"Usury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... national bank would not at once secure our properties, put an end to usury, facilitate commerce, supply the want of coin, and produce ready payments in ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... is the song, though he, The singer, passes: lasting too, For souls not lent in usury, The rapture of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... comfortably against the wall, fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal-and-lumber dealer and the cattle shipper sat on opposite sides of the hard coal-burner, their feet on the nickelwork. Steavens took ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... white. Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices? And to-day, also, I ordered ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... not—what is it but a refined species of usury? a hoard lodged beyond all reach of bankruptcy? a store for futurity? exempt from the numerous losses and disappointments of those who mistake the blessing of wealth to consist in its ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... mask to move, With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake, And many a bachelor to wait on him, In their fresh garments trim. Bid her awake therefore, and soon her dight, For lo! the wished day is come at last, That shall, for all the pains and sorrows past, Pay to her usury of long delight: And, whilst she doth her dight, Do ye to her of joy and solace sing, That all the woods may answer, and your ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... more on this, than on the next, and next. My time is all ta'en up on usury; I never am beforehand with my hours, But every one has work before ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated so long with zealous Catholics, that she is already most probably one of us, ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... saw it stretch Its topmost round, when it appear'd to him With angels laden. But to mount it now None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; The walls, for abbey rear'd, turned into dens, The cowls to sacks choak'd up with musty meal. Foul usury doth not more lift itself Against God's pleasure, than that fruit which makes The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate'er Is in the church's keeping, all pertains. To such, as sue for heav'n's sweet sake, and not To those ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... entire manuscript of the Aurora. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melancholy, feeling that he was "entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the lazy servant." "It was with me," he writes, describing his years of silence, "as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... calls the "church militant" of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no other country are they so numerous; in no other country is the trade in material and industrial capital so far exceeded by the wholesale and retail trade, the traffic and the usury, in the intellectual capital of the nation. Germany yields more intellectual produce than it can use and ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... OR SPASMODIC DRUNKARD, with whom it is always the unexpected which occurs, and who at intervals exacts from his accumulated capital the usury of as prolonged a spree as his nerves and stomach will stand. Science is inclined to charitably label this specimen of man a sort of a physiologic puzzle, to be as much pitied as blamed. Given the benefit of every doubt, when he starts off ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... was never suffered to accumulate, when it could be discharged by prompt payment—and it was never forgotten! If the account could not be balanced now, the obligation was treasured up for a time to come—and, when least expected, the debtor came, and paid with usury! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... early age Suess was sent to his relatives in Vienna, the famous bankers Oppenheimer. Here the boy was reared in splendour and refinement, and instructed in the intricacies of banking, usury—in short, in finance. He repaired occasionally to his family in Frankfort, halting on the road to visit an aged relation in Stuttgart, Frau Widow Hazzim, at whose house in the Judengasse he made the acquaintance ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... the space of four years all debts were paid, and lands returned to their right owners. The public debt was contracted when Asia was fined twenty thousand talents by Sylla, but twice as much was paid to the collectors, who by their usury had by this time advanced it to a hundred and twenty thousand talents. And accordingly they inveighed against Lucullus at Rome, as grossly injured by him, and by their money's help, (as, indeed, they were very powerful, and had many of the statesmen ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... accusers. The offences for which persons were summoned before the tribes, were, bad conduct of a magistrate in performance of his duties, neglect of duty, mismanagement of a war, embezzlement of the public money, breaches of the peace, usury, adultery, and some other crimes. The "Comitia Tributa" were used as courts of appeal, when a person protested against a ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... for the glory of Christ, counting the weariness, and the hurts, and the drops of blood as a sure reckoning to be repaid to you in heaven, as if you had lent God a piece of money which He must pay again. The Lord Jesus gave not His life at an account, nor His blood at usury; He counted not the pain, nor was His suffering set down in a book; but He gave all freely, of His love for men. Shall men therefore ask of God a return, saying: 'We have given Thee so much, as ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... mere usury! I owe my life to you, and you refuse The acquittance of the interest of the debt, To heap more obligations on me, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... letters, in which he describes his inmost feelings, as well as the events going on around him. The uncle of Atticus, the brother of his mother, whose family tomb we are now examining, left him at his death an enormous fortune, which he had amassed by usury. Atticus added greatly to it by acting as a kind of publisher to the authors of the day—that is, by employing his numerous slaves in copying and multiplying their manuscripts. He kept himself free from all the political factions of the times, and thus managed to preserve the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... received the goods and sought to extort more. Stanley refused to be bullied, whereupon the chief threatened to attack him in force. Let Stanley now tell the story, for it is an illustration of the way he combated the usury and ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... certificates of goods and chattels aforementioned. Never had they appeared so insignificant and paltry as then, when he sniffed over them with the air of one disdainfully doing a disagreeable task. It is said, "Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury"; but he evidently was not my brother, for he demanded seventy per cent. I put my signature to certain indentures, received my pottage, and fled from ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... produced high rates of interest. These, on the one hand, facilitated usury, and, on the other, exacted more labor and produce for the privilege of using that money. Staggering under burdensome rates of interest, factory owners, business men in general, farmers operating on a large scale, and landowners with tenants, shunted the load on to the worker. The ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... [Footnote 88: i.e. usury? See post. One of the commentators ridiculously suggests that they were needlemakers, from ago, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... even self-love may be the dupe of goodness and forget itself when we work for others. And yet it is but taking the shortest way to arrive at its aim, taking usury under the pretext of giving, in fact winning everybody in a ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... in a bad way, being in many cases reduced to the condition of mere agents of the great wholesale houses elsewhere, and kept going by these houses mainly in the hope of recovering old debts. There is a severe pressure of usury, too, upon the farmers. "If a farmer," said one resident to me, "wants to borrow a small sum of the Loan Fund Bank, he must have two securities—one of them a substantial man good for the debt. These two indorsers must be 'treated' ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... prudence, will yield to you the comforts, if not the luxuries, of subsistence. In ten weeks the face of the bill will be thus repaid. For his forbearance in the matter of time, which hath most seriously inconvenienced him, he requires that you shall pay him the further sum of L2 as usury, and likewise that you do liquidate and save him harmless from the charges of us, his solicitors, which charges, from the number of grave and complicated questions which have become a part of this case and demanded solution, we are unable to make less ...
— Shakespeare's Insomnia, And the Causes Thereof • Franklin H. Head
... dislike he had taken to the company. Upon hearing his name, I knew him to be a gentleman of a considerable fortune in this county, but greatly in debt. What gives the unhappy man this peevishness of spirit is, that his estate is dipped, and is eating out with usury; and yet he has not the heart to sell any part of it. His proud stomach, at the cost of restless nights, constant inquietudes, danger of affronts, and a thousand nameless inconveniences, preserves this canker in his fortune, rather than it shall be said he is a man of fewer hundreds ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... know whether there are any usurers who loan money at usury and interest; or who sell on credit at a dearer price than the things are worth when cash is paid; or who buy at a less price in order to give the money advanced with the imposition ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... of Death all men are equal. There is neither rank, nor station, nor prerogative, in the republic of the grave. At that fatal threshold the philosopher ceases to be wise, and the song of the poet is silent. There Dives relinquished his riches and Lazarus his rags; the creditor loses his usury, and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation; the proud man surrenders his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures. Here the invalid needs no physician, and the laborer rests from unrequited toil. Here at last is Nature's final decree of equity. The wrongs of time ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... myself. The usury in the market is no longer to be endured. We can do nothing more there, but she is already bringing people ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Stories were circulated of their contempt for the Catholic worship, their desecration of its most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children, at the celebration of their own passover. [14] With these foolish calumnies, the more probable charge of usury and extortion was industriously preferred against them, till at length, towards the close of the fourteenth century, the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, and perhaps encouraged by the numerous ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... Usury, from the earliest Period to the present Time. Together with a brief Statement of General Principles concerning the Conflict of the Laws of different States and Countries, and an Examination into the Policy of Laws on Usury and their Effect upon Commerce. By J. B. C. Murray. Philadelphia. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... with the Jews, who inhabited England in great numbers, and were found through purchase, usury, or mortgage, to have become possessors of various estates, which conferred on them the power of appearing on juries, of, in some cases, presenting to church benefices, and of the wardship of vassals. This was a serious grievance; and the King interfered by decreeing that, in every ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... none but the wise man does usury sit well. Consider. His is the art of putting two and two together, and usury is the art of putting interest together. The two are evidently connected, and one as much as the other is the prerogative of the true ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... unawed, content, and calm. His fortune was a little nook of land; And there the Scythian found him, hook in hand, His fruit-trees pruning. Here he cropp'd A barren branch, there slash'd and lopp'd, Correcting Nature everywhere, Who paid with usury his care. 'Pray, why this wasteful havoc, sir?'— So spoke the wondering traveller; 'Can it, I ask, in reason's name, Be wise these harmless trees to maim? Fling down that instrument of crime, And leave them to ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... remark, which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors as well as of debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons, by whom they would ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... Palle of the Medici, which emboss the gorgeous ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, still swing above the pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a surprising fact that the daughter of the mediaeval bankers should have given a monarch to the French in ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... he had no intention of embezzling the money, but that, as he took it for granted the point could never be decided, he thought it was against the usury laws to ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... ignorant of usury, this was not bad. We thanked him acidly, offered the Bonds for sale, and, after a little calculation, accepted two hundred and forty-three ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... ago, when to his overwhelming astonishment it was first made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the patrimony had not been squandered—had been put out to usury rather, bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold—a man living in luxury and holding the ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... occasion, and, in that, to his wish, and is said to have spent some years before his death at his native Stratford." Rowe, too, tells us that it is a story "well remembered in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury; it happened that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends Mr. Combe told Shakespeare, in a laughing manner, that he fancied he intended to write his epitaph, if he happened to outlive ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... to him that publishing was a very respectable business when fairly and properly carried on, and not one that ought to weigh heavy upon a man at the last like the record of a career of successful usury or burgling. ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... 1. Evils of early factory conditions. Sec. 2. Improvement of factory conditions. Sec. 3. Limitation of the wage contract. Sec. 4. Usury laws. Sec. 5. Public inspection of standards and of foods. Sec. 6. Charity, and control of vice. Sec. 7. City growth and the housing problem. Sec. 8. Good housing legislation. Sec. 9. General grounds of this social legislation. Sec. 10. Training in the trades. Sec. 11. Prevalence of ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... demands which the war had made on it, his fortune was giving way beneath these expenditures. Now he began to walk the terrible ways of usury. He borrowed of the most unscrupulous bourgeois, hypothecated his chateaux, alienated his lands. At times he was reduced to asking advances on his religious ornaments, on his jewels, on ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... repented of the suffering He has caused to the soul of His beloved, or that He would pay back with usury what she has suffered for His love. If this consolation last for many days, it becomes painful. She calls Him sweet and cruel: she asks Him if He has only wounded her that she may die. But this kind Lover laughs ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... money on usury, asserted it to be as great a sin as murder. Some time after, he applied to a parishioner to lend him twenty pounds. "What!" said the other, "after declaring your opinion that to lend money on usury, was as bad as murder?" "I do not mean," ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... merchants, with the following protest: "What see I here? Shall my Father's house be thus dishonored? Is this the house of God, or is it a market-place? How can the strangers who come from the land of the Gentiles to worship God perform their devotions in this tumult of usury? And you," he continued, advancing a step toward the priests, who stared at him in amazement, "You priests, guardians of the temple, can you see this abomination and permit it to continue? Woe be unto you! He who searches the heart knows why you ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... one Isaacs, from whom he had, at various times, borrowed money on usury. The name of Isaacs was over a bell, one of many at the door, and, when the bell was rung, the street door "opened of his own accord," like that of the little tobacco-and-talk club which used to exist in an alley off Pall Mall. Allen rang the bell, the outer ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... the property, and required notes payable to his order for an additional interest of two and a half per cent spread over the whole duration of the loan. Such were the rules his father had told him to follow. Usury, that clog upon the ambition of the peasantry, is the destroyer of country regions. This levy of seven and a half per cent seemed, therefore, so reasonable to the borrowers that Jean-Jacques Rouget had his ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... him in the details of life was delightful. He filled all the forms of friendship with an unaccustomed charm, and when he expressed his gratitude, it was with that deep emotion which recompenses kindness with usury. He willingly imagined that he felt himself every day dying; he accepted the cares of a friend, hiding from him, lest it should render him unhappy, the little time he expected to profit by them. He possessed great physical courage, and if he did not accept with the heroic recklessness ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... scold; or at night Matvey would steal into the prayer-room and say softly: "Cousin, your prayer is not pleasing to God. For it is written, First be reconciled with thy brother and then offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... also that usury is no deadly sin. And they sell benefices of Holy Church. And so do men in other places: God amend it when his will is! And that is great sclaundre, for now is simony king crowned in Holy Church: God amend ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... administration of justice. The classes and status of slaves, and the causes of enslavement are recounted. Their customs in marriages and dowries, divorces, adoption, and inheritance are described; also in usury, trading, and punishment for crimes. The standard of social purity is described by Morga as being very low; yet infamous vices were not indigenous with them, but communicated by foreigners, especially by the Chinese. The natives of Luzon appear to be superior, both intellectually and morally, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... spite of very determined opposition he was enabled to repair the wall of the city and dedicate it with great ceremony (Neh. chs. 6 and 12). Nehemiah is counted as one of the greatest reformers. He corrected many abuses such as those of usury and restored the national life of the Jews based upon the written law. Together with Ezra he restored the priests to their positions and renewed the temple worship. He went back to the Persian court where he remained several years and then ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... in spite of ourselves, and listen, in the midst of the silence of midday. And in this so venerable place, where dilapidation and the usury of centuries are revealed on every side—even on the marble columns worn by the constant friction of hands—this voice of gold that rises alone seems as if it were intoning the last lament over the death-pang of Old Islam and the end of time, the elegy, as it were, of the universal death ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... believe me, because I could not explain to them the affair; and hence I could not advance by this way. In distress, therefore, beyond what can be imagined, I compelled serving-men and poor to expend all that they had, to sell many things, and to pawn others, often at usury; and I promised them that I would write to you every part of the expenses, and would in good faith obtain from you payment in full. And yet, on account of the poverty of these persons, I many times gave up the work, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... 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 saw their gain ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... over, he came to town to find your father hiding between four walls, unable to stir out for fear of arrest. Willy had no option but to pay the money; and when your father knew that it was so paid, and that the usury had swallowed up the whole of Willy's little capital, then, I say, I saw upon Charles Haughton's once radiant face the saddest expression I ever saw on mortal man's. And sure I am that all the joys your father ever knew as ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of German origin who came to Paris, and engaged in business of a shady character on the fringe of the Bourse. "In addition to usury and a secret traffic in jewels and precious stones, he particularly occupied himself with the purchase of 'bad debts.'" In pursuit of creditors he was unsparing, and his methods were not infrequently of the nature of blackmail. Jordon, Madame de Beauvilliers, and Saccard himself ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... to these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the false names of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... unir (s'), to unite. univers, m., universe, the whole universe. usage, m., use, custom, precedent. usure, f., usury, usurious interest; payer avec —, to ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... money upon interest, and increasing it by usury, [142] is unknown amongst them: and this ignorance more effectually prevents the practice than a prohibition would do. The lands are occupied by townships, [143] in allotments proportional to the number of cultivators; ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... Eckert sprang from the door; Pollnitz followed him with a mocking glance. "Revenge is sweet," he said, drawing a long breath; "he has often done me wrong, and now I have paid him back with usury. Eckert is lost. Would that I had his house! I must have it! I will have it! Oh, I will make myself absolutely necessary to the king; I will flatter, I will praise, I will find out and fulfil his most secret, his unspoken wishes. I will force him to give me his confidence—to make ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... borrow, he is often exposed to the impositions of a class of unscrupulous money lenders, who violate the laws against usury, but hope to escape punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertisements of the chattel-mortgage ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... the walls of Jerusalem and setting in order the affairs of the commonwealth. The book naturally falls into three divisions. The first division contains the history of his labors in rebuilding the walls of the city and putting an end to the practice of usury, and of the violent opposition and intrigues of the surrounding people. Chaps. 1-7:4. To this is appended a genealogical list, which is the same for substance as that contained in the second chapter ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... Caesars, exhausted itself in slavery, superstition, and voluptuousness. The people—intoxicated and, as it were, stupefied by their long-continued orgies—had lost the very notion of right and duty: war and dissipation by turns swept them away; usury and the labor of machines (that is of slaves), by depriving them of the means of subsistence, hindered them from continuing the species. Barbarism sprang up again, in a hideous form, from this mass of corruption, and spread like a devouring leprosy over the depopulated ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... draft for the usurious interest due to Lord * *'s protege;—I also could wish you would state thus much for me to his Lordship. Though the transaction speaks plainly in itself for the borrower's folly and the lender's usury, it never was my intention to quash the demand, as I legally might, nor to withhold payment of principal, or, perhaps, even unlawful interest. You know what my situation has been, and what it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... God" to the books of Scripture be against all question tenable, it becomes yet more imperative on the interpreters of that Scripture to see that they are not made void by our traditions, and that the Mortal sins of Covetousness, Fraud, Usury, and contention be not the essence of a National life orally professing submission to the laws of Christ, and satisfaction in ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... who has, I am sorry to see, quitted his place. The honourable Member for Oldham tells us that the Jews are naturally a mean race, a sordid race, a money-getting race; that they are averse to all honourable callings; that they neither sow nor reap; that they have neither flocks nor herds; that usury is the only pursuit for which they are fit; that they are destitute of all elevated and amiable sentiments. Such, Sir, has in every age been the reasoning of bigots. They never fail to plead in justification of persecution the vices which persecution has engendered. England has been to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... easy; aye, but—to stretch his life As on a rack—were that not better still? Dead, I'd bury with him my revenge; But while he lives the old account will stand At daily usury. I'll tent his agony, prolong it here, Even here where I may feed upon it; Not send him hence beyond my reach. Aye! I'll fight with death to keep him for mine own. But, now— O, I must calm myself or miss my aim! For, like a hunter when first he sees ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... elections, and told them his political principles.[37] He was in favor of internal improvements, such as opening roads, clearing streams, building a railroad across Sangamon County, and making the Sangamon River straight and navigable. He advocated a usury law, and hazarded the extraordinary argument that "in cases of extreme necessity there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect." A law ameliorated by infractions is no uncommon thing, but ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... had hoarded their money for the pleasure of secretly looking at it. Old Monsieur de la Bertelliere called an investment an extravagance, and thought he got better interest from the sight of his gold than from the profits of usury. The inhabitants of Saumur consequently estimated his savings according to "the revenues of the sun's ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Lindum (Lincoln). This disposition, which faced north and west, came near to breaking down in 61, when the east rose under Boudicca (Boadicea), queen of the Iceni, partly in protest against the usury of Seneca, the philosopher and ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... of a Jew, and still more every general reflection on Jewish usury, avarice, and cruelty, I felt poignantly. No power of imagination could make me pity Shylock, but I felt the force of some of his appeals to justice; and some passages struck me in quite a new light on the Jewish side of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... establishments of the Pope did not suffice for him; with various artifices, bulls, laws and indulgences, he has brought under his power land and people and all they possess, exhausting the world by usury. And so it should be, for this state of affairs was richly deserved by men for despising the Gospel ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... fail in this, shall I have written in vain? O, no; it is but a fulfilment in part of the great mission, "do with all thy might what thy hand findeth to do." If we have but one small talent we are commanded to put it upon usury, "that the Lord may receive ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... antagonistic, but what he does not see is that the interests of labor and capital may both be antagonistic to the interests of monopoly, and that until the latter is destroyed the two former will be continually forced into positions of seeming antagonism. He denounces "rapacious usury," and says that it was "more than once condemned by the Church," conveniently overlooking the fact that the usuria, which was condemned, was not only "rapacious" but was all taking of money for the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... penny of certain fee, revenue, stipend, or pension, either left him or restored unto him,")—Dee says that "he has been constrained now and then to send parcels of his little furniture of plate to pawn upon usury; and that he did so oft, till no more could be sent. After the same manner went his wives' jewels of gold, rings, bracelets, chains, and other their rarities, under the thraldom of the usurer's gripes: 'till non plus ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... censured? If wealth is to be got, how little good at it is that merchant like to do, if following the precepts of wisdom, he should boggle at perjury; or being taken in a lie, blush; or in the least regard the sad scruples of those wise men touching rapine and usury. Again, if a man sue for honors or church preferments, an ass or wild ox shall sooner get them than a wise man. If a man's in love with a young wench, none of the least humors in this comedy, they are wholly addicted to fools and are afraid of a wise man ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... Prophet, incite the faithful to fight!'[FN328]" Q "What are the ordinances of buying and selling?" "The Koranic are: (1) offer and acceptance and (2) if the thing sold be a white slave, by whom one profiteth, all possible endeavour to convert him to Al-Islam; and (3) to abstain from usury; the traditional are: making void[FN329] and option before not after separating, according to his saying (whom Allah bless and preserve!), 'The parties to a sale shall have the option of cancelling or altering terms whilst they are yet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... without master, wasting year by year; Youth past, age creeping on, friends, brothers, sons Lost in the void, gone where no respite runs For sorrow, but the darkness covers all— What name should we bequeath our sons but thrall, Or what beside a name, who let go by Ilios the rich for others' usury? And have the blessed Gods no say in this? Think you they be won over by a kiss— Here the Queen, she, the unwearied aid Of all our striving, Pallas the war-maid? Have they not vowed, and will ye scant their hate, Havoc on Ilios from gate to gate, And for her towers abasement ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... one lend to any one of the Hebrews upon usury, neither usury of what is eaten or what is drunken, for it is not just to make advantage of the misfortunes of one of thy own countrymen; but when thou hast been assistant to his necessities, think it thy gain if thou obtainest their gratitude to thee; and withal that ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... no other than Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, a Jew of Arragon, who—accused of usury and pitiless scorn for the poor—had been daily subjected to torture for more than a year. Yet "his blindness was as dense as his hide," and he had ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... of wounded pride: Antonio has called him dog. It is partly the result of covetousness: Antonio has hindered him of half a million; and when Antonio is gone, there will be no limit to the gains of usury. It is partly the result of national and religious feeling: Antonio has spit on the Jewish gaberdine; and the oath of revenge has been sworn by the Jewish Sabbath. We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... is, that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum of money, on the yield of which his descendants had ever since lived. "Interest on investments" was a species of tax on industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was then able to levy, in spite of all the efforts to put down usury. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... hours of earth bestow With sorrow thou must pay. Though many follow close, yet know, They're loaned but for a day. With sighing in thy laughter's stead Shall come a time of grief, The load of usury bow thy head, With loss of thy belief. Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Hadst thou not smiled upon me, thou, I ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... admirable scheme of society with its guild system of industry, its absence of usury in any form and its just sense of comparative values, was shot through and through with religion both in faith and practice. Catholicism was universally and implicitly accepted. Monasticism had redeemed Europe from barbarism and Cluny had freed the Church from the yoke of German ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... but in London! Humor, Interest, Curiosity, suck at her measureless breasts without a possibility of being satiated. Nursed amid her noise, her crowds, her beloved smoke, what have I been doing all my life, if I have not lent out my heart with usury to such scenes! ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... lay A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment; Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town, If not redeem'd this day, which is not in The unthrift's purse; there being scarce one shire In Wales or England, where my monies are not Lent out at usury, the certain hook ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... constable. But he did not remain one long; and became in turn a Fleet Street publican, the proprietor of a Haymarket night-house, an auctioneer, a picture dealer, a bill discounter (with a side line in usury), and the editor of a Sunday organ. Next, the theatre attracted his energies; and in 1852 he secured a lease of Drury Lane at the moderate rental of L70 a week. On Boxing-night he offered his first programme there. This consisted of Uncle Tom's Cabin ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... fame; of restraining or obstructing others in the exercise of their rights, or in the use and enjoyment of their properties; of practising deceptions, impositions, frauds, and all forms of insincerity, usury, extortions, and violence; of laying obstructions in the way of the weak or helpless; of giving false testimony; of speaking untruth; of reporting even truth, when it may lead to discord and strife; of occasioning danger; of offending decency ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when he has none to lend, will play the jackal to some money-lion, and get a large share of the spoil for himself. And further, if you differ in faith from him, in his heart will send you to hell with as much pleasure as he would derive from ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... the loan were not repaid after the first harvest, double the amount was to be paid at the second; at the third harvest, fourfold was due on an unpaid loan; and so on, regularly increasing. This was the only usury among them, although some have stated otherwise; but those persons were not well informed. Now, some who are lazy, and unwilling to exert themselves to pay the tribute, ask a loan for this purpose, and repay a somewhat ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various
... intended to diminish the profits, to destroy the political influence and to lower the social position of the moneyed class. As the usurers did not choose to take on themselves the expense of putting down usury, the whole plan failed in a manner which, if the aspect of public affairs had been less alarming, would have been exquisitely ludicrous. The day drew near. The neatly ruled pages of the subscription book ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless nor so blood-guilty ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... proposal was for the daughter of a Gray's Inn money-lender. Usury was not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in Charles II.'s London. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... were practically three castes in Rome,—priests, nobles, and beggars,—for there was nothing which in any degree corresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consisted chiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome was the lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and its population was composed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... a backer of domestic slave-dealers, and put his money into forms of gain men hesitated at; not only at the curbstone, for usury, but behind pawnbrokers and sporting men, in lottery companies and liquor-houses, and, it was said, in the open slave-trade, too, clippers for which occasionally stole out of the Chesapeake on affected trading errands to the East Indies, and came home with nothing ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... they hoarded wealth, which the King might seize at his pleasure, though none of his subjects could touch it. The Jew's special capacity—in which Christians were forbidden by the Church to employ themselves through fear of the sin of usury—-was that of money-lender. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... in the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he had been married. He first acted on commission for the Benedictine-Camalduian fathers of the forest of Senart, who had heard of him as a man wholly given to piety; then, giving himself up to usury, he undertook what is known as "business affairs," a profession which, in such hands, could not fail to be lucrative, being aided by his exemplary morals and honest appearance. It was the more easy for him ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... sustained Mr. Washburn's position in a characteristic speech, especially answering General Banks's argument that we should pay this amount from a spirit of friendship for Russia. "If," said General Butler, "we are to pay this price as usury on the friendship of Russia, we are paying for it very dear indeed. If we are to pay for her friendship, I desire to give her the seven million two hundred thousand dollars in cash, and let her keep Alaska, because I think it may be a small sum to give for the friendship if we could ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... other scriptural passage did the good Deacon cling to the injunction, "Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness." Meekly insisting that he was only a steward of the Lord, he put out his Lord's money that he might receive it again with usury, and so successful had he been that almost all mortgages held on property near Pawkin Centre were in the hands of the good Deacon, and few were the foreclosure sales in which he was ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... p. c. returns he requires an accounting. Two servants have put their talents out at usury and gained one hundred per cent. Good. The unprofitable one simply digs up the talent deposited with him and hands it out on demand. A pattern of behavior for trust companies and banks, surely! In one version we read that he had wrapped it in a napkin and laid it ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... gathered.[10] Some planters who sympathized with the Negroes brought forward the scheme of protecting them by advancing certain necessities at more reasonable prices. As the planter himself, however, was subject to usury, the scheme did not give much relief. The Negroes' crop, therefore, when gathered went either to the merchant or to the planter to pay the rent; for the merchant's supplies were secured by a mortgage on the tenant's personal property and a pledge of the growing crop. This often prevented ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... look to her alone, and not to the United States, for the settlement of her claims. In regard to the bonds issued by the late republic for double the amount of the original contracts, he thinks that between private individuals such would be void on account of usury. He, however, recommends that government should certainly pay to its creditors the full amount of benefits received, and interest on the amount from the time when it should have been paid. He also recommends that a law be passed, requiring all creditors holding ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... meanwhile the people are dying of hunger, crushed down by taxes. The only reform that has been accomplished is that the men have taken to wearing caps and the women have left off their head-dresses! And the poverty! the drunkenness! the usury!" ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... delay," he begins, "in fulfilling my promise of an essay on the taste for beauty in works of art, in the words of Pindar. He says to Agesidamus, a youth of Locri—ideai te kalon, horai te kekramenon—whom he had kept waiting for an intended ode, that a debt paid with usury is the end of reproach. This may win your good-nature on behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and circumstantial than I ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... harshly, 'it is easy to say farewell; and as for any hope after that, the devil lends it us at usury, and if we cannot pay on the day ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Asia, in a mighty town, 'Mong Christian folk, a street where Jews might be, Assigned to them and given them for their own By a great Lord, for gain and usury, Hateful to Christ and to his company; 40 And through this street who list might ride and wend; Free was it, and unbarred at ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... tutti originali, it was not such an absurd conception of the case to suppose that if I had lent him five francs once, I should like to do it continually. Perhaps he may yet pay back the loan with usury. But I doubt it. In the mean time, I am far from blaming the Mouse. I merely feel that there is a misunderstanding, which I can ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... greater part is buried under ground; indeed, I have never examined the tenth part of it. I have coins of silver and gold older than the times of Ferdinand the Accursed and Jezebel; I have also large sums employed in usury. We keep ourselves close, however, and pretend to be poor, miserably so; but on certain occasions, at our festivals, when our gates are barred, and our savage dogs are let loose in the court, we eat our food off services such as the Queen of Spain cannot boast of, and wash ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... to Rabbi Yehuda ben Elaei, "Thy face is like that of one who breeds pigs and lends money on usury." He replied, "These offices are forbidden me by the rules of my religion, but between my residence and the academy there are twenty-four latrinae; these I regularly visit as ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a "parasitic Greek civilization"—minus ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... thousand peasants in the winter—in a single commune—to be seen awaiting their turn to have their taxes "flogged out." Of course, before this was endured all means had been exhausted for raising the required amount. Usury, that surest road to ruin, and the one offering the least resistance, was the one ordinarily followed. Thus was created that destructive class called Koulaks, or Mir-eaters, who, while they fattened upon the necessities of the peasantry, also demoralized the state by creating ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... retrace your steps; your haste to reach your goal will only take you further from it. Do not imitate the miser who loses much lest he should lose a little. Sacrifice a little time in early childhood, and it will be repaid you with usury when your scholar is older. The wise physician does not hastily give prescriptions at first sight, but he studies the constitution of the sick man before he prescribes anything; the treatment is begun later, but the patient is cured, while the hasty ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... such, were never regarded as heretics. But the usury they so widely practiced evidenced an unorthodox doctrine on thievery, which made them liable to be suspected of heresy. Indeed, we find several Popes upbraiding them "for maintaining that usury is not a sin." Some ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... absence of any organized agency to receive lapsed property, inheritance and preferably primogeniture were of such manifest advantage that the old social organization always tended in the direction of these institutions. Such usury as was practised relied entirely on the land and the anticipated agricultural produce of ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... been said about a good purpose, I wish to have understood with caution. For a good purpose ought to be twofold. First, a purpose with regard to open, mortal sins, such as adultery, homicide, fornication, theft, robbery, usury, slander, etc. The purpose to avoid these sins belongs properly to sacramental Confession, and to confession before God it belongs at any moment after the sins have been committed; according to the word of Ecclesiasticus, "My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more, but ask pardon for thy former ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... simply a thorough egotist. In his youth he had been charged with usury; no one knew by what means he had become rich, for the little drapery trade which he called his profession did not appear to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... yourself up with it, monseigneur; if there be usury, it is I who practice it, and both of us reap the advantage ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... into a vague discussion upon labor as a measure of value. (b.) A legal rate of interest received his support, and his argument was answered effectually by Bentham ("Defense of Usury"). (c.) While not agreeing with the French school that agriculture is the only industry producing more than it consumes, and so land pays rent, yet he thinks that it produces more in proportion to the labor ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... that man must needs find honey in this lion, that can plead his innocency and uprightness. All the people curse me, saith Jeremiah, but that without a cause, for I have neither lent nor taken on usury; which it seems was a sin at that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... property, it is not our mission either to hasten or to precipitate its disappearance. A product of labor, quite often being merely a tool of the one who is detaining it, not only do we respect it, we do something more yet, we relieve it from taxes, usury, scandalous charges on the part of the middlemen, whose victim it is. And this will be done in order to make possible its free evolution towards superior forms of exploitation and ownership, which become more ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures; by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. [140] But as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not be very frequent, and the general uses to which their liberality was applied ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the shores of great rivers and inland seas. Trade and travel began, at first only a trade in adventitious things, in metals and rare objects and luxuries and slaves. With trade came writing and money; the inventions of debt and rent, usury and tribute. History finds already in its beginnings a thin network of trading and slaving flung over the world of the Normal Social Life, a network whose strands are the early roads, whose knots are the first ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay, with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the preparations for the wedding. The Earldom of Envy, the Kingdom of Covetousness, the Isle of Usury were granted as marriage gifts to the pair. But Theology was angry. He would not permit the wedding to take place. "Ere this wedding be wrought, woe betide thee," he cried. "Meed is wealthy; I know it. God grant us to give her unto ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... skill. He had the trick of making usury look like kindness; he always spoke of those fellows, those hidden owners of the money and the horses—heartless wretches who were "after him," holding him responsible for the short-comings of all their debtors. The burdens he thus supposedly assumed ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... time, why the squadron was not paid even its wages. The Government had provided the means, but those to whom the distribution was entrusted retained the money during their pleasure, employing it for their own advantage in trading speculations or in usury, only applying it to a legitimate purpose when further delay became dangerous to themselves. One great cause of the hatred displayed towards me by these people, was my incessant demands that the claims of the squadron should be satisfied as regarded ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... console my mind thou now dost fly; Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory, Which coupled with desire my soul distress. So finding in thee grace to plead for me— Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case— He who now writes, returns thee thanks for these. Lo, it were foul and monstrous usury To send thee ugliest paintings in the place Of thy fair spirit's ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... their teeth with fiery stones, from morning until evening, and during the night they make their teeth grow again, to the length of a parasang, only to break them anew the next morning. Nasargiel explained: "These are the sinners who ate carrion and forbidden flesh, who lent their money at usury, who wrote the Name of God on amulets for Gentiles, who used false weights, who stole money from their fellow-Israelites, who ate on the Day of Atonement, who ate forbidden fat, and animals and reptiles that are an abomination, and who ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... right, And speaks the truth in his heart, Who utters no slander with his tongue, Who does no wrong to his friend, Who makes no charge against his neighbor; In whose sight the vile are despised, But he honors those who revere the Lord. He keeps his oath at all costs, His money he puts not out to usury, And cannot be bribed to injure ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... agony of my ancestor that, little realizing what he was doing, he bequeathed this poisonous dross to the Abbey he founded. I am required to lend it in Frankfort, upon undoubted security and suitable usury, that it may stimulate and fertilize the commerce of the land, much as the contents of a compost heap, disagreeable in the senses, and defiling to him who handles it, when spread upon the fields results in the production of flower, fruit, and ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... my patron was engaged. Among others we bought and sold plate, and foreign gold and silver coins. These we melted and culled. Some were recoined at the Mint, and with the rest we supplied the refiners, plate-workers, and merchants who required the precious metals. Whenever we received money at usury, we gave a bond, and my patron was always able to lend it out again, either to the Government or to others at a still higher rate of usury. At times, the stranger from the country might have supposed that ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... their laws respecting debt and usury underwent some changes, according as society advanced, and as ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... not with his tongue, (v) nor doeth evil to his neighbour, (vi) nor taketh up a reproach against another; (vii) in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, (viii) but who honoureth them that fear the Lord. (ix) He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not; (x) He that putteth not out his money to usury, (xi) nor taketh a bribe against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. Thus David reduced the Law to eleven principles. Then came Micah and reduced them to three, as it is written: 'What doth the Lord require of thee but (i) to do justice, (ii) ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... in their becoming the victims of another defeat. The loss of their second chance of seizing the Diamond is mainly attributable, as I think, to the cunning and foresight of Mr. Luker—who doesn't stand at the top of the prosperous and ancient profession of usury for nothing! By the prompt dismissal of the man in his employment, he deprived the Indians of the assistance which their confederate would have rendered them in getting into the house. By the prompt transport of the Moonstone to his banker's, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... therefore a very great evil. First of all, there are many things of ancient society not reproved or reprobated by the founders of Christianity, which are inconvenient to, and inconsistent with, our moral sense, and which would violate the laws of modern society. Such are the laws and customs of usury and polygamy. No man in his senses would attempt to establish polygamy in modern society, because it is not prohibited and condemned by the writers of the New Testament. To argue, therefore, that slavery is congenial with the spirit of the Christian religion because it is not condemned ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... all good men, even the most conservative, really dream of, when the sneer shall be struck from the face of the well-fed; when the wine of honour shall be poured down the throat of despair; when we shall, so far as to the sons of flesh is possible, take tyranny and usury and public treason and bind them into bundles and burn them. And the other is the disruption that may come prematurely, negatively, and suddenly in the night; like the fire ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... the chest, had landed in their country 150,000 years previously, and finding them very barbarous, slaying one another and unacquainted with the use of letters, the precious metals, or the art of usury, had instructed them in civilization, endowed them with letters, a coinage, police, lawyers, instruments of torture, and all the other requisites of a great State, and had finally drawn up for them this code of law or custom, which they carefully preserved engraved upon the tablets of ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the temple, or the priests, as the great moneylenders. This is a view easily misunderstood. It is quite true that the temples were great landowners, and had steady incomes, and possessed treasuries; but there is no evidence that they lent on usury. It seems rather that these loans without interest (except as a fine for undue retention of the loan) were a kindly accommodation. We know that under certain circumstances a man might appeal to the temple treasury to ransom him from the enemy. He might also borrow in case of necessity ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... solitariness! O how much do I like your solitariness! Here nor reason is hid, vailed in innocence, Nor envy's snaky eye, finds any harbour here. Nor flatterer's venomous insinuations. Nor coming humourist's puddled opinions, Nor courteous ruin of proffer'd usury, Nor time prattled away, cradle of ignorance, Nor causeless duty, nor cumber of arrogance, Nor trifling titles of vanity dazzleth us, Nor golden manacles stand for a paradise. Here wrong's name is unheard; slander a monster is, Keep thy sprite ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... did not find him so remiss, But, lightly issuing through, He did repay her kiss for kiss, With usury thereto.(3) ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... real advantage; but that to take by assault the second capital of his future states was to expose himself to the dislike of the Flemings; and Joyeuse knew the Flemings too well not to feel sure that if the duke did take Antwerp, sooner or later they would revenge themselves with usury. This opinion Joyeuse did not hesitate to ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... Nature, engag'd him in the Acquaintance, and entitled him to the Friendship of the Gentlemen of the Neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a Story almost still remember'd in that Country, that he had a particular Intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old Gentleman noted thereabouts for his Wealth and Usury: It happen'd, that in a pleasant Conversation amongst their common Friends, Mr. Combe told Shakespear in a laughing manner, that he fancy'd, he intended to write his Epitaph, if he happen'd to out-live him; and since he could not know what might be said of him when he was dead, ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... partner in a printing enterprise which failed in 1827, leaving him still more embarrassed financially, but endowed with a fund of experience which he turned to rich account as a novelist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt, bankruptcy, usury, and speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid it bare in novel after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained of the law, and even pressing into service the technicalities of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Rosalie; throw off the turquoise bracelet. For you there is no betrothal—no marriage feast. Soon you will leave the town with drooping head, glad, by flying among strangers, to escape the mockery of cruel hearts at home. The gold that your father heaped up for his children by usury and fraud will again roll from hand to hand, will serve good and bad alike, will swell the mighty tide of wealth by which human life is sustained and adorned, peoples and states made great and powerful, and individuals strong or weak, each according ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... vice, in all its pomp and power, can treat with just neglect; And piety, though clothed in rags, religiously respect. Who to his plighted vows and trust has ever firmly stood; And though he promise to his loss, he makes his promise good. Whose soul in usury disdains his treasure to employ; Whom no rewards can ever bribe the guiltless to destroy. The man, who, by this steady course, has happiness insured, When earth's foundations shake, shall stand, by ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... he had always been a cog in the blind machinery of other people, exchanging so much toil for so much money. Now that he could see his little plantation grow and prosper beneath his hands, every hour repaid with nature's usury, he began to feel the elation that a man finds in independence. At first Fetuao had entered but half-heartedly into his plans; she would sit on a log and watch him with mirthful wonder as he swung his ax on the land Faalelei had given them; and ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... fear lest ever again they be lured by specious promises to suffer usury at the hands of Yahn, who is overskilled in Law. Only Yahn sits and smiles, watching his hoard increase in preciousness, and hath no pity for the poor shadows whom he hath lured from their quiet to toil in the form ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... and changes in financial matters, and also with prominent business houses in this and other cities. Among the recent letters received in correspondence of this sort are letters from the Secretary of State of every State in the Union with regard to rates of interest and usury laws, and letters from each of our city banks as to methods of reckoning time on paper, the basis of interest calculations, the practices concerning deposit balances, and other business matters subject to change. The aim of the proprietor is to keep the school abreast ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... just grinding the poor down. I believe that the reason we are in such a wretched state in this country to-day is on account of crowding the poor, and getting such a large amount of money for usury. People evade the law, and pay the interest, and then they give a few hundred dollars to negotiate the loan. There is a great amount of usury, and see where we are to-day! See what a wretched state of things we are having, not only in this country, but all over ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... the Church is the worst usurer of them all, with its learned divines in scarlet hoods, who hold shares in music halls, and its Fathers in God living at ease and leasing out public-houses. You have been lending money on usury too, and on a bad security. What are you going to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine |
