"Extortionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in secret at so much and such harsh tyranny. Farnese was acting in Piacenza as Tarquin of old had acted in his garden, slicing the tallest poppies from their stems. And soon to swell his treasury, which not even his plunder, brigandage, and extortionate confiscations could fill sufficiently to satisfy his greed, he set himself to look into the past lives of the nobles, and to promulgate laws that were retroactive, so that he was enabled to levy fresh fines and perpetrate fresh sequestrations in punishment of deeds ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... make the flesh of Christ was, according to Wycliffe, an impudent fraud, and their pretension to possess this power was only an excuse by which they enforced their claim to collect fees, and what amounted to extortionate taxes, from the people. [Footnote: Nowhere, perhaps, does Wycliffe express himself more strongly on this subject than in a little tract called The Wicket, written in English, which he issued for popular consumption about this time.] But, in the main, no dogma, however incomprehensible, ever ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... "kyrie" by instinct,—"I'm only an honest maid. Dion is terribly extortionate." She cast down her eyes, expecting instant succour from the susceptible seaman, but to her disgust she saw he was admiring only ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate taxation, and ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... death the world knows; and the joke was becoming a little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were victims of this plot—to die by the assassin's knife or waiting for the ransom that never came—is not a part of this record. It was becoming a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the {284} islanders, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's represented—and continued to represent through over half a century—rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... years old. When ambassador at the Byzantine court (1173) he was blinded by order of the emperor Manuel I, and revenge was probably one of the motives which took him again to the East. The Venetians, being asked to transport the crusaders, demanded an extortionate price; but as Venice was the only power possessing the necessary ships, a contract was made with her for the service in 1201. Immediately the Venetians, by a secret treaty with Egypt, for the sake of commercial privileges, betrayed the crusaders to the Moslems. Embarkation ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... found the alternative to lie between a statuette to be erected in the temple of the hero-god, or one of the odes of the learned Theban. Choosing the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article, and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed bargainer left, and was for some days decided in favor of the brazen image, which could be had at half the price. But reflecting that what Pindar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... who, in his turn, would create a subsidiary agency, until the land in many cases was "subset six deep."[5] The ultimate occupier and sole creator of agricultural wealth lived perpetually on the verge of starvation, beggared not only by extortionate rents, partly worked out in virtually forced labour, but by extortionate tithes paid to the alien Anglican Church, in addition to the scanty dues willingly contributed to the hunted priests of his own prescribed religion. His resident upper class—though we ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... no other "ladies" but flower girls, as she found them more profitable, charged them higher prices for accommodations, whether by the day or week, and as but few places would assume the risk of harboring the waifs, they were compelled to pay her extortionate rates. ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... he could humble the bond-woman and damn her offspring with impunity. Upheld by the law the Southerner sold his own daughter and sister into a life of shame. The pretty Negress and the woman of mixed blood brought extortionate prices in Southern markets. Northern sympathizers may talk of the New South, and the Southern orator may harp upon the shortcomings of the "inferior race," but on this line of thought and conduct, the Southern whites have not changed one whit. ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... Illinois law of 1873; but it soon discovered that no workable set of uniform rates could be made for the State because of the wide variation of conditions in the different sections. Rates and fares which would be just to the companies in the frontier regions of the State would be extortionate in the thickly populated areas. This difficulty could have been avoided by giving the commission power to establish varying schedules for different sections of the same road; but the anti-railroad sentiment was beginning to die down, and the Legislature of 1875, instead ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... protested, pointed out the fact that the United States had already paid the Bey heavy tribute, and asked when these extortionate demands were to end. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... variety. All was fish that came to his net. He was willing to advance on anything that had a marketable value, and which promised to yield him, I was about to say, a fair profit. But a fair profit was far from satisfying the old man. He demanded an extortionate profit from those whom ill-fortune drove to his ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr. |
