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More "Mercenary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... driven by starvation into frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich chateaux.[21] A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had now come to take their pleasure in the French carnival of crime, and so the plundering and burning went on until the fair land was wellnigh a wilderness, and the English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... favors by ribald jesting and talk as obscene as their condition of drunkenness would permit them, while the women accepted their attentions in the spirit in which they were offered, calculating, watching, with an eye trained to the highest pitch of mercenary motive, for the direction whence the greatest benefit ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... possible way. These were fed by the politicians for the sake of their influence. The soldiery of Rome had changed. Formerly made up of patriots who marched out to defend their own country or to conquer surrounding provinces in the name of the Eternal City, the ranks were filled with mercenary soldiers taken from the barbarians, who had little interest in the perpetuation of the Roman institutions. They had finally obtained so much power that they set up an emperor, or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... aim or not? Yet they are, speaking in terms of communities, pure self-interest—all bound up with economic problems, with money. Does Admiral Mahan mean us to take him at his word when he would attach to such efforts the same discredit that one implies in talking of a mercenary individual? Would he have us believe that the typical great movements of our times—Socialism, Trades Unionism, Syndicalism, Insurance Bills, Land Laws, Old Age Pensions, Charity Organisation, Improved ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Day to the prejudice of the rest of the brethren.' Thanks to the Almighty, we are the only people upon earth that have no priests. Wouldst thou deprive us of so happy a distinction? Why should we abandon our babe to mercenary nurses, when we ourselves have milk enough for it? These mercenary creatures would soon domineer in our houses and destroy both the mother and the babe. God has said, 'Freely you have received, freely give.' Shall we, ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... indolent or mercenary creature, No one more cordially detested the life of dependence than he. He always thought that his father had discharged all the duties of that relation in nourishing his childhood and giving him a good education. Whatever has ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... themselves. The taking and re-taking of Tortuga by the French was always with the assistance of the roving community; and at the conquest of Jamaica the English navy had the same influence in its favour. The [v.04 p.0655] buccaneers, in fact, constituted a mercenary navy, ready for employment against the power of Spain by any other nation, on condition of sharing the plunder; and they were noted for their daring, their cruelty and their extraordinary ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... But no; he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, searching with the chill of space till my financial status stood before him shivering and ashamed. I communed with myself: By his brow he is a thinker, but his intellect has been prostituted to a mercenary exaction of toll from misery. His nerve centres of judgment and will have not been employed in solving the problems of life, but in maintaining his own solvency by the insolvency of others. He trades upon sorrow and draws a livelihood from misfortune. He transmutes tears into treasure, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... The disarming of the population in Upper Silesia, conducted under French auspices, had taken the arms away from the Germans but left arms with the Poles. Added to that, guns, machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, were run over into the plebiscite area, and a mercenary "insurrectionary" army was raised, partly from the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse, mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer mistakes; the marquis ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... of your tone in talking of our young pupil and your daughter; I object still more strongly to your insinuation that my desire to see them married (provided always that they are sincerely attached to each other) springs from a mercenary motive." ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... "Oh, you mercenary rascal! You have saved your neck from the gallows, if you have saved nothing else. But here are ten pounds for present needs; and I will take care not to see you want for the future. Now be off with you. Your longer stay ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... social chance for me, except as I could buy in for a few glimpses at the tidy confectioners', where persons of civil condition resorted for afternoon tea. Even to these one could not speak, and I could only do my best in a little mercenary conversation with the bookseller about York histories. The book- stores were not on our scale, and generally the shops in York were not of the modern department type, but were perhaps ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... wound me with that treacherous weapon, evading the question and giving a distorted meaning to my sentiments in order to offend my dignity, you are mistaken, dear aunt. Call me mercenary, if you choose. God knows ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Now they crossed athwart a bright feathery cloud, and now they were against the clear blue sky. I confess, being no sportsman, I was more interested for the poor bird that was striving for its life, than for the hawk that was playing the part of a mercenary soldier. At length the hawk got the upper hand, and made a rushing stoop at her quarry, but the latter made as sudden a surge downwards, and slanting up again, evaded the blow, screaming and making the best of his way for a dry tree on the brow of a neighbouring ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... up into regular hours for work and recreation. Other good Quaker women from outside came in to help; and the taproom kept by a mercenary guard was done away with, and an order established that no spirituous liquors should be brought into Newgate. The women agreed to keep away from the grating on the street, except when personal friends came; to cease begging; to quit gambling. They were given pay for their labor. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... that no provocation should be wanting to engage him to speak the truth, they asked him if he wanted any money. He with much art answered very indifferently, no; adding, he scorned to make such a discovery out of a mercenary view, but that he was resolved to be revenged of his captain. They then ordered him to the sign of the Boot, in St. Thomas's, Exeter, whither they soon followed him, having first sent to Mr. Eastwood, an exciseman, to ask what he would have for dinner, and what liquor he would ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... first to enter. He enquired of every one he met of the fate of Isabelle; but all turned from him with disgust. At length he found her out, but what was his grief and surprise—in a nunnery! Firm to the troth she had so solemnly plighted, she had rejected the proposition of her mercenary parent; and, having no idea but that her lover had shared the fate of all Christian captives, she had shut herself up from the world, and vowed to live the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... murmured the old woman. "For these worthless, glittering toys have they ruined the happiness of the dear innocent heart, and on them the guilt will fall if her soul is lost! I remark how she is changed in her letters since her shameful, mercenary marriage. She writes of nothing but the arrangement of her house, and speaks as if the beauty and costliness of things were only to be thought of, and there is not even a confidential, heart-felt word ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... refined or spiritual establishment, but it was decorous, and Randall had such an affection and respect for the innocence of his sister's young son, that he could not bear to have him exposed to the company of one habituated to the licentiousness of the mercenary soldier. At first the jester hoped to remove the lads from the danger, for the brief remainder of their stay, by making double exertion to obtain places for them at any diversion which might be going on when their day's work was ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... perfunctory pomp and display, and gave not a suggestion of bereavement—and that it was, for every person in the cortege was hired for the occasion. Half the food had been left at the tomb for the departed in his spirit form; the remainder was to be devoured by the mercenary mourners when the procession broke up at the door of the home from which ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... you have finished your Dictionary, I suppose you will labour your present work con amore for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, "nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought him in 'near, L2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher of the Exchequer was worth L1800 a year. Letters, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... bitterness in his voice that Margaret noted silently. So (she thought) he had hoped for a moment that at the last Frederick R. Woods had relented toward him. It grieved her, in a dull fashion, to see him so mercenary. It grieved her—though she would have denied it emphatically—to see him so disappointed. Since he wanted the money so much, she would have liked for him to have had it, worthless as he was, for the sake of the boy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... once warm and exacting. The fact was, that Horatio Paget saw in his daughter the high-road to the acquirement of a handsome competence for his declining years. His affection was sincere so far as it went; a sentiment inspired by feelings purely mercenary, but not a hypocritical assumption. Diana was, therefore, so much the more likely to be softened ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... liberty and freedom of conscience, to hate tyranny and oppression, then I am indeed a criminal," he answered in an unshaken voice. "You call me a spy and load me with opprobrium. It was necessary to gain information as to the movements of your mercenary army: twice have I obtained that information and carried it to our noble general. My only regret is that I have not succeeded a third time in so doing; but understand that though I have thus laboured to injure you secretly, I have ever ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... articles. When the deputies returned, their constituents were not very well pleased with what had been done, declaring that they would not submit to be locked up at the mercy of any man, nor would they trust to mercenary troops for guarding their city. The Prince, hearing this, agreed that the burghers, Calvinists, Lutherans, as well as Romanists, should be employed to guard ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... Basis of Marriage.—Included here should be hasty marriages, mercenary marriages, marriages entered into unwillingly after pregnancy had occurred, as well as marriages where coercion was ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... cherry-brandy; he says it makes his head ache: he prefers the clear, cold water, or at most a dish of chocolate. Mother may jeer at him as unmanly; she has a fine spirit, mother: and she may think I might have done better; but mother has grown a little mercenary, and forgotten that she was once young herself, and would have liked to have served a great genius with such a loving heart and such blue eyes as Will's. Ah! the girls will all envy me, when they get a glance from Will's blue ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... strange, voluptuous, and in some way terrible, shone those Pleasure Cities of which the kinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the street had spoken. Strange places reminiscent of the legendary Sybaris, cities of art and beauty, mercenary art and mercenary beauty, sterile wonderful cities of motion and music, whither repaired all who profited by the fierce, inglorious, economic struggle that went on in ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Hour of Application in a Day is not sufficient, even for one of the quickest Apprehension; the Master therefore should consider how much more Time is necessary for one that has not the same Quickness, and how much he is obliged to consult the Capacity of his Scholar. From a mercenary Teacher this necessary Regard is not to be hoped for; expected by other Scholars, tired with the Fatigue, and solicited by his Necessities, he thinks the Month long; looks on his Watch, and goes away. If he be but poorly paid for his ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... Mycroft. It is an advantage to get about in such a case without taking a mercenary into your confidence. But we must plan what we are ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... virile power of fascination in the not immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately mercenary, variously instructed, a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... concerning Kado the Striver, but it is most unlikely that he is a mere figment of popular imagination. What history does record, however, is that the wicked Duchess and her host of mercenary Normans were forced to flee, and that her place was taken by a more ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... for them, that attention to the most important duties at the last gasp, indicates that honesty without any thought of personal advantage was innate in the man; that it did not require the invitation of pleasure, or the allurements of mercenary rewards. For what greater evidence can we require that those things which are honourable and right are desirable of themselves for their own sake, than the sight of a dying man so anxious in the discharge of such important duties? But, as I think that letter deserving of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... might be proved by reference to the Byzantine historians; most of whom, and also Villehardouin's account of the taking of the city of Constantinople by the Franks and Venetians, make repeated mention of this celebrated and singular body of Englishmen, forming a mercenary guard attendant on the person of the Greek Emperors. [Footnote: Ducange has poured forth a tide of learning on this curious subject, which will be found in his Notes on Villehardouin's Constantinople ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... fading charms there yet remained attraction for many visitors; and she now submitted to the mercenary profanations of love, more odious, as her mind had been subdued by its most captivating, ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... to be amused, so as not—it was too absurd—to be fairly frightened. Strange enough indeed—if not natural enough—that, late at night thus, in a mere mercenary house, with Susie away, a want of confidence should possess her. She recalled, with all the rest of it, the next day, piecing things together in the dawn, that she had felt herself alone with a creature who paced like a panther. That was a violent ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... simple intermediaries, claiming no wondrous powers, making use of no deceptive nor mercenary methods, as far as my observation goes, with no particular dress and little paraphernalia, having no political influence, but possessing, in all that concerns religion, paramount authority. Their title to priesthood is derived from violent manifestations, such as trembling, perspiring, belching, ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... The City Hall clock near by struck eleven. The time had come for returning to their mercenary guardian. Phil shook the sleeping form of Giacomo. The little boy stirred in his sleep, and murmured, "Madre." He had been dreaming of his mother and his far-off Italian home. He woke to the harsh realities ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... are not usually popular or to be encouraged, but Mark Twain had an especial weakness for compliments that came in that way. They were not mercenary compliments. The writer had nothing to gain. Two such letters follow—both written in England just at ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... who was a prisoner like himself, "As for you, Count Narischkin," said he, "I have nothing to upbraid you with; you are a Russian, you are doing your duty; but how could a man of one of the first families in Russia become the aide-de-camp of a foreign mercenary? Be the aide-de-camp of a Russian general; that employment will ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... twenty-two homilies on Ezekiel, which he preached while Rome was besieged by the Lombards, in 592. In the nineteenth he, in profound humility, applies to himself, with tears, whatever the prophet spoke against slothful mercenary pastors. Paul the deacon relates, that after the saint's death, Peter the deacon, his most intimate friend, testified that he had seen in a vision, as an emblem of the Holy Ghost, a dove appear on his head, applying his bill to his ear while he ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... to slip by. No honeymoon should be shorter than that. It is meet that we should grant our quiddlers three and their excellent parent the supreme felicity of enjoying the period without being spied upon by a mercenary story-teller. But all interests, as well as all roads, lead to a common centre. The centre in this case was ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... I have a few words to say to you all—words which, though they may sound a little mercenary, are in reality prompted by very ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... of subterfuge, there was no deep and double subterfuge in all this. De Stancy took no particular interest in his ancestral portraits; but he was enamoured of Paula to weakness. Perhaps the composition of his love would hardly bear looking into, but it was recklessly frank and not quite mercenary. His photographic scheme was nothing worse than a lover's not too scrupulous contrivance. After the refusal of his request to copy her picture he fumed and fretted at the prospect of Somerset's return before any impression had been made on her heart ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Crown, whose zeal, ability, and fidelity could not be suspected. On the next day (January 25) the Governor devoted a despatch to Lord Hillsborough to remarks upon the press, and especially the "Boston Gazette" and Edes and Gill—"They may be said to be no more than mercenary printers," are the Governor's words,—"but they have been and still are the trumpeters of sedition, and have been made the apparent instruments of raising that flame in America which has given so much trouble and is still likely to give more to Great Britain and her Colonies"; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... 40,000 pounds, acquired without her husband's privity or approval;" and a year later her husband followed her, having resigned his Governor-Generalship. The fortune which he now possessed was moderate, his opportunities considered, and had been honourably acquired; for his motives had never been mercenary, and the money which he had wrung from Indian princes had invariably been applied to the service of the Company or the necessities of his administration. He was received with honour by the Directors and with favour by the Court. There was talk of a peerage ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... their own; they lost in independence, but they gained far more than they lost. They were the basis on which the State was built up; they no longer wasted their military prowess in purposeless feuds or in mercenary service; in the Prussian army and administration they found full scope for their ambition, and when the victories of Frederick the Great had raised Prussia to the rank of a European Power, the nobles of Brandenburg were the most loyal of his subjects. They formed an ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... that to-day you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife's confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... was the beginning of one of those phenomena of mental contagion which abound in the history of the Revolution. The foreign mercenary troops, although they could scarcely be interested in the movement, began to show symptoms of mutiny. Louis XVI. was reduced to accepting their disbandment. He recalled Necker, went to the Hotel de Ville, sanctioned by ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... event; the gold and silver shower of the bridal presents was raining down. The determining cause of the catastrophe was never quite clear to the community—whether a lover's quarrel with disproportionate consequences, by reason of the marplot activities of a mercenary relative of the lady's, advocating the interests of a sudden opportunity of greater wealth and station; or her foolish revenge for a fancied slight; or simply her sheer inconstancy in a change of mind and heart. At all events, without a word of warning, Julian Bayne, five years before, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... shoulders the responsibility of real work. Their leaders had been selected from the outside,—clever, eager, pushing men, but of late had been hardly selected from among themselves. As used to be the case with Italian Powers, they entrusted their cause to mercenary foreign generals, soldiers of fortune, who carried their good swords whither they were wanted; and, as of old, the leaders were ever ready to fight, but would themselves declare what should be and what should not be the casus belli. There was not so much meanness as Mr. Ratler supposed in the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... So, when the mercenary reported to Rowlett what had occurred on that afternoon he omitted any mention of the knife, but much later he carelessly turned it over to ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... perceived the real state of affairs. A great number of Allorron's people were absent in the interior, employed by Abou Saood's companies as mercenary soldiers. The Baris are a most warlike tribe, and would make excellent troops; thus they were valuable allies of the slave-hunters, as the geographical position of Gondokoro rendered it the only spot that was adapted for an important station. The traders now possessed of the monopoly ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... conversion of common metals into silver and gold by means of a most marvellous and wholly fabulous agent called the Philosopher's Stone, that its devotees were half knaves, half fools, whose views concerning Nature were entirely erroneous, and whose objects were entirely mercenary. This opinion is not absolutely destitute of truth; as a science alchemy involved many fantastic errors; and in the course of its history it certainly proved attractive to both knaves and fools. But if this opinion involves some element of truth, it involves ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... domineering being all on the wife's side. No tears were shed by her during his absence, and a scornful smile was the utmost that his anger or ill-temper ever elicited. So they managed to get on tolerably well, the inquiring look of the cold grey eye often checking a fit of passion. As Louis's mercenary propensities have already shown themselves, it is almost needless to add that she had what he valued more than anything else—money—which, by the way, she took good care to have settled on herself. But this he did not object to (albeit she would have done so all the same if he ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... Goodness, built upon Selfishness and Mercenary Principles, to that which proceeds from a Rectitude of Thinking, and a real Love of Virtue and Reasonableness of ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... temple and its oracles would not be meddled with. Its treasures would be safe. Visitors would be free to come and go. He would give any security that Greece required that the wealth of Apollo should be safe and all go on as before. But he fortified the town, and invited mercenary soldiers till he had an army of five thousand men. As for the priestess of Apollo, from whose lips the oracles came, he demanded that she should continue to be inspired as before, and should give an oracle in his favor. The priestess refused; whereupon ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... that art nothing but your commendation of my trifle[344] can give me any occasion to call in question. I do not doubt but you will look over this poem with another eye, and reward it in a different manner, from a mercenary bookseller, who counts the lines he is to purchase[345], and considers nothing but the bulk. I cannot help taking notice, that, besides what the authour may hope for on account of his abilities, he has likewise another claim to your regard, as he lies at present under very disadvantageous circumstances ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... coolly taken his sight, while speaking, now deliberately applied the match with his own hand, and, with a philosophy that was sufficiently to be commended in a mercenary, sent what he boldly pronounced to be "a thorough straight-goer" across the water, in the direction of his recent associates. The usual moments of suspense succeeded and then the torn fragments, which were seen scattered in the air, announced that the shot ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... confess to being glad to leave: for either one was intruding upon a simple folk entirely surrounded by water; or the simple folk, knowing human nature, had made itself up and sent out its importunate young from strictly mercenary motives. In either case Marken is no place for a sensitive traveller. The theory that the Marken people are savages is certainly a wrong one; they have carried certain of the privileges of civilisation very far and can take care of themselves with unusual ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... set me a most difficult task—so difficult, that should I succeed in solving this problem, I hope shall obtain your complete confidence. Gentlemen, we have amongst us at this moment a visitor, and one whom we all delight to honour, the more especially as we know him to be the determined foe of that mercenary scoundrel the weasel, who, should I be so fortunate as to obtain the crown, shall, I promise you, never set foot in my palace—I allude to the friend of the squirrel and the hare—I allude to Sir Bevis. ('Hear, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... expenses of the little court, of the bodyguard, of the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings were met, as well as of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged to the personal attendants of the prince. The illegitimacy of his rule isolated the tyrant and surrounded him with constant danger, the most honorable alliance which he could form was with intellectual ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... sword laid Rhoesakes dead at his feet. During this fierce and perilous cavalry battle, the Macedonian phalanx[407] crossed the river, and engaged the enemy's infantry force, none of which offered much resistance except a body of mercenary Greeks in the pay of Persia. These troops retired to a small rising ground, and begged for quarter. Alexander, however, furiously attacked them by riding up to them by himself, in front of ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... to be frank, lest she might seem to be angling for his fortune, did not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer it, if by so doing he could make amends for his infidelity to her family forty years back in the past. Time had not made him mercenary, and it had quenched his ambitions; and though his wish to wed Avice was not entirely a wish to enrich her, the knowledge that she would be enriched beyond anything that she could have anticipated was what allowed ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... was American by birth, young, slim, and spoke like a lady. Her hair was dyed; her breasts padded. She acted sentiment, but was less affectionate than E.B. I met her when she was out of a job. I gave her L2 whenever I met her. She was not mercenary. She was sensual. I became very much in love with her. I discovered her, however, writing letters to a fellow whom I had met one day when I was walking with her. He was only an acquaintance, but the brother of my most intimate friend. What I objected to was that in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... scarcely less hampered by social prejudice, which forbade them to pursue manual avocations, even when adapted to them, and destined them, whether fit or unfit, to the professions, thus wasting many an excellent handicraftsman. Mercenary considerations, tempting men to pursue money-making occupations for which they were unfit, instead of less remunerative employments for which they were fit, were responsible for another vast perversion of talent. All these things now are ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... prejudices—its falsehoods. He would have recast it, less for himself than for the benefit of mankind. He would have consented to be crushed beneath its ruins, provided those ruins were to give place to his ideal plan of the government of reason. Brissot was one of those mercenary scribes who write for those who pay best. He had written on all subjects, for every minister; especially Turgot. Criminal laws, political economy, diplomacy, literature, philosophy, even libels,—his pen was at the hire of the first comer. Seeking the support ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... time Demetrius, the son of Seleucus, fled away from Rome, and took Tripoli, a city of Syria, and set the diadem on his own head. He also gathered certain mercenary soldiers together, and entered into his kingdom, and was joyfully received by all, who delivered themselves up to him. And when they had taken Autiochus the king, and Lysias, they brought them to him alive; both which were immediately put to death by the command of Demetrius, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... else but speedy death. But until he had the partnership, he felt himself morally obligated to deny himself Eveley in the flesh. For he was one of those unique, old-fashioned creatures who feels that man must offer position and affluence as well as love to the lady of his choice. So it was no mere mercenary madness on his own account that kept Nolan living a life of gentle and economic obscurity, patient struggling for a foothold on the ladder of ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... make the terms with Farrington. The first glance aroused my suspicions of him. He was shifty-eyed, and his face had a hard and mercenary look. In spite of, perhaps rather because of, my repugnance we quickly came to an agreement, and as I left the apartment I mentally resolved to keep my ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... wailed Nell. "How can you be so mercenary? Oh, I wish it was the necklace! But it ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... our laws, our language, and our institutions new vigor for conquest and for human enlightenment. Venality, that dogs great efforts, undoubtedly there was. But the high tide of the conflict showed no mercenary taint. On both sides it was urged from the highest motives of patriotism and of honor and in defense of the popular principle. That principle with us means local self-government and representative union. The rebel yell was because ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... me at once I'll break every bone in your body!' He then snatched my bonnet, a new one, from my head, and so acted on my nerves that I went off to the Registry Office and was married. That he was actuated by merely mercenary motives is proved by the fact that the gratuity (of half-a-crown), which he presented to the Registry Clerk, he actually borrowed from me! I knew him already to be unprincipled; but never until that moment had it flashed upon me that he was a fortune-hunter! However, as he had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... little history in his mind that was reasonably near the truth, of a hard-up professional family, fatherless perhaps, of a mercenary marriage at seventeen ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... knowledge by purchasing it from individual Mid[-e]. It is customary with Mid[-e] priests to exact payment for every individual remedy or secret that may be imparted to another who may desire such information. This practice is not entirely based upon mercenary motives, but it is firmly believed that when a secret or remedy has been paid, for it can not be imparted for nothing, as then its virtue would be impaired, if not entirely destroyed, by the manid[-o] or guardian spirit under whose special protection it may be supposed ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... made with them another attack on Tsingpu. This attack, like its two predecessors, was repulsed with heavy loss, and the original Ward force was thus finally discredited. It should be borne in mind, to distinguish it from what followed, that it was a mercenary force of European and Spanish half-breeds, without ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... her so anxious for the marriage beats me," cried Ernest. "It was not a particularly good match from a mercenary ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... enemies, that I had been the principal accessory to it. My most trifling actions were misrepresented with the same black malignity. They even made it a crime in me to have written to madame de Bearn, thanking her for her past kindnesses, and thus setting her at liberty to retire from the mercenary services she pretended to have afforded me. And who could blame me for seeking to render myself independent of her control, or for becoming weary of the tyrannical guidance of one who had taken it into her head that I had become her sole property, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... in love he saw now had been in shallow water; but it had not tended to strengthen his faith in the innate nobility of women. On the contrary, it had shown him that a woman who seemed sweet and loving could be hard and calculating, even mercenary. Innocence being a charming pose, why should it not be adopted by the cleverest actresses, professional sirens, specialists in enchantment, who wished to be admired by all men, even men for whom they cared nothing? How could he tell even now that this girl ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." And that holy "prize" does, and must, prove a magnet to the Christian's will and hopes. What is he looking for? Not an accession of personal dignity in heaven, but a word from his beloved Master's heart. There is nothing mercenary in this. True, it "has respect unto the recompense of reward." But the "reward" is what only love can give, and only love can take. It is love's approval of ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... of the leading chiefs or "khans" of the Bakhtiyaris, and another chief was the self-styled Minister of War. These chieftains have always been a strange and changing mixture of mountain patriot and city intriguer—of loyal soldier and mercenary looter. The mercenary instincts, possibly aided by a sense of their own comparative helplessness against Russian Cossacks and artillery, led them to accept the stranger's gold and fair promises, and they ended their checkered but theretofore ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... contemptuous rage; the man before him was more mercenary and wicked than he thought could be possible. He buried both his sons almost at the same hour, but he still found time and opportunity to inquire about the legacy for which he had ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now, if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up every other mercenary possession. Its ownership betokened not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who was above ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... immoderately attracted by anyone possessed of riches and a title—or of either of the two? As an au fait in the female temperament, I shall wager that it is nine out of ten that if you spoof this mercenary young minx into believing that you are merely a native impecunious nonentity, and not to be shot at with powder, she will instantaneously drop pursuing ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... during the preceding night all the men had declared their adherence to his party, he received from them a promise of safety, and was gladly admitted to their assembly; where, however, though treated with all honour by the throng of mercenary soldiers, he found himself detained almost as a hostage; for they, like the praetorians who after the death of Pertinax had accepted Julian as their emperor because he bid highest, now undertook the cause of Procopius in the hope of great gain to themselves from the unlucky ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... with the curate or village doctor it is a success, and her friend will always think so. And when a girl marries a gentleman, and a Member of Parliament, instead of well, I'm not going to say anything personal her friends will congratulate her upon his position. It may be very wicked, and mercenary, and all that; but it's the way ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... does weak tottering age seek to unite itself with warm, impetuous youth! The ice of winter is no congenial mate for the fresh, early flower of spring. How often do we see old, decrepit men wooing and wedding young girls, purchased by wealth from mercenary parents! Well have such sacrifices to Lust and Mammon, been termed legalized prostitution. And does not such a system excuse, if not justify, infidelity on the part of the wife? An old, drivelling dotard ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... ancient writers that the strength of a free state consists in its infantry; and, on the other hand, that when the infantry in a state become more valuable than the cavalry, the power of the aristocracy is diminished, and equal rights can no longer be withheld from the people. The employment of mercenary soldiers in modern times renders these observations no longer applicable; but in the military states of antiquity, where the citizens themselves served as soldiers, there are innumerable examples of this mutual connection between political and military systems. It is further illustrated in ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... esteem? Will he, who may with heroes claim a place, Belie that fame, and to himself be base? Think how august and godlike you did look, When my defence, unbribed, you undertook; But, when an act so brave you disavow, How little, and how mercenary now! ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... deserted by them in her turn, and because, instead of arming her warlike people against every foreign foe, she had habituated her citizens to unarmed effeminacy and had rested her sole support on a mercenary army, an artificial and spiritless automaton, separated from and unsympathizing with the people. The idea that the salvation of Prussia could now alone be found in her reconciliation with the neighboring powers of Germany, in a general confederation, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... slave!" We omit Kolin Battle, too, spoken of with a proud modesty (Prag is not spoken of at all); and how the neighboring ravenous Powers, on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become satellites ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... said Lady Fitzgerald, who knew that of all men her husband was usually most free from mercenary feelings and an over-anxiety as to increased wealth, either for himself or for his children; "and I think it would be such a comfort to you. Herbert, you see, is so fond of county business, and so little anxious for what young ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... her—I cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion. I have done with her, and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... and so forth, may please others, but I prefer to make a collection that shall show future ages who it was that built up our finances, and furnished the sinews of war. Some may look upon this move as a mercenary one, but with me it is a passion. It is not simply a freak, it is a desire ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... his kindred, as unlike as unequal, has been combating against his Catholic brethren in Dublin, with circular letters, edicts, proclamations, arrests, and dispersions;—all the vexatious implements of petty warfare that could be wielded by the mercenary guerillas of government, clad in the rusty armour of their obsolete statutes. Your Lordships will, doubtless, divide new honours between the Saviour of Portugal, and the Dispenser of Delegates. It is singular, indeed, to observe the difference between our foreign and domestic policy; if Catholic ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... had looked steadily upon his lot in life, and he accepted it, and determined to make the best of it and to be happy in it; yet he felt that it was after all a rugged lot. Without considering all women as mercenary as Caroline Danby, which his knowledge of his mother forbade him to do, even in his most woman-scorning mood, he yet doubted whether any of those who had been reared amidst the refinements of cultivated life, could be won to leave them all for love in the western wilds; and as the unrefined could ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... Buonaparte, being an only child, had fallen heir to her father's property on the second marriage of her mother. The stepfather was an excellent Swiss, a Protestant from Basel, thoroughly educated, and interested in education, and for years a mercenary in the Genoese service. On his retirement he became a Roman Catholic in order to secure the woman of his choice. He was the father of Letitia's half brother, Joseph. The retired officer, though kindly disposed to the family he had entered, had little but his pension and savings: he could contribute ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... blessings and praises, if happily we are the instrument of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and allow the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... love other than as a degraded menial, to make men the slaves of her mercenary schemes, La Corriveau cared nothing. She never felt it, never inspired it. She looked down upon all her sex as the filth of creation and, like herself, incapable of a chaste feeling or a pure thought. Every ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... becomes their duty to act upon its contents. Do you know what that means? Can you for a moment realize what is involved? A man's enemy, even his so-called religious enemy, any assassin, any slanderer, any liar, even the mercenary who agrees to hire out his honor itself for the wages of a slave, can deposit an anonymous accusation against any one whom he hates or wishes to ruin; and it becomes the duty of the authorities to respect his communication as much as though ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... whatever route I proposed. This is a point that I should like to make clear to all who may read this, for it is indicative of a trait often lost sight of by those accustomed to having, in novels and so forth, the more mercenary side of the Australian's character pointed out to them. A common subject of speculation is whether or no Australians would make good soldiers; as to that my belief is, that once they felt confidence in their officers none could make more loyal or willing troops; without that ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... their fortunate speculations; a lucky hit will cause a dolt to be pointed out as a clever fellow, when, the next turn of the market proving unsuccessful, he is despised and insulted: so much are the frequenters of 'Change influenced by the most sordid and mercenary feelings, that almost all of them are the willing dupes of riches and good fortune. However, as you are strangers here, gentlemen, I will introduce you, entre nous, to a few of the characters who thrive ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... has thus been the means of enlightening the masses of the colored people that lay claim to any degree of education whatever. What the Negro teacher has accomplished has been done not from a selfish motive or a mercenary point of view, but primarily because he has endeavored to do his part toward elevating the race with which he is identified. If it is true that the salvation of the Negro lies in his being educated, then to the Negro teacher must be attributed the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... THOUSAND.—The Anabasis, the principal work of Xenophon, describes the retreat from the Tigris to the coast of Asia Minor, of a body of ten thousand mercenary Greek troops,—a retreat effected under his own masterly leadership. The Persian Empire, now in a process of decay, was torn with civil strife. Xerxes and his eldest son had been murdered (465 B.C.). The story ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the duke started in his chair with a look of pain; but Pollyooly's deep blue eyes shone suddenly like bright stars, and she smiled a heavenly smile. It was not that she was mercenary. But it was the chief aim of her life to raise a wall of gold (it could not be too thick or too high) between the ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... d'argent, point de Suisse, is a proverbial expression which the Swiss twist into a historical compliment, asserting that it arose in early mercenary times, from the fact that they were too virtuous to accept the suggestion of the general who hired them, and wished them to take their pay in kind from the defenceless people of the country they ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... shining up into sudden renown in these times. The Long Bridge has done nothing hitherto except carry passengers on its back across the Potomac. Hucksters, planters, dry-goods drummers, Members of Congress, et ea genera omnia, have here gone and come on their several mercenary errands, and, as it now appears, some sour little imp—the very reverse of a "sweet little cherub"—took toll of every man as he passed,—a heavy toll, namely, every man's whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty. Every man—so it seems—who passed the Long Bridge was stripped of his last dollar ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... of the jury, is the fatal weapon with which a woman's hand, supernaturally nerved in the struggle for gain, struck down, destroyed a venerable old man, an honored citizen, whose gray hairs should have shielded him from the murderous assault of a mercenary adventuress. Can she behold without a shudder, this tell-tale instrument of her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... afterwards, "seeing himself deserted, and fearing they would seize his castles, he sent the Earl of Pembroke and other faithful messengers to them, to let them know he would grant them the laws and liberties they desired." * * But after the charter had been granted, "the king's mercenary soldiers, desiring war more than peace, were by their leaders continually whispering in his ears, that he was now no longer king, but the scorn of other princes; and that it was more eligible to be no king, than such a one as he." * * He applied to the Pope, that he might by ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... desk,—his heart had been always there. The death of his father gave him, as a birthright, a high position in a respectable though second-rate firm. To make this establishment first-rate was an honourable ambition,—it was his! He had lately married, not entirely for money,—no! he was worldly rather than mercenary. He had no romantic ideas of love; but he was too sensible a man not to know that a wife should be a companion,—not merely a speculation. He did not care for beauty and genius, but he liked health and good temper, and a certain proportion of useful understanding. He chose ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... too well to trust him. There were higher powers in France than Bishop Gaudri, which were known to be susceptible to the same mercenary argument. A deputation was therefore sent to King Louis the Fat at Paris, laden with rich presents, and praying for a royal confirmation of the commune. The king loved the glitter of cash; he accepted the presents, swore that the commune should be respected, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... multiply in the earth that confusion will be the result—a second Babel. We, all of us, such as we are, have reason to know that crowned kings are less ungrateful than kings of our profession; that the most sordid man of business is not so mercenary nor so keen in speculation; that our brains are consumed to furnish their daily supply of poisonous trash. And yet we, all of us, shall continue to write, like men who work in quicksilver mines, knowing that they are doomed to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... neighboring people, regardless of the justice of the enterprise and without looking at the fatal consequences to ourselves and to the cause of popular government. Such expeditions, however, are often stimulated by mercenary individuals, who expect to share the plunder or profit of the enterprise without exposing themselves to danger, and are led on by some irresponsible foreigner, who abuses the hospitality of our own Government by, seducing the young and ignorant to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... bird of game, due on the 12th of August, breaking up the senate of the kingdom, and accessible only to the few whom wealth or privilege give the entree into the preserved regions, has, when even thrown into the market by the mercenary scions of the great, a considerable value; and perhaps it is only in the North that it is properly cooked and appreciated. A moor bird requires a particular sagacity in carving, which is a secret to the uninitiated. You may carve it ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... that you have plenty of cash, but that it has been borrowed, portends that you will be looked upon as a worthy man, but that those who come in close contact with you will find that you are mercenary ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... he said to himself, "especially now that his income is doubled. She might even accept him as a husband— women are so mercenary. But her heart will never cease to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... of Arab, and his features were peculiarly regular for the colour of his skin—details which George was not slow to note. The fellow was armed with the usual long knife stuck in his waist-cloth, and looked the picture of the unscrupulous mercenary so frequently found ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... al, pardonable. cor po're al, bodily. ve'nal, mercenary; base. du'al ist, a believer in two gods. ap'po site, suitable; fit. op'po site, over against. du'el ist, one who fights a duel ac cla ma'tion, a slout. ac cli ma'tion, inurement to climate. de scen'sion, descent. dis sen'sion, strife. an'a lyze, to separate. ce're ous, like ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... as an example of college playwriting, to include the text of Barnabas Bidwell's "The Mercenary Match," written at Yale, and played by the students of Yale.[2] Only one copy of that play is, thus far, known to be in existence, owned by Mr. Evert Jansen Wendell, and its inclusion in the present collection is ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists - 1765-1819 • Various
... we'd set up as packers, but in the meantime all is fish that comes to our net. I'm getting quite a mercenary character. You had a long ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... a mercenary wretch and will do anything for money. I won't be scrambled into my boat in a hurry, and we MUST have Rebecca because I've borrowed a fine pitcher and promised the boys their camel," said Miss Ellery, who considered herself ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... wrong view of things, and if it was not the idle and good-for-nothing fellows who were more prudent than he. To waste his life in superhuman works, to tire his mind in seeking to solve great problems, and to attain old age without other satisfaction than unproductive honors and mercenary rewards. Those who only sought happiness and joy—epicureans who drive away all care, all pain, and only seek to soften their existence, and brighten their horizon—were they not true sages? Death comes so quickly! And it is with astonishment that one perceives when the hour is at hand, that ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... be called cold-hearted, mercenary, and unfeminine. But when a young girl throws prudence to the winds, and allows herself to love where there is nothing to live on, what then is she called? It seems to me that it is sometimes very hard for young girls to be in the right. They ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the court, the dark forces among the local population, prompted by hatred of the Jews, bent all their efforts on putting the investigation on the wrong track. The low, mercenary Terentyeva became their ready tool. When in September, 1825, Alexander I. was passing through Velizh, she submitted a petition to him, complaining about the failure of the authorities to discover the murderer ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... as he went on with his arguments, that she had become to him an Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "Get thee to a nunnery!" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the ashes in a ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... town; and, exchanging clothes with an acquaintance a Highland soldier, he had walked unsuspected opposite her door, until, finding an opportunity of conversing with her on the morning of the wedding-day, he had represented her new lover as a silly, ill-shaped fellow, who had just head enough to be mercenary, and himself as one of the most devoted and disconsolate of lovers. And, his soft tongue and fine leg gaining the day, she had left the marriage guests to enjoy their tea and toast without her, and set off ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Still, as she knew her mother was not overscrupulous, and any stick was good enough wherewith to beat Claverhouse, she would like to know, if only to gratify a woman's curiosity, whether Claverhouse was really going to marry this kinswoman of his, and, in passing, whether he was the mercenary ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... respective motives, the drunkard is an innocent and honorable man in comparison with the retailer of drinks. The one yields under the impulse—it may be the torture—of appetite; the other is a cool, mercenary speculator, thriving on the frailties and vices of others. He is a man selling for gain what he knows to be worthless and pernicious; good for none, dangerous for all, and deadly to many. He has looked in the face the sure consequences of his course, and if he can but make gain ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... the other, in which the stronger protected the younger in the midst of battles, helped him to cross precipices, sponged the sweat of fevers from his brow, and stole food for him, and the weaker, a child perhaps, who had been picked up on the roadside, and had then become a Mercenary, repaid this devotion by a ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... me an injustice, young gentleman: I am not so mercenary,—I do not always make terms. It is true, I served the Count for pay; that is what my company is for, and if he had not gone out of his chateau to hunt his wife, we might have defended the place till the enemy was tired out. But he allowed himself to be caught in the road,—you have heard ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the title and privileges of Romans were enlisted for the general defence of the republic; but those mercenary troops heard with cold indifference the antiquated names of the republic and of Rome. Attached, either from birth or long habit, to the climate and manners of Gaul, they loved and admired Julian; they despised, and perhaps hated, the Emperor; they dreaded the laborious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... Carthage depended upon mercenary troops, which her great wealth enabled her to procure in abundance from Spain, Italy, and Greece, as well as from Libya. Sardinia and Corsica were among her earliest conquests, and Sicily was also one of the first objects of her military enterprise. The Phoenician colonies in this island came under ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... knowing that you are provided for. I promised your mother that, as far as lay in my power, I would shield you from wrecking your life as she wrecked hers. And money—a secure little income of her own—is a very good sort of shield for a women. Four hundred's not enough to satisfy a mercenary individual, but it's enough to enable a woman to marry for love—and not for a home!" He spoke with a kind of repressed bitterness, as though memory had stirred into fresh flame the embers of some burnt-out passion of regret, and Sara looked at him ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... property, earnings and children of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands, is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a noble and life-long partnership of equals into a mercenary and servile relation between superior ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... of the Moon was seen in Mysia, according to Polybius.[123] The date of September 1 has been assigned for this eclipse which is said to have so greatly alarmed some Gaulish Mercenary troops in the service of Attalus, King of Pergamos, that he had to get rid of them as soon as he could—make terms with them to ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... We have been at peace with all the world. We have been visited with no national calamity. Our people have been advancing in general intelligence, and, I will add, as great and alarming as has been the advance of political corruption among the mercenary corps who look to government for support, the morals and virtue of the community at large have been advancing in improvement. What, I again repeat, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... backers of the Fair showed no mercenary temper. The architects, too, worked with public spirit and zeal which money never could have elicited. Notwithstanding the World's Fair was not financially a "success," this was rather to the credit of its unstinted ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which they had made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a mercenary soldiery to compel you to submission by insult and murder; who called your patience ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... and that the fifty-two good ladies employ their time in more charitable and useful actions than in filling the heads of poor children with stories so hurtful to the real interests of religion. However credulous our young guide was, he was not mercenary, being with difficulty persuaded to accept a franc or two for what he styled the pleasure of having conducted us. We next visited the castle of Tarascon, now used as the public prison, and in which 1500 English were confined ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... and flaying; it has created the Puritan entrepreneur, the daring and imaginative organizer of Puritanism, the baron of moral endeavour, the invincible prophet of new austerities. And, by the same token, it has issued its letters of marque to the Puritan mercenary, the professional hound of heaven, the moral Junker, the Comstock, and out of his skill at his trade there has arisen the whole machinery, so complicated and so effective, of ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... evil hour, listening to mercenary suggestion, the parents conceived the idea that the poor girl might be made a source of pecuniary gain; and notwithstanding the advice and remonstrance of her true friends, M. de Faremont, Dr. Verger, M. Hebert, and others, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... ever served their country with more entire exemption from every imputation of selfish and mercenary motives, than those to whose memory we are paying these proofs of respect. A suspicion of any disposition to enrich themselves or to profit by their public employments, never rested on either. No sordid motive approached ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... part of Asia and Africa. I have everywhere shown myself the friend of my fellow-creatures. My knowledge, my time, my fortune have ever been employed in the relief of distress! I have studied and practised medicine, but I have never degraded that most noble and most consoling of arts by mercenary speculations of any kind. Though always giving, and never receiving, I have preserved my independence. I have even carried my delicacy so far as to refuse the favours of kings. I have given gratuitously my ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin,—also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... but, I repeat, I am not mercenary. Of course, if I should marry, I should like, for my wife's sake, to live as well as a married man as I have lived ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... unclerical and do mischief. Now he used, though not getting on with the Curtises, to be most successful with the second-rate people; but he has managed to offend half of them during this unhappy mania, which, of course, they all resent as mercenary, and how he is ever to win them back I don't know. After all, curatocult is a shallow motive—Rachel ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are pretended to be raised. Pitt, who has alternately bullied and flattered Mr. Pelham, is at last to be secretary-at-war;(1129) Sir W. Yonge to be removed to vice-treasurer of Ireland, and Lord Torrington(1130) to have a pension in lieu of it. An ungracious parallel between the mercenary views Of these patriot heroes, the regiment-factors, and of their acquiescent agents, the ministry, with the disinterested behaviour of m Lord Kildare,(1131) was drawn on Friday by Lord Doneraile; who read the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... suffer not thyself to know that sin; and suffer never pride to have domination in thy wit, ne in thy word, that sin was the beginning of all perdition. Whosomever work to thee any thing, anon yield to him his meed and hire, let never the hire of thy servant ne meed of thy mercenary remain in no wise with thee. That thou hatest to be done to thee of other, see that thou never do to an other. Eat thy bread with the hungry and needy, and cover the naked with thy clothes. Ordain thy bread and wine upon the sepulture of a ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... bade some of our friends farewell, and at about nine o'clock of the night set out for Baltimore. How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse of freedom lends wings to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... too quickly. "Of course." Then she hesitated, as if something of his distaste echoed within her. She went on, her voice strange. "Sure, I'm mercenary. I've been broke in Venusport, and again here on Luna. It's no fun. Poverty is not all the noble things the copybooks say. It's undignified and degrading. You want to stop washing after a while, because it doesn't seem ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... several talks about the stuff after that. "The New Accelerator" he called it, and his tone about it grew more confident on each occasion. Sometimes he talked nervously of unexpected physiological results its use might have, and then he would get a little unhappy; at others he was frankly mercenary, and we debated long and anxiously how the preparation might be turned to commercial account. "It's a good thing," said Gibberne, "a tremendous thing. I know I'm giving the world something, and I think it ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... darling, you know how tenderly I adore you; if you don't marry me at once I'll break every bone in your body!' He then snatched my bonnet, a new one, from my head, and so acted on my nerves that I went off to the Registry Office and was married. That he was actuated by merely mercenary motives is proved by the fact that the gratuity (of half-a-crown), which he presented to the Registry Clerk, he actually borrowed from me! I knew him already to be unprincipled; but never until that moment had it flashed upon me that he was a fortune-hunter! However, as he had the drawing-room ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... not, certainly, on his side, a mercenary match. He would have been incapable of marrying with so mean a motive. He is said, indeed, to have given, about this period, a substantial proof of very much the contrary disposition. This appears in the following anecdote, which has ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... palaces, in court or camp, but in the barranca and the forest, the gipsy suburb of Seville, the woodland bivouac and smuggler's lair. Carmen is a gipsy, a sort of Spanish Esmeralda, but without the good qualities of Hugo's charming creation. She has no Djali; she is fickle and mercenary, the companion of robbers, the instigator of murder. She inveigles a young soldier from his duty, leads him into crime, deceives and betrays him, and finally meets her death at his hand. M. Merimee has been much in Spain, and—unlike some of his countrymen, who apparently go thither ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... not like a beggar, I soon recovered my natural spirits, and congratulated myself upon having bought sufficient experience to insure me against falling a second time an easy prey to a Father Corsini, to thieving gamblers, to mercenary women, and particularly to the impudent scoundrels who barefacedly praise so well those they intend to dupe—a species of knaves very common in the world, even amongst people who form what is called ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the French republican armies; but while the English fleets remained masters of the seas, the enthusiasm of the French soldiers, and the genius of their young generals, had thus far proved too strong for the mercenary battalions of despotism. In the closing month of the year 1800, Pitt's "Second Coalition" had been shattered by the defeat of the Allies at Hohenlinden. The Peace of Amiens which shortly ensued (March, 1802, to May, 1803) was but a delusion. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... a matter and the coarse mercenary nature of the woman jarred upon the poet's sensitive soul. The plain fact that he hadn't got twenty guineas in the world could not be gainsaid. But he had rich friends. If he could only interest them in this protegee of his something might be done. And there ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... of specifying particulars in this class of uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I shall leave them to the reader's reflection, with the general remark, that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What I have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his petty, mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting about the machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe, and meanwhile the farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here a cripple, but if I still bore the ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's dolphin,—also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, and ducks of lower degree at ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... magnificent, not absorbing, but just common. That in speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her innocence of what is mean and mercenary, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... A mercenary man. It is painful to see how rapidly the old simple spirit is dying out in rural districts. Twenty years ago a fisherman would have been charmed to do a little job like that ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... not merely mercenary motives that had made Emilia accept John Lambert; but what troubled him was a vague knowledge that it was not mere pique. He was used to dealing with pique in women, and had found it the most manageable of weaknesses. It was an element of spasmodic conscience than he saw ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... evils of war, famine, and pestilence. He adds that the king, seeing the injuries which were inflicted on the country, gathered together the soldiers who were serving him for pay, and sent them home with rich rewards. We may regard this disbanding of his mercenary troops as another sign that ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... elation. His was not a mercenary nature, and he had all along thought his comrade too sanguine, though he ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... an attempt is made to secure national defence by a system of militia, and to take account of political possibilities. The great European States maintain standing armies in which all able-bodied citizens have to pass a longer or shorter period of military training. England alone keeps up a mercenary army, and by the side of it a territorial army, whose ranks are ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... "What a mercenary old thing Gertrudis is!" exclaimed Blue Bonnet, as, after congratulating the happy pair, she and Alec walked back ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... for the use of persons placed in the most trying circumstances, and some of them are for persons writhing under a sense of intolerable injury, sweetness and light do ever reign. Even 'yours truly, Jacob Langton,' in his 'letter to his Daughter's Mercenary Fiance',' mitigates the sternness of his tone by the remark that his 'task is inexpressibly painful.' And he, Mr. Langton, is the one writer who lets the post go out on his wrath. When Horace Masterton, of Thorpe Road, Putney, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... freedom. Some have been seen kissing the ground in an ecstacy of gladness when they arrive. It is the land of their dreams, where they hope to find home and happiness. They come to us with ideals of citizenship that shame our narrow, mercenary standards. These men are of a race which has gladly shed its blood for freedom and is doing it today. But what happens? They go out to work on construction gangs for the summer, they earn money for several months, and when the work closes down ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... possible occasion, even when it would be better to refrain. It is an aggressive patriotism which sometimes is quite uncouth in its manifestations, but it is real patriotism, disinterested and devoid of any mercenary or ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... so as not—it was too absurd—to be fairly frightened. Strange enough indeed—if not natural enough—that, late at night thus, in a mere mercenary house, with Susie away, a want of confidence should possess her. She recalled, with all the rest of it, the next day, piecing things together in the dawn, that she had felt herself alone with a ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... of Anaitis in Armenia male and female slaves were dedicated to the goddess, but men of rank also consecrated their daughters. After long service they married, no one considering them degraded. They were not mercenary, being well provided for by their families. Therefore they received only their social equals.[1911] Baal Peor seems also to have been a case of sacral harlotry.[1912] The strongest reason for thinking so is Hosea ix. 10. Rosenbaum[1913] interprets the pestilence as venereal. The kedeshim (male ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... rocks nor the ruts nor the crowds nor anything could stop them; through thick and through thin they went to the front, for there was rivalry in those days and when the Aigles time after time got first water on, they won triumphs which we of this mercenary epoch cannot understand. The Aigles were in for glory, nothing else. So when we heard the roar of a rapid and sniffed the mist in the air, "Tirtaan Aigles dis wai," ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... encouragement of poetry; and whose judgment of that art nothing but your commendation of my trifle[344] can give me any occasion to call in question. I do not doubt but you will look over this poem with another eye, and reward it in a different manner, from a mercenary bookseller, who counts the lines he is to purchase[345], and considers nothing but the bulk. I cannot help taking notice, that, besides what the authour may hope for on account of his abilities, he has likewise another claim to your regard, as he lies at present ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... cherished jealously by Snettishane, who stood between her and all suitors, listening disdainfully to the young hunters as they bid for her hand, and turning them away as though she were beyond price. Snettishane was mercenary. Lit-lit was to him an investment. She represented so much capital, from which he expected to receive, not a certain definite interest, but an ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... Like enough, there are many of these Gentlewomen who live with their Friends, as rank Prostitutes, as errant Jilts, as those who make open profession of the Trade—almost as mercenary—But come, the Song. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... become impartial judges in it; and at any rate we must allow his reign, in regard to European concerns, to have been most glorious when contrasted with the pusillanimity of James I., with the levity of Charles I., and the mercenary meanness of the two last princes of the house of Stuart. Upon the whole, the character of Cromwell must ever stand high in the list of those who raised themselves to supreme power by the force of their genius; and among such, even in respect of moral virtue, it would be found ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... as mankind remain within the semicrystallized state of soul development, so as to require the aid of external forces to support the human throne within its earthly temple, mercenary troops will exist ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Millionary; the humbler, but yet larger vehicle from the green metropolitan suburbs (the Hanging Gardens of our Babylon), in which every traveller might, for a modest remuneration, take a republican seat; the mercenary caroche, with its private freight; the brisk curricle of the letter-carrier, robed in royal scarlet: these and a thousand others were laboring and pressing onward, and locked and bound and hustling together in the narrow channel of Chepe. The imprecations ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... detestable," said Claudius, "to think how mercenary the marriage contract is, in all civilised and uncivilised countries. It ought not to be so—it is wrong from ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... short periods left him at the most critical moment. Very typical occurrences he himself tells of, when Connecticut troops could "not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their term (saving those who have enlisted for the next campaign, and mostly on furlough), and such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole, that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen," and when he described how in his retreat through New Jersey, "The militia, instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... position," quickly retorted the former, with an offended air. "But should I wish to do so, I should hardly be deterred from it by either of the considerations you have just named, I think. And, indeed, if the mercenary and ambitious motives, which you would have actuate me, were alone to be my guide in such a step, I could see but little temptation for the sacrifice in the honors and wealth which are so much to depend on a triumph that, for all your boasts, I believe will never be accomplished; while ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... and upon better advice give the friendly reader notice: it was not mine intent to prostitute my muse in English, or to divulge secreta Minervae, but to have exposed this more contract in Latin, if I could have got it printed. Any scurrile pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary stationers in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these pages. Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave the action by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me and upon my family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and disgust of his wife's surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some pecuniary reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had declared he would accuse her, of having ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... at those feasts seditions are generally begun; and it looked as if he should not be able to escape the plot they had laid for him, had not his foreign auxiliaries, the Pisidians and Cilicians, assisted him; for as to the Syrians, he never admitted them among his mercenary troops, on account of their innate enmity against the Jewish nation. And when he had slain more than six thousand of the rebels, he made an incursion into Arabia; and when he had taken that country, together with the Gileadires and Moabites, he enjoined ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Suppose our mercenary impresario were unable to get into the concert hall of his famous rival. He would then listen outside the window and analyze the sound in this fashion: "Fifty per cent. of the sound is made by the tuba, 20 per ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... be frank, lest she might seem to be angling for his fortune, did not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer it, if by so doing he could make amends for his infidelity to her family forty years back in the past. Time had not made him mercenary, and it had quenched his ambitions; and though his wish to wed Avice was not entirely a wish to enrich her, the knowledge that she would be enriched beyond anything that she could have anticipated was what allowed him ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... Kid just how it was—how right up to the very last minute I kept expecting the luck to turn and how even then I mighta got it all back if the game-keeper hadn't been so blamed unreasonable and mercenary. When my last chip is gone I holds up a finger for a marker and tells him I'll take another stack of fifty, all blues this time, but he only looks at me sort of chilly and distrustful and remarks in a kind of a bored way ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which they had made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a mercenary soldiery to compel you to submission by insult and murder; who called your patience ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... plenty is in proportion to tillage; and tillage, to personal and immediate interest, that is to the spirit of property. Whence it follows, that the nearer the cultivator approaches the passive condition of a mercenary, the less industry and activity are to be expected from him; and, on the other hand, the nearer he is to the condition of a free and entire proprietor, the more extension he gives to his own forces, to the produce of his ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... reproach of Demosthenes, that his eloquence was mercenary; that he privately made orations for Phormion and Apollodorus, though adversaries in the same cause; that he was charged with moneys received from the king of Persia, and condemned for bribes from Harpalus. And should we grant that all those (and they are not few) who have made these ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the terrible agonies. During the entire day for this extended period indigo was pricked in this unfortunate man's skin. Accounts such as this have been appropriated by exhibitionists, who have caused themselves to be tattooed merely for mercenary purposes. The accompanying illustration represents the appearance of a "tattooed man" who exhibited himself. He claimed that his tattooing was done by electricity. The design showing on his back is a copy of a picture of the Virgin Mary surrounded ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... floor," said Marcel. "To me it is evident that Colline has been corrupted. He has already sold his vote for so many drinks. Don't interrupt me! (Colline was rising to protest.) You shall have your turn. Colline, mercenary soul that he is, has presented to you this stranger under an aspect too favorable to be true. I told you before; I see through this person's designs. He wants to speculate on us. He says to himself, 'Here are some chaps making ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... at him with some wonder. It had never dawned upon him that this shiftless, thriftless, worthless, sponging parasite was yet, after and in spite of all, not mercenary in the issue of his thoughts; yet so ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inscriptions, medals, statues, chains, sacrificing vessels, &c. It is to be lamented that modern ignorance and barbarity are fast obliterating all traces of the Roman walls of Isurium; their foundations having been dug up for the mercenary purpose of obtaining their materials. We cannot sufficiently censure such irreverence to "hoar antiquity," or the contracted and grovelling ideas which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... No great King: I come to thee for charitable License, That we may wander ore this bloody field, To booke our dead, and then to bury them, To sort our Nobles from our common men. For many of our Princes (woe the while) Lye drown'd and soak'd in mercenary blood: So do our vulgar drench their peasant limbes In blood of Princes, and with wounded steeds Fret fet-locke deepe in gore, and with wilde rage Yerke out their armed heeles at their dead masters, Killing them twice. O giue vs ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... course of this post-election discussion of February 23d, that Wade insinuated that mercenary motives were the key to Douglas's conduct. "Have the people of Illinois forgotten that injunction of more than heavenly wisdom, that 'Where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also'?" To this unwarranted charge, which was current in Abolitionist circles, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... HON. Base alien! mercenary fugitive! Presumptuous Spaniard! that with shameless pride Dar'st ask an English lady for thy wife, I scorn my slave should honour thee so much: And, for myself, I like myself the worse, That thou dar'st hope the gaining of my love. Go, get thee gone, the shame of my esteem, And seek some drudge ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Nimbus was transformed, first into the "contraband" and mercenary soldier George Nimbus, and then by marriage ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... served their country with more entire exemption from every imputation of selfish and mercenary motives, than those to whose memory we are paying these proofs of respect. A suspicion of any disposition to enrich themselves, or to profit by their public employments, never rested on either. No sordid motive approached them. The inheritance which they have left to their children is ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... of it. Only the other day, it was, that Lucile had made a plea to her for St. Vincent, and now it was Colonel Trethaway! True, there had been a false quantity somewhere, but now it seemed doubly false. Could it be, after all, that Lucile was mercenary? These thoughts crowded upon her swiftly, with the colonel anxiously watching her face the while. She knew she must answer quickly, yet was distracted by an involuntary admiration for his bravery. So she followed, perforce, the lead of her heart, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... days of the Restoration, when the question as to the disputed settlements was only at its first stage, overtures had been made to Hyde, which it was fancied might earn from him some mercenary favour for those who might be the intermediaries, It was proposed that a special grant of land might be made to him, or that a sale might be effected in his favour on nominal terms, which would make it almost equal to a free gift. It was consistent with all his action in such matters that ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... three months to slip by. No honeymoon should be shorter than that. It is meet that we should grant our quiddlers three and their excellent parent the supreme felicity of enjoying the period without being spied upon by a mercenary story-teller. But all interests, as well as all roads, lead to a common centre. The centre in this case ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... order, meaning, I suppose, that we are to leave our heavy overcoats and blankets and foot stoves and such other luxuries behind; that rather indicates that we are going to do something besides retreat; and I should like to get a whack at those mercenary Dutchmen before I freeze or starve," ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... purpose than saving. They cherish no illusions of an unworldly sort about it. This is true of Quaker and Catholic, laborer and summer resident. It is true of the small class of cultivated intellectual-aesthetes, who might be expected to be less mercenary. They all value money; but not for display, not for luxury, scarcely for travel; not for books or the education of children. Quaker Hill men and women would accumulate money, invest and manage it wisely and live in respectable "plainness." This characteristic ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... exhausting than normal coitus. I must, however, point out that the effects of moderate masturbation in the adult have been greatly exaggerated, either by confounding the effect with its cause, or for mercenary objects, by driving timid persons ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... people. The rebellion began in the camp of the Janissaries, and the ringleader was one Halil Patrona, a poor Albanian sailor-man, who after plying for a time the trade of a petty huckster had been compelled, by crime or accident, to seek a refuge among the mercenary soldiery of the Empire. The rebellion was unexpectedly, amazingly successful. The Sultan, after vainly sacrificing his chief councillors to the fury of the mob, was himself dethroned by Halil, and Mahmud I. ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... foe. Napoleon offered to these bands the same reward which he had promised to the peasants. But to a man, they refused the gold. They had imbibed the spirit of their chief, his enthusiasm, and his proud superiority to all mercenary motives. "We are not toiling for money," said they, "but for your approval, and to ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... the bounty of the community, is agreeable to the intentions of legislature, or the ideas of humanity, is a doubt. For in some parishes the unfortunate paupers have the additional misery of being sold to a mercenary wretch to starve upon twelve pence a head. It is matter of surprise that the magistrate should wink at this cruelty; but it is matter of pleasure, that no accusation comes within the verge of my historical ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... justice and perversion of all the principal functions of government, had it in their power to discover the whole. Mr. Hastings was obliged, in consequence of that concealment, to support her and to support him. Every evil principle was at work. He bought a mercenary silence to pay the same back to them. It was a wicked silence, the concealment of their common guilt. There was at once a corrupt gratitude operating mutually by a corrupt influence on both, and a corrupt fear influencing the mind of Mr. Hastings, which did not permit him to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Lucy, "I am certain you do Old Alice injustice. She has nothing mercenary about her, and would not accept a penny in charity, if it were to save her from being starved. She is only talkative, like all old folk when you put them upon stories of their youth; and she speaks about the Ravenswood people, because she lived under them so many years. But I am ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labor, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good-night, or, neglected in some ostentatious hospital, breathes its last amidst the laugh of mercenary attendants." ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... necessity." Upon this the lady sent for her Bruttian admirer and introduced him to her brother. He, by encouraging the stranger in his passion, and assuring him that he would induce his sister to look favourably on it, had no difficulty in inducing the man, who was a mercenary soldier, to break his faith in expectation of the great rewards which he was promised by Fabius. This is the account given of the transaction by most writers, though some say that the lady by whose ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... volume of Verlaine in his hands, and he wandered off. He tried to read, but his passion was too strong. He thought of the stray amours to which he had been introduced by Flanagan, the sly visits to houses in a cul-de-sac, with the drawing-room in Utrecht velvet, and the mercenary graces of painted women. He shuddered. He threw himself on the grass, stretching his limbs like a young animal freshly awaked from sleep; and the rippling water, the poplars gently tremulous in the faint breeze, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... My best and freshest men; serv'd his designments In mine own person; holp to reap the fame Which he made all his; and took some pride To do myself this wrong: till, at the last, I seem'd his follower, not partner; and He wag'd me with his countenance as if I had been mercenary. ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... tale, dealing with matters to him particularly strange, such as gambling, dishonoured mothers, horrors of men and mercenary marriages. It all struck him as very dreadful; it all sank into him; but it didn't oppress him in its strangeness; no outside fact, however dreadful, ever oppressed Franklin. What did oppress him was the thought of Helen in ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the world, bon Dieu! the doctrine with which she begins is that she is to have a wealthy husband: the article of faith in her catechism is, "I believe in elder sons, and a house in town, and a house in the country!" They are mercenary as they step fresh and blooming into the world out of the nursery. They have been schooled there to keep their bright eyes to look only on the prince and the duke, Croesus and Dives. By long cramping and careful process, their little ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... very obvious reasons you cannot trust the crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws. However, a government, be it as bad as it may, will, in the exercise of a discretionary power, discriminate times and persons; and will not ordinarily pursue any man when its own safety is not concerned. A mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, the obnoxious people are slaves, not only to the government, but they live at the mercy of every individual; they are at once the slaves of the whole community, and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful men are those on whose ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to be considered in determining the somewhat mercenary question, "Does Colonization Pay?" as viewed with regard to the interests of the colonizing country, are: (1) the market that the colonies afford for the goods which the colonizing country has to sell; ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... You thought that I only cared for you because——You told me that I was heartless and mercenary, you remember, Drake. But, ah; it wasn't true! Yes, I've been brought up at a bad school. I've been taught that it's a sacred duty for every girl, as poor as I am, to make a good match; and I thought—see how frank I ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... my power, I would shield you from wrecking your life as she wrecked hers. And money—a secure little income of her own—is a very good sort of shield for a women. Four hundred's not enough to satisfy a mercenary individual, but it's enough to enable a woman to marry for love—and not for a home!" He spoke with a kind of repressed bitterness, as though memory had stirred into fresh flame the embers of some burnt-out passion of regret, and Sara looked at him ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... was deeply touched to find that I had to deal with a young man who, in spite of being threatened by consumption, and being also exceedingly badly off, had come at my invitation, simply from a sense of duty and honour, and not with any mercenary motive. I saw from his knowledge and capacities that he would never be able to attain a position of great influence, but his kindness of heart and his extraordinarily receptive mind filled me with a feeling of profound respect for him. A few years later I was very sorry ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was bearing the weight of Christianity on his shoulders and carrying the future of the world beneath his robe, toiling with his hands for his living by the side of Aquila and Priscilla, in order that he might keep Christianity from being tarnished with the faintest suspicion of mercenary motives. ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... What! you are my paid subordinate, are you? Oh yes, I had forgotten the salary! Well then, on that mercenary ground, will you agree to let ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to support themselves; and that if they marry poor men, it should be with a prospect of being able to help their partners. If all parents thought so, girls would not be reared on speculation with a view to their making mercenary marriages; and, consequently, women would not be so piteously degraded as ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the country to the south of Skoplje fell completely under Turkish control; it was here that the famous national hero, Marko Kraljevi['c] (or King's son), renowned for his prowess, ruled as a vassal prince and mercenary soldier of the Turks; his father was one of the rebel princes who fell at the battle of the river Maritsa in 1371. North of Skoplje, Serbia, with Kru[)s]evac as a new political centre, continued ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... their being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health in the People. Ground down under the iron heel of despotism, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... But the cold-blooded little demon sticks in my thoughts; she has bitten me with those even little teeth of hers; I feel as if I might turn rabid and do something crazy in consequence. It's very low, it's disgustingly low. She's the most mercenary little jade in Europe. Yet she really affects my peace of mind; she is always running in my head. It's a striking contrast to your noble and virtuous attachment—a vile contrast! It is rather pitiful that it should be the best I am able to do for myself ...
— The American • Henry James
... favor of which they are prosecuted. In case of the death of the debtor, this rigorous demand falls upon the ruined houses of widows and orphans, and may be easily converted into a means either of cruel oppression or a mercenary indulgence, according to the temper of the exactors. Instead of thus having recourse to imprisonment, the old balance is sometimes deducted from the current produce. This, in these circumstances, is a grievous discouragement. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Girl, and this one night's enjoyment with her will be worth all the days I ever past in Essex.— Would she'd go with me into England, tho to say truth, there's plenty of Whores there already.— But a pox on 'em they are such mercenary prodigal Whores, that they want such a one as this, that's free and generous, to give 'em good Examples:— Why, what a House she has! how rich ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Jaffeir's Part, And Roman Brutus speaks a Master's Art. But still we often Mourn to see their Phrase An Earthly Vapour, or at Mounting Blaze. A rising Meteor never was design'd, T'amaze the sober part of Human kind. Were I to write for Fame, I would not chuse A Prostitute and Mercenary Muse. Which for poor Gains must in rich Trappings go, Emptily Gay, magnificently Low, Like Ancient Rome's Religion, Sacrifice and Show. Things fashion'd for amusement and surprize, Ne'er move the Head, tho' they divert ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... was to happen," remarked Bea, with a little mercenary expectation, "Congreve Hall would be Olive's; just think of it, girls, how grand! and Cousin Roger is immensely wealthy, and there would be no end of splendid things;" and Bea sighed a little, as she spoke, for she was not going to win any wealth or grand home by her wedding, and ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... not reply. This seemed a sadly mercenary view of work, and a little shocked her. But then Claudia had not to earn her ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... prosperous, I was not disposed to be mercenary; though I did think you were not worldly-wise. Now that I am destitute, you can see that to marry a man not worth a dollar, and with a precarious profession, is not what it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... not only succeeded in driving them out of Judah and Israel, but in carrying the war into their own country. The Philistine cities were conquered, and soldiers from Gath, where David had himself once served as a mercenary, were drafted into the body-guard of ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... whatever she may have thought of this speech, was bound to rebuke the shockingly mercenary ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... for, though naturally careful of all put under her own hands, she was at heart very far from being either selfish or mercenary. In fact, the silver cup was at that hour of more real interest to her. It would be a part of her old home in her new home. It was connected with her life memories, and it made a portion of her future hopes and dreams. There was also something more tangible about it than about the bit of paper certifying ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... years before to take command of the Revolutionary army. In both instances he was regarded as the deliverer of the country from a great peril. Possessed of probably the largest fortune in America, he could not be accused, as were many of his compatriots, of mercenary motives in his public actions. His freedom from personal ambition and selfish motive having been tested in the tempting days of the war, he could be relied upon by the people not to betray them in their extremity by any assumption of powers. Reputed to ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... from the original stock he had brought up from Durango. His particular interest was in the almost unblemished whites, and these he had given especial care. He made a good deal of money selling this strain to friends among the ranchers back in Texas. No mercenary consideration, however, could have made him part with the great, rangy white horses he had gotten from the Durango breeder. He called them Blanco Diablo (White Devil), Blanco Sol (White Sun), Blanca Reina (White Queen), Blanca Mujer (White Woman), and El ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... know, you mercenary little monkeys; come in the sitting-room if you want to hear ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... that in seeking to obtain my title and estates, I am influenced by no mean or mercenary considerations; my sole desire is to benefit the human race. I have been employing all my leisure hours during the last nine years in perfecting a system of philosophy entirely new, and applicable to all times, to all nations, and to ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... the expenses of the little court, of the bodyguard, of the mercenary troops, and of the public buildings were met, as well as of the buffoons and men of talent who belonged to the personal attendants of the prince. The illegitimacy of his rule isolated the tyrant and ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Considering both the numbers and the now-acquired discipline and self-confidence of the Cyreians, even Sinope herself could have raised no force capable of meeting them in the field. Yet they did not belong to any city, nor receive orders from any established government. They were like those mercenary armies which marched about in Italy during the fourteenth century, under the generals called Condottieri, taking service sometimes with one city, sometimes with another. No one could predict what schemes they might conceive, or in ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... reached a stage of development so that such things as eclipses could be predicted with anything like accuracy, the occult knowledge of the astronomer would be unquestioned. Turning this apparently occult knowledge to account in a mercenary way would then be the inevitable result, although it cannot be doubted that many of the astrologers, in all ages, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... cowardly and mercenary Martinez has received the punishment his treachery so well deserved; during his flight he was met by some Indians and murdered. May divine Providence thus punish all traitors to ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... know. I don't think she knows. It was the destruction of an ideal which was terrible. She had clung to it. She had said to herself: 'Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but this one is true.' Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her. She stood alone in the world—in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... enquired of every one he met of the fate of Isabelle; but all turned from him with disgust. At length he found her out, but what was his grief and surprise—in a nunnery! Firm to the troth she had so solemnly plighted, she had rejected the proposition of her mercenary parent; and, having no idea but that her lover had shared the fate of all Christian captives, she had shut herself up from the world, and vowed to live ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... foot of the president's chair, and the two members of the court who are busily engaged in counting coin, George would seem to insinuate that the fellows of the college of his time were a decidedly mercenary set. ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... he knew his Fearful position; but that which weighed heaviest upon his heart was a consciousness of the misinterpretations which the world might put upon the motives of his conduct in this elopement, imputing it to selfishness and a mercenary spirit. When about to be searched, ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... and a dusky richness of decay. The autobiographical form imposes, to be sure, an increasing strain on the reader's credulity, as the plot thickens, and we find ourselves, half-unexpectedly, involved in a lurid tale of monks, priests, disguised revolutionists, cruel, mercenary fathers, etc., and the Danish author playing his favorite role of deus ex machina. Still more incredible is the part of benevolent Providence which he assigns to himself in "The Bride of Roervig," where he saves the heroine's ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... affairs, I had clearly indicated who should be that man. I—of course! Such accusations of self-nepotism are a sign of the times. No one can speak disinterestedly about a subject now; we all must have a motive. We are all mercenary, we are automatic advertising machines of our own selves, we are always insincere. Charming! But for my own part, I wish to state it very plainly that I never have thought, or could think, of putting ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... time with the gilded fools, by my ability to learn more quickly. The result was that I could not be contented with the small salary of my government office. I had to keep up appearances with my companions. So, I drifted into gambling, into sharp tricks—then became a mercenary soldier, an officer, in the continuous revolutions of the southeastern part of Europe. I sank deeper and at last, in one serious escapade, I managed to have myself reported dead, so as to quiet the heartaches of my mother, who believed I was killed ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... wanting, whether they be the tittle-tattle of the nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. Byron and Shelley, and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its own sake, was forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw his book from the reach of a public that was rooting ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... ceased to throw out such insinuations. But those who got near him and saw the man as he was, who knew that he refused money and worked with his hands day and night to keep himself above the suspicion of mercenary motives, who heard him pleading with them one by one in their homes and exhorting them with tears to a holy life, who saw the sustained personal interest he took in every one of them—these could not resist the proofs of his disinterestedness or ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... divided, "in this part of the world," he writes, "into two distinct classes: the home women and the visiting women—les femmes d'interieur, and les femmes du monde; the exact theory of the mariage de convenance, which is popularly but wrongly considered as based on mere mercenary motives; and the mental condition of the peasant, with his natural quickness of intellect and his stupendous ignorance, his adherence to tradition and ingrained superstitiousness, and his suspicion of the nobles and tendency to emancipate himself from clerical influence. It is France ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... what was the matter?—that her beloved Oliver had earned the reputation throughout the division of a man who can propose to a charming girl, and then desert her for money, at the moment when the tragic blow of her life had fallen upon her?—and she, that of the mercenary mother who had forced him into it. Precious lucky for Oliver to have got in ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Prussian general, distinguished as the organiser of the Prussian army, to the establishment of a national force instead of a mercenary; died of a wound in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... narrowly. Her own life was done; Alan's death had made her task impossible; but if Dolly could fill her place for the sake of humanity, she would not regret it. Enough for her to have martyred herself; she asked no mercenary ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... Battle, too, spoken of with a proud modesty (Prag is not spoken of at all); and how the neighboring ravenous Powers, on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become satellites of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... perspectives, the work of Mr. Streeter,' serjeant-painter to King Charles the Second. In February 1664, the Diarist saw Dryden's Indian Queen acted 'with rich scenes as the like had never been seen here, or haply, except rarely, elsewhere on a mercenary theatre.' Mr. Pepys—most devoted of playgoers—notes occasionally of particular plays, that 'the machines are fine and the paintings very pretty.' In October 1667, he records that he sat in the boxes for the first time in his life, and discovered ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... pious Puritan magistrates and these gentlewomen of Boston and Salem the only colonists who displayed such sordid and mercenary bargaining and stipulating in matrimonial ventures: numberless letters and records throughout New England prove the unvarying spirit of calculation that pervaded fashionable courtship. A bride's portion was openly ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... provide moneys, as this new resumption bodes you certain disbursements. Somewhere about the end of September or October, I propose to be under way (i.e. in the press); but I have no idea yet of the probable length or calibre of the Canto, or what it will be good for; but I mean to be as mercenary as possible, an example (I do not mean of any individual in particular, and least of all, any person or persons of our mutual acquaintance) which I should have followed in my youth, and I might still ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... their time in more charitable and useful actions than in filling the heads of poor children with stories so hurtful to the real interests of religion. However credulous our young guide was, he was not mercenary, being with difficulty persuaded to accept a franc or two for what he styled the pleasure of having conducted us. We next visited the castle of Tarascon, now used as the public prison, and in which 1500 English were confined during the war. The enormous height and massiveness of its walls, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... knowledge vast consignments for the use of liberal economic government. We had infused into our laws, our language, and our institutions new vigor for conquest and for human enlightenment. Venality, that dogs great efforts, undoubtedly there was. But the high tide of the conflict showed no mercenary taint. On both sides it was urged from the highest motives of patriotism and of honor and in defense of the popular principle. That principle with us means local self-government and representative union. The rebel yell was because they thought local ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... there was no other social chance for me, except as I could buy in for a few glimpses at the tidy confectioners', where persons of civil condition resorted for afternoon tea. Even to these one could not speak, and I could only do my best in a little mercenary conversation with the bookseller about York histories. The book- stores were not on our scale, and generally the shops in York were not of the modern department type, but were perhaps ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... thirty pounds a year, and retired with his deaf old housekeeper to the Clints of Drumore. Yet forty years before, the Reverend Fergus Symington was counted the luckiest young minister in the Stewartry; and many were the jokes made in public-house parlours and in private houses about his mercenary motives. He had married money. He had been wedded with much rejoicing to the rich daughter of a Liverpool merchant, who had made a fortune not too tenderly in the West Indian trade. Sophia Sugg was ten years the senior of her husband, and her temper ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... been aroused in me for the first time by my continental journey with Willersley and by Meredith's "One of Our Conquerors." That quite justifiable dread of a punishment for all the slackness, mental dishonesty, presumption, mercenary respectability and sentimentalised commercialism of the Victorian period, at the hands of the better organised, more vigorous, and now far more highly civilised peoples of Central Europe, seemed to me to have both a good ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the doctrine of obedience. Therefore I shall revive religion, but it shall be a religion of obedience to the House of Hohenzollern. The God of the Hebrews declared them to be his chosen people. But they proved a servile and mercenary race. They traded their swords for shekels and became a byword and a hissing among the nations—and they were scattered to the four corners of the earth. I shall revive that God. And this time he shall chose more wisely, for the Germans shall be his people. The idea is not mine. ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... but gratuitously and by nature," it would be recognized by the affections of all of them to be a true sentiment. Why it would be disgraceful, great God, that birth and travail and procreation should be gratis and mere nature among the beasts, while among mankind they should be merely mercenary transactions! ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... peasantry, driven by starvation into frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich chateaux.[21] A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had now come to take their pleasure in the French carnival of crime, and so the plundering and burning went on until the fair land was wellnigh a wilderness, and the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... climate, in occupation, and in the habit of life and thought. Strange to say, each section misunderstood the other. The Southern people believed the North to be so engrossed in money-making and so enfeebled by luxury that it could send to the field only mercenary soldiers, who would easily be beaten by the patriotic Southerners. They said, "Cotton is King;" and believed that England and France were so dependent upon them for that staple, that their republic would be recognized ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... my honour'd, much respected friend! No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed, a friend's esteem and praise: To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene, The native feelings strong, the guileless ways, What Aiken ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... from boyhood to age under her ancestral roof, who remembered her father in the bloom and glory of early youth; that this faithful servant should be thrust out at the bidding of an interloper—a paltry schemer, who, in Vixen's estimation, had been actuated by the basest and most mercenary motives when he married her mother;—that these things should be, moved Violet Tempest with an ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... castles, he sent the Earl of Pembroke and other faithful messengers to them, to let them know he would grant them the laws and liberties they desired." * * But after the charter had been granted, "the king's mercenary soldiers, desiring war more than peace, were by their leaders continually whispering in his ears, that he was now no longer king, but the scorn of other princes; and that it was more eligible to be no king, than such a one as he." * * He applied to the Pope, that he might ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... with evident emotion. 'The loss of a few hundreds is of no real importance to me; and do you think that I could suffer that noble young woman to toil incessantly to pay the debt of an unprincipled parent? No, I am not so mercenary. Miss Beaufort refused me as a husband, but she must allow me the pleasure of becoming her friend. You need not be jealous, sir, of the title I am solicitous to assume, for it was for your sake that she rejected me; but whether as a maiden ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... soldier, sternly. 'Inform me immediately: Are you a mercenary of the tyrant of England, or a friend to liberty? your life depends on ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... a primitive decision since the war commenced. The decision is the same for both men and nations. They can choose the world or achieve their own souls. They can cast mercenary lots for the raiment of a crucified righteousness or take up their martyrdom as disciples. Those men and nations who have been disciples together can scarcely fail to remain friends when the tragedy is ended. What the fool ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... with some design, invested with the possibility of a useful life, a noble destiny. Whether it be the mercenary Greek vending his wares on the street corner, or the roaming Italian with his harp strapped over his shoulder, or the dissolute man behind prison bars paying the penalty of misspent days—all are invested with latent power and talent to ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... where and how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhoewden, and his chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief and his subordinate ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... made up our bundles, bade some of our friends farewell, and at about nine o'clock of the night set out for Baltimore. How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse of freedom lends wings to the feet, buoys up the spirit within, and the fugitive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... thus habituated to all the forms of a civilized state. Mr. Brooke, with a rare courage and wisdom, has always trusted for his safety to the good-will of his native subjects. He has never been sustained by mercenary bands. At a time when piratical violence was most threatening, when disorders were yet rife in his own state, and when his subjects but poorly appreciated his benevolent purposes towards them, his whole English force was twenty-four men. It is pleasant to add, that this confidence was not misplaced. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... So would he. (To Luiz.) Where are the halberdiers who were to have had the honour of meeting us here, that our visit to the Grand Inquisitor might be made in becoming state? LUIZ. Your Grace, the halberdiers are mercenary people who stipulated for a trifle on account. DUKE. How tiresome! Well, let us hope the Grand Inquisitor is a blind gentleman. And the band who were to have had the honour of escorting us? I see no band! LUIZ. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... words, and back came Youth and Romance, passionately. "Aunt Frances, a woman hasn't any right to marry just because she thinks it is her best chance. She hasn't any right to make a man feel that he's won her when she's just little and mean and mercenary." ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... to "go with" Bessy Houghton regularly after that. In his single-mindedness he never feared that Bessy would misjudge his motives or imagine him to be prompted by mercenary designs. He never thought of her riches himself, and it never occurred to him that she would ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Woo Were Hebrew and Greek Women Coy? Masculine Coyness Shy but not Coy Militarism and Mediaeval Women What Made Women Coy? Capturing Women The Comedy of Mock Capture Why the Women Resist Quaint Customs Greek and Roman Mercenary Coyness Modesty and Coyness Utility of Coyness How ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... on with his arguments, that she had become to him an Ophelia, weakly led. Women in his lexicon of romance might be weak but never mercenary. I think he finally overthrew her in his mind with "Get thee to a nunnery!" I know that he burned her picture; he showed me the ashes in a ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... military conditions imposed on Germany—a small mercenary army, no obligatory conscription, no military instruction, no aviation, no artillery except a minimum and insignificant quantity required by the necessities of interior order. Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary can only have insignificant armies. Austria ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... this report, relating to the Duke, was yet of more importance. The greatest part of Her Majesty's forces in Flanders were mercenary troops, hired from several princes of Europe. It was found that the Queen's general subtracted two and a half per cent, out of the pay of those troops, for his own use, which amounted to a great annual sum. The Duke of Marlborough, in his letter already mentioned, endeavouring ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... declared all slaves found on its territory to be free. "Such traffic," it said, "is base and contrary to all humanity ... namely, that the human form, made after the image and similitude of our Creator, should be turned to mercenary profit and sold as if ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... as has been said, was a mercenary and rapacious man, caring no more for a bleeding country than does a bird of prey for a bleeding dove. So long as he obtained the gold of his impoverished countrymen, and eluded the grasp of the blockading ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... from you; you lavish the public money to scandalous and obscure uses; you suffer your allies to perish in time of peace, whom you preserved in time of war; and, to sum up all, you yourselves, by your mercenary court, and servile resignation to the will and pleasure of designing, insidious leaders, abet, encourage, and strengthen the most dangerous and formidable of your enemies. Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... signorina?' he said. 'Young people and beautiful people should not be mercenary. Poor child! you had better have ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... national affairs sinks to the merely sporting instinct of "backing your candidate" at elections as a horse is backed at race meetings, and of "shouting for your party" as men shout for their favourite football team, or sinks still lower to the mercenary speculation of personal gain or loss on election results, then another danger comes in—the indifference of the average honest citizen to all politics, and the cynical disbelief ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... take their proper place in the work of human development when, freed from all mercenary bondage, they will be exclusively cultivated by those who love them, and ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Suspicion had worked its way through narrow openings, and my doubts were giving way to convictions, so that soon I believed I would be as much against Hosley as the fiery Tescheron, when goaded by the mercenary Smith. ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... a thought to what would pass as an insignificant subsidiary trifle. No rascal is sharp enough to guard every point,—a general fact that illustrates over and over again, in the experience of man, the seminal truth that in a mercenary and physical as well as in a high and spiritual, sense there is neither wisdom nor profit outside of the limits of absolute integrity and ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... quite extirpated the latter. The word, both the noun and the verb "to rat," was first levelled at the converts to the government of George the First, but has by degrees obtained a wider meaning, and come to be applied to any sudden and mercenary change in politics. The ravages of rats might form the subject of a curious volume. They are not at all literary in their tastes, though they are known to eat through bales of books, should they be placed ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... that one of the abuses which came into large practice from the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu was the adoption of children of ignoble birth into samurai families in consideration of monetary payments by their parents. This mercenary custom was strictly interdicted by the Matsudaira regent, who justly saw in it a danger to the solidity of the military class. But it does not appear that his veto received ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... sympathy with freedom and literature, and all human learning should speak with unmistakable accents for the elevation, evangelization, and liberation of the oppressed. In a future day, the historian cannot purge our political history from the shame of wanton and mercenary oppression. But there is not, I believe, a book in the literature of our country that will be alive and known a hundred years hence, in which can be found the taint of despotism. The literature of the world is ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... however, it shall not. He that has four limbs, and a French heart, can do spadework; and will! On the first July Monday, scarcely has the signal-cannon boomed; scarcely have the languescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down their tools, and the eyes of onlookers turned sorrowfully of the still high Sun; when this and the other Patriot, fire in his eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself begins indignantly ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... It was very hard of heart, to my mind, I remember. It was an old servant even then; and I felt as though it ought to show some sorrow; as though it wanted sympathy with us in our distress, and were a dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah! how soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going on, and in its being checked or stayed by nothing, lay its greatest kindness, and the only balm for grief ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... accuse you of being at all mercenary, but such things have been, and there has something come to my knowledge to-day, which I deem it my duty to tell you, so that hereafter you can neither blame me ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... without our knowledge, and most assuredly, had we known it, would have met with our strongest opposition. We have no claim on the Duke. His Grace honour'd us with a visit, in token of his respect for the memory of the dead, and his liberality and munificence are well and widely known; and the mercenary, taking an unfair advantage of these circumstances, have taken a step which both Mr. Nicholls and I utterly regret and condemn. In answer to your query, I may state that the whole expense for both the schools and church is about one hundred pounds; and that after what has ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... equally unnatural and mischievous passivity on the part of the other, have given birth to the meek maiden waiting for her fate, to the typical disconsolate and forlorn "superfluous woman," to the two standards of morality for the sexes, to the mercenary marriage with all its attendant miseries, to the selfish, exacting, querulous wife, to the disappointed or tyrannical husband; and of late, with the wider possibilities of individual pleasure and satisfaction, to ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... them;—a nation who love their sun, their arts, their monuments, their country, at once antique and in the spring of youth;—a nation that stand equally aloof from the refined pleasures of luxury, as from the gross and sordid pleasures of a mercenary people." ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... throw did the worldling gain the wealth, station, and honour he coveted? He had wedded the only child of a man whose treasure might be counted by hundreds of thousands; but, in doing so, he had failed to secure the father's approval or confidence. The stern old man regarded him as a mercenary interloper, and ever treated him as such. For five years, therefore, he fretted and chafed in the narrow prison whose gilded bars his own hands had forged. How often, during that time, had his heart wandered back to the dear old home, and the beloved ones with whom ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... made no allusion to her in speech. "I don't think I'm very good at that kind of thing," he said. "When the father and mother came to ask of my house and my home I should break down. I don't say it as praising myself;—indeed, quite the reverse; but I fear I have not a mercenary tendency." ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Smith was not disposed to cast his pearls before swine, and so evaded the direct question. He knew that his mercenary neighbour would trample under foot, with sneering contempt, any expression of the pure satisfaction he derived from what he had done—would breathe upon and obscure the picture of a grateful mother and her daughter, if he attempted ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... the selfish and mercenary character of the men, and women, too, that I meet in this world has made me, perhaps, too suspicious of all men's motives," said the champion egotist of the world, speaking with the air of the great ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the flexible form, and listens to the words that he would admire, only the cynical suspicion is in his mind that she is talking for effect. His general habit was to consider all women mercenary and untrustworthy. Deep in his heart—for he had a heart, though contracted from want of use—lay a hungry desire to be loved, really loved for himself; and the very keenness of the longing, and the anxiety not to ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... sordid toil. I drench it with mercenary ink. My work in your country counts for play as well. You see what's thought of the pleasure your country can give. My ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... changed his name, and should have married. But the idiotic notions about pluck prevented him from changing his name; and he would not marry a woman who accepted him from only mercenary motives. He was so unattractive that he did not think it possible a woman would marry him for any other reason. However, he could not always be superintending the manufacture of Blacking-cream; and it was obvious to him that he could publish no more verses. So he devoted himself ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... sixtieth part of a legion, which was stationed in Capernaum. If we look at all the features of his character which come out in the story, we get a very lovable picture of a much more tender heart than might have been supposed to beat under the armour of a mercenary soldier set to overawe a sullen people. 'He loveth our nation,' say the elders of the Jews,—not certainly because of their amiability, but because of the revelation which they possessed. Like a great many others in that strange, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... some trinket, as a mark of consideration; because he himself had such a particular value for the fellow, on account of his attachment and fidelity, that he should be sorry to see him treated on the footing of a common mercenary domestic. There was not one jewel in the possession of this grateful young lady, that she would not have gladly given as a recompense, or badge of distinction, to her rescuer; but his master pitched upon a seal ring of no great ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... idealism, she contrives to combine the disadvantages of both. She, who was the light o' love of all Europe for long ages, and in her poverty denied nothing to her clientele, has now laid aside a little money, repenting of her frivolous and mercenary deeds (they sometimes do), and becoming puritanically zealous of good works in her old age—all this, however, as might have been expected from her antecedent career, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... by a hostile garrison. Her spirit sank within her, and she bitterly felt the impoverishment of the always scanty means, which deprived her of the power of laying out sums of money on those rites which were universally deemed needful for the repose of souls snatched away in battle. It was a mercenary age among the clergy, and besides, it was the depth of a northern winter, and the funeral rites of the Lady of Whitburn would have been poor and maimed indeed if a whole band of black Benedictine monks had not arrived from Wearmouth, saying they had been despatched ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spare your taunts. But, to show you how mercenary I am, let me assure you that the woman to whom my word is pledged, and to whom I must return, is without any property ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... and we are only providing for our safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a question of difference of opinion about labor; the North prefers a system regulated by the mercenary dictates of traffic, ruled by capital, and subject to the chronic difficulties of strikes and starvation; the South, a simpler relation, binding master and slave together for their mutual benefit, abolishing pauperism, and dividing society into two unmistakable, harmonious classes—the well-fed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... play; Correct your cravats, foretops, lock behind: The dress and breeding of the play ne'er mind; For the coarse dauber of the coming scenes To follow life and nature only means, Displays you as you are, makes his fine woman A mercenary jilt and true to no man, Shows men of wit and pleasure of the age Are as dull rogues ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... rich on thirty pounds a year, and retired with his deaf old housekeeper to the Clints of Drumore. Yet forty years before, the Reverend Fergus Symington was counted the luckiest young minister in the Stewartry; and many were the jokes made in public-house parlours and in private houses about his mercenary motives. He had married money. He had been wedded with much rejoicing to the rich daughter of a Liverpool merchant, who had made a fortune not too tenderly in the West Indian trade. Sophia Sugg was ten years the senior of her husband, and her ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... geese: of the Biblical goose, that blew his bugle from the roof of Noah's Ark; the classical goose that picked his livelihood along the shores of the AEgean; of the historical goose, that squawked to save old Rome; the mercenary goose, laying the golden egg; and, finally, of the ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... hoped much from the interest of her connections; but a change in the ministry had thrown her relations out of power; and, beyond her dowry, he obtained no worldly advantage with the lady of his mercenary choice. Mrs. Beaufort was a woman whom a word or two will describe. She was thoroughly commonplace—neither bad nor good, neither clever nor silly. She was what is called well-bred; that is, languid, silent, perfectly dressed, and insipid. Of her two children, Arthur was almost ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what to me seemed like wealth. I recalled the fact that my father had paid Ted exactly half this amount, and had found him quite willing to stay with us for half that again, or even for occasional tobacco money. Perhaps there was a mercenary vein in me at the time. I think it likely. The talk of my fellow orphans was largely of wages, and materialism dominated the atmosphere in which I lived. I know this refusal of twenty-five shillings ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... finished, for there is not a man in that whole kingdom who has an income of one hundred ducats or a palm's length of land; nor is there one who considers it a disgrace to be given two hundred lashes. They are a mercenary horde, accustomed to ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... touched by his look and manner to an immediate unfolding of her scheme, "let us look at things again. Perhaps we shall not find them so hopeless as they look. If I am prudent, Everett, I am not mercenary. I only want to see Rosa happy. I don't care whether it is on hundreds a year, or thousands. And the fact is, I have not condemned your plans without having a more satisfactory one to offer to your choice. Listen ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion—if only they can continue to get munitions. We are reducing English regard to this purely mercenary basis.... ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and suffer not thyself to know that sin; and suffer never pride to have domination in thy wit, ne in thy word, that sin was the beginning of all perdition. Whosomever work to thee any thing, anon yield to him his meed and hire, let never the hire of thy servant ne meed of thy mercenary remain in no wise with thee. That thou hatest to be done to thee of other, see that thou never do to an other. Eat thy bread with the hungry and needy, and cover the naked with thy clothes. Ordain thy bread ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... penetration was not long in scenting out who was the formidable rival to whom Daddy Mainspring alluded. Sacre! to think the mercenary old hunks could dream of sacrificing my lovely Lucy to such a hobgoblin of a fellow as a superannuated dragoon quartermaster, with a beak like Bardolph's in the play. But I had some confidence in my own qualifications; and as I gave a sly glance down at my nether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... just as mercenary love is opposed to the love of charity, so is servile fear, apparently, opposed to chaste fear. But mercenary love is always evil. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Wordsworth's last poems, which disgusted them, not only from the subservient spirit to Toryism which pervaded them, but also excited their laughter from their absurdity, Byron, in whose house they were, said to them, "It is satisfactory to see that a man who becomes mercenary, and traffics upon the independence of his character, loses at the same time his talent ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... father is not so mercenary—such an idea never entered his head. But the Squire himself has indeed said—'Why, if any thing happened to Frank, you would be next heir to my lands, and therefore we ought to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... is that of money-making will not make the work any more excellent than is demanded by the largest possible returns; and frequently the largest possible returns are to be obtained by indifferent work or by work which has absolutely no social value. The ordinary mercenary purpose always compels a man to stop at a certain point, and consider something else than the excellence of his achievement. It does not make the individual independent, except in so far as independence is merely a matter of cash in the bank; and for every individual ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... different men, if we may judge from the feats which they performed, from those of these days; one of the best of his histories is that which describes the life of Harald Haardraade, who, after manifold adventures by land and sea, now a pirate, now a mercenary of the Greek emperor, became king of Norway, and eventually perished at the battle of Stamford Bridge, whilst engaged in a gallant onslaught upon England. Now, I have often thought that the old Kemp, whose mouldering skull in the Golgotha of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... notion of. Anonymous letters, verbal dissuasions; newspaper attacks making Colt (a murderer who is attracting great attention here) an angel by comparison with me; assertions that I was no gentleman, but a mere mercenary scoundrel; coupled with the most monstrous misrepresentations relative to my design and purpose in visiting the United States; came pouring in upon me every day. The dinner committee here (composed of the first gentlemen in America, remember that) were so dismayed, that they besought ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... woman. "For these worthless, glittering toys have they ruined the happiness of the dear innocent heart, and on them the guilt will fall if her soul is lost! I remark how she is changed in her letters since her shameful, mercenary marriage. She writes of nothing but the arrangement of her house, and speaks as if the beauty and costliness of things were only to be thought of, and there is not even a confidential, heart-felt word for her old Trude. It would seem as if she had forgotten all former objects of interest. ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... to Guildhall was crowded from top to bottom, and many had scaffoldings besides; carpets and rich hangings were hung out on the fronts all the way along; and our friend notes that the citizens were not mercenary, but "generously accommodated their friends and customers gratis, and entertained them in the most elegant manner, so that though their shops were shut, they might be said to have kept ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... agonizing thrill! (I can feel the place in frosty weather still). For a week from ten to four I was fastened to the floor, While a mercenary wopped me ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... name, but she is the daughter of an English peer of very ancient family. Her father having married a second time, Dorothea was exposed to the persecutions of a low-minded vulgar woman, whose whole ideas were of that mean and mercenary description which characterise the Caucasian race. Naomi Shekles was the offspring of a Jew, and she hated, whilst she envied, the superior charms of the noble Norman maiden. But she had gained an enormous supremacy over the wavering ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Perhaps the great thinkers, whose influence can be traced in the tendencies towards monotheism which became marked at various periods, believed in a Heaven for the just and good. If they did, their teachings must have been suppressed by the mercenary priests. It was extremely profitable for these priests to perpetuate the belief that the spirits of the dead were consigned to a gloomy Hades, where the degree of suffering which they endured depended on the manner in which their bodies were disposed of upon earth. An orthodox funeral ceremony ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... said (and the point is worth insisting on) that the Englishman cannot pretend that he goes into business with any other object than to make money. His motives are on the face of them mercenary if not sordid. The American is impelled primarily by quite other ambitions. Similarly, when the Englishman thinks of business, the image which he conjures up in his mind is of a dull commonplace like, on lines so long established and well-defined ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... She'll be in directly. I wanted her to do some errands for me, but she flatly refused to go into the town. I am afraid she mismanages her affairs sadly. But she won't allow me to interfere. I hate to look at such things in a mercenary spirit, but it is provoking to see her throw over two such good matches. First Mr. Henderson, and now Roger Hamley. When does the squire expect Roger? Does he think he will come back sooner for poor ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... herself for Austin. Dick would be content if she went about in raiment made of dusters and bath towels. In return, what could she give each of these men? She put the question to herself. She was not mercenary or heartless. She gave of herself freely and loved the giving. What could she give to Austin? What could she give to Dick? These questions, in her sober mood, ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... you're a mercenary bit of flesh and blood. Always looking out for customers," I returned, shaking ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... thought before that you were mercenary and suspicious, and I don't know what else besides? What has Jacob been doing to 'aggravate' you lately, that you should be ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... and it looked as if he should not be able to escape the plot they had laid for him, had not his foreign auxiliaries, the Pisidians and Cilicians, assisted him; for as to the Syrians, he never admitted them among his mercenary troops, on account of their innate enmity against the Jewish nation. And when he had slain more than six thousand of the rebels, he made an incursion into Arabia; and when he had taken that country, together with the Gileadires ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... work of Mr. Streeter,' serjeant-painter to King Charles the Second. In February 1664, the Diarist saw Dryden's Indian Queen acted 'with rich scenes as the like had never been seen here, or haply, except rarely, elsewhere on a mercenary theatre.' Mr. Pepys—most devoted of playgoers—notes occasionally of particular plays, that 'the machines are fine and the paintings very pretty.' In October 1667, he records that he sat in the boxes for the first time in his life, and discovered that from that point of ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... and then orders something else; but the American, as a rule, is either too proud or too foolish to inquire into these details. At home he is beset by a hideous fear that some waiter will think he is of a mercenary nature; and when he is abroad this trait in him is accentuated. So, in his carefree American way, he orders a portion of a dish of an unspecified value; whereupon the head waiter slips out to the office and ascertains ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... shows for commonplaces! That life is short, that marriages from mercenary motives produce unhappiness, that different men are virtuous in different degrees, that advice is generally ineffectual, that adversity has its uses, that fame is liable to suffer from detraction;—these and a host of other such maxims are of the kind upon which no genius ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... but it only confirms what I have said; namely, that an artist's talent may be infinite, but that its mercenary claims are necessarily limited,—on the one hand, by its usefulness to the society which rewards it; on the other, by the resources of this society: in other words, that the demand of the seller is balanced by ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... entertainment, indeed, cannot be the choice of the mercenary, the envious, or the malicious. Its value is known only to persons of an opposite temper; and to their experience alone, we appeal. Guided by mere disposition, and without the aid of reflection, in business, in friendship, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... have limited my researches to the fifteenth century, leaving to others the task of studying those pictures of the Renaissance in which the Maid appears decked out in the German fashion, with the plumed hat and slashed doubtlet of a Saxon ritter or a Swiss mercenary.[144] I cannot say who served as a prototype for these portraits, but they closely resemble the woman accompanying the mercenaries in La Danse des morts, which Nicholas Manuel painted at Berne, on the wall of the Dominican Monastery, between 1515 and 1521.[145] In le Grand ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... praised the care that had been taken of the babies; admired the strong and healthy ones, which indeed nearly all were; took an interest in those who looked paler, or less robust; and how fond and proud the nurses were of their charges; and how little of a hired, mercenary, hospital feeling existed among ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... hour, as in more peaceful times, good and bad ideas, valuable and worthless devices, noble and generous as well as sinister and mercenary purposes are mingled in the vast multitude of projects which are presented for acceptance and adoption. The power of the nation is magnified by the impulse which arouses it; but in its exaltation it still retains ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... They were, it seems, finally organized by Cormac mac Art, 227 A.D.(?) the grandson of Conn the Hundred Fighter. But they had loosely existed before in the time of Conn and his son Art, and like all mercenary bodies of this kind were sometimes at war with the kings who employed them. Finally, at the battle of Gowra, they and their power were quite destroyed. Long before this destruction, they were led in the reign of Cormac by Finn ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... had been neglectful.... But she was not a demonstrative woman. Even when he was a baby she could not cuddle him and wonder at him and regard him as the most wonderful thing in creation.... She had never held him to her breast as God and nature meant mothers to hold their babies. A mercenary ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... misunderstood me," she said, not knowing how to excuse her mercenary hopes. "I wish only for your happiness!" And then, conscious that this was not her sole aim, and that she was not perfectly honest, ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... the means of enlightening the masses of the colored people that lay claim to any degree of education whatever. What the Negro teacher has accomplished has been done not from a selfish motive or a mercenary point of view, but primarily because he has endeavored to do his part toward elevating the race with which he is identified. If it is true that the salvation of the Negro lies in his being educated, then to ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... young ladies, when old enough, into general society. Mrs. Schreiber was the very person required. Intellectually she had no great pretensions; but these she did not need: her character was irreproachable, her manners were polished, and her own income placed her far above all mercenary temptations. She had not thought fit to accept the station of Colonel Watson's wife, but some unavowed feeling prompted her to undertake, with enthusiasm, the duties of a mother to the colonel's daughter. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the man before him was more mercenary and wicked than he thought could be possible. He buried both his sons almost at the same hour, but he still found time and opportunity to inquire about the legacy for which he had ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... person, and hence to be corrected by the voices of those who are faithful to a higher Power than his,—a blow to the exercise of excommunication from any personal grounds of malice or hatred, or when used to extort unjust or mercenary demands. He also maintained that the endowments of the clergy could be lawfully withdrawn if they were perverted or abused,—a bold assertion in his day, but which he professed he was willing to defend, even unto death. If the prelates had dared, or had possessed sufficient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... for himself, and was willing—so at least it was reported—to pay for it at the handsome figure of 4,000 pounds for a single couplet. Pope, however, who was not mercenary, declined to gratify the alderman, who by his will left the poet a legacy of 100 pounds, possibly hoping by this benefaction, if he could not be praised in his lifetime, at all events to escape posthumous abuse. If this were his wish it was ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... gentler virtues, so prominent in Christianity, have little place in the list. The virtues are chiefly aristocratic. Favourable conditions are needed for their cultivation. They are not possible for a slave, and hardly for those engaged in 'mercenary occupations.'[4] Further, it may be remarked that habit of itself does not make a man virtuous. Morality cannot consist in a mere succession of customary acts. 'One good custom would corrupt the world,' and habit is frequently ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... to see you display such a mercenary disposition, Joseph. But I see that I must come to terms with you. How much will you take to ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... to space a few times, as a junior officer on trade-and-raid voyages into the Old Federation. He was supposed to be a fair astrogator. He had expected his uncle to give him command of the Enterprise, which had been ridiculous. Disappointed in that, he had recruited a mercenary company and was seeking military employment: It was suspected that he was in correspondence with his uncle's worst enemy, Duke ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... this, gathered themselves together from all the cities and came in a body to condole with him, and when they had come they were laid in bonds by him. Miltiades then was in possession of the Chersonese, supporting a body of five hundred mercenary troops; and he married the daughter of Oloros the king of the Thracians, who was ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... government. We had infused into our laws, our language, and our institutions new vigor for conquest and for human enlightenment. Venality, that dogs great efforts, undoubtedly there was. But the high tide of the conflict showed no mercenary taint. On both sides it was urged from the highest motives of patriotism and of honor and in defense of the popular principle. That principle with us means local self-government and representative union. The rebel yell was because they thought local government ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... the meditated retreat of Bourbon became impossible, and the city was taken by assault. His favorite mottoes were, Kriegsrath mit der That, "Plan and Action," and Viel Feinde, viel Ehre, "The more foes, the greater honor." He was the only man who could influence the mercenary lancers, who were as terrible in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he added gravely. "Prepare yourself to be courted and flattered for its sake. Some people would say, 'Do not destroy her faith in human nature. She will learn the truth soon enough.' I believe that to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Good and true men are abundant, but there are unscrupulous and mercenary ones as well, who will woo you for the sake of your fortune and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... generally appears in the other works of this author; but he has perverted the characters of Ovid, in making Daphne, the chaste favourite of Diana, a whore, and a jilt; and fair Syrene to lose her reputation, in the unknown ignominy of an envious, mercenary, infamous woman.' ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... chance for me, except as I could buy in for a few glimpses at the tidy confectioners', where persons of civil condition resorted for afternoon tea. Even to these one could not speak, and I could only do my best in a little mercenary conversation with the bookseller about York histories. The book- stores were not on our scale, and generally the shops in York were not of the modern department type, but were perhaps the ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... money would not be convenient to me. Arthur—poor fellow, a very fine young man, sir,—is, as I have told you in perfect confidence, a little imprudent and lavish; in short, your offer to dispense with any dowry is extremely liberal, and proves your nephew is actuated by no mercenary feelings: such conduct prepossesses me highly in your favour and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was lying prone on the deck; his face was haggard, his look wild, and he tore his hair in distraction. "My master, my poor master!" cried he; "I have murdered thee by my mercenary wickedness; oh, holy Virgin! forgive me, for I am a sinner!" "Look up, Herbert de Burgh," said a voice beside him; "the Mother of mercy is never appealed to in vain; she can restore the dead to life; she can, though late, re-illume joy in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... chief, once more Welcome to this grateful shore; Now no mercenary foe Aims again the fatal blow,— Aims at thee ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... self-immolation? Indeed, founded on this principle, the work of benevolence is extremely liable to degenerate into sheer superstition. The payment of the stipulated sum is soon thought to render one worthy of Divine acceptance; and thus, instead of gushing from the heart, charity becomes a mere mercenary business, scarcely rising to the dignity of a virtue. This the experience of the religious world proves, as is evidenced by the views and conduct of the Jews respecting tithes in the time of Christ; and at the present period, by the payment of ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... refuses to paint for hire or model on order is the same. Wagner, Millet, Rembrandt, William Morris and Ruskin are examples of men who were incapable of anything but their highest and best creative work, and refused to truckle to the mercenary horde. Such men may be without conscience in a business way. And a person may be absolutely moral in all his acts of life, except in writing and talking, and here he ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... person could live very comfortably on an income that had formerly supported two. He said it wasn't right I should be burdened with the support of his family. Jack was so sensitive, you see, lest people might think he was making a mercenary marriage, and that his sister was profiting by it. Now, I call that one of the noblest things I ever heard of, for he is devotedly attached to his sister, and, naturally, it is a great grief to him to see her compelled to work ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... was like to prove, when they that were the engineers feared to be the authors. Nor were they content to feign things against me, but to urge things, feigned by the ignorant, against my profession, which though, from their hired and mercenary impudence, I might have passed by as granted to a nation of barkers that let out their tongues to lick others' sores; yet I durst not leave myself undefended, having a pair of ears unskilful to hear lies, or have those things said of me which I could truly prove of them. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... the words of the eye-witness, the gull "set at a sparrow as a pointer dog would do at its game." In an instant it had the luckless victim by the back, and swallowed it without giving it time to shut its eyes. But this was an unlovely friendship. The motives were altogether mercenary and low. The story affords, however, a curious instance of the power of reasoning possessed ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... perquisitions—thunderings at iron-studded doors, battering-rams set between posts, and the clouds of dust flying from the driven lintels, the screams of maids, the crying of women, a stray corpse or two flung on to the street, and then the procession as before, arms and legs, with a mercenary soldier between each pair, fore and aft. All this was repeated and repeated, till the dull monotony of tyranny began to wear through the long Teutonic patience to the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... tended strongly to increase his distrust of himself and his timidity. We should have wished that he could have experienced somewhat kinder treatment from the object of his regard, were it not that his character, and especially his subsequent history, show that he was entirely mercenary and selfish himself in seeking her hand. If we can ever, in any instance, pardon the caprice and wanton cruelty of a coquette, it is when these qualities are exercised in thwarting the designs of a heartless speculator, who is endeavoring to fill his ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... without the slightest consideration for local feeling. Garrison after garrison was installed and commanded to obey his officers alone, while the soldiers were allowed to levy their own rations, equivalent to raids on a friendly country. As always, the agglomeration of mercenary companies was difficult to control. The duke did not succeed in having those remote from his jurisdiction kept in due restraint. Complaints began to pour into his headquarters. Public sentiment shifted day by day. The Burgundian became the personification of a public foe. Before Charles ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... dreamer, like the few men whose minds had first given birth to the wonderful idea of a railroad from East to West. Neale found himself confronted by a singularly disturbing fact. However grand this project, its political and mercenary features could not be beautiful to him. Why could not all men be right-minded about a noble cause and work unselfishly for the development of the West and the future generations? It was a melancholy thing to learn that ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... their unvarying daily fare is the "blotting-paper ekmek" and yaort, with a melon or a cucumber occasionally as a luxury; yet, the moment I approach, they assign me a place at their "table," and two of them immediately bestir themselves to make me a comfortable seat. Neither is there so much as a mercenary thought among them in connection with the invitation; these poor fellows, whose scant rags it would be a farce to call clothing, actually betray embarrassment at the barest mention of compensation; they fill my pockets with bread, apologize for the absence of coffee, and compare the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... hovering on the brink of another (the ninth). The reason I want the stanzas again which I sent you is, that as these cantos contain a full detail (like the storm in Canto Second) of the siege and assault of Ismael, with much of sarcasm on those butchers in large business, your mercenary soldiery, it is a good opportunity of gracing the poem with * * *. With these things and these fellows, it is necessary, in the present clash of philosophy and tyranny, to throw away the scabbard. I know it is against fearful odds; but the battle must be fought; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... other than as a degraded menial, to make men the slaves of her mercenary schemes, La Corriveau cared nothing. She never felt it, never inspired it. She looked down upon all her sex as the filth of creation and, like herself, incapable of a chaste feeling or a pure thought. Every better instinct ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... these plans, thirty-five years ago, to the service of my country, that I have reserved them through the most adverse and trying circumstances, satisfied that at some future time I should prove my character to be above pecuniary considerations or mercenary motives. I have looked forward to the restoration of those honours, of which I was most unjustly bereaved, and to freedom from mental anguish, endured throughout an isolation from society of one-third of a century. I cannot contrast ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... Douglas came to me filled with delight. Mr. Minturn secured an appointment for him to make an investigation for the city which will be a great help to Douglas. It will bring him in contact with prominent men, give him big work and a sample of how mercenary I am—it will bring him big pay and he knows how to use the money in a big way. Douglas knows Mr. Minturn so well, and respects him so highly, yet no one can know him as ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... give birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at their will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to them everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must also buy all the mercenary pens which propagate our methods and which will instruct the people concerning their enemies whom we attack. The clergy, being the most powerful through public opinion, can only be destroyed by ridiculing religion, rendering its ministers odious, ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... whether they be the tittle-tattle of the nursery or the lady's drawing-room, or the shameless combinations entered into by librarians.... In England as in France those who loved literature the most purely, who were the least mercenary in their love, were marked out for persecution, and all three were driven into exile. Byron, Shelley, and George Moore; and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature for its own sake, was forced, amid cries of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... wetting best." Louisa laughed, and used afterwards to say to Hannah, "Has Jack given you a wetting?" Later on some other free ladies took up the joke, and Hannah's "wetting" became a bye-word among the circle of free, mercenary lovers. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... difficulty in getting men to enlist in the Mounted Police. This was clearly not due to any mercenary motives on the part of men enlisting. The remuneration for both officers and men was small, as it remains comparatively speaking to this day, when we remember that the work has always called for an unusual degree of endurance, initiative, reliability and courage. But the Government no doubt ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... a blow to Phoebe's plan and she fell silent, thinking deeply. She had foreseen that Droop would take only a mercenary view of the matter and had relied upon the X-ray to provide him with a motive. But if he refused this, what was ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... and glanced nervously about him. "I must hasten," he said; "I cannot stop for explanations; but you will find me in my office at two o'clock to-morrow, if you care to call. Meantime, my young friend, I am not perhaps as mercenary as you think, and I may be able to be of great assistance to you," and with a final bow, the man hastily disappeared around a turn ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... marry," said Jane, rather drearily. "It isn't easy to find some one with whom one would be willing to pass one's life. I've had several chances—one or two of them not entirely mercenary, I think. But not one that I could bring myself ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... thought worth revising and transcribing; and these transcripts have been frequently lent to others. Hence copies have been multiplied, in their nature imperfect, if not erroneous; some of which have fallen into mercenary hands, and become the object of clandestine sale. Having therefore so much reason to apprehend a surreptitious impression, he chose rather to submit his own errors to the world, than to seem answerable for those of other men. And, with this ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... thus, however, absolutely necessary to the virtue of war that it should be waged by personal strength, not by money or machinery. A nation that fights with a mercenary force, or with torpedoes instead of its own arms, is dying. Not but that there is more true courage in modern than even in ancient war; but this is, first, because all the remaining life of European nations is with a morbid intensity thrown into their ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... congratulations. The betrothed are then considered almost married. Engagements are, of course, frequently broken off, but such a thing as an action for 'breach of promise' is impossible, and would be considered most mercenary and mean. As a rule, engagements are not long, and as soon as the wedding-day is agreed upon, the preceding fortnight is filled with parties of various kinds, while there is another great reception ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... beloved one is seen to be clothed with genius and beauty and truth indeed, but also to be crowned with self-sacrifice. Society makes haste to forget him who remembers only himself. As there can be no illiterate sage, no ignorant Shakespeare, so history knows no selfish hero. For the mercenary forehead memory has no wreath. A sentinel with a flaming sword guards the threshold of the temple of fame against those aspirants ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... himself tells of, when Connecticut troops could "not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their term (saving those who have enlisted for the next campaign, and mostly on furlough), and such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades the whole, that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen," and when he described how in his retreat through New Jersey, "The militia, instead of calling forth their utmost efforts to a brave and manly opposition in order ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... been very wrong to buy a stolen diamond, but he had done it from no mercenary motives, for he had given it to her. She supposed that he had loved the beautiful thing, and felt when it was offered to him that he could not bear to let it go.... Perhaps the Countess de Santiago had stolen it on the Monarchic! That might ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... absorbing, but just common. That in speaking of money he was protecting himself, proudly self-guarding his own honour and that of his mother, Lesbia Faircloth, never, in her innocence of what is mean and mercenary, occurred ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... man of distinguished appearance, with all the gaiety, grace, and charm that, in spite our popular impression to the contrary, are not seldom found amongst the nobles of his country. His undoubted wealth and position redeemed his suit from any appearance of being inspired by a mercenary motive. Indeed, he was accustomed himself to be pursued, and Florence and he recognised in each ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... side a part of the Macedonian army or some of the Greek mercenary soldiers. The Greeks were thus contending among themselves who should possess Asia. The inhabitants were indifferent in these wars as they had been in the strife between the Greeks and the Persians. When the war ceased, there remained but three generals; from the empire of Alexander each of them ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... it's the way of the world!" thought Walter, as his quondam friend left him. "But, thank Heaven, all are not mercenary! I've got a few ...
— Walter Sherwood's Probation • Horatio Alger
... one another (a grimace which Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann supposed that the Doctor recognised him from having met him already somewhere, probably in some house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself very rarely visited, never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love. Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste, especially before Odette, whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse, Swann assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that the lady next to the Doctor was Mme. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... talents and every vice, Madame," said Mr. Jefferson, coldly. "A genius if you will, but a man without honor, without probity, erratic, unscrupulous, mercenary, passionate. Cupidus alieni prodigus sui. Great as are his parts, he will never be able to serve his country, for no dependence can be placed in him. He cannot even further his own interests, for he is his own worst enemy. No association with such ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... laid siege to the fort, but he met with most determined resistance from the garrison, nerved and stimulated by the voice and example of the heroic wife. The besiegers were almost disheartened, when a traitor within the walls—a "mercenary Swiss," according to a contemporary writer—gave them information which determined them to renew the assault with still greater vigour. D'Aunay and his men again attempted to scale the walls, but ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... rest upon the fact that he seems never to have been estranged in faith from the Roman Catholic Church, but he objected only to certain political and mercenary abuses. The first retraction is written in his style and it certainly contains nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there, Rizal prepared a practically ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... fellow like that. Baron indeed! He's only a foreign mercenary; and here is your poor father sent out of the country, while my lord has apartments set aside for him in the Palace, and he's petted and pampered, and now at last he goes off in one of the King's ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... person, property, earnings and children of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands, is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a noble and life-long partnership of equals into a mercenary and servile relation between ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... you prefer that Goodness, built upon Selfishness and Mercenary Principles, to that which proceeds from a Rectitude of Thinking, and a real Love of Virtue ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... and mercenary pen, Polydore, Lucan, Allan, Vandal, Goth. Malignant poet and historian both. Go seek the novice statesmen and obtrude On ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... found cause to think that the tenth part of learning stood or fell with the clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a sordid and unworthy speech of any churchman who had a competency left him. If therefore ye be loath to dishearten utterly and discontent, not the mercenary crew of false pretenders to learning, but the free and ingenuous sort of such as evidently were born to study, and love learning for itself, not for lucre or any other end but the service of God and of truth, and perhaps that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... Strength must let the Graces bind it, and the arbitrary lion must yield to the reins of love. For this purpose taste throws a veil over physical necessity, offending a free mind by its coarse nudity, and dissimulating our degrading parentage with matter by a delightful illusion of freedom. Mercenary art itself rises from the dust; and the bondage of the bodily, at its magic touch, falls off from the inanimate and animate. In the aesthetic state the most slavish tool is a free citizen, having the same rights as the noblest; and the intellect which shapes ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... just it! You girls expect a man to mean business at the first look. No man when he first becomes interested in a woman has any definite scheme of engagement to marry her in his mind, unless he is meaning a vulgar mercenary marriage. However, I did at last mean an honourable engagement, as you call it, ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... was once at Milan a German mercenary, Gulfardo by name, a doughty man, and very loyal to those with whom he took service; a quality most uncommon in Germans. And as he was wont to be most faithful in repaying whatever moneys he borrowed, he would have ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... representations of newly produced works of art, and an ample amount of ably written controversy upon everything under the sun. The correspondence columns, instead of being an exercising place for bores and conspicuous people who are not mercenary, will be the most ample, the most carefully collected, and the most highly paid of all departments in this paper. Personal paragraphs will be relegated to some obscure and costly corner next to the births, deaths, and marriages. This paper will have, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... numerous aliases, more by incapacity to conceive of such depth and complication of horror as were revealed by the idea, the perplexed thinker did not, for a while, admit to herself the possibility that the nameless vagabond may have been Clara's living husband, instead of a mercenary villain who had secured surreptitiously the proofs of a marriage she wished the world to forget. Having learned that she had wedded, a second time, in her maiden name, and that her antecedents were unsuspected in her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... the lash resounds on a slave's naked sides; and the sick wretch, who can no longer earn the sour bread of unremitting labor, steals to a ditch to bid the world a long good-night, or, neglected in some ostentatious hospital, breathes its last amidst the laugh of mercenary attendants." ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... brutes are turned mercenary, madam," said Mr. Touchwood, "I remember when a Scottishman would have scorned to touch a shilling that he had not earned, and yet was as ready to help a stranger as an Arab of the desert. And now, I did but drop my cane the other day as I was riding—a fellow who was working at the hedge made three ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... places evidently appeals to these people as the most natural thing in the world for them to do. It is a part of the un-written code of the hospitality of their uncivilized country, and is, in all probability, undertaken without so much as a mercenary thought. Presenting them with a money-consideration for their services certainly has a tendency to awaken the latent spirit of cupidity, generally resulting in their transformation from simple and unsophisticated children, hospitable both by nature and tradition, into wretched mercenaries, who regard ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... from motives other than mercenary. His cup was full when he could hear John's masterful voice addressed to Mrs. Rapp, Junior, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... metals into silver and gold by means of a most marvellous and wholly fabulous agent called the Philosopher's Stone, that its devotees were half knaves, half fools, whose views concerning Nature were entirely erroneous, and whose objects were entirely mercenary. This opinion is not absolutely destitute of truth; as a science alchemy involved many fantastic errors; and in the course of its history it certainly proved attractive to both knaves and fools. But if this opinion involves some element of truth, it involves a far greater proportion ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... opportunities for knowing that Vanderbilt had pocketed millions of dollars in his fraudulent hold-up arrangement with various mail subsidy lines. He was known to be mercenary and unscrupulous. Yet he was selected by Secretary of War Stanton to act as the agent for the Government. At this time Vanderbilt was posing as a glorious patriot. With much ostentation he had loaned to the Government for ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... oracles would not be meddled with. Its treasures would be safe. Visitors would be free to come and go. He would give any security that Greece required that the wealth of Apollo should be safe and all go on as before. But he fortified the town, and invited mercenary soldiers till he had an army of five thousand men. As for the priestess of Apollo, from whose lips the oracles came, he demanded that she should continue to be inspired as before, and should give an oracle in his favor. The priestess refused; ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... When the deputies returned, their constituents were not very well pleased with what had been done, declaring that they would not submit to be locked up at the mercy of any man, nor would they trust to mercenary troops for guarding their city. The Prince, hearing this, agreed that the burghers, Calvinists, Lutherans, as well as Romanists, should be employed to ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... choice of her husband: two young ladies in "A Story of Beyond the Sea" are both consulted in the matter. As a rule, however, her inclination was not permitted to stand in the way of the interests of her parents or guardians. She was betrothed in childhood, and married very young, for mercenary or political reasons, to a husband much older than herself. We read of a girl of twelve being married to a man of fifty. There was no great opportunity for a love story here; and the strange entreaty, on the ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... is this way: If something happens to you and by writing about it you can make a bit of money and at the same time be a benefactor to the race, then why not? Does not the philanthropic aspect of the proposition more than balance off the mercenary side? I hold that it does, or at least that it should, in the estimation of all fair-minded persons. It is to this class that I particularly address myself. Unfair-minded persons are advised to take warning and stop right here with the contemporary paragraph. That ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... Be not mercenary nor extravagant in your states, And the king will honour you. Thinking of this service, He will enlarge the dignity ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the population in Upper Silesia, conducted under French auspices, had taken the arms away from the Germans but left arms with the Poles. Added to that, guns, machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, were run over into the plebiscite area, and a mercenary "insurrectionary" army was raised, partly from the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. The supposition ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... the place to the parson, however worthy. It is, indeed, gratifying to see that the Highest Representative of Law and Order in the realm, after HER GRACIOUS MAJESTY, is so utterly uninfluenced by any mercenary motives. I send this by Private Post, an old ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... scene. Prettilove is an inoffensive little rabbit of a man. Marigold might sit for the model of a war-scarred mercenary of the middle ages, and when he called a man a liar he did it with accentuaton and ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... who has to play a rather thankless part in the mercenary designs of her parent, Miss WINIFRED BARNES contrived, very naively and prettily, to preserve an air of maiden reluctance under the most discouraging conditions. As Mortimer John Mr. SYDNEY VALENTINE had admirable scope for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... "a mercenary man," who "rented out his influence gained from political positions to companies of doubtful character for large pay."[1389] At a later day he sketched his readiness "to change his politics" for "a large consideration ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... power, with the aid of Daniel Webster and a band of lesser traitors, has enacted a law, which puts their dearly-bought liberties in the most imminent peril; holds out a strong temptation to every mercenary and unprincipled ruffian to become their kidnapper; and has stimulated the slaveholders generally to such desperate acts for the recovery of their fugitive property, as have never before been enacted in the ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... a motive for the crime, and a very strong one. First, we will presume that you are in love with the wife of the man who is murdered. Secondly, supposing that you are mercenary, quite a considerable amount of money will come to you in case you marry Brenton's widow. Next, some one at that table poisoned him. It was not Mrs. Brenton, who poured out the cup of coffee. The cup of coffee was placed before Brenton, and ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... the "Writs of Assistance," there was something nobler exhibited than superiority to mercenary consideration. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold, mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts. They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... think she knows. It was the destruction of an ideal which was terrible. She had clung to it. She had said to herself: 'Many men may be false, and mercenary, and unscrupulous, but this one is true.' Suddenly, he had ceased to exist for her. She stood alone in the ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... life of the Seneca chief was spent in vain endeavors to preserve the independence of his tribe, and in active opposition as well to the plans of civilization proposed by the benevolent, as to the attempts at encroachment on the part of the mercenary.... He yielded nothing to persuasion, to bribery, or to menace, and never to his last hour remitted his exertions, in what he regarded the noblest purpose of his ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... gaze—the triumphs of the Mind. He nursed the elements of courage—he Supplied the aliment that feeds and guides The daring spirit to its high emprise— A nation's moral energies, by him Directed, found a nobler end and aim. He gave that high discriminating tone That marks the Brave from mercenary tools— Features that separate a British Crew From hireling bravoes, and from pirate hordes. And yet no marble marks the spot where lies The dust of DIBDIN;—no inscription speaks A Nation's gratitude—a ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... she bitterly felt the impoverishment of the always scanty means, which deprived her of the power of laying out sums of money on those rites which were universally deemed needful for the repose of souls snatched away in battle. It was a mercenary age among the clergy, and besides, it was the depth of a northern winter, and the funeral rites of the Lady of Whitburn would have been poor and maimed indeed if a whole band of black Benedictine monks had not arrived from Wearmouth, saying they had been despatched at special ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... actor called Clear, who was wonderfully like Vrain, save that he had no scar on the cheek, and had a moustache, whereas Vrain was always clean-shaved. He had made the acquaintance of the actor—Michael Clear was his full name—and of his wife. They proved to be hard up and mercenary, so Ferruci had no difficulty in gaining over both for his purpose. For a certain sum of money (which was to be paid to Mrs. Clear when her husband was dead and the Count, married to Lydia, was possessed of the assurance money) ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... in the Vineyard likewise warns us against a mercenary spirit in which we might serve the Master for the sake of a reward, bargaining for so much labor for so much pay, jealous of those who may receive as much as ourselves, though deserving, as we ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... menstruation vanished, and now, rather than being held in fear and awe, the physicians of to-day constantly see the results of copulation during this period. The uncontrollable desire of the husband and the mercenary aims of the prostitute furnish examples ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... officer. ve'ni al, pardonable. cor po're al, bodily. ve'nal, mercenary; base. du'al ist, a believer in two gods. ap'po site, suitable; fit. op'po site, over against. du'el ist, one who fights a duel ac cla ma'tion, a slout. ac cli ma'tion, inurement to climate. de scen'sion, descent. dis sen'sion, strife. an'a lyze, to separate. ce're ous, like wax. an'nal ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... hopes, they anticipate the privileges of matrimony, and compel the bride's parents to countenance their legitimate aspirations to save the honour of the family. Honi soit qui mal y pense—they simply force the hand of a dictatorial mother-in-law. The women are notably mercenary, and if, on the part of the girl and her people, there be a hitch, it is generally on the question of dollars when both parties are native. Of course, if the suitor be European, no such question is raised—the ambition ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... prevented him from much frequenting the dry and dusty walks of jurisprudence. In his epistle to posterity, he endeavours to justify this repugnance by other motives. He represents the abuses, the chicanery, and mercenary practices of the law, as inconsistent with every principle of candour ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... country; corrupting the very fountains of political power; and converting the ballot-box—that great palladium of our liberty—into an unmeaning mockery, where the rights of native-born citizens are voted away by those who blindly follow their mercenary and selfish leaders. The evidence of this is found not merely in the shameless chaffering for the foreign vote at every election, but in the large disproportion of offices which are now held by foreigners at home and abroad, as compared ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... sackings that Rome has repeatedly suffered at the hands of Goth, Vandal, or Christian. This time it was the soldiery of the eldest son of the church—- Charles V—who did the sacking; it was in the year 1527, a soldier—probably some impious, heathenish mercenary—broke into the holy sanctuary of the church and stole therefrom the box that contained the holy relics, among them the holy prepuce. These impious wretches, as a rule, came to grief in short order; hence ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Sir Norman, frowning; "she was forced into the marriage by her mercenary friends. Oh! if I had him here, wouldn't I make him wish the highwaymen had shot him through the head, and done for him, before I would ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... in battle, in council, in hair-breadth escapes from pursuing hosts, from famine, from perils of the sea, she showed the masterful authority, the impetuous daring, the pertinacity which she had inherited from her Norman ancestors. Stephen fell back on his last source—a body of mercenary troops from Flanders,—but the Brabancon troops were hated in England as foreigners and as riotous robbers, and there was no payment for them in the royal treasury. The barons were all alike ready to change sides as often as the ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... stated above that one of the abuses which came into large practice from the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu was the adoption of children of ignoble birth into samurai families in consideration of monetary payments by their parents. This mercenary custom was strictly interdicted by the Matsudaira regent, who justly saw in it a danger to the solidity of the military class. But it does not appear that his ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... times. The Long Bridge has done nothing hitherto except carry passengers on its back across the Potomac. Hucksters, planters, dry-goods drummers, Members of Congress, et ea genera omnia, have here gone and come on their several mercenary errands, and, as it now appears, some sour little imp—the very reverse of a "sweet little cherub"—took toll of every man as he passed,—a heavy toll, namely, every man's whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty. Every man—so it seems—who passed the Long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Hebrew and Greek Women Coy? Masculine Coyness Shy but not Coy Militarism and Mediaeval Women What Made Women Coy? Capturing Women The Comedy of Mock Capture Why the Women Resist Quaint Customs Greek and Roman Mercenary Coyness Modesty and Coyness Utility of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... spiders, who have spun their webs over the lower division of my book-shelves (consisting chiefly of law and divinity) during the peaceful reign of her predecessor, fly at full speed before the probationary inroads of the new mercenary. Even so the Laird of Ellangowan ruthlessly commenced his magisterial reform, at the expense of various established and superannuated pickers and stealers, who had been his neighbours for half a century. He wrought his miracles like a second Duke Humphrey; and by the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... slave Nimbus was transformed, first into the "contraband" and mercenary soldier George Nimbus, and then by marriage ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... United can boast of members and publications whose polish and scholarship are well-nigh impeccable. In considering the adjective "amateur" as applied to the press association, we must adhere to the more basic interpretation, regarding the word as indicating the non-mercenary nature of the membership. Our amateurs write purely for love of their art, without the stultifying influence of commercialism. Many of them are prominent professional authors in the outside world, but their professionalism never creeps into their ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the most glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now, if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up every other mercenary possession. Its ownership betokened not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who was above and ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... am I doing?" Daisy asked, and he replied: "Making a fool of a boy, for mercenary purposes of your own. I have seen it ever since we left Liverpool and I tell you I will not allow it, and if you persist in luring Allen to your side on all occasions, and throw over him the glamour of your ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... a caste contempt for the men of commerce, with their mercenary talk about credit and market prices; and also for the scientists, doctors, engineers, and men of other professions, who spoke of things in books which he did not understand. Reading books was one of the faults ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... improvidence, soon depleted the exchequer. Internal troubles occurred to further embarrass the executive, and the resources of the state were severely strained in coping with more than one serious rebellion, among which the most formidable was the mutiny of a mercenary force under the command of a Turk officer named Popai, who imagined that he was unjustly treated, and that the time was favorable to found an administration of his own. His early successes encouraged him to believe that he would succeed in his object; but when he found that all the ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... been the lot of the unfortunate aborigines of America, in the early periods of colonization, to be doubly wronged by the white men: they have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been traduced by bigoted and interested writers. The colonist often treated them like beasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... fame mine unambitious Muse Affected ever but t'eternise thee; All other honours do my hopes refuse, Which meaner prized and momentary be. For God forbid I should my papers blot With mercenary lines with servile pen, Praising virtues in them that have them not, Basely attending on the hopes of men. No, no, my verse respects not Thames, nor theatres; Nor seeks it to be known unto the great; But Avon, poor in fame, and poor in waters, Shall ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... destined to last; he always respected his work, and the care given to it bore no relation to the price it was to fetch. He often expressed a wish that he might labor like the monks in the Middle Ages, without being disturbed by mercenary considerations; that simple shelter, food, and raiment should be provided for himself and for those dependent upon him—he did not foresee any other wants—so that he might devote the whole of his mental energy to subjects worthy of it. But I used ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... their religious opinions and sentiments a deep hatred of oppression. The three who fell were young men and well educated for the age in which they lived. They were of the yeomanry. They did not serve on that day upon compulsion nor for mercenary motives. They were the servants of the province; they were martyrs ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... him had been excited in this community. As you well know, I have and could have no sympathy with the motives by which he may be presumed to have been actuated. Why, then, this sudden feeling in his behalf? Not, I assure you, from mercenary motives. His acquittal or his condemnation will make no difference in the compensation I receive for my services. The overpowering interest I feel in this case originates in the fact that it places at stake the reputation of this District, and, in some respects, of the ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... confederates a "big game" in the way of "water-works" stocks, and the like. These pictures of corrupt judges and dishonest corporations have some probability: they show us many clearly-developed sensual and mercenary scoundrels; they are all, very possibly, portraits from life; but they are all excessively crude in their likenesses and inexpressibly wearisome. It is a distasteful and unsavory world to which the author introduces us: if he wishes to show us consummate rascals we insist that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... in the bank to Silvia's account the sum of five thousand dollars. We had never invited him to visit us or made any overtures in the way of communication with him, lest he should think we were cultivating his acquaintance from mercenary motives. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... increased ardour,—"never, till I receive from your own lips the answer which is to make me the happiest or the most miserable of mankind. Hear me, adorable girl! You know not the extent of my devotion. No mercenary consideration influences me. Love—admiration for your matchless beauty alone sways me. Let your father—if he chooses, leave all his wealth to his adopted son. I care not. Possessed of you, I shall have a treasure such as kings could ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Paris, before the adjournment of the Council of Sens, gave Francis a specious excuse for inaugurating the more cruel system of persecution now demanded of him, and tended somewhat to conceal from the king himself, as well as from others, the mercenary motive of the change. Just after the solemnities of Whitsunday, an unheard of act of impiety startled the inhabitants of the capital, and fully persuaded them that no object of their devotions was safe from iconoclastic ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... proud, for who but a grovelling money grubber would not sooner be descended from a warrior, elected chief, on account of his all-round prowess, than from some measly hireling whose instincts were all mercenary?—possess ghosts that are nearly allied to ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... be Allan Lyster's wife when she came of age. He told her he would rather forego all claim to her wealth, marry her at once, and leave her guardian to act as he thought best; but she, though delighted to find him free from the least taint of anything mercenary, refused to run the risk of ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... deed, making over to you from me one half of the fortune of Claude de Buxieres. You will then be, by law, and in the eyes of all, one of the desirable matches of the canton, and you can demand the hand of Mademoiselle Vincart, without any fear of being thought presumptuous or mercenary." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the toils around him, and struck the blow. It was, indeed, only through the agency of such an accomplice that Braxley could have put his schemes into execution, or ventured even to attempt them. The blood boiled in his veins as he surveyed the mercenary and unprincipled hireling, and strove, though in vain, to rise upon his fettered arms, to give energy ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the eldest Son of a Nobleman of Naples; but Theodora's Father having no regard to the Happiness of his Daughter, after Leander had made his Addresses, he forbad him his House, not approving the Circumstances or the Character of the young Gentleman; for the Father of Theodora was a mercenary Courtier, having no regard to any but such as were in their Nature Misers and sanctified Hypocrites, and Leander being a Gentleman inclin'd to Extravagancy. Leander setting a greater value upon his Education, Manners and good ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... stationed in Capernaum. If we look at all the features of his character which come out in the story, we get a very lovable picture of a much more tender heart than might have been supposed to beat under the armour of a mercenary soldier set to overawe a sullen people. 'He loveth our nation,' say the elders of the Jews,—not certainly because of their amiability, but because of the revelation which they possessed. Like a great many others in that strange, restless era when our Lord came, this man ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the redoubted Junius in a spirit of enlightened discrimination. We must bear in mind that the poisoned arrows of the unseen combatant were discharged at a period peculiarly favorable for the exercise of his destructive skill; when startling invective was in fashion; when the mercenary acts of the foremost public man excused, if they did not justify, wholesale and unreflecting chastisement; when the public press was in its earliest infancy, and public writers had not yet educated the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... is dishonored by those who take it up from mercenary motives, for wealth and fame, or think to build a baseless fabric of their own on another's foundation. They cannot put the "new wine into old bottles;" they can never engraft Truth into error. Such students come to my College to learn a system which they ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... and lawyers of ability making sacrifices, giving up their personal affairs in order to take places of honour in the government in which the salary was comparatively small, proving that even these were open to inducements other than merely mercenary ones. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that the galleon was the richest-laden vessel we had captured, and that several thousand pounds would come to my share alone if I succeeded in carrying her safely into port. Not, I must say, that I thought about the money for itself. I never was mercenary. I should have been considered wiser had I been so, but my thoughts instantly flew to Madeline Carlyon. I pictured to myself peace restored between the revolted provinces of America and England, and I, with wealth at my disposal, able to go over and claim with ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... you know how tenderly I adore you; if you don't marry me at once I'll break every bone in your body!' He then snatched my bonnet, a new one, from my head, and so acted on my nerves that I went off to the Registry Office and was married. That he was actuated by merely mercenary motives is proved by the fact that the gratuity (of half-a-crown), which he presented to the Registry Clerk, he actually borrowed from me! I knew him already to be unprincipled; but never until that moment had it flashed upon me that he was a fortune-hunter! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... of at once fixing the Chilian Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... children, that recollection of them, and affectionate friendship for them, that attention to the most important duties at the last gasp, indicates that honesty without any thought of personal advantage was innate in the man; that it did not require the invitation of pleasure, or the allurements of mercenary rewards. For what greater evidence can we require that those things which are honourable and right are desirable of themselves for their own sake, than the sight of a dying man so anxious in the discharge of such important duties? ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... poems, which disgusted them, not only from the subservient spirit to Toryism which pervaded them, but also excited their laughter from their absurdity, Byron, in whose house they were, said to them, "It is satisfactory to see that a man who becomes mercenary, and traffics upon the independence of his character, loses at the same time his talent ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... uncertain, in morals pompous and wrong-headed; Murat knew where and how the great prizes were to be found, and was as dashing and venturesome as he was selfish and worldly-wise. The Russian generals were plodding disciples of routine. Bennigsen was an able Hanoverian mercenary, despising alike his Livonian colleague, Buxhoewden, and his chief, the servile Russian marshal, Kamenski. The Prussian general Lestocq was capable but inexperienced. The chief and his subordinate were ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... for a moment suppose you would marry any one you didn't like, from mercenary considerations; but there is no reason you should ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... PAPER OF PINS, ii, 4aab3b, 13: The lover offers the maiden in alternate quatrains various gifts to induce her to marry him. She replies in alternate quatrains, refusing him. Finally, he offers "the key of his chest." She accepts, but he scorns her mercenary love. ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... happened remarkably late in history that with the discovery of the possibilities of coal there was a great boom in the demand for industrial machinery. At the same time there were thrown up the most marvelous advances in physics and chemistry. Recurring War became not the clashes of mercenary armies, but the catapulting of whole nations at each other. New destructive devices out of the laboratories were raised into the commandants of the course of history. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... by his baiting of Uncle Martin's philosophy died away, his heart sank with sorrowful thoughts of Phillida and her sufferings, and with indignant and mortifying thoughts of how she would inevitably be associated in people's minds with mercenary quacks and disciples of a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings." He asked, what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet?" Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, "if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... "doctryne of a rowt of Romayne bysshopps." Strype consequently notes with great sorrow that many "ancient manuscripts and writings of learned British and Saxon authors were lost. Libraries were sold by mercenary men for anything they could get, in that confusion and devastation of religious houses. Bale, the antiquary, makes mention of a merchant that bought two noble libraries about these times for forty shillings; the books whereof served him for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... responsibility of real work. Their leaders had been selected from the outside,—clever, eager, pushing men, but of late had been hardly selected from among themselves. As used to be the case with Italian Powers, they entrusted their cause to mercenary foreign generals, soldiers of fortune, who carried their good swords whither they were wanted; and, as of old, the leaders were ever ready to fight, but would themselves declare what should be and what should not be the casus belli. There was not so much meanness ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... as an unusual person, ignorant of life, to whom it seems to me all things are possible. And I see you, a very nice young man. But what else? I ask to be told why you fulfil all possibilities. Don't misunderstand me. I am not mercenary. Mathilde will have plenty of money of her own some day. I don't want a millionaire. I want ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... glory of the establishment of the English in America must be given to the patriotic and persevering men of the Virginia Company. It is erroneous and unjust to accuse them of mean and mercenary motives in founding and maintaining the colony at Jamestown. Some of them, perhaps, were dazzled with visions of a rich harvest of gold and silver, but most must have realized that there was small chance of remuneration. Many were ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... inflamed the discontent of his troops. More attentive to the interests of mankind than to those of the army, he expressed the vain hope, that, by the establishment of universal peace, he should soon abolish the necessity of a standing and mercenary force. [61] The unguarded expression proved fatal to him. In one of the hottest days of summer, as he severely urged the unwholesome labor of draining the marshes of Sirmium, the soldiers, impatient of fatigue, on a sudden threw down their tools, grasped their arms, and broke out into a furious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... interested people without any difficulty. It is our belief that the whole project is more likely to succeed if the leader himself is serving without remuneration, for he will then be easily able to refute any charge that he is urging the project out of selfish or mercenary considerations. ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... people at home—namely, that the Chinese really prefer the Japanese to all other foreigners; for they realize their dependence upon them, and if they do not make common cause with them it is because foreigners, chiefly Americans, instigate it all from mercenary and political motives. As a matter of fact, I doubt if history knows of any such complete case of national dislike and distrust; it sometimes seems as if there hadn't been a single thing that the Japanese might have done to alienate the Chinese that they haven't ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... with wonder and pity. "If you'll be so kind," he said with great deference. But just as this perverted product of a liberal education was about to propel him across the threshold of the court he turned about, disengaged the mercenary hands, with one of his own, from the back of the chair, drew their owner alongside and turned to me. "While we're here, my dear fellow," he said, "be so good as to perform this service. You understand?" I gave our companion a glance of intelligence and we resumed ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... forgotten. When labourers simply regard harvest-time as a season when they can earn a few shillings more than usual, and take no further interest in their work, or in the welfare of their master, all brightness vanishes from their industry: their minds become sordid and mercenary; and mutual trust, good-feeling, and ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... why they shouldn't spend their money that way as well as any other," said Jeff, and this proof of his impartiality suggested to Westover that he was not only indifferent to the mercenary international marriages, which are a scandal to so many of our casuists, but had quite outlived his passion for the girl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... they work together. Why only yesterday Douglas came to me filled with delight. Mr. Minturn secured an appointment for him to make an investigation for the city which will be a great help to Douglas. It will bring him in contact with prominent men, give him big work and a sample of how mercenary I am—it will bring him big pay and he knows how to use the money in a big way. Douglas knows Mr. Minturn so well, and respects him so highly, yet no one can know ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to the conclusion that it was therefore a mercenary marriage, as she had done in another case. She forgot, for the moment, her interest in the Forest news, and though she seemed to be contemplating her beautiful dress for the evening laid out upon the bed, the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... right to say, what we are all tempted to say at times—"How can I be heroic? This is no heroic age, setting me heroic examples. We are growing more and more comfortable, frivolous, pleasure-seeking, money-making; more and more utilitarian; more and more mercenary in our politics, in our morals, in our religion; thinking less and less of honour and duty, and more and more of loss and gain. I am born into an unheroic time. You must not ask me to become ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Dalila; she hates Samson more bitterly than the leader of his enemies. She is not mercenary, like the Biblical woman; she scorns the promise of riches which the High Priest offers so she obtain the secret of the Hebrew's strength. Thrice had she essayed to learn that secret and thrice had he set her spell at naught. Now she will ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to one another (a grimace which Cottard styled "letting 'em all come"), Swann supposed that the Doctor recognised him from having met him already somewhere, probably in some house of 'ill-fame,' though these he himself very rarely visited, never having made a habit of indulging in the mercenary sort of love. Regarding such an allusion as in bad taste, especially before Odette, whose opinion of himself it might easily alter for the worse, Swann assumed his most icy manner. But when he learned that the lady next to the Doctor was Mme. Cottard, he decided ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever entered into, was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the north of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the shop, so once ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... frenzied revolt, avenged their agony upon the nobility by hideous plunderings and burnings of the rich chateaux.[21] A partial peace with England was patched up in 1360; but the "free companies" of mercenary soldiers, who had previously been ravaging Italy, had now come to take their pleasure in the French carnival of crime, and so the plundering and burning went on until the fair land was wellnigh a wilderness, and the English troops caught disease from their victims and perished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... loftily. "Don't worry about that. If I can't bribe my way past a cordon of mercenary foreign waiters—and talk down any other opposition—I'm neither as flush as I ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... come other little Murphys in regular succession; and it had grown to be one of the legendary privileges of the school to furnish the babies with names and baptismal presents. Mrs. Murphy was not entirely mercenary in her yearly request. She appreciated the artistic quality of the names that the girls provided. They had a distinction, that she herself, with her lack of literary training, would never have been able to give. The choosing of the names had come to ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... principle, the work of benevolence is extremely liable to degenerate into sheer superstition. The payment of the stipulated sum is soon thought to render one worthy of Divine acceptance; and thus, instead of gushing from the heart, charity becomes a mere mercenary business, scarcely rising to the dignity of a virtue. This the experience of the religious world proves, as is evidenced by the views and conduct of the Jews respecting tithes in the time of Christ; and at the present period, by the payment ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... not find your opinion at all incredible," said Thorndyke, with a smile, "even if Mr. Walter were quite a mercenary young man—which, I take ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... institutions that the Romans were indebted for their grandeur; and when they lost these virtues, and when, no longer regarding the military service as an honor as well as a duty, they relinquished it to mercenary Goths and Gauls, the fall of the empire became inevitable. It is doubtless true that whatever increases the prosperity of the country should be neither neglected nor despised; it is also necessary to honor the branches of industry which are the first instruments ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Meldrum had known them, disapproved of them, considerably avoided them: she had watched the girl, off and on, from her early childhood. Flora, just twenty, was extraordinarily alone in the world—so alone that she had no natural chaperon, no one to stay with but a mercenary stranger, Mrs. Hammond Synge, the sister-in-law of one of the young men I had just seen. She had lots of friends, but none of them nice: she kept picking up impossible people. The Floyd-Taylors, with whom she had been at Boulogne, were simply horrid. The Hammond Synges were perhaps ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... asked your opinion, but I knew what I was going to do. Only, I did think him personally possible—which made the expediency, the mercenary view of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... enjoy a poetical element. In such a sweet sequestered retreat, how much more pleasing to the soul it would have been, for you and I, like two captive birds in one cage, to have sung away our hours in innocence, than for me to be thus torn from you by fate, and all on account of that mercenary legacy, perchance the spoils of ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... local riot, of merely domestic concern, and was held to foreshadow a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The angry taunts were soon returned. The ruling classes in Great Britain made the discovery that the war was a struggle between chivalrous gentlemen and mercenary counterhoppers and cherished the hope that the failure of the North would discredit, the world over, the democracy which was making uncomfortable claims in England itself. The English trading classes resented the shortage of cotton and the high duties which the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... ten o'clock, and read and talk with Miss Vervain for an hour or two; but Mrs. Vervain's hospitality was too aggressive for the letter of the agreement. She oftener had him to breakfast at nine, for, as she explained to Ferris, she could not endure to have him feel that it was a mere mercenary transaction, and there was no limit fixed for the lessons on these days. When she could, she had Ferris come, too, and she missed him when he did not come. "I like that bluntness of his," she professed to her daughter, "and I don't ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... known, my Lords, that Mr. Hastings, besides having received proposals for delivering up the beautiful country of Benares, that garden of God, as it is styled in India, to that monster, that rapacious tyrant, Asoph ul Dowlah, who with his gang of mercenary troops had desolated his own country like a swarm of locusts, had purposed likewise to seize Cheyt Sing's own patrimonial forts, which was nothing less than to take from him the residence of his women and his children, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... considered in determining the somewhat mercenary question, "Does Colonization Pay?" as viewed with regard to the interests of the colonizing country, are: (1) the market that the colonies afford for the goods which the colonizing country has to sell; and whether control gives to the ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... odious in the eyes of the European democracy, when contrasted with our antagonistical system of the divine right of the people. It is her policy and her purpose to render our institutions unstable by means of a suborned and venal press, and a band of mercenary, hireling, political and religious monarchical conspirators, parasites and traitors. These her gold can furnish. Her arms having repeatedly failed to subjugate the American democracy, she now has recourse to her diplomacy, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... and appropriate it to the pious purposes of the Moorish war. But, far from being blinded by their sophistry, she suffered the law to take its course, and, in order to place her conduct above every suspicion of a mercenary motive, allowed his estates, which might legally have been confiscated to the crown, to descend to his natural heirs. Nothing contributed more to re-establish the supremacy of law in this reign, than the certainty of its execution, without respect to wealth or rank; ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... his history through the war would be tedious. What Washington and Jefferson really thought of him we shall never know. He was never mercenary, but his pride was wounded that so little recognition of his astounding services was forthcoming. The ingratitude of Kings was a commonplace; the ingratitude of peoples an unpleasing novelty. But Washington bestirred himself at last, and Paine was voted an estate of 277 acres, more or less, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... kingship as in a commonwealth, and it is to this good form of our government that we partly owe that doubling of the people which has probably happened here in the 435 years last past. And if the ambition of some, and the mercenary temper of others, should bring us at any time to alter our constitution, and to give up our ancient rights, we shall find our numbers diminish visibly and fast. For liberty encourages procreation, and not only keeps our own inhabitants among us, but invites strangers to come ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... a long silence, and the curate wondered whether he had been too mercenary in his request. ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... people, lead to the subject of economy, and openly discuss and settle the most essential points. At the same time a father should not intimidate his son with the idea that nothing but rigid economy can win his parental favour; his parental favour should not be a mercenary object; he should rather show his son, that he is aware of the great temptations to which a young man is exposed in going first into the world: he should show him, both that he is disposed to place confidence in him, and that he yet knows the fallibility of youthful ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... divides; A lofty fabric does the sight invade, And stretches o'er the waves a pompous shade; Whence sudden shouts the neighbourhood surprise, And thundering claps and dreadful hissings rise. Here thrifty R——[16] hires monarchs by the day, And keeps his mercenary kings in pay; With deep-mouth'd actors fills the vacant scenes, And rakes the stews for goddesses and queens: 10 Here the lewd punk, with crowns and sceptres graced, Teaches her eyes a more majestic cast; And hungry monarchs with a numerous train Of suppliant slaves, like Sancho, starve and ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Piedro, thinking that he hesitated from merely mercenary motives. "You shall have what share of the profits ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... modesty (Prag is not spoken of at all); and how the neighboring ravenous Powers, on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... had not taken a wrong view of things, and if it was not the idle and good-for-nothing fellows who were more prudent than he. To waste his life in superhuman works, to tire his mind in seeking to solve great problems, and to attain old age without other satisfaction than unproductive honors and mercenary rewards. Those who only sought happiness and joy—epicureans who drive away all care, all pain, and only seek to soften their existence, and brighten their horizon—were they not true sages? Death comes so quickly! ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... been to mutilate, curtail, and patch up a drama in Italian, in order to introduce favourite airs, selected from different authors, the contrast has always been broken thereby, without every one's knowing the reason: and since ignorant mercenary prompters, though Italians, have been employed in hotch-potch, and in translating our dramas from Italian into English, how could such operas appear any ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... re-investment of the principal—which were enough for two persons who could be content with plain living in Italy. Browning still urged that he should be the bread-winner; he implored that her money should be made over to her own family, so that no prejudice against his action could be founded on any mercenary feeling; but she remained firm, and would consent only to its transference to her two sisters in the event of his death. And so the matter rested and was dismissed from the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... aloud, and his thought is one of intense and undisguised self-conceit. The spirit of the Pharisee was there, "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men." His heart at this moment was undisguisedly mercenary; his eye was on the main chance. We have done and suffered so much for God; what return may we expect for our services? That young rich man would not part with his portion in this world, in order to follow Christ: Peter, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... being accepted than any other of the numerous persons who had yet aspired to the favour of this heiress. The very circumstance of his having paid no court to her at first, operated in his favour; for it proved that he was not mercenary, and that, whatever attention he might afterwards show, she must be sure would ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... their country with more entire exemption from every imputation of selfish and mercenary motives, than those to whose memory we are paying these proofs of respect. A suspicion of any disposition to enrich themselves, or to profit by their public employments, never rested on either. No sordid motive approached them. The inheritance which they have ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... opinion,' he said, 'and I am not ashamed of repeating it in anybody's hearing. I consider the Countess Narona to be a cruelly-treated woman. Why shouldn't she be Lord Montbarry's wife? Who can say she has a mercenary motive in marrying him?' ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... a moment against the wall. Mrs. Warren's idea of perfect happiness would have received a severe shock, could she have heard Nancy murmur, brokenly: "Dear old dad! Pray Heaven you don't know that your little Nance is a miserable, mercenary coward!" ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the money, Mr Lyddiard,' the baronet returned with evident emotion. 'The loss of a few hundreds is of no real importance to me; and do you think that I could suffer that noble young woman to toil incessantly to pay the debt of an unprincipled parent? No, I am not so mercenary. Miss Beaufort refused me as a husband, but she must allow me the pleasure of becoming her friend. You need not be jealous, sir, of the title I am solicitous to assume, for it was for your sake that she rejected me; but whether as ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the life of a Parisian art student, but somehow the experience did not equal his anticipations. What he had read in books—poetry and prose—had thrown a halo around the Latin Quarter, and he was therefore disappointed in finding the halo missing. The romance was sordid and mercenary, and after a few months of it he ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... point of view! Some of the action takes place in a house on the Avenue Malakoff, which must have been near the hotel of the Princesse de Sagan and the apartment occupied by Miss Mary Garden.... A fat manufacturer's wife confronts the proposal of a mercenary duke with an epic rejoinder: "Pay a man a million dollars to sleep with my daughter! Never!"... Again Saltus demonstrates how completely he is master of the story-telling gift, how surely he possesses the power to compel ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... in France. Thus we find, in 1417, when the French government resolved to make a powerful effort to crush the navy of England, the ships were first to be "hired, at a great sum of gold, from the state of Genoa." These mercenary vessels formed the fleet over which the Earl of Huntingdon gained a decided victory immediately before Henry's second ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... heart having any thing to say in the matter,—by a mother who is a superfine Mrs. Falcon:—and wretched mischief comes of it. Brainard, the fortune hunter, is a heartless and cynical illustration that a Broadway hunter can be as unblushingly mercenary, and as genteelly dishonorable as the veriest old Bond Street hack, bred up in the traditions of the Regency, who ever began life on nothing and a showy person—continued it on nothing and the reputation of fashion—and ended no one cares how or where. There are character, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... present embarrassing position," quickly retorted the former, with an offended air. "But should I wish to do so, I should hardly be deterred from it by either of the considerations you have just named, I think. And, indeed, if the mercenary and ambitious motives, which you would have actuate me, were alone to be my guide in such a step, I could see but little temptation for the sacrifice in the honors and wealth which are so much to depend on a triumph that, for all your boasts, I believe will never be accomplished; ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... eyes for a moment, then her own drooped and she grew pale. It was not that her father's eyes told her his thoughts, it was at the humiliation of her own position in being the object of mercenary scheming. "He has not enough money," she said at last distinctly, "and he wants more. That's what it means. And he dares to think—." She stopped short, and for a moment it seemed as if it would be impossible for her to go on; a hot flush came to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... conducted under French auspices, had taken the arms away from the Germans but left arms with the Poles. Added to that, guns, machine-guns, rifles, and ammunition, were run over into the plebiscite area, and a mercenary "insurrectionary" army was raised, partly from the local Polish population and partly from Poland proper. An army which the French Government held to be capable of intimidating the League of Nations garrison of ten thousand fully equipped men, was thus improvised. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... violates it when he consciously presses for an unjust judgment, much more so when he presses for the conviction of an innocent man.... The high and honorable office of a counsel would be degraded to that of a mercenary, were he compelled to do the biddings of his client against the dictates of his conscience."[18] The sentiment has been expressed in flowing numbers by our great commentator, Sir ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... in them had faded. If they were ordinary emigrants he would not see them after the ship docked, if they were of enough importance to be useful to her, if they had influential friends abroad, the more he saw of them the better. Mrs. Vanderlyn was not a mercenary woman. The only gold she worshiped had been beaten into coronets; of that which had been minted she had plenty. She did not envy fortunes, though her envy ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... frivolous, make men and women False to their natures, cruel to each other And to the unborn offspring they devote To misery through ill-assorted unions, Or habits reckless of maternal dues; How marriage, sacredest of mortal steps, Is entered on from motives all unworthy; Social ambition, mercenary aims, The dread of poverty, of singleness,— The object of uniting families,— And momentary passion fatuous. So I resolved, God helping, to be true To my own self, and that ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... truly grateful; though, perhaps, at the time I had not that knowledge of the world which enlarges the grateful organs. It cannot matter what my feelings were, and I never was mercenary. All my sentiments at that period ran in Greek senarii; and perhaps it would show how good and lofty boys were in that ancient time, though now they are only rude Solecists, if I were to set these ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... plainly said so upon the very first covert and polished allusion to the subject which the earl slyly made. This discovery, in breaking off all hopes of a union with Lady Mary Stanville, had crushed more than mercenary expectations. It affected, through his heart, Vernon's health and spirits; it rankled deep, and was resented at first as a fatal injury. But Vernon's native nobility of disposition gradually softened an indignation which his reason convinced him was groundless and ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was a dismal yesterday at least, perhaps it was to me! The genius of England might be a mere mercenary man of the world, and employed all his attention to turn aside cannonballs from my Lord Stair, to give new edge to his new Marlborough's sword: was plotting glory for my Lord Carteret, or was thinking of furnishing his own apartment in Westminster Hall with a new set of trophies-who would then ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... whose judgment of that art nothing but your commendation of my trifle[344] can give me any occasion to call in question. I do not doubt but you will look over this poem with another eye, and reward it in a different manner, from a mercenary bookseller, who counts the lines he is to purchase[345], and considers nothing but the bulk. I cannot help taking notice, that, besides what the authour may hope for on account of his abilities, he has likewise another claim to your regard, as he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of the gun, was not the desperate undertaking that it now is, when from the hedge of steel issues a rolling and continuous fire. The French regiment, once broken, had been cut down with scarce any resistance, while the mercenary cavalry had been defeated with the greatest ease. Thus, among the brigade of the Irish horse there were but few fallen friends to mourn, and nothing to mar the pride that every man felt, in the behaviour ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... articles of the "Gazette" with a humility and rancour that compensated for his lack of talent. The marquis, in entering on the campaign, had perceived immediately the advantage that might be derived from the co-operation of this insipid sacristan with the coarse, mercenary pen. After the February Revolution the articles in the "Gazette" contained fewer ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... have scouted the idea of being aristocratic or mercenary; yet she did want him to look higher. There had been such an attractive Hoffman cousin spending a month with Margaret, who thought Ben delightful. There were two or three girls in the neighbourhood. In fact, a ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... wherefore it would be hard to say. He had not thought of it since. But perhaps the moon, which was shining again as it had shone that night on the old market-place, had helped to recall it, or perhaps it satisfied him with a sense of appropriateness. For it was not a dismal, monotonous product of mercenary dryness to which the words were set, but the characteristic music of devotion by which the spirit of prayer is made audible when words fail, as they always do, to express it in all its force and fervour. The Boy listened a while with parted lips. It was a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to see him, and there was no other social chance for me, except as I could buy in for a few glimpses at the tidy confectioners', where persons of civil condition resorted for afternoon tea. Even to these one could not speak, and I could only do my best in a little mercenary conversation with the bookseller about York histories. The book- stores were not on our scale, and generally the shops in York were not of the modern department type, but were perhaps ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... bundles, bade some of our friends farewell, and at about nine o'clock of the night set out for Baltimore. How shall I describe my first experience of free life? Nothing can be greater than the contrast it affords to a plantation experience, under the suspicious and vigilant eye of a mercenary overseer or a watchful master. Day and night are not more unlike. The mandates of Slavery are like leaden sounds, sinking with dead weight into the very soul, only to deaden and destroy. The impulse ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... myself. I confess I should not wish to be a great heiress; I should always be fancying that it was the "fine eyes of my casket," as the French say, which attracted my admirers, and I could not stand that. No, Frank was not mercenary, I was sure, and if even—why the competency I should be possessed of would be an agreeable surprise. If, indeed! Nothing was clear, nothing was settled. What a fool I was to dwell so upon an uncertainty, to anchor my hopes upon a dream! ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... cupboard had not been locked, Paul would undoubtedly have burst out and yielded himself up, to escape the humiliation of being sold like this by a mercenary and treacherous porter. As it was, he had to wait till the inevitable words ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... been to the YOUNG readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years—enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honorable thoughts d actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the other day, it was, that Lucile had made a plea to her for St. Vincent, and now it was Colonel Trethaway! True, there had been a false quantity somewhere, but now it seemed doubly false. Could it be, after all, that Lucile was mercenary? These thoughts crowded upon her swiftly, with the colonel anxiously watching her face the while. She knew she must answer quickly, yet was distracted by an involuntary admiration for his bravery. So she followed, perforce, the lead of ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... of condition and are, in a great measure, house broken, and their manners to a certain extent cultivated. He has no trouble whatever with pups when ordered, as he simply sends the address of customers and the farmer ships them. This, to me, is a very uninteresting and somewhat mercenary way of doing business, as one misses all the charm of breeding and the bringing up of the little tots, to many of us the most delightful part of the business. To those breeders who have newly started in, do not get discouraged ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
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