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More "Avarice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Elliot's opinions as to the value of a baronetcy. Upon all points of blood and connexion he is a completely altered man. Having long had as much money as he could spend, nothing to wish for on the side of avarice or indulgence, he has been gradually learning to pin his happiness upon the consequence he is heir to. I thought it coming on before our acquaintance ceased, but it is now a confirmed feeling. He cannot bear the idea of not being Sir William. You may guess, therefore, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... landed properties and an aristocracy. Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for if men have rum, they are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... beloved companion—for in his own selfish way he loved her after a sort, and perhaps more than he loved any human being in the world—and who must expect before many years to follow her, should be so full of this world's avarice and ambition; so eager to make more, and more, and more money, and to stand at the head of the list of all the wealthiest men in the land. Strange, yet the name of such a one is legion. But in the case of Old Aaron Rockharrt there might have been this ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ressource assuree, Viens ranimer leur langueur desoeuvree: Leur ame vide est du moins amusee Par l'avarice en plaisir deguisee." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... look or turn, I suddenly saw drop from the ash, the form of a woman, a Highland girl, with bold, handsome features, raven black hair, and the whitest of arms and feet. In one hand she carried a wicker basket, in the other a knife, a broad-bladed, sharp-edged, horn-handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came into her large dark eyes, as, wandering around her, they rested on the rich facings of the English officers' uniforms. I knew what was in her mind, and—forgetting she was but a ghost—that they were all ghosts—I moved heaven and earth to stop her. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... which, if properly weighed, must be the deepest motive of humiliation to all? A good-natured man will be so far from rejoicing, that he will be secretly troubled, whenever he reads that the greatest Roman moralist was tainted with avarice, and the greatest ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... of goodness that cleaves even to the heart of an intrigante revolted against her avarice. "Nay, poor soul, I'll not take it," said she; and put her hands before her eyes not to see it, for she knew she could not look at it long and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a benefactor of humanity, but why not tap the wealth of the Incas! If the mere invention of a folding toothbrush could open the sacred precincts of Fifth Avenue, what realms beyond the dreams of avarice were waiting for him who should revolutionize ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... responsibility for, the economic relations of society. An unjust distribution of goods, the withholding from the producer of his fair share of the wealth which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches—these were ranked under one term as avarice, and they were counted not among the venial offenses, like aberrations of the flesh, but avarice was considered one of the seven deadly sins of the spirit. The application of the ethics of Jesus to social control ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... discontented Duke of Guienne in France, had been vanquished by Charles Martel, who derived that humble but glorious surname from the event we are now to record. Charles had left Eude the enjoyment of his dukedom, provided that he held it as a fief from the crown; but blind with ambition and avarice, Eude adopted a scheme which threw Christianity itself, as well as Europe, into a crisis of peril which has never since occurred. By marrying a daughter with a Mahometan emir, he rashly began an intercourse with the Ishmaelites, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Nicklaus Wagner announced that the spirit of avarice was still active as ever in his bosom. Even Baptiste, who had lost all his dogmatism and his disposition to command, under the imposing omens which had now made themselves apparent even to him, loudly joined in the protest against this waste of property. It is rare ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Aventine is glory's tomb; her pomp and power lie low in dust. Our land, more favored, had its Pilgrim Fathers. On shores of solitude at Plymouth Rock, they planted a nation's heart,—the rights of conscience, imperishable glory. No dream of avarice or ambition broke their exalted purpose, theirs was the wish to reign in hope's ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... fell a victim to the avarice of Omar, who desired to possess himself of the Jew's wealth. Being an autocrat, he easily found means to accomplish his purpose. He invited Bacri to the palace, conversed affably for a time, and then bowed him out with a smile. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the will of avarice, for the aid of cruelty and injustice; it was an African slaver—the schooner Panda. She was commanded by Don Pedro Gilbert, a native of Catalonia, in Spain, and son of a grandee; a man thirty-six years of age, and exceeding handsome, having a round face, pearly teeth, round forehead, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... summed up as a respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this misconception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's religion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church became a theater, where orators, instead of church teachers harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... outrageously misrepresented, and also as an instance of his ordinary conduct towards the servants of his house; it shows too, at the same time, whether the severe economy that he required in his domestic management, and of which I will speak elsewhere, was the result, as has been stated, of sordid avarice, or whether it was not rather a rule of prudence, from which he departed willingly whenever his kindness of heart or his ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... there be any evil propensities, such as a quarrelsome, irritable temper, a love of turbulence and cruelty, selfishness, avarice, jealousy, etc., all of which lie at the base of the brain, they may be for the time entirely suppressed by gentle dispersive manipulations from the organs of such propensities either down toward ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... tenderest ties of human nature, and plunging villages and families into mourning and despair. The hyena, the tiger, the crocodile, are creatures existing by the will of God; the man-stealer is a sin-created monster! The depredations of the former are the effects of hunger; those of the latter avarice—the meanest passion that ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... of New York City real estate held out dazzling opportunities gratifying his acquisitiveness for wealth and power—the wealth that fed his avarice, and the power flowing from the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief which your avarice has occasioned." ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... a large stock of avarice, ignorance, and vanity, this superior had certain ridiculous peculiarities in his person, such as a hunch upon his back, and distorted limbs, that seemed to attract the satirical notice of Peregrine, who, young as he was, took offence at his want of reverence for ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... by a young girl guided by the courage of love. It was by this path that the beautiful Mary of Vestfjordal went with light and firm foot to meet the friend of her childhood and her beloved, Ejstein Halfvordsen. But the avarice of her father separated them, and Mary's tears and prayers obliged Ejstein to fly, in order to escape the schemes of a treacherous rival against his life. Years passed on, and Mary remained steadfast in ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... washed up on the land from the ocean. Now Licinnius was originally a Gaul but was captured, brought among Romans, and made a slave to Caesar, by whom he was set free, and then by Augustus he had been made procurator of Gaul. He had barbarian avarice and Roman haughtiness, and tried to overthrow every person and thing deemed superior to himself and to annihilate any power which temporarily appeared strong. It was his care to supply himself with plenty ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... his fears and appealed to his avarice. Harry had too much money and some follies, I confessed, but he was sound at heart, and I had hope of making a strong man of him, and of course his money might be a great lever ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... sister of Mr Morgan's, who till then had kept his house and he intended should still remain in it; for as through the partiality of an aunt who had bred her up she was possessed of a large fortune, her brother, in whom avarice was the ruling passion, was very desirous of keeping in ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... the law, one man might trail another with murder stronger than avarice in his heart, and none ever be the wiser. To hide secrets such as these the unfathomed mountains reached out their ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... about Alice's "things"—Alice was being re-costumed from garret to cellar, with a walking-dress and walking-boots to measure, and a bride's costume of the most ravishing description, and stockings and such like beyond the dreams of avarice—and a constant and increasing dripping into the house of irrelevant remarkable objects, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the money realised by the sale of her possessions, which she intends to give to the poor. Her face displays contempt for money and other earthly things, which she seems to abhor, while the usurers are the very picture of human avarice and greed. Similarly the face of one who is counting the money, which he appears to be communicating to the notary who is writing, is very fine, for although his eyes are turned towards the notary, yet he keeps his hand over the money, thus betraying his greed, avarice, and mistrust. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Parthians had brought him to his death. [14] So Sabinus gave thence a signal to the Romans to fall upon the Jews, although he did not himself venture so much as to come down to his friends, and thought he might expect that the others should expose themselves first to die on account of his avarice. However, the Romans ventured to make a sally out of the place, and a terrible battle ensued; wherein, though it is true the Romans beat their adversaries, yet were not the Jews daunted in their resolutions, even when they had ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... object of preventing renewed intercourse with the Loyalists and the restitution of Loyalist property. 'The proceedings of these people,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton, 'are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a desire of rapine ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... they introduce a miser, make him address his gold as his mistress; as something to be seen, felt, and hugged; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at least. The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a Platonic affection in comparison with the seeing, touching, and handling pleasures of the old Chrysophilites. A bank-note can no more satisfy the touch of a true sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could return her husband's embrace in the shades. See the Cave ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... tortoise. I have read somewhere that the race is not always to the swift. You must treat your fellow men and women as if you had just arrived on this earth from the planet Mars. You must dig through the strata of conventionality to the virgin soil beneath. The great human passions are lust and avarice, though they take a thousand forms, in many of which they have more polite names. For instance, the former, when kept within polite boundaries, is usually known as Love. As Avarice makes but a sorry theme for the romantic writer, Love is the subject that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... a gentle Avarice And hoard the soft Allurements that entice; For One will come who holds the Golden Means To buy your ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... swing himself nimbly up the face of the great rock. Werper, clawing fearfully during the perilous ascent, sweating in terror, almost palsied by fear, but spurred on by avarice, following upward, until at last he stood upon the summit of the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin's death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, abrief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.[9] The author's relation to his parents is adapted directly ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... able to give your Hon'ble House of Commons such satisfaction as was Expected from me. I hope I have not offended against the Law, but if I have, It was the fault of others who knew better, and made me the Tool of their Ambition and Avarice, and who now perhaps think it their Interest that I should be removed out of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... shine to be seen in the heap of copper, but one of the gleaming sixpences was almost sure to have dropped from the hand of Thomas Crann. Not that this generosity sprung altogether from disinterested motives; for the fact was, that he had a morbid fear of avarice; a fear I believe not altogether groundless; for he was independent in his feelings almost to fierceness—certainly to ungraciousness; and this strengthened a natural tendency to saving and hoarding. The consciousness ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mothers' ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... remained for him was to look back upon an unbroken line of seduction and profligacy—upon wealth and influence not merely abused, but prostituted to the lowest and grossest purposes of our worst passions—upon systematic crime—unmanly treachery—and that dishonest avarice which constituted the act of heartless desertion in himself the ultimate ruin and degradation of his victims. Such was this well known squire of the old school, whose portrait, taken from life, will be recognized by every one who ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... vault, coffer, and garde-robe—stall and meuse.-are well nigh drained," answered the monk, with a sour look at the Norman, whose native avarice gleamed in his dark eyes as ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wide, with her leading families connected by marriage with those of Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important relations with the South, there was no city—not even Baltimore—that was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,—that horrid blending of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens, having first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the dreams of avarice." They spoke in low tones, and there was something in the hush that suggested to Colville the feasibility of taking into his unoccupied hand one of the pretty hands which the pale night-light showed him lying in Mrs. Bowen's lap. But he forbore, and only sighed. "Well, then, I will say ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... was so hard for boys, where temptations and danger stood all round her boy's pathway. Not only hidden perils, concealed from sight, so he might possibly escape them, but open temptations, open dangers, made as alluring as private avarice could make them, and made as respectable as dignified legal enactments could make them,—all to draw her boy down the pathway his poor father descended." For one of the curius things about Cicely wuz, she didn't seem to blame Paul hardly a mite, nor not so very ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that it is not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae of mediaeval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice—Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... early manhood and pulled off the biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... he had never been a man greedy of money, so was he now more indifferent to it than in his earlier days. It is a mistake, I think, to suppose that men become greedy as they grow old. The avaricious man will show his avarice as he gets into years, because avarice is a passion compatible with old age,—and will become more avaricious as his other passions fall off from him. And so will it be with the man that is open-handed. Mr. Underwood, when struggling at the Bar, had fought as hard as any of his compeers ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a lower degree of the same class as the third-rate working farmer of the past. He is the old small dairy farmer in a coarser shape. With a little less education, ruder manners, with the instincts of eating, drinking, and avarice more prominently displayed, he presents in his actual condition at this day a striking analogy to the agriculturist of a bygone time. In fact, those farmers of twenty or thirty acres, living in cottage-like homesteads, were barely distinguishable as far as personnel ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... quiet wombe Of his great Grandmother{26} with steele to wound, And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe With Sacriledge to dig. Therein he fownd Fountaines of gold and silver to abownd, Of which the matter of his huge desire And pompous pride eftsoones he did compownd; Then avarice gan through his veines inspire His greedy ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... they sink deep into the hearts of sinners; set up a glass in which vice sees its own image, and bring back many from the paths of error into the high-road of repentance. What a heavenly sight, when a miser, scared at the hideous picture of his avarice drawn by my eloquence, opens his coffers to the poor and needy, and dispenses the accumulated store with a liberal hand! The voluptuary, too, is snatched from the pleasures of the table; ambition ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... is injurious to the health of our entire body politic. It stifles in those for whose benefit it is permitted all patriotic love of country, and substitutes in its place selfish greed and grasping avarice. Devotion to American citizenship for its own sake and for what it should accomplish as a motive to our nation's advancement and the happiness of all our people is displaced by the assumption that the Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something low—low as compared with moral and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... that neither our sons nor we can allow Clementina to take the veil? Can we so reward Laurana for her cruelty? Especially now, that we suspect the motives for her barbarity? Could I have thought that my sister Sforza—But what will not love and avarice do, their powers united to compass the same end; the one reigning in the bosom of the mother, the other in that of the daughter? Alas! alas! they have, between them, broken the spirit of my Clementina. The very name of Laurana gives her terror—So far is she sensible. But, O ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... his footing: no other was put over his head, and in time he came to be called Roy the bailiff, without having ever been formally appointed as bailiff. He drew his two pounds per week—his stipulated wages—and he made, it is hard to say what, besides. Avarice and tyranny were the predominant passions of Roy's mind; bad qualities, and likely to bring forth bad fruits when ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... almost incapable of retaining it; he himself had the one talent of his race, but was an exception to their incapacity. In justice to our family I may add that we are said to make indulgent husbands and fathers,—two characters incompatible with avarice, and sometimes even with prudence when ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Claude Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin from the close of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, and whose diocese extended to the valleys of Piedmont, says that the Waldenses took their origin from Leo, a person in the time of ye Emperor Constantine, who, hating the avarice of Pope Sylvester and the immoderate endowment of the Church of Rome, seceded from her communion, and "drew after him all who entertained right sentiments about the ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... Indians were now very rapidly passing away from the native proprietors to the new-comers, and English settlements were every where springing up in the wilderness. The Indian power was evidently declining, while that of the white man was on the increase. With prosperity came avarice. Unprincipled men flocked to the colonies; the Indians were despised, and often harshly treated; and the forbearance which marked the early intercourse of the Pilgrims with the natives was forgotten. The colonists had generally become exasperated ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... that they would murder the people. In order to incite the starvelings against Pierre, Macquart went so far as to circulate a report that the retired oil-dealer was not so poor as he pretended, but that he concealed his treasures through avarice and fear of robbery. His tactics thus tended to rouse the poor people by a repetition of absurdly ridiculous tales, which he often came to believe in himself. His personal animosity and his desire for revenge were ill concealed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... take her, take her, by all means; you will be the prettiest, finest, loveliest, sweetest couple. Augh! what a delicate dish of matrimony you will make! Her age with your youth, her avarice with your extravagance, and ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's. So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice. Several times he visited the husband and wife, always borrowing considerable sums, and threatening to reveal their crime if they refused him. The first few times the poor creatures gave in to his exactions; but the moment came at last when, robbed of all ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... state, and judging by the rumor of cliques]; a general discontent reigning in the Country, love of his subjects pretty much gone; people speaking of him in no measured terms [in certain cliques]. Cares nothing about those who helped him as Prince Royal, say some; others complain of his avarice [meaning steady vigilance in outlay] as surpassing the late King's; this one complained of his violences of temper (EMPORTEMENS); that one of his suspicions, of his distrust, his haughtinesses, his dissimulation" (meaning polite impenetrability when he saw good). Several circumstances, known to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... people of England to consider how the House of Commons under the operation of these examples must of necessity be constituted. On the side of the Court will be, all honours, offices, emoluments; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the Court, and in opposition to its system. For his own ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... legendary treasures of the New Indies—yet all of them were serving unconsciously the genius of their race in laying the foundations of new worlds. Perhaps of them all Smith saw most clearly the value of the settlement in Virginia, and just as clearly was he aware that the jealousies and avarice of many of his fellow colonists would threaten seriously its growth and indeed ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... them up in his belt, and seemed prepared to defend them with his very life-blood, Guy couldn't conceal from himself-the fact that he fairly despised him. Such vulgar, common-place, unredeemed love of pelf! Such mere bourgeois avarice! Of what use could those wretched pebbles be to him here in the dusty ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to avarice, Teach pride its mean condition, And preach good sense to dull pretence, Was honest Jack's high mission. Our simple statesman found his rule Of moral in the flagon, And held his philosophic school Beneath the "George ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is what you covet, you greedy curmudgeon—that is it? Do not all the crimes you have committed out of avarice weigh upon you heavily enough? Gold, and yet more gold—that is the end, the foul end, of all your desires. A fat morsel, no doubt: the Mukaukas' estates, his talents of gold, his gems, slaves, and horses; I admit that. But thank God the All-merciful, we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... always go to the other side.... To be proud of buying high-priced articles cheap is the good fortune of merchants, but should be unknown to samurai. Let it not be even so much as mentioned.... Samurai must have a care of their words, and are not to speak of avarice, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... also, what may be the probability of our being able to borrow the whole sum. Under these dispositions and prospects, it would grieve us extremely to see our debt pass into the hands of speculators, and be subjected ourselves to the chicaneries and vexations of private avarice. We desire you, therefore, to dissuade the government, as far as you can prudently, from listening from any overtures of that kind, and as to the speculators themselves, whether native or foreign, to inform them, without ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be wasted, and worse than wasted; and all this, that the producers and venders may feed and fatten on the gains? This objection lies equally against the temperance reform and every other reform, where cupidity and avarice are involved. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... chill'd,—like vampire, now, He sucks the life-blood of his friends or foes Until he viler grows than savage beast. And when, at length, stretch'd on his bed of death, And powerless, friendless, o'er his clammy brow The dark'ning shades descend, strong to the last His avarice lives; and while he feebly plucks His wretched coverlet, he gasps for breath, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to require some simple pleasures and excitement, which would cost money. And money should not be wanting. Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of her age. Only Willie was never stinted nor hindered of anything that the two women thought could give him pleasure, for ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... might see the world a little, for the first time. Her sorrow on this occasion has in it something beautiful, in so bright and gay a woman: shows us the mother strong in her, to a touching degree. The rough cub, in whom she noticed rugged perverse elements, "tendencies to avarice," and a want of princely graces, and the more brilliant qualities in mind and manner, had given her many thoughts and some uneasy ones. But he was evidently all she had to love in the world; a rugged creature inexpressibly ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... greatly mistaken. Chupin had sufficient experience and common sense to read his master's character and discern his motives. He saw plainly enough that this honest impulse on M. Fortunat's part came from disappointed avarice and wounded vanity, and that the agent would have allowed the Marquis de Valorsay to carry out his infamous scheme without any compunctions of conscience, providing he, himself, had not been injured by it. Still, the young fellow did not allow his real ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and taste are afterwards very different, entirely from the careless way in which they have been cooked. They are in greatest perfection when in greatest plenty, i.e., when in full season. By season, we do not mean those early days, when luxury in the buyers, and avarice in the sellers about London, force the various vegetables, but the time of the year in which, by nature and common culture, and the mere operation of the sun and climate, they are ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... hitherto competitors, would disappear. The world would wear a smile instead of a frown! Brotherly love between man and man, would become the rule in place of the exception! Gold would lose its charm! Avarice would pass away! Selfish instincts, born of bitter years under a cruel system would soon follow! Long dormant, spiritual natures would be awakened! A new spiritual growth would take place! A vastly ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... very much, my child,' he continued, sympathetically, 'if it turned out that he had either' altered his mind or by some accident had neglected to make his will? I speak as your father, Janey, and I think I have some knowledge of your character. I think I know that you are as free from avarice as anyone could be.' ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... concealed the heart of an Atheist.' Now, these priests were also the philosophers of Rome, and it is not impossible that some modern philosophical priests, like their Pagan prototypes, secretly despise the religion they openly profess. Avarice, and lust of power, are potent underminers of human virtue. The mighty genius of Bacon was not proof against them, and he who deserves to occupy a place among 'the wisest and greatest' has been 'damned to eternal fame' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty (modestia). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have no contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chastity are not emotions (passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former are moderated, and which is discussed later under ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... acting rashly, that a bet of twenty thousand pounds was at stake, that the elephant was absolutely necessary to him, and that he would secure him if he had to pay twenty times his value. Returning to the Indian, whose small, sharp eyes, glistening with avarice, betrayed that with him it was only a question of how great a price he could obtain. Mr. Fogg offered first twelve hundred, then fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, two thousand pounds. Passepartout, usually so rubicund, was fairly white ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... products of fear, insanity, idiocy, paralysis of various muscles and organs, profuse perspiration, cholerina, jaundice, sudden decay of teeth, fatal anaemia, skin diseases, erysipelas, and eczema. Passion, sinful thought, avarice, envy, jealousy, selfishness, all press for external bodily expression. Even false philosophies, false theology, and false conceptions of God make their unwholesome influence felt in every bodily tissue. By infallible law, mental ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... growing woodland that might have made their owners rich at some later day were sacrificed to his greed of gain. You had to give him half your trees to make him give half price for the rest. Some men yielded to him out of ignorance, or avarice for immediate gains, and others out of bitter necessity. Once or twice he had even brought men to their knees and gained his point by involving them in money difficulties, through buying up their mortgages and notes. He could sell ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... conclusions appear to us to be scarcely warranted. If the extensive or even universal practice of a thing proves its necessity, then has there been justification, either now or in the past, for war, lying, avarice and other vices. It is strange that drugs differing so greatly in their immediate and obvious effects as, for example, alcohol and opium, or coffee and tobacco should be used. Should it he said that only some of the much used stimulants are useful, there is an end to the argument based on their universal ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality, the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land, and the wealth centred in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate and fatal, I mean poverty and riches, he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land, and to make new ones, in such a manner that they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... few years there was peace in the grasslands, and the settlers prospered as others joined. But it was not always so. For with more settlers came greed and avarice. Laws were made, regulations were had, rules announced and they were not always fair. Greed, sometimes sat in the councils, and the avaricious bent the rules. Then, there were other wars in which justice and fairness ran not ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... yet she did not go to bed. She feared to sleep, to lose the consciousness of her joy of the glory which had come into her life. She was a miser of the golden hours of this black and howling night. To sleep would be to be robbed. A splendid avarice in her rebelled against ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and, among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the Genius, 'are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the like cares and passions that infest ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... rather by reason of his avarice and grasping disposition; for, indeed, he was Theodoromedes originally ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... of the kind, ensues. Commonly, however, the tragedy is different from this, and deeper. Commonly, in these cases, action loses height as it gains lateral surface; the superior faculties starve, being robbed of sustenance by this avarice of performance, and consequently of supply, on the part of the lower,—they sit at second table, and eat of remainder-crumbs. The delicate and divine sprites, that should bear the behests of the soul to the will and to the houses of thought in the brain her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... heard the Earth-song I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... enraged pessimist; and I could believe, that he seriously attributed to Providence, some quality inconceivably malignant, directed in all things personally against himself. His immense bitterness and his careful avarice, alike, I could explain, and in a measure justify, when I came to understand that he had felt the sharpest stings of poverty, and, moreover, was passionately in love, in love comme on ne l'est plus. As to what ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... tomb— Be proud today, oh, portico of gloom!— Where lies the man in solitary state Who never caused a tear but when he died And set the flags around the world half-mast— The gentle Tribune and so grandly great That e'en the utter avarice of Death That claims the world, and will not be denied, Could only rob him of his mortal breath. How strange the splendor, though the man be past! His noblest inspiration was his last. The statues of the Capitol are there. As when he stood upon the marble stair ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... profession to which the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand du Tillet, that jackal, with the same magnitude of operations worked out by that elephant of a Nucingen. He has outlined and measured the exact relation of each character to his environment ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... You have come to gamble, and your gambling is attended by every form of intemperance and immorality. I am not afraid to tell you so, for God has laid upon me a plain message, and I intend to do my duty. These race-courses are not for horse-racing, but for reservoirs of avarice and drunkenness and prostitution. Don't think"—he was looking straight into the painted faces of the women in pink and yellow, who were trying to smile and look amused—"don't think I am going to abuse the unhappy girls who are forced by a corrupt civilization to live by their looks. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Spanish councils, to discontinue and to discourage any farther researches in that quarter. Already masters of a larger empire on the continent of America than they could conveniently govern, and of richer mines of the precious metals on that continent than they could convert into use, neither avarice nor ambition furnished reasons for aiming at a fresh accession of dominions. And thus, though settled all along the shores of this ocean, in a situation so commodious for prosecuting discoveries throughout its wide extent, the Spaniards remained satisfied with a coasting intercourse between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... through the rest of his days. Packed about the long tables were young faces flushed with hope or grey with despair; middle-aged faces which expressed excitement or indifference; old, old faces, scarred and lined and seamed, where avarice, selfishness, cruelty, dishonesty crossed and recrossed till human semblance was literally blotted out. Light-o'-loves, gay and careless; hideous old crones, who watched the unwary and stole the unwary's ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... that it should never be made the residence of the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited, and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage, which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the color of friendship. [58] But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... perhaps, may call profound policy, was indispensable to the accomplishment of his projects; and sometimes, as if to keep himself in practice, he would do it in matters of secondary importance. For example, his opinion of the insatiable avarice of Sieyes is well known; yet when he proposed, in his message to the Council of Ancients, to give his colleague, under the title of national recompense, the price of his obedient secession, it was, in the words of the message, a recompense worthily ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... absorbing study of the effects of heredity; 'L'Auberge rouge' is an analysis of remorse, as is also 'Un Drame au bord de la mer'; while 'L'Enfant maudit' is an analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested in the passion of poetic love. Finally, 'Maitre Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jesus-Christ en Flandre' is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of colonization remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives of this insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the toil of the mass would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and unmistakable inconvenience to every individual in the association; inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of employers, or the unjust ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences; ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Plowman: [Footnote: The Plowman's Tale, which was printed as one of the Canterbury Tales in Speght's editions. It is now rejected by all authorities.] yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest deserved the lashes which he gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury tales: neither has his contemporary Boccace spared them. Yet both these poets lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free-hearted and Generous, and where is ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... Commencement jaunt much easier than they would slide in again after you got home. That was the exact reason why I was not there.... I flatter myself that none of my friends ever thought me greatly absorbed in the sin of avarice, yet I assure you, Jem, that in these days of poverty I look upon a round dollar with a great deal of complacency. These rascal dollars are so necessary to the comfort of life, that next to a fine wife they are most essential, and their acquisition an object ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... fiery eyes and a pink and pointed chin. A daughter of a mother who had known too many admirers in her youth; a woman with an ample lap on which she held a Persian kitten or a trifle of fruit. Bounty, avarice, desire, intelligence—both of them had always what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... such avarice may well have heartened Demetrios when the well-armoured gaoler knelt in order to unlock the door of Perion's cell. As an asp leaps, the big and supple hands of the proconsul gripped Bracciolini's neck from behind, and ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... before him! It was something to be a benefactor of humanity, but why not tap the wealth of the Incas! If the mere invention of a folding toothbrush could open the sacred precincts of Fifth Avenue, what realms beyond the dreams of avarice were waiting for him who ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... a century from the time Spain first learned of America, Cortes not only penetrated Mexico, but sent his corsairs up the west coast of the {134} continent. Pizarro conquered Peru. Spanish ships plied a trade rich beyond dreams of avarice between the gold realms of Peru and the spice islands of the Philippines. The chivalry of the Spanish nobility suddenly became a chivalry of the high seas. Religious zeal burned to a flame against those gold-lined pagan temples. It was easy to believe that the transfer of wedges of ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... conspiracy with the enemies of their country, to chain down the legislature at the feet of both; when the whole mass of your constituents have condemned this work in the most unequivocal manner, and are looking to you as their last hope to save them from the effects of the avarice and corruption of the first agent, the revolutionary machinations of others, and the incomprehensible acquiescence of the only honest man [the president] who has assented to it. I wish that his honesty and his political errors may not furnish ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... of him who had made gold his god. For some time they feared to rekindle the light, but at last they ventured. It was but to witness the last dread pangs of one who had made wife and son secondary to the great absorbing passion of avarice; and now he was constrained to depart from the scene of his toil, and to leave all that he had grovelled for behind him, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... resources; the Romans being indignant that the conquered aggressively took up arms against their victors; the Carthaginians, because they considered that in their subjection it had been lorded over them with haughtiness and avarice. There is besides a story, that Hannibal, when about nine years old, while he boyishly coaxed his father Hamilcar that he might be taken to Spain, (at the time when the African war was completed, and he was employed in sacrificing ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, a more ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... Essay owes its origin to a conversation with a friend, on the subject of Mr Godwin's essay on avarice and profusion, in his Enquirer. The discussion started the general question of the future improvement of society, and the Author at first sat down with an intention of merely stating his thoughts to his friend, upon paper, in a clearer manner than he thought he could do in conversation. But as ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... was in no position to bargain. They came out smoking twopenny cigars whose strength was remarkable for their age, and before they parted Mr. Chase was pledged to the hilt to do all that he could to save Mrs. Teak from the vice of avarice. ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... read the evidence, as it related to this trade, without acknowledging the inhumanity of it, and our own disgrace. By what means was it kept up in Africa? By wars instigated, not by the passions of the natives, but by our avarice. He knew it would be said in reply to this, that the slaves, who were purchased by us, would be put to death, if we were not to buy them. But what should we say, if it should turn out, that we were the causes of those very cruelties, which we affected to prevent? But, if it were ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... knowledge and enlightenment as men. The education should be given in common, and this will powerfully further the interests of morality. The separation of the sexes in youth really proceeds from the fear of unequal marriages, in other words, from avarice and pride. It would be dangerous for a democratic community to allow the spirit of social inequality to survive among women, with the consequence that it could never be extirpated among men. Condorcet was not a brilliant writer, but the humanity and generosity of his thought finds a powerful ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... practical law which I recognise as such must be qualified for universal legislation; this is an identical proposition and, therefore, self-evident. Now, if I say that my will is subject to a practical law, I cannot adduce my inclination (e.g., in the present case my avarice) as a principle of determination fitted to be a universal practical law; for this is so far from being fitted for a universal legislation that, if put in the form of a universal law, it would ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of James were his worst enemies. As generous as the day, he gave away with reckless profusion anything and everything that he could lay his hands upon. It was soon to appear that the great queen's most unlovely characteristic, her avarice; was a more blessed quality to the nation she ruled than the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he at length, 'YOU contract to marry Ellen Heathcote? the poor, innocent, confiding, light-hearted girl. No, no, Edward Dwyer, I know you too well for that—your services, be they what they will, must not, shall not go unrewarded—your avarice shall be appeased—but not with a human sacrifice! Dwyer, I speak to you without disguise; you know me to be acquainted with your history, and what's more, with your character. Now tell me frankly, were I to do ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... jerked by unseen wires." "Consciousness," says Bergson, "is essentially free." Man the savage or man the philosopher—he alone can decide. Let him purify patriotism with Christianity and he has brotherhood; adulterate it with avarice and he has war. The evolution of patriotism is not a physical thing. Listen to Huxley, "Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of the ethical process." The evolution of patriotism, ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... her now," he said. "And believe me in this, Edith; no knowledge obtained of a friend in happiness is at all equal to that which is obtained in sorrow. Had Lady Mason been prosperous, had she never become subject to the malice and avarice of wicked people, I should never have loved her as I ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... remember, was precarious, the Forest itself being continually exposed to danger by its proximity to the Welsh border. Mahel was this lady's youngest brother, of whom Camden records that "the judgment of God overtook him for his rapacious ways, inhumane cruelties, and boundless avarice, always usurping other men's rights. For, being courteously treated at the Castle of St. Briavel's by Walter de Clifford, the castle taking fire, he lost his life by the fall of a stone on his head ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... not express my emotion and thankfulness to the young man otherwise than by the pressure of the hand, for he spoke no language but his mother tongue. Even at that time many anecdotes of the remarkable avarice of the rich Clementi were related, which had greatly increased in later years when I again met him in London. It was generally reported that Field was kept on very short allowance by his master, and was obliged ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... thirty-seven. He said to Manduit, who attended him till he died, 'It is finishing a noble career early; but I die the victim of my ambition and the avarice of ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... industrious boy, though it be money, is only money considered as the means of gratifying a benevolent wish. In a commercial nation it is especially necessary to separate, as much as possible, the spirit of industry and avarice; and to beware lest we introduce Vice under ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... of mineral worth a thousand dinars? But ye are excusable, for that ye are poor folk and have not in your possession things of price." The King asked, "O merchant, hast thou jewels such as those whereof thou speakest?"; and he answered, "Plenty." Whereupon avarice overcame the King and he said, "Wilt thou give me real jewels?" Said Ma'aruf, "When my baggage-train shall come, I will give thee no end of jewels; and all that thou canst desire I have in plenty and will give thee, without price." At this the King rejoiced and said to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Flint-breasted Pallas joys in single life; But Pallas and your mistress are at strife. Love, Hero, then, and be not tyrannous; But heal the heart that thou hast wounded thus; Nor stain thy youthful years with avarice: Fair fools delight to be accounted nice. The richest[19] corn dies, if it be not reapt; Beauty alone is lost, too warily kept." These arguments he us'd, and many more; Wherewith she yielded, that was won before. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... audience from his majesty. I took to the King a pair of silver mounted pistols, ten dollars, ten bars of amber, ten of coral. But, when he had looked at the present with great indifference for some time, he told me that he could not accept it; alleging, as an excuse for his avarice, that I had given a much handsomer present to the King of Kataba. It was in vain that I assured him of the contrary; he positively refused to accept it, and I was under the necessity of adding fifteen dollars, ten bars coral, ten amber, before his majesty would ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... serve a monarch whom we love. They boast, they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error. Yes, they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. They offer us their protection: yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... reaped. This, likewise, in many places raises the price of corn. The price of wool is also so risen that the poor people, who were wont to make cloth, are no more able to buy it; and this, likewise, makes many of them idle: for since the increase of pasture God has punished the avarice of the owners by a rot among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of them—to us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves. But, suppose the sheep should increase ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... continue to be introduced into China, in spite of the strongest imperial edicts, and the severest denouncements of punishment against its consumers, so infatuated are its users, and so governed by the spirit of avarice ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... by Knox of avarice, applied at least his wealth to laudable purposes; and in the words of Keith, was "a man of great learning, and a most accomplished politician." He entered St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews, in 1511, and took his ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... 21, 1790), Ribas concealed himself among the reeds on the bank of the Danube, and did not reappear until the danger was over and he could in safety share in the booty taken by his sailors. But this cowardice and avarice of their admiral very nearly caused a mutiny among the sailors. It was not suppressed without ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... be my powers over you? I know the first generous impulse of your heart is always good; but then ambition,—let me speak truth to you,—avarice, the offspring of ambition, leads you astray, and contaminates the ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... legends of the wilderness; but neither physicians nor moralists have yet attempted to distinguish the morbid states of intellect[32] which are extremities of noble passion, from those which are the punishments of ambition, avarice, or lasciviousness. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... her, take her, by all means; you will be the prettiest, finest, loveliest, sweetest couple. Augh! what a delicate dish of matrimony you will make! Her age with your youth, her avarice with your extravagance, and her scolding with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... to find merit in what I have done; it is by my love alone that I trust to deserve you. As for the scruples you feel, your father himself justifies you but too much before the world; and his avarice and the distant way in which he lives with his children might authorise stranger things still. Forgive me, my dear Elise, for speaking thus of your father before you; but you know that, unfortunately, on this subject no good can be said of him. However, ...
— The Miser (L'Avare) • Moliere
... objects of divine solicitude. Hopeless looks and dwarfish lives are fearful protests against the pitiless avarice of the faithless rich. This or that conception of the redemptive economy, or concerning the personnel of its central figure, may be tolerated, but there can be no hopeful sign for him who actively or passively oppresses God's ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Vanity acts like a woman,—they both think they are defrauded when love or praise is bestowed on others. Voltaire was jealous of the wit of a roue whom Paris admired for two days; and even a duchess takes offence at a look bestowed upon her maid. The avarice excited by these two sentiments is such that a fraction of them given to the poor ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... line, but not so high as the virtues, and that it should be not among the energies, but among the moderating faculties of the front half of the head. Hence they usually ascertain its true location. If Avarice or Acquisitiveness should be considered, they would recognize it as entitled to a place below the horizontal line, and also behind the vertical line, but neither the lowest nor the most posterior. If Firmness is mentioned, they ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... themselves guilty of the same, without any astonishment or miracle at all? It would, peradventure, be more strange to see the passion fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion. If there be no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire; it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either constant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession. And by that means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in them than ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... banquet is said to have been prepared, deserves no more regard than many other stories and appearances of the same kind; yet we are not to discard as incredible the tradition of a barbarous age, merely because it asserts the sacrifice of a young and beautiful heiress to the jealousy or the avarice of a stepmother. When this is granted, the story of the pie with all its horrors may safely be ascribed to the inventive genius of a minstrel. On the whole, Radcliffe is a place which, not only from its antiquity and splendour, but from the great families ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... restraint upon others. Assailed by no external temptations to indulgence themselves, their prohibitions were limited to the very few gratifications that are inconsistent with the habits of Indian life. Avarice was a passion of which neither they nor their tribe had, as yet, felt the influence. All things were in common; and individual appropriation of property was unknown. The "strong waters" of the white man, the fire which hath eaten into ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... a person with a narrow forehead, small grey eyes, and that peculiar expression of countenance which the vice of indulged avarice seems generally to produce. Though his lips denoted sensuality, their total want of firmness showed the astute Father Mendez that he would be easily moulded to his will. The marquis was perfectly well aware of the way ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... marriage may fall of the high ideal standpoint, there should never be recrimination in public between man and wife, nor the utterance of taunts as to the avarice, expediency, or cowardice that may have influenced either side in the presence of a third person. Few attain to the highest happiness of which we are capable in this state: few, perhaps, make the most of what they have; yet it is very rare to find a married woman ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... property, if it should come to him during his banishment, immediately seized it all, like a robber. The judges were so afraid of him, that they disgraced themselves by declaring this theft to be just and lawful. His avarice knew no bounds. He outlawed seventeen counties at once, on a frivolous pretence, merely to raise money by way of fines for misconduct. In short, he did as many dishonest things as he could; and cared so little for the discontent ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... I have committed nothing which might bring dishonour, or disgrace, or shame: no deed of avarice or treachery have I done in all my day's: nay, but much generosity, much kindness, much truth and faithfulness have I shown, often at the risk of my own life. I have lived in amity with my good brother, whom I rejoice to see in possession of ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... Grigsby's town office that Ford saw the ore specimens and the certified assays, and listened not too credulously to Grigsby's enthusiastic description of the Little Alicia. To be a half-owner in this mine of mines was to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice—when the railroad should come: if one might take Grigsby's word ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny.' The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468—' The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... rest. It was always sombre in its attire, ascetic in its habits, intolerant in its dogmas, secluded in its life, narrow in its views, and repulsive in its austerities; but its leaders and dignitaries did not then conceal under their coarse raiments either ambition, or avarice, or gluttony. They did not live in stately abbeys, nor ride on mules with gilded bridles, nor entertain people of rank and fashion, nor hunt heretics with fire and sword, nor dictate to princes in affairs of state, nor fill the world with spies, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... yet derive any advantage from the early maturity of the harvest, and it is still with difficulty we obtain a limited portion of bad bread. Severe decrees are enacted to defeat the avarice of the farmers, and prevent monopolies of the new corn; but these people are invulnerable: they have already been at issue with the system of terror— and it was found necessary, even before the death of Robespierre, to release them from prison, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... supplement of additional assimilations, and how to get them in. With all this, the child had been taught to dance; and there was a greed of learning about it (the book being designed to show the way to others) that struck me as avarice of the most violent and perverse form; the avarice of men for money and baronial holdings being innocent compared, as sins of the flesh are innocent compared to the sins of mind. This book and the tragic child form to my idea one of the final eruptions ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... to accusation and revilement against the Romish Church; for the sake of her own honour he must refuse to do so. As for his battle against indulgences, his only thought had been to prevent the Mother Church from being defiled by foreign avarice, and that the people should not be led astray, but learn ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... of decorum in this character, you found a slough beneath. She had a wonderful passion for presents; and, in this point, the third teacher—a person otherwise characterless and insignificant—closely resembled her. This last-named had also one other distinctive property—that of avarice. In her reigned the love of money for its own sake. The sight of a piece of gold would bring into her eyes a green glisten, singular to witness. She once, as a mark of high favour, took me up-stairs, and, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... his subjects being unable to endure his cruelty and avarice, fled in great numbers to Xemindoo, who was now master of some considerable towns. Xemindoo having gathered an army of 200,000 men and 5000 elephants, marched to the city of Pegu, near which he was encountered by Zemin at the head of 800,000 men. The battle was long doubtful, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... habits as tending to subvert their morals, and to render them frivolous and insincere. I added that in America as well as everywhere else there were bad men, men of no principles, whose consciences never stand in the way of their ambition or avarice; but that I firmly believed that, as a body, the American Congress was as pure from corruption and foreign influence as any body of men in the world. They were much pleased with what I told them, and acknowledged that America and American visitors ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... my Lord, it is not without some difficulty that I check my natural impulse to follow you, as a scholar, into the interesting analysis of the distinctions which may be drawn between Rapacity and Acquisitiveness; between the Avarice, or the prudent care, of possession; between the greed, and the modest expectation, of gain; between the love of money, which is the root of all evil; and the commercial spirit, which is in England held to be ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'O Brahmana, this my desire of wealth is not for enjoying it when obtained. It is only for the support of the Brahmanas that I desire it and not because I am actuated by avarice! For what purpose, O Brahmana, doth one like us lead a domestic life, if he cannot cherish and support those that follow him? All creatures are seen to divide the food (they procure) amongst those that depend on them.[1] So should a person leading a domestic life give a share of his food ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... are never enough, never nearly enough; even if you take one at a time and lay it down and say, "This is a house," even then there are not enough. We see rich people, rich people out of motor cars, rich people beyond the dreams of avarice, going into toyshops and buying these skimpy, sickly, ridiculous pseudo-boxes of bricklets, because they do not know what to ask for, and the toyshops are just the merciless mercenary enemies of youth and happiness—so ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... and bony, and of less than average height. His Italian features were full of expression. The bad sides to his character were hypocrisy, spite, harshness, and avarice. He had plenty of natural intelligence but his adventurous youth and the lowly position of his family had not encouraged him to study; he was totally lacking in what one calls education. In the heyday of his career he had a keen eye and a decisive mind and ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... them go. Books are not buried with their owners, and the veriest book-miser that ever lived was probably doing far more for his successors than his more liberal neighbor who despised his learned or unlearned avarice. Let the fruit fall with the leaves still clinging round it. Who would have stripped Southey's walls of the books that filled them, when, his mind no longer capable of taking in their meaning, he would still pat and fondle them with the vague loving sense of what they had once been to him,—to ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Nobody could resist his eloquence. He could scarcely stand upright from weakness, yet he could address ten thousand men. He was an outspoken man, and reproved the greatest dignitaries with as much boldness as did Savonarola. He denounced the gluttony of monks, the avarice of popes, and the rapacity of princes. He held heresy in mortal hatred, like the Fathers of the fifth century. His hostility to Abelard was direful, since he looked upon him as undermining Christianity and extinguishing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... now cultivated, we have been informed by his majesty, whose endeavours will probably be successful, however they may at first be thwarted and obstructed; because the near approach of danger will rouse those whom avarice has stupified, or negligence intoxicated; thus truth and reason will become every day more powerful, and sophistry and artifice be in time ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... a degree, however, in which we suppose that the care of ourselves becomes a source of painful anxiety and cruel passions; in which it degenerates into avarice, vanity, or pride; and in which, by fostering habits of jealousy and envy, of fear and malice, it becomes as destructive of our own enjoyments, as it is hostile to the welfare of mankind. This evil, however, is not to be charged upon any excess in the care of ourselves, but upon a mere ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... that that state which lays its foundations in rare and heroic virtues, will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess. For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other: and when men are left no ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... water-fall To one by deserts bound— Making the air all musical With cool, inviting sound— Is oft some unpretending strain Of rural song, to him whose brain Is fevered in the sordid strife That Avarice breeds 'twixt man and man, While moving on, in caravan, Across the sands ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... the Macedonian bow; Meteors of earth that set to rise no more: A hero-worship, as of old? Not now Should chieftain bend with servile reverence o'er The fading pageantry of Paynim lore. True heroes they whose consecrated vow Led them to Jewry, fighting for the Cross; While not by Avarice lured, or lust of power Inspired, they combated that Christ should reign, And life laid down for him counted no loss. On Dorylaeum's plain, by Antioch's tower, And Ascalon, sleep well ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... southward. He knew that both young Cormick and old Mother Nolan were heavy sleepers; and, earlier in the evening, he had seen something through the window of the guest-chamber that had aroused his curiosity and a passion of avarice. ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... not wonderful that this great conqueror should have been overcome by the special infirmity, to which such immense plunder would dispose him; he has left behind him a reputation for avarice. He desired to be a patron of literature, and on one occasion he promised a court poet a golden coin for every verse of an heroic poem he was writing. Stimulated by the promise, "the divine poet," to use the words of the Persian historian, "wrote the unparalleled poem called the Shah ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... though bad enough in many respects, had taken a fancy to me. We were to engage, I found, in the slave-trade. At first I was shocked at the barbarities I witnessed, but soon got accustomed to them. We did not always keep to that business. The profits were not large enough to satisfy our avarice; and even piracy we did not hesitate to commit at times, when opportunity offered. At length the brig was cast away, and many of the crew and all our ill-gotten gains were lost. I, with two or three others, who escaped, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Calcutta would be as pleasing a subject. The character of the Hollanders is too grossly vicious and detestable to give the least pleasure. They are neither men, nor even devils; but a sort of lubber fiends, compounded of cruelty, avarice, and brutal debauchery, like Dutch swabbers possessed by demons. But of this play the author has himself admitted, that the subject is barren, the persons low, and the writing not heightened by any laboured scenes: and, without attempting to contradict this modest ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he had exhausted it, and found it no more than a monotonous grind of gain which ended in a loathing of the thing gained. Others might and would consume themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,—but for him such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,—a change of surroundings, a change of associations—and for this, what could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... are both studies. The former is a perfect master of certain chords; He has practised upon them, not for philosophical, but for mercenary purposes. He knows the depth, and strength, and tone of vanity, curiosity, pride, envy, avarice, superstition, nationality, and local and general prejudice. He has learned the effect of these, not because they contribute to make him wiser, but because they make him richer; not to enable him to regulate his conduct in life, but ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... an old fellow-soldier and one so mettle as himself. As for you, my dear sir, my daughter and I would be proud to receive our benefactor, whom we regard as a brother and a son. The French nobleman has proved a person of the most filthy avarice of character, and I have been necessitate to leave the haras. You will find us, in consequence, a little poorly lodged in the auberge of a man Bazin on the dunes; but the situation is caller, and I make no doubt but we might spend some very pleasant days, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... movement of mankind as merely understanding it, and analysing it, and liking it,—and making allowances for it. He is tumultuous and urgent, daring and impetuous, eager to say a great word. His conceptions shake him. They are all grandiose and huge. The great passions are awake in them—avarice, lust, hate, love, god-like pity, supreme courage, base fear. The whole trend of his mind is towards the heroic. He struggles to be in touch with the actual, and he makes many incursions upon it, but Romance snatches him away again, and claims him for her own. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... respite, fall one by one, as Rochester had already fallen. Churchill might indeed secure himself from this danger, and might raise himself still higher in the royal favour, by conforming to the Church of Rome; and it might seem that one who was not less distinguished by avarice and baseness than by capacity and valour was not likely to be shocked at the thought of hearing amass. But so inconsistent is human nature that there are tender spots even in seared consciences. And thus this ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these long apartments flew, as it were, one sigh, one joyful breath of relief and surprise, and all faces, the sad and bright, the eyes reddened by wine and night watches, as well as those sparkling with avarice and passion, all turned toward the lofty, full form of the Stadtholder, who, so proud and so brilliant, so august and self-conscious, stood upon the threshold of the door. He gave no salutation; not in the least did he incline his head, but with one sharp ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... related to him every circumstance of his story. Mr. Moreland had no predilection in favour of lord Thomas Villiers. His sister, whom he esteemed in all respects an amiable woman, had by no means lived happily with her husband. Avarice and pride of rank were the farthest in the world from being the foibles of Mr. Moreland, and the sensibility of his disposition did not permit him to treat the faults, to which himself was a stranger, with much indulgence. ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... think that now our life is only drest For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom!—We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest: The wealthiest man among us is the best: No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... out, "At least, it is a holy-day, and I shall go to Paris!" and, as a contrast to him, an old withered artisan, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with sharp avarice eloquent in every line of his face, muttered out to a fellow-miser, "No business to-day, no money, John; no money!" One knot of women, of all ages, close by which my horse passed, was entirely occupied with a single ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... believes that the Republic would bring it emancipation. It will always remember the young representatives of the people and the young army leaders! The imprudence of the Government is only comparable to its avarice." ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... the same vain creatures of doubt and dread, of unbelief and credulity, of avarice and pretence, that you knew, and at whom you smiled. Nay, our very "social question" is not altered. Do you not write, in "The Runaways," "The artisans will abandon their workshops, and leave their trades, when they see that, with all the labour that bows their bodies from dawn to dark, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... it is one of the virtues attributed to them by a Breton writer, who assigns to them four virtues and three vices. Their virtues consist in a love of their country and their home, resignation to the will of the Almighty, loyalty to each other, and hospitality. Their vices are avarice, contempt for women, and drunkenness. Their love of country and home is carried to an extent, rivalling, if not exceeding, that of the Swiss. The Breton not only loves the village where he was born, but he loves the field of his fathers, the hearth ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... buttress his hope with mental argument, logical, even final, but singularly unconvincing where Pearl was concerned, as anything logical and final must ever be. He tried to recall in detail stories he had heard of her avarice and her coquetries; he thought of her jewels, her name, her wiles. Who was she to object to past peccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to reassure himself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautiful as the sun on the desert, but her image rose ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... came to the door of his heart and asked for admission, but he sent Unkindness to double bar it against her. Generosity knocked, but Avarice stood sentinel. Envy was forever refusing to let Good-will, Appreciation, Approval, Delight, come in. Detraction would give no countenance to Virtue and Excellence. Doubt made deadly assault upon Faith, and Trust, and Hope, whenever they drew near, while Ill-will stood ever on the alert to drive ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... two daughters. This desolating incursion left the empire weak and tottering to its fall. Genseric "became the tyrant of the sea; the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Asia, were again exposed to his revenge and avarice. Tripoli and Sardinia returned to his obedience; he added Sicily to the number of his provinces; and before he died, in the fulness of years and glory, he beheld the FINAL EXTINCTION of the empire of the West." Gibbon, ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... the level of the only creature whom he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence, and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory; and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away. The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in the same moral position is a stroke of excellent art. There are plenty ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... beneath the shams of things, and to him this dead Aristocracy cried out loudly for burial. There was an incredible amount of drunkenness, and of debauchery scarcely hidden; there was pretense strutting like a peacock, and avarice skulking like a hound; there were jealousy, and base snobbery, and raging spite, and a breath of suspicion and scandal hanging like a poisonous cloud over everything. These people came and went, an endless procession of them; they laughed and danced and gossiped and drank ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... The insatiable avarice of Constable Montmorency—[Anne de Montmorency, Constable of France in 1538, died 1567.]—tended rather to enlarge than restrain the authority of Francois I. The extended views and vast designs of M. de Guise would not permit them to ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... wealth of the country was in possession of the clergy; and we have the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses to the unworthy uses to which it was put. Hector Boece, John Major, and Ninian Winzet were all three faithful sons of the Church, and all three cried aloud at the venality, avarice, and luxurious living of the higher clergy. "But now, for many years," wrote Major, "we have been shepherds whose only care it is to find pasture for themselves, men neglectful of the duties of religion. By open flattery do the worthless sons of our nobility get the governance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the ...
— Martin Luther's 95 Theses • Martin Luther
... the most innocent eyes. He was the identical chivalrous young American or Englishman who strides through his pages in battalions to romantic death or romantic marriage. Every one speaks of the extraordinary youthfulness of his mind, which was still fresh at an age when most men find avarice or golf a substitute for former pastimes. He not only refused to grow old himself, he refused to write about old age. There are a few elderly people in his books, but they are vague and shadowy. They serve to emphasize the brightness of youth, and are quickly blown away when the ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. {276} In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted. True, these English bourgeois are good husbands and family men, and have all sorts of other private virtues, and appear, in ordinary intercourse, as decent and respectable as all ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... speaking of an acquaintance, who, though extremely avaricious, was always abusing the avarice of others, added, "Is it not strange that this man will not take the beam out of his own eye before he attempts the mote in other people's?"—"Why, so I daresay he would," cried Sheridan, "if he was sure of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... poem to teach science. Herein Addison's excellent feelings seem to have led him astray, for speaking of false humour he says that "it is all one to it whether it exposes vice and folly, luxury and avarice, or, on the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty." From what he says, we might conclude that true humour was that which attacks vice, and false that which makes against virtue. But although it is good to have a worthy object, this has nothing to do with the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... a moment, and it was not avarice which prompted him when he said, "Considering the risk one hundred dollars is ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... activity of the animal nature, and unless the upper surface of the brain is well developed all over, we may expect some excess in the way of violence, temper, selfishness, perversity, sensuality, dishonesty, avarice, rudeness of manners, moral insensibility, slander, contentiousness, jealousy, envy, revenge, or some other form of wickedness, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... venture, at haphazard. Phr. acierta errando[Lat]; dextro tempore[Lat]; "fearful concatenation of circumstances" [D. Webster]; "fortuitous combination of circumstances" [Dickens]; le jeu est le fils d'avarice et le pere du desespoir[Fr]; "the happy combination of fortuitous circumstances" [Scott]; "the fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms" [Bentley]; "God does not play dice with the universe" ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ages, civic, commercial, democratic, could not preserve, without flaw or failure, the attitude, in the first place, of the poet of feudal princes towards an Over-Lord who rules them by undisputed right divine, but rules weakly, violently, unjustly, being subject to gusts of arrogance, and avarice, and repentance. Late poets not living in feudal society, and unfamiliar alike with its customary law, its jealousy of the Over-Lord, its conservative respect for his consecrated function, would inevitably miss the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... are quite different now. The march of empire has been rapid; many men have grown rich, to use a novel expression, beyond the dreams of avarice, and ten times as many have ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... consider, that although avarice is sometimes mixed up in the ministry of the preaching of the gospel, and lawless acts are committed by our captains and soldiers, yet such excesses do not make the cause less just. He should consider also that, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... Where Avarice lurks in sordid cell, 5 Or mad Ambition builds the dream, Or Pleasure plots th' unholy scheme There ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... sakes; for, bold and blind, To lust and avarice inclined, Each shadowy idol you obey, Disowning my ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... monk at Egmont, describes the character of Philip the Bold's successor in the following words: "A certain King of France, also named Philip, eaten up by the fever of avarice and cupidity." And that was not the only fever inherent in Philip IV., called The Handsome; he was a prey also to that of ambition, and, above all, to that of power. When he mounted the throne, at seventeen years ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... craft and deliberate cruelty which sacrifices everything to self-advantage? Can any human mind measure the various and almost infinite wrongs committed by the man who piles up through years of sordid avarice an unjust fortune? Who can count the broken hearts in the pathway of that implacable ambition which "wades through slaughter to a throne"? These things may not be apparent to the man whose nature is subdued ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... figure of running a race, given in the text, was borrowed. A man cannot run long and well with a load on his back. You have no doubt seen the fabled demigod Atlas pictured with the world on his shoulders. I have often thought of that old Grecian representation of avarice, as being something like a true picture of many professors of the Christian religion at the present day. You see the old myth struggling along with this big round world on his back, apparently casting his eyes upward at times as if he might be longing to reach the top of Mount ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... ornaments, furniture and women's clothing to an amount far beyond their expectations, besides a hundred and twenty slaves, of whom they took the best, and threw the rest into prison, they reached such a pitch of insatiable desire and avarice, that they showed their character; for from the ears of the wife of Polemarchus, Melobius took the golden earrings which she happened to be wearing, as soon as he came into the house. 20. And not in the least part of our property did we receive compassion from them; but they so wronged us, ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... scheme there are two objections. The first, that there is already so much unsettled land in private hands as to afford room for an immense future population, although the Crown not only withheld its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the value of the possessions in the hands of the great private monopolists without any adequate cheek to the growing ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... treasure lying under the earth there, for all I know or care; for there is no interest in a treasure without a Treasure Island to sail to. If there is a treasure it will never be found, for I am not interested in wealth beyond the dreams of avarice since I know that avarice has no dreams, but only insomnia. And, for the other party, my gardener would never consent to dig up ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... called his "luck." He was by temperament an enraged pessimist; and I could believe, that he seriously attributed to Providence, some quality inconceivably malignant, directed in all things personally against himself. His immense bitterness and his careful avarice, alike, I could explain, and in a measure justify, when I came to understand that he had felt the sharpest stings of poverty, and, moreover, was passionately in love, in love comme on ne l'est plus. As to what ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... city now returned with the articles he had bought, and was immediately killed. The others then began to feast upon the provisions prepared for them, and were seized with violent pains, and soon died. In this manner all three fell victims to each other's avarice and cruelty, without ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a Warren and a Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... him," continued Philippe, "the depth and penetration of M. de Richelieu, without the avarice of M. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... country, where the laws of the priesthood and the functions of a confessor are either unknown or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's. So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice. Several times he visited the husband and wife, always borrowing considerable sums, and threatening to reveal their crime if they refused him. The first few times the poor creatures gave in to his exactions; but the moment came at last when, robbed of all their fortune, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... defence. I have hardly seen any who have done themselves credit by attacking him. Conscia virtus, and you may add what belongs to the genus irritabile vatum, make him well armed against his assailants. For the rest, piety, honesty, temperance, freedom from all avarice or meanness, are found in him in a ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... powerful impulse. It is however of no consequence; no matter what was his crime, such a punishment was abominable, and could not be inflicted, even if the laws permitted it, in our State. If that monster who committed the Stoneham murder in cold blood, impelled solely by avarice, had not put an end to his own life, but had awaited his conviction, had been sentenced to such a punishment, although he would have merited, perhaps more than any other offender who has appeared in our times, the greatest sufferings, yet such a sentence could ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... who commanded the royal troops, was forced to withdraw from the capital. The city was completely in the hands of the insurgents, who were driven hither and thither by every passion which can sway the human soul. Patriotic zeal blended with envy, hatred, malice, revenge, and avarice. The mob at last attacked the Bastille, a formidable fortress where state-prisoners were arbitrarily confined. In spite of moats and walls and guns, this gloomy monument of royal tyranny was easily taken, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... divine happiness here, and the more easily we glide into the conditions of being hereafter. For, surely, all we can imagine of the life of gods, or of blessed immortals, supposes the absence of self-made cares and contentious passions, such as avarice and ambition. It seems to us that it must be a life of serene tranquility, not indeed without active occupations to the intellectual or spiritual powers, but occupations, of whatsoever nature they be, congenial to the idiosyncrasies of each, not forced and repugnant—a life gladdened by the untrammelled ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... off the biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set their heart upon. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... liberty of opinion, which we all say we possess, while so few of us dare honestly exercise it. This passion, this political frenzy that seizes men and whirls them in its eddies, is a most singular compound of patriotism, of enthusiasm for an individual, and of the personal hopes, fears, generosity, and avarice of the individual who is enthusiastic. It is a passion which, existing in others, can be turned to account by the cool leader who does not possess it, but which may too easily bring ruin upon the man who ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... also gasping then, and the expression of her face was changing into one from which Mrs. Trent involuntarily turned her eyes. Cunning and avarice predominated, and in the woman's throat was a curious clicking sound, as if she had lost and were trying to find her voice. Which, when found, seemed not to belong to the good-natured Elsa, so changed ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... changes that Shakespeare made in the characteristics of the dramatis personae. The motive of the elder brother in mistreating the younger he makes envy, not avarice as in the romance, a substitution due to his desire to unify the action by drawing a parallel between the brothers and the dukes. The superiority of Shakespeare's Rosalind to Lodge's delineation of the character has, perhaps, been slightly overestimated. To describe Lodge's Rosalynde as "a ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... now no more his sceptre has passed to a woman and a child, and you dare not attack their infancy and weakness. How inglorious would be your conquest, how shameful your defeat! and yet the event of war is in the hand of the Almighty." Avarice was the only defect that tarnished the illustrious character of Mahmud; and never has that passion been more richly satiated. [811] The Orientals exceed the measure of credibility in the account of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... haunting dread took from him a little even of the blameless pleasure that naturally belonged to the paying of his debts. Also he now became plainly aware of a sore fact which he had all his life dimly suspected—namely, that there was in his nature a spot of the leprosy of avarice, the desire to accumulate. Hence he grew almost afraid of his money, and his anxiety to spend it freely and right, to keep it flowing lest it should pile up its waves and drown his heart, went on steadily increasing. That he could hoard ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... that Balaam was inspired by God in the blessings which he gave to the people of the Lord, and in the prediction which he made of the coming of the Messiah; but we must acknowledge, also, the extreme corruption of his heart, his avarice, and all that he would have been capable of doing, if God had permitted him to follow his bad inclination and the inspiration of ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... when the North, blinded by avarice and hate, rang with the cry of "On to Richmond," our Confederate Army of the Potomac was divided between Manassa and Winchester, watching at both points the glittering coils of the Union boa-constrictor, which writhed in its efforts ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... strength. The sinners in Sion are afraid, trembling hath seized upon the hypocrites. Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh in justices, and speaketh truth, that casteth away avarice by oppression, and shaketh his hands from all bribes, that stoppeth his ears lest he hear blood, and shutteth his eyes that he may see no evil. He shall dwell on high, the fortifications of rocks shall be his highness: bread is given him, his waters ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... just that character and color of quartz; and that is a lode which crops out for nearly two miles on a stretch, and in my opinion is destined, at no distant day, to confer upon its locality a globe-girdling celebrity, and upon its two hundred owners riches beyond the dreams of avarice. Name that lode, please." ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... June 68 to January 69, elected at the age of 70 by the Gallic legions to succeed Nero, but for his severity and avarice was slain by the Praetorian guard, who proclaimed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... more complex than the mind of man? And as, in all machinery, there are wheels and springs of action not apparent without close examination of the interior, so pride, ambition, avarice, love, play alternately or conjointly upon the human mind, which, under their influence, is whirled round like the weathercock in the hurricane, only pointing for a short time in one direction, but for that time steadfastly. How difficult, then, to analyse the motives and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... very simple—and, evidently, it had been effective, as witness the renewal of their operations in the murder of Roessle that afternoon. Fear and avarice had both probably played their part; fear of the man who would with such consummate nerve fling his life into the balance to turn the tables upon them, while he jeered at them; avarice that prompted them to get what they could out of Stangeist's brains and leadership, and to be satisfied ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the motives of the Philistine," interrupted Abel-Phittim' "for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or by his generosity; but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven can not extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... famous "Compte rendu au roi" appeared in February, 1781. The portrait of the author, excellently engraved on copper, stares complacently from the frontispiece, above an allegorical picture, where we can make out Justice and Abundance, while Avarice appears to bring her treasures, and a lady in high, powdered hair, and no visible clothing, gazes astonished from the background. The contents of the report are not such as we are in the habit of expecting in financial documents, but are rhetorical and self-complacent. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... advantage may be found on one side, and his sense of duty on another. At such a crisis he is trebly armed, if he is able from his heart to say—"I have vowed a vow before God. I have put on the robe of justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambition. Pass me who will, slight me who will, I will live henceforward only for the great duties of life. My business is on earth. My hope and my reward ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... hand. Her father wished to marry her in the class to which he himself belonged. He loved, esteemed commerce, because he considered it the source of wealth. His daughter despised it because it was, in her eyes, the source of avarice and the food of cupidity. Men in this condition of life were repugnant to her. She desired in a husband ideas and feelings sympathising with her own. Her ideal was a soul and not a fortune. "Brought up from my infancy in connexion with the great men of all ages, familiar with lofty ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a smile to the face of Clotilde, who was always amused by the jests about Martine's avarice; and the breakfast ended more cheerfully. The doctor desired to take the coffee under the plane trees, saying that he felt the need of air after being shut up all the morning. The coffee was served then on the stone table beside the fountain; and how pleasant it was there in the shade, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... what he thought of the Holy Father, the cardinals, and the other persons at the pontifical court. At these words the Jew exclaimed, "God damn them all! I never once succeeded in finding among them any holiness, any devotion, any good works; but, on the contrary, luxurious living, avarice, greed, fraud, envy, pride, and even worse, if there is worse; all the machine seemed to be set in motion by an impulse less divine than diabolical. After what I saw, it is my firm conviction that your pope, and of course ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... producing a strong clasp knife, he contrived, with some difficulty, to open one; and no sooner had he forced the shells apart than I guessed that we had all stumbled upon a fortune, in extent probably "beyond the dreams of avarice!" For as the shells parted, exposing the fish, three or four small bead-like objects became revealed, that I instantly recognised as pearls. The oysters were undoubtedly pearl oysters; and the millions of shells that lay at our feet doubtless contained gems enough to ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... I was so anxious to put an end to, will instantly gain ground. No, it will all go well; M. d'Epinay, if he is an honorable man, will consider himself more than ever pledged to Mademoiselle de Villefort, unless he were actuated by a decided feeling of avarice, but ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not made it a law to tell the truth. Well, then, dear inquisitive reader, if I played with almost the certainty of losing, although no one, perhaps, was more sensible than I was to the losses made in gambling, it is because I had in me the evil spirit of avarice; it is because I loved prodigality, and because my heart bled when I found myself compelled to spend any money that I had not won at the gaming-table. It is an ugly vice, dear reader, I do not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... there was peace in the grasslands, and the settlers prospered as others joined. But it was not always so. For with more settlers came greed and avarice. Laws were made, regulations were had, rules announced and they were not always fair. Greed, sometimes sat in the councils, and the avaricious bent the rules. Then, there were other wars in which justice and fairness ran not ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... Jesus Christ. For more than fifty generations the church has carried the black flag. Her vengeance has been measured only by her power. During all these years of infamy no heretic has ever been forgiven. With the heart of a fiend she has hated; with the clutch of avarice she has grasped; with the jaws of a dragon she has devoured, pitiless as famine, merciless as fire, with the conscience of a serpent. Such is the history of the church ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
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