"Exorbitant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when they overflow, drown those grounds, and ruin those husbandmen, which, whilst they flowed calmly betwixt their banks, they fertilized and enriched; so our passions, when they grow exorbitant and unruly, destroy those virtues, to which they may be very serviceable whilst ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... the far limits of the northern ice-world to the sunny western slopes of the great American continent. It was at such a place as this, hemmed in amidst the foot-hills, that they established their factor and his handful of armed men; lonely sentries at the gates of the mountain world, to levy an exorbitant tax upon the harvest of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... over his prisoners to Peter, the prefect of Rome; who executed some, as notorious ringleaders, on the spot; and allowed others to ransom themselves at exorbitant rates. Indeed, that stern functionary would have put the whole of them to death, had not Adrian, in whose breast this unfortunate outbreak had produced the liveliest regret, interfered in their behalf, so that it was reluctantly resolved to set ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... Fact who abide there. If he is not the debtor of his comrade—and he protests the debt—he should be. But the rascal laps it all up, as a cat porridge, without so much as a wag of the tail for Thank-you. Such are the exorbitant overlords in mortal men, who pass for reputable persons, with a chief seat ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Oscar Vincent, rising, "I should like to ask the gentleman for how many he is speaking. He certainly is not speaking for me. I don't want the Society to be exclusive. There are not many who can afford to pay the exorbitant sums which he desires fixed for admission fee and for monthly assessments, and I for one am not willing to exclude any good fellow who desires to become one of us, but does not boast as heavy a purse as the gentleman ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... appealed to, and the ecclesiastical lawyers have a most delightful time of it. It all costs a great deal of money nowadays, and leading advocates on this side or that are actually so extortionate and exorbitant that they will not do anything for nothing, and insist on receiving the most exorbitant fees. So it was in the old days. The final court of appeal in all matters ecclesiastical was before the Pope at Rome or Avignon, and the proctors and doctors, and all ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... animalism. He loved beauty as much as they did, and there is an oriental splendour about all his work, albeit an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who "failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb—"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with such inscriptions on them—"The future ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... counsel and conversation to the end of my days, and would bind myself under penalties to be always enraptured by them; and, above all, that I would turn my back on all other women for ever for her sake. I did not object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never dreamt of any of these things; that unless the lady's character and ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... disinterested money-dealers with whom he usually negotiated his paper. He had pictures all over his "studios," which had been purchased in the same bargains. If he sold his goods at an enormous price, he paid for them at a rate almost equally exorbitant. There was not an article in his shop but came to him through his Israelite providers; and in the very front shop itself sat a gentleman who was the nominee of one of them, and who was called Mr. Mossrose. He was there ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... young gintlemen are two princes that are travelling in cog. In consideration of all of them having delicate appetites like mesilf, not forgetting the honor of their company, ye will be glad to make a reduction in your exorbitant rates, ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... well as Catholic Whiteboys. Lord Charlemont, the Protestant Irish statesman, denying this now well-ascertained fact, was nevertheless explicit enough about the cause of the disorders. "The real causes," he said, "were ... exorbitant rents, low wages, want of employment, farms of enormous extent let by their rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, by whom small portions of them were again let and relet to intermediate oppressors, and by them subdivided for five times their value among the wretched ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... I thought of adding a note to the analysis of each of the illustrious observer's memoirs, containing a detailed indication of the improvements or corrections that the progressive march of science has brought on. But in order to avoid an exorbitant length in this biography, I have been obliged to give up my project. In general I shall content myself with pointing out what belongs to Herschel, referring to my Treatise on Popular Astronomy for the historical ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... of trouble on this somewhat venturesome tour occurred at Taiyneu; when the bill was brought for their night's entertainment, they found it was most exorbitant. They saw they were likely to have trouble, so they sent on the carts with luggage and waited at this strange hostelry till they believed they had got well out of the way. Then they offered what they believed was a reasonable amount in payment of their bill. It was ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... is a little more careful in that direction. At least she does not openly demand tribute from prostitutes. She finds it much more profitable to go in for real estate, like Trinity Church, for instance, to rent out death traps at an exorbitant price to those who live ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... From him I was able to buy a quantity of farinha, which came in useful to us, although I had to pay an exorbitant price for it—L4 sterling for each 50 litres or thereabouts—that is to say, about 51/2 pecks in English measure. The price of farinha on the coast would be less than ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... patient man than Herr von Schalckenberg. The applicants proved to be, almost without exception, trades-unionists, out on strike because their employers had declined or had been unable to accede to the exorbitant demands of the workmen. These workmen had in many cases been idle for months; yet they now unhesitatingly refused employment, and refused it insolently too, because the wages offered by the professor, though fully equal to those paid by other employers, were less than they chose to consider ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Republica Jesuitica'), with the noble disregard of consequences so noticeable in most polemical writers, boldly alters this to a million dollars, his object being to prove that the Jesuits exacted exorbitant taxation from the neophytes. *6* The honey of the missions was celebrated, and the wax made by the small bee called 'Opemus', according to Charlevoix (livre v., p. 285), 'e/tait d'une blancheur qui n'avait rien de pareil, et ces neophytes ont consacre/ tout qu'ils en ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim; yet again I say if Society would or could admit it, the face of the world would be changed; discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended. To feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... purchase of forage and vegetables, etc., from farmers.[2] It took over the control of the railways. When, owing to panic, there was a rush for the purchase of food-stuffs, which was used to force up prices unduly, the Government intervened to prevent exorbitant charges. Particularly interesting is the action of the State regarding sugar, two-thirds of our supply of which comes from Germany and Austria. In the days immediately following the declaration of war wholesale ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... understand you, Sir. [Gives Money.] The Fees here are so many, and so exorbitant, that few Fortunes can bear the Expence of getting off handsomly, or of dying ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... taste of the stage goddess; and there are instances on record of whole operas having been composed in vain because she did not happen to be pleased with them, and refused to sing. This evil period we have happily out-grown, but an equally great nuisance remains. The exorbitant prices still demanded by the "stars" are out of all proportion to their deserts, and show that even if the composers are their slaves no longer, the spectators and managers still are so. In Paris and elsewhere it is often found impossible ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... long, mother, as you imagine," replied Alla ad Deen: "the sultan is mistaken, if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected greater difficulties, and that he would have set a higher price upon her incomparable charms. I am very well pleased; his demand is but a trifle to what I could have done for her. But while I think of satisfying his ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... denier, took only 1 per 100, and on the mutations of real-estate. This mutation tax is the only one rendered worse; it was immediately aggravated by the Constituent Assembly, and it is rendered all the more exorbitant on successions in which liabilities are not deducted from assets. (That is to say, the inheritor of an indebted estate in France must pay a mutation tax on its full value. He has the privilege, however, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Lord Upperton continued, "who goes in rather strong. He makes grand speeches in the Commons; but almost always gets fleeced at Almack's. The Jews, who are usually on hand in one of the outside rooms with their shekels, waiting to lend money, charge exorbitant interest. Charley calls it the Jerusalem Chamber. Sometimes he gets completely cleaned out, and has to borrow a guinea to pay the waiter who brings him his brandy. One night at the beginning he won eight thousand pounds, but before morning lost ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... reality, amounted to the same thing, for it was not possible for the king to prolong his refusal indefinitely, and the veto, though absolute, would only have been suspensive. But this faculty, bestowed on a single man, of checking the will of the people, appeared exorbitant, especially out of the assembly, where it ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... eat it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink. I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of one kind and another, like tomatters ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... villages we had passed through were deserted, and in some places the water was stinking. We looked back upon Sinde as a paradise compared to the country we were now in. All the little grain that was supplied to the bazaars by the commissariat was sold at the most exorbitant price, yet we were obliged to buy it, and as much as we could get of it too, and lucky we thought ourselves to get any of it, even at this rate, at times, in order to feed our horses and camels, which were beginning to knock up terribly. We could not now, as we used to do in Sinde, ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... to be, Bates called as early as possible and offered to direct a suit against the corporation for damages at half the usual price—that is, as Bill Stone once put it, the widow got half and Bates half, which nobody seemed to think exorbitant, because it cost a lawyer a good deal to get his education, and court convened but twice a year. He was among the first to call on Westerfelt that morning, and with a mysterious nod and crooking ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... amount Mrs. Dinneford had contributed from her private fortune the sum of twenty thousand dollars. Not until she had furnished him with that large amount would he consent to leave the city. He magnified her danger, and so overcame her with terrors that she yielded to his exorbitant demand. ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... was no room to doubt his sincerity. I told him I once thought myself a kind of monarch in my old station, of which I had given him an account; but that I thought he was not only a monarch, but a great conqueror; for he that had got a victory over his own exorbitant desires, and the absolute dominion over himself, he whose reason entirely governs his will, is certainly greater than he that ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... As Jim had said, there was some blamed thing going on. And for certain here were these two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided, both sharp-set to keep the wreck from us, and that at an exorbitant figure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... huts and hovels, the dwellings of 'cockatooers,' who are not, as it might seem, a species of bird, but human beings; who rent portions of this forest . . . on exorbitant terms . . . and vainly endeavour to exist on what they can earn besides, their frequent compulsory abstinence from meat, when they cannot afford to buy it, even in their land of cheap and abundant food, giving them some affinity to the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... are used by lumbermen. Their owner was a compound of Caucasian, African, and Indian, with the shrewdness of the white, the good temper of the negro, and the indolence of the red man. He was at first exorbitant in his demands; but a little money, some tobacco, and a spare fowling-piece made him happy, and he was ready to let us drive his beasts to the end of the peninsula. It required some skill to mount the boat securely on the wheels and to guard against any upsets or collisions, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... character seven hundred and thirty-five several times. These glorious achievements were carefully recorded in the public acts of the empire; and that he might omit no circumstance of infamy, he received from the common fund of gladiators a stipend so exorbitant that it became a new and most ignominious tax upon the Roman people. [38] It may be easily supposed, that in these engagements the master of the world was always successful; in the amphitheatre, his victories were not often sanguinary; but ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... indeed, at that time a French captain named La Roue, who played high stakes, up to six thousand crowns, which was then deemed exorbitant. This intrepid gamester proposed a bet of twenty thousand crowns against one of ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... so highly praised for common honesty I am of course led to suppose that dishonesty in his particular trade is the common rule. The body of English landlords must be exorbitant tyrants when one among them is so highly eulogised for taking no more than his own." Luckily at that moment dinner was announced, and the exceptional character of the Duke of Mayfair was ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... as long as you are mistrustful of"—with its implied appeal to her generous confidence, precipitated the visit. How could she be mistrustful? Of course he may come: but the wish to do so was unwisely exorbitant. On the afternoon of May 20th, 1845, Browning first set eyes on his future wife, a little figure, which did not rise from the sofa, pale ringleted face, great eager, wistfully pathetic eyes. He believed that she was suffering ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... conscientious discharge of official duty; and he, when he lays his head upon his respectable pillow any time after 1 a.m., may surely go to sleep in the comfortable consciousness that he has done a fair day's work for a not exorbitant remuneration. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... sense, the opposite views are true" (Eth. Nic., ix, c. viii. Sec. 3). What do you mean by "usury"? (C) Do you comprehend under it any payment of money as interest for the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding interest, such as the money-lender, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... author as he has least studied, and forget to discharge even the dull duty of an editor. In this project let him lend the bookseller his name (for a competent sum of money) to promote the credit of an exorbitant subscription.' Gentle reader, be pleased to cast thine eye on the proposal below quoted, and on what follows (some months after the former assertion) in the same journalist of June 8. 'The bookseller proposed the book by subscription, and raised some thousands of pounds for the same: I believe ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... a return for her hospitality, which at first she pretended to refuse; but we soon discovered her treachery, as she insisted on our paying two ducats as a ransom for each of our horses. We expressed our astonishment at this rapacity, and endeavoured to represent our inability to comply with such exorbitant demands, but all to no purpose, and we were forced to comply, being afraid that she might even have plundered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... a rare book dealer in York City, and for an exorbitant fifty credits purchased a fifth-edition copy of An Investigation into the Possibility of Faster-than-Light Space Travel, by James H. Cavour. He had left his copy of the work aboard the Valhalla, along with the few personal possessions ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... know, he'll make exorbitant demands, But here your part of me will come in play; The Italian soul shall teach me how to sooth: Even Jove must flatter with an empty hand, 'Tis time to thunder, when ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... Episcopal Church. Absalom Jones, a much respected colored man, was his colleague. In 1793, when the yellow fever was raging, it was extremely difficult to procure attendants for the sick on any terms; and the few who would consent to render service, demanded exorbitant prices. But Bishop Allen and Rev. Mr. Jones never hesitated to go wherever they could be useful; and with them, the compensation was always a secondary consideration. When the pestilence had abated, the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... latest method, an official taster having been formerly employed, but owing to the exorbitant rate of insurance on such officers and the rapid decimation of the royal retinue, that plan was recently abandoned. After finishing his repast the Czar receives the morning papers, previously disinfected, and after reading the news, sentences a few nihilists to death ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. He knew that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... there's not much to learn—the great point as I take it is to be exorbitant enough in your ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... called attention to the fact that California, in spite of her vast wealth, was peopled, for the most part, with people desperately poor; and that ground in the vicinity of any city, town or place of enterprise was held at so exorbitant a figure that the poor were actually enslaved by the men who owned the land. That is to say, the men who owned the land controlled the people who had to live on it, for man is a land animal, and can not live apart from land, any more ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... no windows in its canvas walls, and its solitary chimney was an erection of corrugated iron, surmounted by a tin chimney-pot. "The Golden Reef," where spirituous liquors were to be had at exorbitant prices, was of a more palatial character, as it had a front of painted wood, in which there hung a real door furnished with a lock, though the sides of the building were formed of rough logs, taken in their natural state from the "bush." The ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... doors of the great Library. His Oriental researches, as we know, were speedily abandoned, but the rooms in Great Russell Street still kept their tenant. They were far from an ideal abode, indifferently furnished, with draughty doors and smoky chimneys, and the rent was exorbitant; the landlady, who speedily gauged her lodger's character, had already made a small competency out of him. Even during long absences abroad Egremont retained the domicile; at each return he said ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... when the expenditures of his department had been very great, and the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture called on him to ascertain how he had used up so much money, Sir Isaac spluttered and talked learnedly, and at last concluded by saying: "Yes, sir; the expenses have been very great, exorbitant; indeed, sir, they have exceeded my most sanguine expectations." The Chairman was not satisfied. Looking over Sir Isaac's estimate for the year, it was found he had made requisition for five thousand dollars to purchase two hydraulic rams. "Them, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Triumphati, cap. 9. both urgeth and answers), besides the covetousness, imposture, and knavery of priests, quae faciunt (as [6639]Postellus observes) ut rebus sacris minus faciant fidem; and those religions some of them so fantastical, exorbitant, so violently maintained with equal constancy and assurance; whence they infer, that if there be so many religious sects, and denied by the rest, why may they not be all false? or why should this or that be preferred ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... de Paris." By 1824 the fame of the establishment had begun to wane and in 1826 it expired, though the "Almanach des Gourmands" of the latter year said that the proprietor was the Very of limonadiers, that his ices were superb, his salons magnificent—and his prices exorbitant. Perhaps it was ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... costly, precious; worth a Jew's eye^, dear bought. at a premium. not to be had, not to be had for love or money; beyond price, above price, priceless, of priceless value. [priced in excess of value] unreasonable, extravagant, exorbitant, extortionate; overpriced, more than it's woth. Adv. dear, dearly; at great cost, heavy cost; a grands frais [Fr.]. Phr. prices looking up; le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle [Fr.]; le cout en ote le gout [Fr.]; vel prece ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the squadron anchored yesterday afternoon. We are completing the water with all expedition, but I am disappointed that there is no wine to be had but at a very high price. We are supplied with bullocks and other articles the same as at Syracuse; and, as at that place, the people are exorbitant in their demands. Every possible attention has been shown by the governor. I paid him a visit of ceremony this morning with the other captains of the squadron. He appears a man ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... the spirit of their chieftains intimidated, by the predominating influence of the Marquis of Argyle, upon whom the confidence of the Convention of Estates was reposed with the utmost security; and whose power in the Highlands, already exorbitant, had been still farther increased by concessions extorted from the King at the last pacification. It was indeed well known that Argyle was a man rather of political enterprise than personal courage, and better calculated to manage an intrigue of state, than to control ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... us apply this: the officers, after considerable hardships, have all procured quarters comfortable and satisfactory to them. In order to do this, they were obliged, in many instances, to hire houses for a year certain, and at such exorbitant rents, as were sufficient to tempt independent owners to go out of them, and shift as they could. These houses, in most cases, were much out of repair. They have repaired them at a considerable expense. One of the general officers has taken a place ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... retail dealers;" and the centralization of power over this important portion to the trade is, we are told,[2] defended in the columns of the "Times," as "tending to bring down the price of school-books; for booksellers who possess copyrights, now sell their books at exorbitant prices, and, by underselling them, the commissioners will be able to beat them." Judging from this, it would seem almost necessary, if this treaty is to be ratified, that there should be added some provision authorizing ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... Dolorosa to come into her room. It was a queer fancy in one so devoted to paintings as she is. I have been wishing ever since she got it to buy a pendant for it. I found a splendid 'Niobe in Tears'—paid an exorbitant price for it—brought it home, thinking Helen would be charmed, but she banished it to the library. Then I purchased a 'Hecate'—a wonderfully beautiful thing, but that was also condemned, and sent into banishment. Was it not ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... and had welcomed with tremulous gratitude the rare opportunities that had come in her way of receiving any, had suddenly realised that it might not be sinful to buy them. The joy that she had in the handful bought from a street vendor was cheap, after all, at the price that might have seemed exorbitant if it had been ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's feelings ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... among them the New Idea. The "missionary" would advertise a "free cure," if people would send to him. The "cure" would be in the form of a prescription. There being no drugs in any drugstore bearing the names given in the prescription, the dupe was expected to pay an exorbitant price for them to the philanthropic "missionary." In one case of this kind the "medicinal plants brought from South America, the only place where they grew," were upon examination by chemists of the New Idea found ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... is produced in the Goanese but we must go south to find the "Bilad al-Filfil" (home of pepper) i.e. Malabar. The exorbitant prices demanded by Venice for this spice led directly to the discovery of The Cape route by the Portuguese; as the "Grains of Paradise" (Amomum Granum Paradisi) induced the English to explore the West ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... as in England; firewood, or rather sticks, are brought on donkeys from a distance of two and three days' journey within the Cordillera; and pasturage for animals is a shilling a day: all this for South America is wonderfully exorbitant. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... to pay his former advances, with a copious interest thereon. The needy expectant was loath to furnish him with another supply, though in the end he was prevailed on to borrow from his friends, at an exorbitant ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Giffard was falling into decay. Miladi had sent to France early in the season for many new stuffs and trinkets, and the settlement of some affairs, instead of turning all over to Destournier. The goods had come at an exorbitant price, but there had been a great tangle in money matters, and at his death his concessions had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... have taken rooms at Rochester, running back and forth each day in the machine,—though Rochester was by no means beyond the zone of exorbitant charges. Notions of value become very much congested within a radius of two or three hundred miles ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... but of course you will report them on your arrival; and can give them one of the boats, to land across the bay, if they are not wanted. If the governor wants to buy the cargo for the garrison, let him have it, at once. Don't stand out for exorbitant terms, but take a fair price. It is just as well to be on good terms with the authorities. We might have to put in to refit, and want spars, etc., from the naval yard. If the governor doesn't want the cargo, don't sell ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... see his friend Azzo Correggio, and soon after his arrival he was witness to a revolution in that city of which Azzo had the principal direction. The Scalas, who held the sovereignty of Parma, had for some time oppressed the inhabitants with exorbitant taxes, which excited murmurs and seditions. The Correggios, to whom the city was entrusted in the absence of Mastino della Scala, profited by the public discontent, hoisted the flag of liberty, and, on the 22nd of May, 1341, drove out the garrison, and made themselves ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... placed by the queen in this emergency upon the counsels of Leicester encouraged the insatiable favorite to grasp at honor and authority still more exorbitant; and he ventured to urge her majesty to invest him with the office of her lieutenant in England and Ireland; a dignity paramount to all other commands. She had the weakness to comply; and it is said that the patent was actually drawn out, when the defeat of ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... his horses; they were the only ones he had. He was without the means to purchase another team, and without horses he could not gather his harvest. He was therefore forced to mortgage his land for enough to buy another pair of horses. The money-lender demanded large interest on the loan and an exorbitant bonus besides; and as the 'bankers,' as they called themselves, had an organization, he could not get the money at a lower rate anywhere in that vicinity. It was the old story. The crops failed sometimes, and when they did not fail the combinations and trusts of one sort or another swept away ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... though the place at which they remained had but few attractions. It was another forest hut inhabited by an old Spanish couple who were by no means willing to give them room, although they paid for their accommodation at exorbitant rates. It is one singularity of places strange and out of the way like such forest tracks as these, that money in small sums is hardly valued. Dollars there were not appreciated as sixpences are in this rich country. But there they stayed ...
— Returning Home • Anthony Trollope
... exorbitant for a g-gypsey's fiddle! You could buy a d-dozen other instruments for that, just as ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... Grimm and Edgar Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? "Es-tu fou d'en douter?" cried Edgar. "What a sublime occasion ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... An exorbitant jealousy of miracle, revelation, and ultimate moral distinctions has been imported from evolutionary science into religious thought. And it has been a damaging influence, because it has taken men's attention from facts, ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... games and lotteries; (12) by usury; (13) by farm rent, house rent, and leases of all kinds; (14) by commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his legitimate salary; (15) by making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages."[273] "What is property? It is robbery."[274] "Property, after having robbed the labourer by usury, murders him slowly by starvation."[275] Practically the identical doctrines are propounded by British Socialists. Further instances of the resemblance ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... at this time sorely pressed for ready money. He was buying one piece of land after another, usually at exorbitant prices, and having already increased the estate of Abbotsford from 150 to nearly 1,000 acres, he was in communication with Mr. Edward Blore as to the erection of a dwelling adjacent to the cottage, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... his habits, and thus involved in debt, he was disaffected because the mission could not accede to exorbitant demands, and relieve him from pecuniary embarrassments. So he went abroad to collect money for this purpose, and made his way to England, where he succeeded in interesting several of the dignitaries of the Established Church. Returning ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... very satisfactory communication from Lord Stanley, by the last packet, entirely approving of the "dignified and temperate" conduct of the Governor, and assuring him of the strenuous support of Her Majesty's Government, in resisting the "unreasonable and exorbitant pretensions of the late Cabinet." Shall we see you again before we move to Montreal? Sir Charles goes to the Falls, and then returns to Kingston, which he leaves on the ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... accommodation there, but even to obtain his liberty from him if he thought it necessary to desire it: but, alas! he was deceived; his old friend knew him no longer, and refused to see him, and the lieutenant-governor insisted on as high garnish for fetters, and as exorbitant a price for lodging, as if he had had a fine gentleman in custody for murder, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... very serious matter. Even if the peasants could obtain money at five or six per cent., the position of the debtors would be bad enough, but it is in reality much worse, for the village usurers consider twenty or twenty-five per cent. a by no means exorbitant rate of interest. A laudable attempt has been made to remedy this state of things by village banks, but these have proved successful only in certain exceptional localities. As a rule the peasant who contracts debts has a hard struggle to pay the interest in ordinary times, ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... consent of parliament, and quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor" (Amos 4:1; 5:11-12; 2:6-7). Micah describes the strong and crafty crowding the peasant from his ancestral holding and the mother from her home by the devices always used for such ends, exorbitant interest on loans, foreclosure in times of distress, "seeing the judge" before the trial, and hardness of heart toward broken life and happiness (Micah 2:1-2; 2:9; 3:1-2). We cannot belittle the moral insight of that unique succession of men. Their spiritual force is still ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... wished to have them in my palace and in the compass of my hand; for none of the Kings owneth the like of them; so I asked the old woman their price and she answered, 'I will not sell them but for the tribute of Damascus.' And I, by Allah, did not hold this price exorbitant, indeed it is but little, for each one of them is worth the whole valuation. So I agreed to that and took them into my palace, and they remain in my possession. Wherefore do thou forward the tribute to us that the woman may return to her own country; and send to us the damsel to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and musty depths of the ship. A few second-class male passengers shared these delectable quarters with the sailors, and the Francis Cadman had secured a complement of first-class patrons willing to pay exorbitant prices for the dubious comforts and plain fare of the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... However, after exorbitant compensation had been made, and Molly had given in return "a bit of her mind," she left for the Irish colony of San Patricio, and Manuel immediately sought his favorite monte table. When he had doubled his money, he ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... idiocy as they went on. Nothing short of a pig-sty could match the filth, but it is only in that class of cars that you see anything of the vast number of poor farmers and laborers. If they can not pay exorbitant rates, refined, educated men and women are thrust into pens and seated face to face with the smoking, drinking, carousing rabble. I have everywhere protested against this outrage and urged the women to demand that the railway companies should ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... settlement could depend, found a readier avenue to wealth and a more tempting sphere for the exercise of manly qualities in the attractions of a campaign that seemed to promise plunder and glory, especially when these prizes were accompanied by no exorbitant amount of suffering or toil. Thus when it had become known that Scipio Africanus would accompany his brother in the expedition against Antiochus, five thousand veterans, both citizens and allies, who had served their full time under the command of the former, offered their voluntary services to ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... up the river are exorbitant of course, as they can only be brought up in canoes requiring long "portages." Here's the tariff at Sailor's Bar and other Bars:—"Flour, 100 dollars a-barrel, worth in San Francisco 11 to 12 dollars; molasses, 6 dollars a-gallon; pork, 1 dollar per pound; ham, 1 ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... commendation which Persius gave him; where by vitium he means those little vices which we call follies, the defects of human understanding, or at most the peccadilloes of life, rather than the tragical vices to which men are hurried by their unruly passions and exorbitant desires. But in the word omne, which is universal, he concludes with me that the divine wit of Horace left nothing untouched; that he entered into the inmost recesses of nature; found out the imperfections even of the most wise and grave, as well as of the common people; discovering even in the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... abstractions; never darting its thoughts beyond that nature with which it is in perpetual battle; seeing only that which is, enjoying only that which it can possess, making its happiness consist in the tranquil ease and honest sensuality of a life without violent passions or exorbitant desires;—such a people must have tranquillity also in their art, they must love an art that pleases without startling the mind, which addresses the senses rather than the spirit; an art full of repose, precision, and delicacy, though material ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... generous supply of salt, had not yet yielded to the treatment. Indeed, according to the best reports, the malady had spread. How serious the insurrection was, appears from the frequency of the monarch's exhortations. All through the winter he was writing to the people, condoling with them for the exorbitant price of food, and attributing all their evils to the continuance of wars in Europe. The Cabinet also addressed the Dalesmen, urging them not to ally themselves with Sunnanvaeder, who was disgruntled, so they heard, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... announced that the cloth could not be purchased; for, while the dispute about the colors of the uniform had been going on, the greedy merchants had advanced the price of all cloths to such an exorbitant figure that the government could n't ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... he had been forty years in America. He will be remembered by those who have read "Paul the Peddler." Though nearly as poverty-stricken in appearance as his poorest customers, the old man was rich, if reports were true. His business was a very profitable one, allowing the most exorbitant rates of interest, and, being a miser, he spent almost nothing on himself, so that his hoards had ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the living Sir Charles Dilke was the President of the Local Government Board, no one cared how the poor lived or fared. They could reside in the most ramshackle tenements in insanitary slums, for which, by the way, they were charged exorbitant rents, far higher than what they would now pay for the well-ventilated and well-equipped self-contained houses of the London County Council and building companies which provide accommodation for the industrial classes. Sir ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... dangerous possession unless carefully watched, that no wine was complete without a large bowl of milk punch. Ward had been told this by Spinney, who took what he called a fatherly interest in St. Cuthbert's, though it must be an exorbitant kind of interest which makes a man recommend a lot of freshers, or anybody else, to mix punch with champagne and port. Spinney had also provided a terrific amount of fruit and other things, and if Collier's room ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... All hast thou spoken as my thoughts are, all As my eternal purpose hath decreed; Man shall not quite be lost, but sav'd who will; Yet not of will in him, but grace in me Freely vouchsaf'd; once more I will renew His lapsed powers, though forfeit; and enthrall'd By sin to foul exorbitant desires; Upheld by me, yet once more he shall stand On even ground against his mortal foe; By me upheld, that he may know how frail His fallen condition is, and to me owe All his deliverance, and to none but me. Some I have ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... herself to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have done), and feels 'what she supposes a farthing candle would experience when the sun rises in all its glory.' Then comes the Publisher's bill for 59 pounds; she is quite shocked at the bill, which is really exorbitant! In her next letter Miss Mitford reminds her father that the taxes are still unpaid, and a correspondence follows with somebody asking for a choice of the Doctor's pictures in payment for the taxes. The Doctor is in London all the time, dining out and generally amusing himself. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Sally, "you'll have to take me to live with you; that creature sha'n't have you all to himself. I hate men, they are so exorbitant,—they spoil all our playmates; and what shall I do when you ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... world, Bertie was astray; and perhaps God has kept her alive, intending she should fulfil her mission years hence, by bringing him out of the snares of temptation, back into the fold of Christ's redeemed. Five years of penal servitude to ransom his soul; was the price exorbitant? ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been enrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered livery-men as interlopers on their rights and privileges. All without distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... not seem to us so very criminal as we read them today; the privilege of electing their own pastors, the abolition of villeinage, the right to hunt and fish and cut wood in the forest, the reduction of exorbitant rents, extra payment for extra labor, and—that universal cry of peasant communes whether in Russia, England, Mexico or sixteenth century Germany—the restoration to the village of lands taken by fraud. But Luther would hear nothing of slaves asserting their own rights, and took ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... with a lurking smile, 'I ever give a thought to another, you may well spare it, for those fancies are here and gone like a flash of lightning, while my love for you burns on steadily, and for ever, like the sun. You little exorbitant ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... and you may suppose that Emilie Schomberg did not lead an idle life. For remuneration she fared, as alas teachers do fare, but ill. The sum which many a gentleman freely gives to his butler or valet, is thought exorbitant, nay, is rarely given to a governess, and Emilie, as a daily governess, ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... temper not only to keep silence myself, but enjoined it to the person with me; who would have been very glad to have shewn his great skill in sousing upon that occasion. She endeavoured to sweeten him by very exorbitant praises of his person, which might even have been mistaken for making love from a woman of less celebrated virtue; and concluded her oration with pious warnings to him, to avoid the conversation of one so unworthy his regard as ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... and political emancipation of woman, and has stood from the first a tower of strength in this cause, giving largely of her wealth for the propagation of its doctrines. Mrs. Knox Goodrich has for many years paid her taxes, sometimes exorbitant, under protest, and at important elections has also offered her vote, to have it refused. The county suffrage society has had an untiring leader in Mrs. Goodrich, and on all occasions she has nerved the weak and encouraged the timid by her example of unflinching devotion. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... manager, she was complimented with a regallo of six hundred more from the Maccaroni Club. 'E molto particulare,' said Cocchi, the Composer; 'ma quei Inglesi non fanno conto d'alcuna cosa se non ben pagata:' It is very extraordinary that the English set no value upon any thing but what they pay an exorbitant price for."-E. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... almost cold attitude. The introduction was duly effected, and for the next half-hour Rainham devoted himself heroically to the mental and physical entertainment (he was not obliged to do much talking) of the American lady, who hailed from the Far West, and lectured him volubly, with an exorbitant accent and a monotony of delivery, which began to tell on his nerves to an alarming degree, on her impressions of Europe, and especially England; the immense superiority of gas as a cooking and heating agent; the phenomenal attainments of her children; ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... me out of the use and comforts of the house to a late period, and because the furniture and everything else would require to be accordant therewith, besides making me pay an extravagant price, perhaps to accommodate the alterations to the taste of another or to the exorbitant ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... not so easy to hire a boat as I had been led to expect. The large crowd had made the boatmen somewhat exorbitant in their demands, and there were several reasons why I should engage one for my own exclusive use, instead of sharing one with some of my travelling companions. In the first place, my luggage was somewhat bulky; and, in the second place, my experience of travel had not failed to teach ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... name, was a long box shaped like an old-fashioned piano case, which had nothing to do with Colonel Snow's enterprises. Despite the fact that it weighed more than half a ton, the boys had clubbed together to pay the rather exorbitant freight charges upon it. Superfluous as it appeared at one time to the Colonel, it was destined to play an important part in the Scouts' adventures in the land ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... who fired so incessantly on the besieged, that they thought (the trench being practicable) they were going to make their attacks, immediately beat a chamade, and were willing to give up the town upon reasonable terms: but the Mareschal's demands were so exorbitant, that the Governor could not agree to them. Then firing began on both sides to be very hot; and they in the town, seeing how the grenadiers lay, killed eight of them. When the Governor surrendered the town, he inquired of the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... way towards accounting for the deficiency complained of? wants of breakfast, wants of dinner, wants of something good for tea, wants of towels, wants of candles, wants of ice, or, at least, of the cooling jars used in the country. Charges exorbitant,—the same as in Havana, where rents are an ounce a week, and upwards; volantes difficult,—Mrs. L. having made an agreement with the one livery-stable that they shall always be furnished at most unreasonable prices, of which she, supposably, pockets half. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... was obliged either to take up arms, or to procure a substitute, or to purchase his exemption by the payment of a heavy fine. The sum of forty-two pieces of gold, to which it was reduced, ascertains the exorbitant price of volunteers, and the reluctance with which the government admitted of this alterative. Such was the horror for the profession of a soldier, which had affected the minds of the degenerate Romans, that many of the youth of Italy and the provinces chose to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Bruttii, which Ulysses the destroyer of Troy is believed to have founded, is said to be unreasonably vexed by the exorbitant demands of purveyors[847]. These injuries grieve us all the more on account of our patriotic love ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... was also to stop at Timur and several other settlements before he returned to Batavia: at the same time, he offered the vessel for sale, or to lett her on freight; but as he conjectured that the colony wanted such a vessel, his demands were exorbitant. He first valued her at sixty thousand rix-dollars, and before he was ready to sail, he offered her for two and thirty thousand rix-dollars. If she was hired, he talked of eleven pounds sterling per month; but no attention ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... laid under Charity's eyes a summons and complaint against Peter Cheever. She glanced over it and found it true except that Zada L'Etoile was not named; Cheever's alleged income was vastly larger than she imagined, and her claim for alimony was exorbitant. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... my father is a very wealthy man at home and that I do come of very good family. But, Hegio, I beseech you, don't let my wealth make your demands too exorbitant: for my father, even though I am his only son, might feel that it was better for me to remain your slave, well fed and clothed at your expense, than to come to beggary there at home where it would disgrace ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... from the vulgar, and made manifest only unto the wise; I herein imitating the examples of many wise philosophers who had done the like. Having found, sir, that the great city of London should be sadly afflicted with a great plague, and not long after with an exorbitant fire, I framed these two hieroglyphics, as represented in the book, which in effect have proved very true.' 'Did you foresee the year?' said one. 'I did not,' said Lilly; 'nor was desirous; of that I made no scrutiny. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... sardar sarcastically; "you have been the ruin of us all. Look you, Chandra Babu, we are all Khataks (customers) of yours whom you have fleeced by levying exorbitant interest on loans and falsifying our accounts. It's no use going to law for our rights; you are hand in glove with the civil court amla (clerks) and peons (menials) and can get them to do whatever you wish. So we have determined to take the law into ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... met with other sentiments from the townsmen. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, foresaw this; he distributed among the public, instead of the original bull, a species of resume in which he had assembled, in a few lines, in the crudest terms, the most exorbitant pretensions of Boniface, at the same time suppressing everything which touched on the troubles of the nation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... at the very time when he engaged the Company in a contract for engrossing the whole of the opium produced in Bengal and Bahar in the ensuing four years on terms of such exorbitant profit to the contractor, affirmed, that "there was little prospect of selling the opium in Bengal at a reasonable price, and that it was but natural to suppose that the price of opium would fall, from the demand being lessened"; that in a letter dated the 5th ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the wilderness! In a recent work, we have had to speak of this tribe of Indians from the experience of other traders who had casually been among them, and who represented them as selfish, inhospitable, exorbitant in their dealings, and much addicted to thieving; Captain Bonneville, on the contrary, who resided much among them, and had repeated opportunities of ascertaining their real character, invariably speaks of them ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving |
