause of expense. But it is so rare to find in the very centre of a provincial town a private dwelling without unpleasant surroundings, handsome in outward structure and convenient within, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... legal restraint is put upon the exercise of the will and intellect of the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men, these differences become ultimately enormous. But as soon as they become so distinct in their extremes as that, on one side, there shall be manifest redundance of possession, and on the other manifest pressure of need,—the terms "riches" and "poverty" ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... natives of this district. Their ancestor had filled a minor office in the capital, and had, in years gone by, been acquainted with lady Feng's grandfather, that is madame Wang's father. Being covetous of the influence and affluence of the Wang family, he consequently joined ancestors with them, and was recognised ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... wretched married beings? And why? He had not, at any rate as yet, sacrificed for money or social gains any of the instincts of his nature. He had been fickle, foolish, vain, uncertain, and perhaps covetous;—but as yet he had not been false. Then he took out Mary's last letter and read ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... I know He loved thee as a son, and always strove To fit thee for the place within our State Which one day should be thine. Sometimes I think, Since he has gone, I have been covetous Of thy dear love, and kept thee from the labour Of State-craft, and the daily manly toils Which do befit thy age; and I have thought, Viewing thee with the jealous eyes of love, That I have marked some shade of melancholy Creep on when none else saw thee, and desired ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... is a popular belief in Norway that there is a race of fairies or magicians living underground, who are very covetous of cattle; and that, to gratify their taste for large herds and flocks, they help themselves with such as graze on the mountains; making dwarfs of them to enable them to enter crevices of the ground, ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... so much to get, which has so little power to satisfy, which must always be less than the wish of the covetous man, which costs so much to keep, which stuffs pillows with thorns, is surely vanity. Honest work is rewarded by sweet sleep. The old legend told of unslumbering guards who kept the treasure of the golden fruit. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... him, in a watch-pocket! It is to be noticed there were no clocks and watches in the much-vaunted days before the flood. It follows, of course, there were no appointments, and punctuality was not yet thought upon. "Though ye take from a covetous man all his treasure," says Milton, "he has yet one jewel left; ye cannot deprive him of his covetousness." And so I would say of a modern man of business, you may do what you will for him, put him in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as Jesus told you, and know God to be infinite Mind, and evil to be only the suppositional opposite, without reality, without life, without power—unless you give it these things in your own consciousness. You don't have to take thought for your life. You don't have to be covetous, or envious, or fearful, or anxious. You couldn't do anything if you were. These things don't help you. Jesus said that of himself he could do nothing. But—as soon as he recognized God as the infinite principle ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... he turned a deaf ear, and finally, glaring at me, said that nothing would ever induce him to part with it. The people would never allow the image to be taken away, as the life of the tribe was bound up with it Seeing that he was not to be moved, I desisted, though a covetous look in his eye when I offered a beautiful colored rug in exchange gave me hope, Rocanandiva was, like most idolatrous priests, very fanatical. When he learned that I professed and taught a different religion, his jealousy was most marked, and he often told me to go from them, I was not ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... false that she had blown upon the children; the silly fool Prechln had imagined it all—nothing was too absurd for stupidity like his to believe; and what then? Can't people die but by witchcraft? Did St. Peter bewitch that covetous knave Ananias (Acts v.) when he fell down dead at his feet for having lied to the Holy Ghost? Let the honourable convocation answer ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... so happened that he was overheard by a certain covetous Jew money-lender. This man was of a malicious disposition; and the poverty of the Khoja was a satisfaction to him. When he heard what the Khoja said he chuckled to himself, saying, "Truly this Khoja is a funny fellow, and it would be a droll thing to see him refuse nine hundred and ninety-nine ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... have travelled by rail, but this mode did not even occur to Bambo. For one thing, he was penniless, except for a few coppers that had escaped Moll's covetous eyes and grasping fingers the last time she rifled his pockets, when she supposed him to be asleep; and for another, he was not used to railway journeys. He had never, in fact, been inside a railway carriage in all his life, and he would have ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... nat longe be mayster therof. The one is possessed and doth nat possesse; and the other within a shorte whyle leueth the possession of riches."—Erasmus De Contemptu Mundi, 1533, fol. 17 (Paynel's translation). So also, in the Rule of Reason, 1551, 8vo, Wilson says:—"Is a covetous man poore or not? I may thus reason with my self. Why should a couetous man be called poore, what affinitie is betwixt them twoo? Marie, in this poynct thei bothe agree, that like as the poore man ever lacketh and desireth to have, so the covetous manne ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... since, thanks to a still inexplicable crime, they had suddenly found themselves in possession of an immense fortune. Perhaps in this wild pursuit of pleasure, in the haste they displayed to satisfy their covetous longings, they hoped to forget or silence the threatening voice of conscience. Such was Mademoiselle Marguerite's conclusion; but she was not long left to undisturbed meditation. By the lieutenant's departure the restrictions which had been placed ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... good: so that, in consequence, every appetitive movement is both specified and named from its proper end. For if anyone were to describe covetousness as love of work because men work on account of covetousness, this description would be incorrect, since the covetous man seeks work not as end but as a means: the end that he seeks is wealth, wherefore covetousness is rightly described as the desire or the love of wealth, and this is evil. Accordingly worldly love ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... now for corroboration of that noble picture to the history of this same Ferrante. A shock awaits us. We find, in this bastard of the great and brilliant Alfonso a cruel, greedy, covetous monster, so treacherous and so fiendishly brutal that we are compelled to extend him the charity of supposing him to be something less than sane. Let us consider but one of his characteristics. He loved to have his enemies under his own supervision, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... mine 'at I'm goin' to tell you about was called the Creole Belle," he sez. "For a longtime it didn't pay to amount to anything, an' then it began to pay; an' the two friends got covetous, an' first George had Jack killed an' then he ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... thousands hung upon his words with intense feeling; numerous converts were by his means added to the church; the proud became broken-hearted, and the lowly were raised, and blessings abounded; the drunkards were made sober; thieves and covetous were reclaimed; the blasphemers were made to sing the praises of God; the desert bid fair to blossom and bring forth fruit as a garden. But, alas! his early labours were contrary to acts of parliament; the spirit of intolerance and persecution soon troubled, and eventually ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... her to raise a thousand crowns in twenty-four hours. She must, therefore, he thought, cancel her debt by her hand. This was the alternative to which he had been manoeuvring to bring her; therefore he entered her salon the next day with the air of a victor. He was no longer covetous of wealth; he had prospered in his own speculations, and was immensely rich; the hand of Leonide, even without her heart, was ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... The Well-behaved Little Boy. The Attentive, Inattentive, Covetous Dilatory, Exact, Quarrelsome, and Good Little Boy. By S. Lovechild 1s. sewed,—Square size, with ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... beats fast. To look on the children whom one's own hand has arrayed, the pure skin brightly veined with blue, that one has bathed, laved, and sponged and decked with gay colors of silk or velvet—why, there is no poem comes near to it! With what eager, covetous longing one calls them back for one more kiss on those white necks, which, in their simple collars, the loveliest woman cannot rival. Even the coarsest lithograph of such a scene makes a mother pause, and I feast my eyes daily ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... deported in 597, were the good figs of his vision and those who remained the bad. The latter were of the breed that had turned Temple and Sacrifice into fetishes, for as such they now treated the Prophet, the greatest whom God ever sent to Israel. Covetous of having him with them they eagerly asked him for a Word of the Lord, promising to obey it, in the expectation of their kind that it would be according to their own ignorant wishes; but when it declared against these, they scolded Jeremiah as disappointed barbarians do their idols, ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... in the case of the love of books. As to the mean, we have seen that it is the virtue of the true book-lover, while the defect constitutes the sin of the Robustious Philistine. But the extreme is found in covetousness, and the covetous man who is in the extreme state of book-loving, is the biblioklept, or book-stealer. Now his vice shows itself, not in contemplation (for of contemplation there can be no excess), but in action. For books are procured, as we say, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... society of this nature is a purely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. What we have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely varied personalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel and compassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynical and emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful in their degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by the franchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way the process whereby they themselves ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... away, if untrue; and if true, some way would be opened by which she might put a stop to all increase of predilection on his part, and yet retain him as a friend for Leonard—that darling for whom she was far-seeing and covetous, and miserly of every scrap of ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... that of this unconquerable passion of love. Any and all of our passions are unconquerable, whenever we shall be weak enough to think them so. Does not the gamester plead the unconquerableness of his passion? The drunkard, the man of anger, the revengeful, the envious, the covetous, the jealous, have they not all the same plea? With the selfish and the feeble passion succeeds to passion as different habits give birth to each, and the last passion proves more unconquerable than its predecessor. How frequently do we see people ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... I publish'd my Satires, I was thoroughly prepar'd for that Noise and Tumult which the Impression of my Book has rais'd upon Parnassus. I knew that the Tribe of Poets, and above all, Bad Poets, are a People ready to take fire; and that Minds so covetous of Praise wou'd not easily digest any Raillery, how gentle soever. I may farther say to my advantage, that I have look'd with the Eyes of a Stoick upon the Defamatory Libels that have been publish'd against me. Whatever Calumnies ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... half-hour for want of a better. My father, Sir Richard, is very rich, and of a most generous nature. My mother died whilst I was yet a boy. I have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhanded—a reptile. Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him—a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two. There is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... him turn to bed: he lov'd her more, To see the love Leander Hero bore: Examples profit much; ten times in one, In persons full of note, good deeds are done. Day was so long, men walking fell asleep; The heavy humours that their eyes did steep Made them fear mischiefs. The hard streets were beds For covetous churls and for ambitious heads, That, spite of Nature, would their business ply: All thought they had the falling epilepsy, Men grovell'd so upon the smother'd ground; And pity did the heart of Heaven confound. The Gods, the Graces, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... Rome. [Sidenote: Further claims to temporal authority.] Later, instead of advisers they claimed to be absolute judges in ecclesiastical matters, and when the temporal possessions of the Popedom made the chair of St. Peter an object of ambition to covetous, designing men, the character of Bishop was too often merged in that of Prince, and spiritual power ceased to satisfy those who thought it their duty or their interest to enforce what was in fact an ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... struggle of politics. If he found abundant time for study, who may not? Frederick the Great, too, was busy in camp the greater part of his life, yet whenever a leisure moment came, it was sure to be devoted to study. He wrote to a friend, "I become every day more covetous of my time, I render an account of it to myself, and I lose none of it ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... regard to the merchants, for they are the better class of people, and those who are most interested, because of their property. So great security was not felt about the others, even though they were Christians; because, as they are a poor and covetous people, they would be inclined to any act of meanness. However, it was always thought that it would be difficult for them to cause any commotion, unless a strong fleet came from China, on which they could rely. Talk continued to increase daily, and with it suspicion; for some of ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... will that you should die, and I, his servant, am sent to tell you his decree. You have been cruel and covetous—you have wished an innocent man's death, and his death caused that of a multitude of victims to the barbarous passions of a great western nation. Man's life must be sacred for every man. God only can ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... time when he was upon the Bench had the credit, I do not know how well deserved it was, of not being much given to hospitality. He was never covetous, and he was very fond of society and conversation. But I fancy he had some fashions of his own in housekeeping which he thought were not quite up to the ways of modern life. At any rate, he was, so far as I know, never known to invite any of his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and perhaps the Methodists a hundred years ago,—gained the hearts of the people and stimulated religious life; but in the fourteenth century they were a nuisance. They sold indulgences, they invented pious frauds, they were covetous under pretence of poverty, they had become luxurious in their lives, they slandered the regular clergy, they usurped the prerogatives of parish priests, they enriched their convents, they accommodated themselves ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... more extensive and successful scale than in Persia; all classes and conditions of people are exposed to the danger, and it is only by an assumed air of poverty that a certain amount of security is obtained. A miserable-looking house, it was explained by a Persian, does not attract the covetous eye of the passer-by; an unusually beautiful one does. "It is a fatal mistake," he added, "to let anybody's eye rest on one's possessions, whether he be the Shah, a minister, or a beggar. He will want to rest his hands upon them next, and then everything is gone. Besides," he ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... return he had called them to the door of his tent, opened one of his trunks, and out of a bag, containing two or three hundred rupees, paid them liberally for their trouble; one of the party he noticed appeared to eye the bag with a greedy, covetous eye, but he said nothing, and the party left, seeming well satisfied with what they had received. After indulging in a bath he was ready for the evening meal, which consisted of chicken, curry or broiled partridge with several etceteras, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... the trusted military commander of the Gothic garrisons in Morocco, as Musa, the oft-defeated Saracen leader, knew to his cost. As this Musa was one day looking with covetous eyes across at the Spanish Peninsula, he was suddenly surprised by a visit from Count Julian; and still more astonished when that commander offered to surrender to him the Gothic strongholds Tangier, Arsilla, and Ceuta in return for the assistance of the Saracen ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... by a single button; his collar was greasy; he kept his hat on his head as he spoke; he wore low shoes, an open waistcoat gave glimpses of a homely shirt of coarse linen. Good-nature was not wanting in the round countenance, with its two slits of covetous eyes; but there was likewise the vague uneasiness habitual to those who have money to spend and hear constant applications for it. Yet, to all appearance, he was plain-dealing and easy-natured, his business shrewdness was so well wadded round ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... had a covetous thought," she said, "it has been when I looked at Ivy Cottage. And to think it is to be mine! The ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... pair of shoes with two heels; for I had lost one, and the shoes were so decayed that they were not worth mending. You see by this that those who are the most generous of their own, can be the most covetous for others. I hope you will be so good to me as to use your interest with her (for what ever she says, you seem to have some) to indulge me with the ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... by my faith, he is covetous. Why, that you may even understand it the better,—when he's sacrificing at any time to his own Genius [10], the vessels that are needed for the sacrifice he uses of Samian ware, lest the Genius himself should steal them; ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... careful than these two brothers, one of whom was called Clutch, and the other Kind. Though brothers, no two men could be more unlike in disposition. Clutch thought of nothing but how to make some profit for himself, while Kind would have shared his last morsel with a hungry dog. This covetous mind made Clutch keep all his father's sheep when the old man was dead, because he was the eldest brother, allowing Kind nothing but the place of a servant to help him in looking ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... that we should view with charity, and treat with forbearance, those who have fallen into an aberration of non-fundamental importance either from the faith or the practise of the Bible and the Augsburg Confession; and on the other hand, that we are bound 'not to eat with a fornicator, or a covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner,' but to 'put away from among us such wicked persons,' and that 'a man that is an heretic,' who denies a fundamental doctrine, a doctrine essential to the Christian scheme, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... voluptuousness to the whole kingdom. Here too, he ruled it with principles the most daring; holding men, in general, in great contempt, and conceiving them to be all as insidious, as servile, and as covetous as those by whom he was surrounded. With the superiority of his character, he made a sport of governing this mass of individuals, as if the task was unworthy of his genius. The fact is illustrated by ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... country will never flourish under the present government. The country must be provided with godly, honorable and intelligent rulers, who are not very indigent, and who are not too covetous. The mode in which this country is now governed is intolerable. Nobody is secure in his property longer than the Director pleases, who is generally strongly inclined to confiscating. A good population would be the consequence of a good government. Many would be allured here by the pleasantness, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not, and they were but trifles, though, indeed, of great ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... a handful of gold and silver. Francis looked at it with covetous eyes for a minute or two, then thrust his brother's hand aside with a jerk which almost sent the coins into ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... time. Meanwhile, a party of Crusaders, headed by Baldwin, brother of Godfrey, and a famous knight named Tancred, had been sent forward to clear a passage for the army. Tancred subdued the city of Tarsus; but his victory was usurped by Baldwin, whose ambitions and covetous nature bore no resemblance to that of his brother. Tancred, a man after Godfrey's heart, surrendered this conquest for the sake of peace; but, when Baldwin showed symptoms of repeating his injustice, resisted by force. Tancred was defeated, but a ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... interminable feud with France, and by intrigues on behalf of James both at home and abroad; he died by a fall from his horse at Kensington just as a great war with France was impending; he was through life the adversary of the covetous schemes of Louis, and before his death he had prepared the materials of that coalition which, under Marlborough and Prince Eugene, brought Louis to the brink of ruin; his reign forms one of the great epochs in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... it his duty to cross-examine Mrs. Dyson closely as to their authorship. He asked her to write out a passage from one of them: "You can give me something as a keepsake if you like, but I don't like to be covetous, and to take them from your wife and daughter. Love to all!" Mrs. Dyson refused to admit any likeness between what she had written and the handwriting of the letter in question. Another passage ran: "Will see you as soon as I possibly can. I think ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... have some symptoms of this moral disease in common. The miser is sometimes rich, nevertheless the covetous spirit is so strong in him that he gloats over a sixpence, has profound interest in gaining it, and mourns over it if lost. You, being well off with a rich and liberal father, yet declare that the interest of a game is much decreased if there are no ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... afterwards should sit in the same skin. Surely it was a goodly sign, a goodly monument, the sign of the judge's skin. I pray God we may once see the skin in England." "I am sure," says he, in another sermon, "this is scala inferni, the right way to hell, to be covetous, to take bribes, and pervert justice. If a judge should ask me the way to hell, I would show him this way. First, let him be a covetous man; let his heart be poisoned with covetousness. Then let him go a little further, and take bribes; and, lastly, pervert judgment. Lo, here is the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... smoke lovingly upon the table, there is nothing for you but to submit to your Fates, or to give up your house-keeping. But with country cozens, those provincials who are not bone of your bone, and who nevertheless at every visit to town call upon you with an eager look and covetous smile, as if to say, 'Ask us to dinner, we once invited you to tea,' there is but one method to pursue; the cut—the firm, unwavering, direct cut. Do not pretend not to see them, or to look fixedly in another direction, but ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... CANAVANS: A covetous miller, his clever wandering brother, and some pleasant absurdity about the popular worship of Queen Elizabeth by her loyal ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... his early years to the indefatigable pursuit of gain. He was frugal and abstemious, though not covetous, and amassed a large property. This property he intended to divide between his two children, and to secure my portion to his nephew, whom his parents had left an orphan in his infancy, and whom my father had taken and treated as ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... style, and note of gods, Through all the provinces, were wild ambition. And no less pride: yea, even Augustus' name Would early vanish, should it be profaned With such promiscuous flatteries. For our part, We here protest it, and are covetous Posterity should know it. we are mortal; And can but deeds of men: 'twere glory enough, Could we be truly a prince. And, they shall add Abounding grace unto our memory, That shall report us worthy our forefathers, Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... a man of his word, was George Bross; not for anything would he have gone back on his promise to keep secret that afternoon's titillating discovery; likewise he was a covetous soul, loath to forfeit the promised treat; withal he was human (after his kind) and since reprisals were not barred by their understanding, he began then and there to ponder the same. One way or another, that day's humiliation must be balanced; else he ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... woman, that they were not designed for her, hardly looked at them, and almost immediately passed them on to Madame. The latter, and even more minutely, Monsieur, gave the bracelets a long look of anxious and almost covetous desire. She then handed the jewels to those ladies who were near her, pronouncing this single word, but with an accent which was ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Thereupon the covetous Traveller determined to trust him, and waded into the pool, where he soon found himself plunged in mud, and ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... describing what shall come to pass in what he calls "the last days," ever touched any people so closely as they do those of our times and country. "Men," he says, "shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemous, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasure, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... with the praetorian prefect in the public interest, I fought the case at the king's judgment-seat, and succeeded in preventing the enforcement of the sale. I rescued the consular Paulinus from the gaping jaws of the court bloodhounds, who in their covetous hopes had already made short work of his wealth. To save Albinus, who was of the same exalted rank, from the penalties of a prejudged charge, I exposed myself to the hatred ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... Knights of the Legion of Honour. As they really deserved it, the choice caused considerable astonishment and general rejoicing; and the three warriors, happy to see three decorations reach them intact after having passed through so many covetous hands, were loud in praise ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... country. Much pleased with the things, Kamrasi ordered the tent to be pitched before all his court, pointed out to them what clever people the white people are, making iron pots instead of earthen ones. Covetous and never satisfied, however, instead of returning thanks, he said he was sure I must have more beads than those I sent him; and, instead of granting the leave asked for, said he would think about it, and send the Kamraviona in the evening with his answer. This, when it came, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre: but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; not a novice, but holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince ...
— An Explanation of Luther's Small Catechism • Joseph Stump
... it will be plain sailing so long as the rest of the things last," said Pawson, handling the piece with a covetous touch. He too liked a day off when he could get it. "Who will you sell the gun ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Song to obtain, O sweet reward, And walk the garden of the Bard?— But thy employ, the year throughout, Is wandering the White Tower about, Moulding and stamping coin with care, The farthing small and shilling fair. Let for a month thy Mint lie still, Covetous be not, little Will; Fly from the birth-place of the smoke, Nor in that wicked city choke; O come, though money's charms be strong, And if thou come I'll give thee song, A draught of water, hap what may, Pure air to make thy spirits gay And welcome ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... of an unselfish from a selfish love, even in this life, consists in this, that the latter depends on our transferring our present passion or appetite, or rather on our dilating and stretching it out in imagination, as the covetous man does;—while in the former we carry ourselves forward under a very different state from the present, as the young man, who restrains his appetites in respect of his future self as a tranquil and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... scrupled to rifle the Deerhurst vineyards of their most attractive vines, and the cluster of fruit on which Mabel had fixed a covetous eye was certainly a tempting one. The rays from two Chinese lanterns, hung near it, brought out its juicy lusciousness with even more than daylight clearness, and Mabel's mouth fairly watered ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... took great pains to correct this evil, especially on Ellen's account; for as Matilda was not covetous, she was ever ready to share with her only companion the raisins and almonds, figs, gingerbread, biscuits, or comfits, which she was continually munching; and this Mrs. Harewood had a particular objection to, not ...
— The Barbadoes Girl - A Tale for Young People • Mrs. Hofland
... through mistake or on purpose, have made it in the Greek Pentateuch only half a didrachm, or about eight cents. This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest of Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the latter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous old man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen thousand dollars, at which it was then valued. When Euergetes sent Athenion as ambassador to claim it, and even threatened to send a body of troops ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... on the Zurweld, they dwelt together in peace. Their flocks grazed the same bills, their herdsmen smoked out of the same pipe; they were brothers until the herds of the Amakosa (Caffres) increased so much as to make the hearts of the Dutch boors sore. What those covetous men could not get from our fathers for old buttons, they took by force. Our fathers were men; they loved their cattle; their wives and children lived upon milk; they fought for their property; they began to hate the colonists, who coveted ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 1. Gnatch.—"The covetous man dares not gnatch" (Hammond's Catechism). From this, and the examples in Halliwell's Dictionary, the sense seems to be "to move." Is it ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 48, Saturday, September 28, 1850 • Various
... Germany's covetous attitude toward the colonial possessions of other nations led to several serious international disagreements in the years before the Great War. More than once it almost brought her into conflict with the government of the United States. An agreement ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson
... founded by a woman, and flourished under her rule. A Tyrian princess, Dido—or Elisa, as she is indiscriminately named in history—was in jeopardy from the tyranny and oppression of an unnatural brother, who, not content with what he had inherited from his father, had cast covetous eyes upon the immense possessions of his sister's husband, whose death he compassed. All the powers of mind which had hitherto lain dormant within her, being roused by the horrid act of her brother, Dido at once set about rescuing her treasure from his grasp, and her retainers from his unbridled ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... and held up the shining object, blades open, corkscrew curling attractively before the covetous eyes of the Shaman. When he could endure the temptation no longer his two black claws shot out, but Nicholas intercepted the much-envied object, while, as it seemed, he drove a more advantageous bargain. Terms finally settled, ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... you in the epistle not to associate with fornicators; [5:10] not altogether the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and rapacious, or idolaters, since then you would have to go out of the world. [5:11]But now I have written to you not to associate, if any one called a brother is a fornicator, or covetous, or an ...
— The New Testament • Various
... judgment of the conference that to have erected their barricades there would have been to expose the city's defenders to attack from the rear. And the mill district suffered comparatively little. It was the business portion of the city toward which they turned their covetous eyes, the great stores, the hotels and restaurants, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... those who would be so very devout that they would neither speak to them authoritatively nor admonish them with kindness to any effect. The Lord has caused us to see this example that we might know that these people are still covetous, and that almost all of them are attached to the world and to themselves—that is, they are worldly people, which shows the holiness of the spirit by which they are actuated! As regards Anna Salters, ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... tall fellow of yours," said Sir Peter, jerking up his chin with that peculiar motion common to the brief in stature, when they are covetous of elongation. "He looks military:—has he been in the army? Ay, I thought so; one of the King of Prussia's grenadiers, I suppose? Faith, I hear ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... public should be such as will at once stamp my character and respectability. On this account, therefore, I think that your Play would be more advantageous to me than to any other bookseller; and as 'I am not covetous of Gold,' I should hope that no trifling consideration will be allowed to prevent my having the honour of being Mr. Colman's publisher. You see, sir, that I am endeavouring to interest your feelings, both as a ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... at point of sword, To rise above their country: might their law: Decrees are forced from Senate and from Plebs: Consul and Tribune break the laws alike: Bought are the fasces, and the people sell For gain their favour: bribery's fatal curse Corrupts the annual contests of the Field. Then covetous usury rose, and interest Was greedier ever as the seasons came; Faith tottered; thousands ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... are ripening, the temperature may be allowed to rise to 90, with sun heat, and to decline to 60 at night. In the succession-houses thin the bunches, and do not be covetous to over-crop the Vines, as it is the cause of many bad effects. Stop laterals, and use the syringe ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... mass. Roger had never so much as conceived it possible that there could be wealth like this: it was a fairy-land of Mammon in his eyes: he stood gasping like a man enchanted; and in the contemplation of these little hills of gold—in their covetous longing contemplation, he forgot the noisy quarrel he had turned aside to see, and thirsted for that ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... yet she hearkens to and hears the mourning which the emperor makes, and the wailing with which the hall is full. And o'er all the city the folk wail who weep and say: "God! what a sorrow and a calamity has accursed death dealt us! Greedy death! Covetous death! Death is worse than any she-wolf, for death cannot be sated. Never couldst thou give a worse wound to the world. Death, what hast thou done? May God confound thee who hast extinguished all beauty. Thou hast slain the choicest creature and the fairest picture—if she ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael ardently looked forward to a comfortable ill-gotten revenue at the hands of the man, who—through a skilful manipulation of the German janitor of the Western Trading Company's office—had obtained the place of office boy, "with substantial ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... the awakening of mutual need. Then the feelings flow swift and strong and carry each toward the other. The impulse to possess, to annex, to have possession of the beloved, is a consuming hunger. It is a covetous grasping, a recognition that the other is indispensable. Out of this comes a union, and from then on, the two grow not only together, but also their common fellowship grows, becoming their way ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... all was the thought that if he did not capture Nellie now, he might do so later on, when he had separated from the spy. Ever since he had first seen the beautiful girl he had been covetous of making her his squaw. Indian fashion, he felt he could compel Nellie to choose him, even if he had to whip her ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... of Epernon. If he were dead, and the Queen so left that she could be made absolute regent during the Dauphin's minority, it was those adventurers who would become through her the true rulers of France, and so enrich themselves and gratify to the full their covetous ambitions. He saw clearly that his safety lay in opposing this coronation—already fixed for the 13th May—which Maria de' Medici was so insistent should take place before his departure for the wars. The matter so preyed upon his mind that last he ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... me. And now to be called "ignorant!" Just as though I could not reason, that is, draw inferences from premises, make deductions from facts. There is the great fact of slavery; it is "the sum of all villanies;" men holding their fellow-men in bondage for the sake of gain; the heart naturally covetous, oppressive, and cruel, where power is unlimited. As though the law of kindness could, in such circumstances, possibly prevail and mitigate the sorrows of the bondman! The direct influence of slavery is to debase, to make ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... possible from the rich mines in that neighbourhood. Carvajal was willing to communicate to Gonzalo a portion of the wealth he expected to acquire in that district, for defraying the expences of the war; but he proposed especially to enrich himself on this occasion, being exceedingly covetous, as has been already remarked. He accordingly went to La Plata, which submitted without resistance, and remained there for a considerable time amassing wealth, till obliged to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... the head, and I shall instantly fall at thy feet, transformed into an image of gold. From this take as much as thou shalt have occasion for; and every member that shall be separated from the image shall instantly be replaced by another of the same precious metal."[FN398] In the morning a covetous neighbour named Hajm visited the merchant, and soon after the apparition presented itself. Abd-el-Malik at once arose and after striking it several blows on the head with a stick, it fell down and was changed into an image of gold. He took what sufficed for the day's needs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the simplest books; the so-called classical ones. They should be amply provided with means of preparing their own playthings. The worst feature of our system are the playthings which imitate the luxury of grown people. By such objects the covetous impulse of the child for acquisition is increased, his own capacity for discovery and imagination limited, or rather, it would be limited if children with the sound instinct of preservation, did not happily smash the perfect playthings, which give them no creative opportunity, and themselves ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key |
