"Usurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... advantage to the West, if conditions were right, is too manifest to need explanation. But sometimes the over-optimistic farmer borrowed too heavily; sometimes the rates demanded of the needy westerners were usurious; often it seemed as if interest charges were like "a mammoth sponge," constantly absorbing the labor of the husbandman. The demand of the West for a greater currency supply has already been seen, for it appeared in the platforms of minor parties immediately after ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... if you could have seen, as I saw, this joyous gathering of persons who had drawn in their commercial claws, and were speculating only on the pleasures of life, you would have found no cause to hate usurious discounts, or to curse bankruptcies. Mankind can't always be doing evil. Even in the society of pirates one might find a few sweet hours during which we could fancy their sinister craft a pleasure-boat rocking ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... robber baron, reining up his pony. "Hans and Jorgan, is your captive safe? Good. Bring him forth." He turned to his invisible band. "To your quarters, varlets! I would confer alone with the usurious"—he rolled the satisfying word finely ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... to make sure that it was genuine, stout, and well-founded. Mrs Hamps followed, the fripperies of her elegant bonnet trembling, and her black gown rustling. Edwin smiled at her, and she returned his smile with usurious interest. There was now a mist of grey ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have no necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable.—He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... have been impossible for Secretary Cobb to stab the national credit. He would have been dealing constantly with a surplus instead of a deficit, and could not have put the nation to shame by forcing it to hawk its paper in the money markets at the usurious rate of one per cent. a month. One of the wisest financiers in the United States has expressed the belief that two hundred millions of coin, which might easily have been saved to the country by a protective tariff between 1850 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... with the most developed industry. A moderate rate of interest is now everywhere permitted; but in all but a few communities the rate that can be collected is limited by law, and penalties more or less severe are imposed upon the usurious lender. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... overtake us in passing along; And public misfortunes, in all their variety, Need not be told in a holyday song. The troubles of Wall-street, I'm sure that you all meet, And they're not at all sweet—but look at their pranks: Usurious cravings, and discounts and shavings, With maniac ravings and Lombardy banks. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... or had been prevented from making any gain, through not having his money, he might charge something for its use. In time people began to distinguish between interest moderate in amount and an excessive charge for the use of money. The latter alone was henceforth prohibited as usurious. Most modern states still have usury laws which fix ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... summoned the usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo hand on a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled forth three white hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to the usurious Jews as to the noble gentleman himself, that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... precision, declares in the tribune that, "commerce is usurious, monarchical and anti-revolutionary."[41136] Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts; it seems a corrupting, incivique, anti-fraternal institution, many Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and attribute it wholly to the State, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... called a matter of counsel in comparison with the maxims of the Pharisees, who deemed some kinds of usury to be lawful, just as love of one's enemies is a matter of counsel. Or again, He speaks here not of the hope of usurious gain, but of the hope which is put in man. For we ought not to lend or do any good deed through hope in man, but only through ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... must bow to him. And woe betide The Wine-bibber,—the Roisterer by night; Him the feast-master, many bouts defied, Him 'twixt the pledging and the cup shall smite; Woe to the Lender at usurious rate, The hard Rich Man, the hireling Advocate; Woe to the Judge that selleth right for pay; Woe to the Thief that like a beast of prey With creeping tread the traveller harryeth:— These, in their sin, the sudden sword shall slay ... ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... from seed-time to harvest. This important function of lending money to pay for labor and thus secure a larger crop, which has only recently been assumed by the Government in its establishment of farm loan banks, had been performed by private capitalists who asked usurious rates of interest. The farmers' protests against these rates had been loud; and now, when they found themselves unable to get loans at any rate whatever, their complaints naturally increased. Looking around for one cause to which to attribute all their misfortunes, they pitched ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... public-house on the outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified themselves as bona fide travellers. But his fellow-travellers had never consented to overlook his origin. He had begun life as an obscure financier by lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious interest. Later on he had become the partner of a very fat, short gentleman, Mr. Goldberg, in the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had never embraced more than the Jewish ethical code, his fellow-Catholics, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... different liquors that were spread upon the table near them. In spite of his best efforts to throw aside such thoughts, Howel could see nothing all that night but the gold, the father who had won it, and the poor wretches who had been ruined in paying usurious interest for it. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... debts hampered him; bankruptcy followed; and he fled from city to city, falling daily into lower practice. It is to be considered that he had been taught, and had learned as a delightful duty, a kind of business whose highest merit is to escape the commentaries of the bench: that of the usurious lawyer in a county town. With this training, he was now shot, a penniless stranger, into the deeper gulfs of cities; and the result is scarce a thing to be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heard less of the shrewd schemes which are devised for fleecing poor Jack, and applied by every one with whom he comes in contact, from the prosperous owner who pays him off in orders that can only be conveniently cashed at some outfitter's, who charges usurious rates for the accommodation, down to the tawdry drab who collects advance money on account of half a dozen sailor husbands. The seaman landing with money in his pocket in any large town is like the hapless ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... Vauvinet to call on me to-morrow," replied Victorin, "but will he be satisfied by my guarantee on a mortgage? I doubt it. Those men insist on ready money to sweat others on usurious terms." ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... young unthrift, whom Foster had more than once accommodated with loans on usurious interest, acknowledged, on this appeal, that he knew him as a wealthy and independent franklin, supposed to be worth much money, and verified the certificate produced to ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... great reformer who amongst a thousand plans for reinfusing vitality into Roman polity was well understood to be digesting a large measure of relief to the hopeless debtor? What lunacy to believe that the ordinary citizen, crouching under the insupportable load of his usurious obligations, could be at leisure to support a few scores of lordly senators panic-stricken for the interests of their own camarilla, when he beheld—taking the field on the opposite quarter—one, the greatest of men, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the second floor, convinced me that there was something more precious than liver in the case. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through actions with his right hand, like a man steadying piles of ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... occupy a prominent position in our history. They were Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell,—both names held in general dread and detestation, though no man ventured to speak ill of them openly, since they were as implacable in their animosities, as usurious and griping in their demands; and many an ear had been lost, many a nose slit, many a back scourged at the cart's tail, because the unfortunate owners had stigmatized them according to their deserts. Thus ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... enforced the marketing of clean and perfect fruit, and a wholesome quality of all other provisions. This was at first difficult to do, as in those ancient days, (I refer to a very remote period of our history) in order to make usurious profit, dealers adulterated all kinds of food; often with poisonous substances. When every state took charge of its markets and provided free schools for cooking, progress took a rapid advance. Do you wonder at it? Reflect then. How could ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... employed in commerce, manufactures, buildings, and agriculture. The failure of Mr. Duer, the chief of that description of people, has already produced some other bankruptcies, and more are apprehended. He had obtained money from great numbers of small tradesmen and farmers, tempting them by usurious interest, which has made the distress very extensive. Congress will adjourn within a fortnight. The President negatived their representation bill, as framed on principles contrary to the constitution. I suppose another will be passed, allowing simply a representative for every ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... easy task to purvey luxuries to the imperious Briton, to hold the extravagant underlings in his usurious clutches, to be at peace with Hindu, Moslem, Sikh, Pathan, Ghoorka, Persian, and Armenian, and to blur his easy-going Mohammedanism in a generous participation in all sins of omission ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... nothing to the wealth of society, but on the contrary constantly take from it, and who have not inaptly been termed by Dr. Howard Crosby the "dangerous classes;" it makes the wealth which gives a few men millions of dollars as their share, either as rental or usurious interest upon capital invested in the production of wealth; and it creates the vast surplus which lies in the coffers of the Federal and State treasuries of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Deny it if you can!—but though to others, When you discoursed of her, you were a flame; To her you were a wick that would not light, Though held in the very fire! And so he won her— Won her, because he wooed her like a man. For all your cuffings, cuffing you again With most usurious interest. Now, sir, Protest that ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... flitted through Mr. Wilkins's confused brain that he should find it impossible to produce the thousands required without having recourse to the money lenders, who were already making difficulties, and charging him usurious interest for the advances they had lately made; and he unwisely tried to obtain a diminution in the sum he had originally proposed to give Ellinor. "Unwisely," because he might have read Ralph's character better than to suppose he would easily consent to ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... magistrate; for the latter felt the impatience and fury of the people, and the fables of the press, like the lash of a whip. Bousquier had seemed to be stubborn; but the presentation of his former stories, which now, like creditors, extorted an ever-increasing usurious interest of lies, sufficed to render him tractable. He appeared to be worn out, to be incapable of expressing what he had seen, of describing what he had heard,—Monsieur Jausion assisted him by questions which contained the ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various |
