"Avaricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instrument, I can compass perhaps two. Thus, while I may have a certain amount of intelligence, I have no aesthetic sense; while I possess the mathematical faculty, I am wholly without the religious emotions; while I am naturally addicted to venery, I have little ambition and am not at all avaricious. Education has further limited my scope. Having been brought up in society, I am impregnated with its laws; not only should I be afraid of taking a holiday from them, I should also feel it painful to try to do so. In a word, I have a conscience as well as a fear ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the desires. Is it possible to set bounds to the desires? I say that they must be banished, eradicated by the roots. For what man is there in whom appetites(30) dwell, who can deny that he may with propriety be called appetitive? If so, he will be avaricious, though to a limited extent; and an adulterer, but only in moderation; and he will be luxurious in the same manner. Now what sort of a philosophy is that which does not bring with it the destruction of depravity, but is content with a moderate degree of vice? Although in this division ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... the Honorable Chaffee's undoing—was blonde, slender, notably fresh as yet, being only twenty-six, and as ruthless and unconsciously cruel as only the avaricious and unthinking type—unthinking in the larger philosophic meaning of the word—can be. To grasp the reason for her being, one would have had to see the spiritless South Halstead Street world from which she had sprung—one ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... How can we feel apathy or indifference while we can almost see from the windows of the room in which we are now deliberating, a receptacle for slaves, in which they are thrust, manacled and bound, all ready to ship by their avaricious owner in the first vessel whose master or owners are as hard hearted and unprincipled as himself! Yes! A dungeon, the horrors of which has called forth deep emotions of regret from all who are permitted to see the misery and wretchedness of its inmates, and particularly ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... first two, in Latin, were compiled by Dr. Johnson at a daily wage, and the third and fourth (which are a repetition of the first two), in English, are by Oldys. A charge of 5s. was made for the first two volumes, which caused a good deal of grumbling among the trade, and was resented 'as an avaricious innovation,' but Osborne replied that the volumes could be either returned in exchange for books or for the original purchase-money. He was also charged with rating his books at too high a price, but a ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... astounding, his hunger for information amazing. He was a man from Mars who knew all that was to be known in his own world but brought into this strange planet a frank and burning curiosity. Barbee's chaps delighted him; a hair rope awoke in his soul an avaricious hunger for a hair rope of his own; commonplace ranch matters, like branding and marking and breeding and weaning and breaking, evoked countless eager questions. For so academic a man, the strange thing about him was his attitude toward these ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... aunque although. ausencia absence. austero austere. austriaco Austrian. automata m. automaton. autor-a author. autoridad f. authority. auxiliar to aid, assist, attend a dying person. auxilio aid. avanzar to advance. avaro avaricious. ave f. bird. avecindar to make a neighbor or fellow-citizen. avergonzar to shame, abash; vr. to be ashamed. averiguar to investigate, find out. avio preparation, provision, apparatus. avisado sagacious. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... was wondering how a man could be tempted to go wrong when such a girl loved him. He was laboring under a misapprehension, of course. Billy Louise had permitted him to misunderstand her interest in the matter. If he had known that she was pleading solely for Marthy—poor, avaricious, gray, old Marthy—perhaps his mercy would have been less tinged with that smoldering resentment which was directed not so much at the wrongdoer, as at fate which had ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... emotions have no contraries, for moderation is a kind of ambition, and I have already observed that temperance, sobriety, and chastity show a power and not a passion of the mind. Even supposing that an avaricious, ambitious, or timid man refrains from an excess of eating, drinking, or sexual intercourse, avarice, ambition, and fear are not therefore the opposites of voluptuousness, drunkenness, or lust. For the avaricious man generally desires to swallow as much meat and ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... inhabited by the Yakshas. We shall see that best of mountains. And, practising severe austerities only on foot we shall go to Kuvera's beautiful lake guarded by Rakshasas. That place cannot be reached by vehicles, O Vrikodara. Neither can cruel or avaricious, or irascible people attain to that spot, O Bharata's son. O Bhima, in order to see Arjuna, thither shall we repair, in company, with Brahmanas of strict vows, girding on our swords, and wielding our bows. Those only that are impure, meet with flies gad-flies, mosquitoes, tigers, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... them, sir?" whispered Helen, while every bad, avaricious, and selfish instinct in her nature, started to sudden life; "where ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... perfect good faith, the only doubtful point in the memorial being that, after the organization of a competent army and navy, the problem of peace or war might be decided. "If peaceful relations be maintained by ratifying the treaty," they wrote, "the avaricious aliens will definitely see that there is not much wealth in the country, and thus, abandoning the idea of gain, they will approach us with friendly feelings only and ultimately will pass under our Emperor's grace. They ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the necessity of lodging full power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them. In reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with mine. Notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore request ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... like Gale's Pyramus and Thisbe, falls into bathos near the end when Amos, in an extended comparison, likens Laura's refusal to cure his love wound to an avaricious doctor's refusal to set a poor man's leg. Page's failure as a poet is not a result of temporary lapses, as here, but of his inability to invent significant conflict. As Amos says, with unintentional irony on ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... Hilda was avaricious about every new sign of increasing strength. Her strong determination, her intense desire, and her powerful will, at last triumphed over bodily pain and weakness. It was as she said, and on the third day she managed to drag herself from her bed and prepare ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... time in frontal attacks upon them. You have a quick temper, let us say. Well, it is better to lose it occasionally and apologise, than to hold your tongue about matters in which you are interested for fear of losing it. You are avaricious—well, hoard your money, and then yield on occasions to a generous impulse. That's a better way to defeat evil, than by dribbling money away in giving little presents which no one wants. I don't believe in petty warfare ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... better than having children of one's own? People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them into mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious of them—might be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old nursery-chest instead of paying them out to meet the bills of humanity and keep the Lord's business moving. I might forget, when I had spent my life in fining their gold and polishing their graven-work, that they were still vessels ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... people. As for us, the priests placed us on board a ship without sails or rudder, and we were delivered over to the waters of the sea to the end that we should perish. But the God who loved us in His mortal life mercifully led us to the harbour of this town. Alas! the people of Marseilles are avaricious, idolatrous and cruel. They permit the disciples of Jesus to die of hunger and cold. And had we not taken refuge in this temple, which they deem sacred, they would already have dragged us to their gloomy prisons. And yet it would have been ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... heads of our Saviour; and the predominant expression is calm, dignified, intellectual, with a tinge of melancholy. This picture was painted at the age of twenty-eight; he was then suffering from that bitter domestic curse, a shrewish, avaricious wife, who finally broke his heart." We have engraved this portrait in the head-piece to this subject (p. 187), along with those of his wife and of his ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... the old couple were saving, if not avaricious. But when it was known, through the indiscreet volubility of Mammy Downey, that Daddy Downey sent the bulk of their savings, gratuities, and gifts to a dissipated and prodigal son in the East,—whose photograph the old man always carried with him,—it rather elevated ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... this avaricious, extortionate and cruel statesman, that "the dark shades of his character were not relieved by a single virtue." His advent disturbed the public tranquillity. He plundered the people, cheated the proprietors, ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... avarus,—desirous of keeping.' BOSWELL. 'I have heard old Mr. Sheridan maintain, with much ingenuity, that a complete miser is a happy man; a miser who gives himself wholly to the one passion of saving.' JOHNSON. 'That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable[948]. No, Sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into domestic as well as international affairs a new spirit of disorder. It is an evil thing to permit the principle of "self-determination" to continue to have the apparent sanction of the nations when it has been in fact thoroughly discredited ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... it. Our very clothes are an appeal to the goodwill of our neighbours, and a refuge from their contempt. Society would be transformed if the distinction were reversed, if admiration were no longer rendered to the luxurious and avaricious and were accorded only to talent and virtue. Let not the necessity of rewarding virtue be suggested as a justification for the inequalities of fortune. Shall we say, to a virtuous man: "If you show yourself deserving, you shall have the essence of a hundred times more food than you can ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... man desireth aught above measure, immediately he becometh restless. The proud and the avaricious man are never at rest; while the poor and lowly of heart abide in the multitude of peace. The man who is not yet wholly dead to self, is soon tempted, and is overcome in small and trifling matters. It is ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... reckons, on the contrary, among the virtues necessary to an honest man, the not putting faith in what is said concerning magic, and to laugh at it. His friend, believing himself very virtuous because he was not avaricious—"That is not sufficient," said he: "are you exempt from every other vice and every other fault; not ambitious, not passionate, fearless of death? Do you laugh at all that is told of dreams, magical ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... struggle, without even protest or remonstrance, was not like Englishmen, before or since. When Erasmus visited England he found that the laity were the best read and the best behaved in Europe, while the clergy were gluttonous, profligate, and avaricious. No historian ever prepared himself more thoroughly for his task than Froude. Sir Francis Palgrave, the Deputy Keeper of the Records under Sir John Romilly, offered to let him see the unpublished documents ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... property, and the position he held in society, misfortune might deprive him of these, and a disagreeable companion for life would remain to remind me constantly of my choice. But a generous, talented man like Lyndsay, by industry and prudence may become rich, and then the most avaricious worlding would applaud the ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... made the acquaintance of one of the chiefs, Suyed Mahommed of the Dushti Suffaed or white desert, through whose country we eventually travelled; we found him an easy good-tempered man, well inclined towards the British, but grasping and avaricious. Throughout our intercourse with him he behaved well, but he took occasion frequently to remind us we were not to forget that he looked for a reward; still, in summing his character, I must say he was superior to his "order;" for, either from the wish to lead a quiet life or from ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... was closely in keeping with the greed of Monsieur Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him, and devouring some with his eyes while devouring others with his jaws, was the same manner. His utter disregard of other people, as shown in his way of tossing the little womanly toys of furniture about, flinging ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... women who are avaricious enough to sell their souls," they cried; "and the maternal Trent is one of them. The girl is only to blame for allowing herself to ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... friendships which she contracted at the convent school, instructed by what she saw and heard and knew was going on around her, in spite of her deceitful and artificial conduct, knowing that neither her father nor her mother, who were very proud of their race as well as avaricious, would ever agree to let her marry the man whom she had taken a liking to, that handsome fellow who had little besides vision, ideas and debts, and who belonged to the middle-class, she laid aside all scruples, thought of nothing but of becoming his, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... visit every fault committed by them with the severest penalty awarded by the law. He was a stern, hard, cruel man, with no sympathy for any one, and was actuated by the most superlative contempt for the poor, from whom he drew his whole income. He was a clever, clear-headed, avaricious man; and he knew that the only means of keeping the peasantry in their present utterly helpless and dependent state, was to deny them education, and to oppose every scheme for their improvement and welfare. He dreaded ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Cabot, "this is but one of many such examples of ancient luxury. Unfortunately, however, most of these extravagant affairs have been melted up by avaricious monarchs who coveted the gems and gold. Such ornate mirrors are a relic of the Renaissance when each object made was considered an art work on which every means of enrichment was lavished. I do not know that I ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... don't you, you avaricious young Jew? You're under seventeen, I suppose?" retorted the amiable Mr Bullinger, thereby raising a laugh at the expense of this little boy of eleven, who retired from ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... the Norman custom, we cannot tell), his additions to Sherborne Minster are still memorable as a new departure in Norman architecture; in fact, he has been called the great architectural genius of the thirteenth century. "Unscrupulous, fierce, and avaricious," he is a type of the great feudal churchmen when they were veritable rulers. According to William of Malmesbury, "was there anything contiguous to his property which might be advantageous to him, he would ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, "Hadn't settled how to make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain't one of the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except the old lady—and she's only out of it because she's too ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... not decrease with further acquaintance. I found Lischen the tenderest of nurses. Whenever any delicacy was to be provided for the wounded lieutenant, a share was always sent to the bed opposite his, and to the avaricious man's no small annoyance. His illness was long. On the second day the fever declared itself; for some nights he was delirious; and I remember it was when a commanding officer was inspecting our quarters, with an intention, very likely, of billeting himself on the house, that the howling and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... simplicity and mercy, are published to the world in the records of former times by sacred bards of great learning. Though endued with every noble virtue, these have yielded up their lives. Thy sons were malevolent, inflamed with passion, avaricious, and of very evil- disposition. Thou art versed in the Sastras, O Bharata, and art intelligent and wise; they never sink under misfortunes whose understandings are guided by the Sastras. Thou art acquainted, O prince, with the lenity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... and lofty aims, enter a doubtful vocation, and in a few years return to college commencement so changed that they are scarcely recognized. The once broad, noble features have become contracted and narrowed. The man has become grasping, avaricious, stingy, mean, hard. Is it possible, we ask, that a few years could so change a ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Karin Ingmarsson, was the son of a cruel and avaricious peasant, who had always treated him harshly. As a child he had been half starved, and even after he was grown up his father kept him under his thumb. He had to toil and slave from morning till night, and was never allowed any pleasures. He was not even allowed ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... was also the work of Algardi. From an artistic point of view, he was most successful in his portrait-statues and groups of children, where he was obliged to follow nature most closely. In his later years he became very avaricious and amassed a great fortune. He died in Rome on the 10th of June ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... masters are going away! O fie on the Kuru elders that have acted like foolish children in thus banishing heirs of Pandu from covetousness alone. Alas, separated from the son of Pandu we all shall become masterless. What love can we bear to the wicked and avaricious Kurus?" Thus O king, have the sons of Kunti, endued with great energy of mind, gone away,—indicating, by manner and signs, the resolutions that are in their hearts. And as those foremost of men had gone away from Hastinapore, flashes of lightning ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... small peddling shops; they, however, principally depend for their livelihood on an extensive traffic in stolen goods which they carry on. It is said that there is honour amongst thieves, but this is certainly not the case with the Jews of Lisbon, for they are so greedy and avaricious, that they are constantly quarrelling about their ill-gotten gain, the result being that they frequently ruin each other. Their mutual jealousy is truly extraordinary. If one, by cheating and roguery, gains a cruzado in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... had cared for once, but as he now put it, he had 'no use for them.' It seemed that all his eighty thousand pounds was destined to be flung upon the great roulette table of stock and share speculations. It was not that he was avaricious; few men cared less for money in itself; but he could not live without the excitement of speculation. 'I prefer the air of Throgmorton Street to any air in the world,' he observed. 'I am unhappy if ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... in one of our little country colleges nine days hence.... My whole philosophy—which is very real—teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done, what room for a poet—for any spiritualist—in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue." It may be remembered that Mr. Matthew Arnold quoted the expression about America, which sounded more harshly as pronounced in a public lecture than as read in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fingers faltered, and he was discovered. He ran like a hare and managed easily enough to outstrip the miser, and to conceal himself in a den where he was well known. But unfortunately the matter did not end there. The Sieur de Ranquet was influential at Court; he was implacable as well as avaricious, and his disposition positively forbade him to forgive any one who had nearly picked his pocket. Besides which he knew that Jean had often stolen his horses. He made a formal complaint at high quarters, and a warrant was issued against Jean, offering a large sum in silver coin ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... commanded me, I laid my hand upon the Bible and vowed eternal, inextinguishable hatred of the Prussians. And the boy's vow has been kept by the man. I have struggled ceaselessly against these ambitious land-greedy, avaricious Prussians; fought with my tongue, my sword, and my pen. And when at last, at Jena, they were vanquished and forced to bow to the very dust, I exulted, for their defeat was Poland's vengeance. God was requiting the wrong they had done ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... been laid down as a principle that where nature is beautiful and generous, men are bad and avaricious. We had all the trouble in the world to procure the commonest articles of food, such as the island produces in abundance; thanks to the signal dishonesty, the plundering spirit of the peasants, who made us pay for everything three times what it was worth, so that we were ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... Nazir did not convince me that he was an altruist who had no private ends to serve. There was an avaricious gleam ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... merely mention, as a familiar example of such errors, that an enlightened student of phrenology called upon me yesterday, to whom phrenologists had given the character of avaricious selfishness and an incapacity for friendship, which indeed was the correct application of the old system, but was the reverse of his true character. The old system did not explain friendship correctly, and entirely mislocated the organ of avarice by placing it in the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... known to few, most falling into one of the extremes, avarice or profusion, ver. 1., &c. The point discussed, whether the invention of money has been more commodious, or pernicious to mankind, ver. 21 to 77. That riches, either to the avaricious or the prodigal, cannot afford happiness, scarcely necessaries, ver. 89 to 160. That avarice is an absolute frenzy, without an end or purpose, ver. 113 to 152. Conjectures about the motives of avaricious men, ver. 121 to 153. That the conduct of men, with respect to riches, can only ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... if ever I became avaricious, I might swell my modest affluence into absolute wealth. I had revisited the spot in which I had discovered the nugget of gold, and had found the precious metal in rich abundance just under the first coverings of the alluvial soil. I concealed my discovery from all. I knew that, did I proclaim ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the spot; he startled—trembled—wept; And through his bosom wildest feelings swept. He sought a nameless grave, but o'er the place Where slept the generations of his race, A marble pillar rose. "Oh Heaven!" he cried, "Has avaricious Ruin's hand denied The parents of my heart a grave with those Of their own kindred?—have their ruthless foes Grasped this last, sacred spot we called our own? If but a weed upon that grave had grown, I would have honoured it!—have called it brother! Even for my father's sake, and thine, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... large factories, and with untold business interests. Just look out there! [pointing out across the expectant audience] look there, and see the countless minions toiling servilely at your dread mandates. And yet—ha! ha! See! see!— They recognize the avaricious greed that would thus grind them in the very dust; they see, alas! they see themselves, half-clothed—half-fed, that you may glut your coffers. Half-starved, they listen to the wail of wife and babe, and with eyes upraised ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... state of misery. Under the triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers were reduced to the vain honors of the purple; but the eldest, the pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman sceptre; and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach which he shared with an avaricious favorite, who enhanced the price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric; but his character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... me, either in deed or in fidelity, amid my wavering, unprosperous fortunes. When my father shall know this, Tyndarus, how well-disposed you have proved towards his son and himself, he will never be so avaricious but that he'll give you your liberty for nothing. And by my own endeavours, if I return hence, I'll make him do so the more readily. For by your aid and kindness, and good disposition and prudence, you have caused me to be allowed to return to ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... which he lived, for he agreed with the proverb which says that fools build houses for wise men to live in, though "the greatest part of Rome sooner or later came into his hands," as Plutarch observes. He was of that sordid, avaricious character which covets wealth merely for the desire to be considered rich, for the vulgar popularity that accompanies that reputation, and not for ambition or enjoyment. He was said to be uninfluenced by the love of luxury or by the other passions of humanity. He was not a man of ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... their pure desires vanish. Others have solemnly promised to renounce their resentments, to conquer their aversions, to suffer with patience certain crosses, and to repress their eagerness for wealth; but nature prevails, and they are vindictive, violent, impatient, and avaricious. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... we have remarked, few men loved Girard, still fewer understood him. He was considered mean, hard, avaricious. If a rich man goes into a store to buy a yard of cloth, no one expects that he will give five dollars for it when the price is four. But there is a universal impression that it is "handsome" in him to give higher wages than other people to those who serve him, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a pitiful story. Ralph believed it to be a true one. To further his own avaricious ends, Farrington had devised a villainous plot to send the man to the penitentiary. He had escaped. He had documents that would cause Farrington not only to disgorge his ill-gotten gains, but would send him ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... once called on an old woman who lived all alone in a little cottage in an extensive forest in Norway. Her name was Gertrude, and she was a hard, avaricious old creature, who had not a kind word for anybody, and although she was not badly off in a worldly point of view, she was too stingy and selfish to assist any poor wayfarer who by chance passed her cottage door. One day our Lord happened to come that way, and, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... to be avaricious," I reproved him. "If the Grass continues to spread—and there seems to be little ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... heart. It is what I shall never forget, and will for ever prevent my judging rashly of people who appear in distress. How do we know what our children may come to? The Lord have mercy upon the poor, and defend them from the proud, the inconsiderate, and the avaricious." ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... titter, and to whisper to each other in their own language, which sounded just like Lettish,[56] and which their guest could not understand. The boy began to reproach his avaricious friend in his thoughts for having thus sent him to Porgu without thinking of what might happen to him; but presently the younger demons seized upon him, and began to toss him from one to another like a ball, sometimes from one side of the room to the other, and sometimes up ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... wanted the money—not that he was avaricious—far from that; but he had numberless schemes in view, and he knew full well that without the gold they could not be ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... in my life, enough to satisfy the most avaricious. But at what cost have I acquired them, and of what comfort are they to me now? I am old, lonely, and menials serve me because of my money. How much better are my so-called friends? They fawn upon me with their lips, but deceit is in their hearts. ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... Fafnir, the eldest, was gifted with a fearless soul and a powerful arm; Otter, the second, with snare and net, and the power of changing his form at will; and Regin, the youngest, with all wisdom and deftness of hand. To please the avaricious Hreidmar, this youngest son fashioned for him a house lined with glittering gold and flashing gems, and this was guarded by Fafnir, whose fierce glances and AEgis ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... youths laboring here the same as the others, galloping from the first streak of dawn over the fields, attending to the various duties of pasturing. The overseer, Celedonio, a half-breed thirty years old, generally detested for his hard and avaricious character, also bore a distant resemblance to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in their bounty, do send other souls into this world, to whom yet, as to their forerunners, in Old Roman, in Old Hebrew and all noble times, the omnipotent guinea is, on the whole, an impotent guinea. Has your half-dead avaricious Corn-Law Lord, your half-alive avaricious Cotton-Law Lord, never seen one such? Such are, not one, but several; are, and will be, unless the gods have doomed this world to swift dire ruin. These are they, the elect of the world; the born champions, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... happened with Anne, however, as with many others of her youth and sex, that her feelings, and not her interest, determined her choice of a husband. She married a young sailor without a shilling. The avaricious father was so enraged, that, deaf to the feelings of a parent, he turned his own child out of doors. Upon this cruel usage, and the disappointment of her fortune, Anne and her husband sailed for the island of Providence, in the hope of ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... always imbitter the heart of an avaricious man—the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... The avaricious, gold-seeking, Suchong Pollyhong Kate-tow, had performed his task—wealth poured into his coffers from the ambitious parents, who longed to boast of an alliance with the brother of the sun and moon, and many were the ill-favoured whose portraits ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... avaricious that she expends for herself and household only ten thousand francs a ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... Oriental dodge, as anybody who has lived in India will readily admit—at once perceiving an advantage to be gained by which he might profitably fill his own pocket at the same time that he would save ours, and give a job to his own Beluches to the prejudice of those avaricious Panganyites, offered us an inducement which was too good not to be at once accepted. The plan was simply this: He was to leave at once and return to Chogue, and make arrangements with his guard for our reception ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... you have more than one Columbus? Or, if you sail in company, and divide the prize of your discovery and the honour thereof, who is to come after you clustered Columbuses? to what fortunate islands of style are your architectural descendants to sail, avaricious of new lands? When our desired style is invented, will not the best we can all do be simply—to build in it?— and cannot you now do that in styles that are known? Observe, I grant, for the sake of your argument, what perhaps many of you know that I would not grant otherwise—that ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... distinction here is merely one of matter of fact, a distinction not always to be made with sureness, since it is one of degree rather than altogether one of kind. When the way in which a man is good or cheerful or avaricious is differentiated for us from the way in which another man is good or cheerful or avaricious, he is so far individualized. Class characterization, c3, may be found along with individualization. The extreme accentuation ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... Guesclin to them. "Every day you risk your lives in forays, which yield you more blows than booty. I come to propose an enterprise worthy of gallant knights and to open to you a new field of action. In Spain both glory and profit await you. You will there find a rich and avaricious king who possesses great treasures, and is the ally of the Saracens; in fact, is half a pagan himself. We propose to conquer his kingdom and to bestow it on the Count of Trastamara, an old comrade of yours, a good lance, as you all know, and a gentle ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... ill-assorted beings returned to their original estate, each equally pleased and happy to do so. The moneyed man, possessing eighteen hundred thousand francs, returned with all the more eagerness to his old avaricious habits because he had momentarily quitted them. His two clerks and the office-boy were better lodged and rather better fed, and that was the only difference between the present and the past. His wife had a cook and maid (two indispensable servants); but except for the actual ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... filched from the ice-chest, Fred was brought before them from the kitchen. The blow the burglar had given him was covered with a piece of cold beef-steak, and the water thrown on him to revive him was thawing from his leather breeches. Mr. Carey expressed his gratitude, and rewarded him beyond the avaricious ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis
... is with slavery. Slaveholding is not necessarily sinful, but if slaveholders fail to discharge the duties enjoined on them in the New Testament; then are they guilty in the sight of God. And here lies the difficulty; when we point out to a rich man his duty, his corrupt and avaricious heart interposes and says, no; you would rob me of my goods, you would damage my pecuniary interests; I cannot, I will not yield to your requisitions. We sometimes encounter the same difficulty with slaveholders. They sometimes imagine that duty and interest, are antagonistic principles. ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... country remained entirely without any sort of merchandise, although the citizens had considerable money, as they had no opportunity to invest the returns which had come [from Mexico]. Since the Chinese are very avaricious, it was regarded as certain that some vessels would come without fail, and the swift ones would arrive here much earlier than they ordinarily do in other years: but this did not happen, for it was the end of May before we had any news from China. For this reason and on account of the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... suppressed feelings on taxation, and on a variety of dues exacted by their clergy, were murmured in proverbs—Lo que no lleva Christo lleva el fisco! "What Christ takes not, the exchequer carries away!" They have a number of sarcastic proverbs on the tenacious gripe of the "abad avariento," the avaricious priest, who, "having eaten the olio offered, claims the dish!" A striking mixture of chivalric habits, domestic decency, and epicurean comfort, appears in the Spanish proverb, La muger y la salsa a la mano de la lanca: "The wife and the sauce by the hand of the lance;" ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... point at the value of Corsica as a station superior to Gibraltar or Minorca. One paper signed 'P. J.' has the undoubted Boswellian touch in dealing with the sailors thrown idle by the cessation of the along-shore Mediterranean trade. 'None are less avaricious than our honest tars, nor have they, in reality, any reason to be discontented. Every common sailor has at least five and thirty shillings a month, over and above which he has his victuals and drink, and that in great abundance. There is no such ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... great extent. Hardship is not a novelty to me, and I don't think I'm avaricious. The fact is, I'm a good deal better at ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste loins, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... peasant girl (frequently copied in his works), and settled there for life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several of ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... fearful ills we have wrought upon him must awaken larger sympathy, and elicit tender mercy. The race are dying out among us: let us at least soothe their parting hours. And let the Government look well to its avaricious agents. Our people are generous, and mean to be just; that is not enough: they must take the proper means, and see that their beneficent intentions are carried out with regard to this wretched remnant. It is not possible that a race so full of wild natural ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to know what he meant by questionable propriety; the meaning of the expression is rather vague. He had returned in all honesty and sincerity of purpose to an honest life, and nothing in the world would have induced him, avaricious though he was, to commit an act that was positively wrong. Only the line that separates good from evil was not very clearly defined in his mind. This was due in a great measure to his education, and to the fact that it had been long before he ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... person, whom she afterwards often admitted to her bed: that she had been equally indulgent to Simier, the French agent, and to the duke of Anjou: that Hatton was also one of her paramours, who was even disgusted with her excessive love and fondness: that though she was on other occasions avaricious to the last degree, as well as ungrateful, and kind to very few, she spared no expense in gratifying her amorous passions: that notwithstanding her licentious amours, she was not made like other women; and all those who ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... is the tender cruelty of passion, that her childlike submission to the Sicilian code woke in him an almost hot pugnacity. She would be given, perhaps, to some hard brute of a fisherman who had scraped together more soldi than his fellows, or to some coarse, avaricious contadino who would make her toil till her beauty vanished, and she changed into a bowed, wrinkled withered, sun-dried hag, while she ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... scornfully rejected. "They would have to come, anyway, or go out of business." But they did not come; rather they put their backs up and fought. And because Fairbanks was enterprising and far-sighted, while Chena was avaricious and narrow, because Fairbanks offered free sites and Chena charged enormously for water-front, business went the ten miles up the often unnavigable slough and settled there, and by and by built a little ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... admire the parent when he broke the truce of affection and vigorously thrashed him. The large majority of the Southern people have been educated to believe the men of the North cowardly, mean, and avaricious. Cowardly, because they persistently refused the duel. Mean, because all classes worked, and there seemed among them no arrogance of birth. Avaricious, because they crouched to the planters with calico and manufactures, or admired their bullying for ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the reign of Charles I, made a good governor, and had won the respect of the people, but as he became old there was a decided change for the worse in his nature. He is depicted in his declining years, as arbitrary, crabbed and avaricious. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... tomb should be opened at the end of three days and told them the case; and they said, "Open now the tomb of the Christian damsel." And the Pasha sent his men to do so, and when they opened it behold it was full of fire, and within it lay the body of the wicked and avaricious Mussulman.' Thus it was manifest to all that on the night of terror the angels of God had done this thing, and had laid the innocent girl of the Christians among those who have received direction, and the evil Muslim among the rejected. Admire how rapidly ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... little moral considerations weigh even with the noblest nations, how vain are the strongest appeals to justice, humanity, and national honour, unless when the public mind is under the immediate influence of the cheerful or vehement passions, indignation or avaricious hope. In the whole class of human infirmities there is none that make such loud appeals to prudence, and yet so frequently outrages its plainest dictates, as the spirit of fear. The worst cause conducted in hope is an overmatch for the noblest managed by despondency; ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... "My mother is avaricious, you wish to say? It is true, her extreme economy has often vexed me; to-day it gladdens my heart; for, thanks to her parsimony, I shall find with her what I need for my army. She will deny these millions to me, to be sure; but you told me where to look for them, and I pledge you my ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... good. In that happy land, the natural man would have been finally put down by the ethical man. There would have been no competition, but the industry of each would have been serviceable to all; nobody being vain and nobody avaricious, there would have been no rivalries; the struggle for existence would have been abolished, and the millennium would have finally set in. But it is obvious that this state of things could have been ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... of paper; and he read these words: "Trew it is, that thir Ilandish men ar of nature verie prowd, suspicious, avaricious, full of decept and evill inventioun each aganis his nychtbour, be what way soever he may circumvin him. Besydis all this, they ar sa crewall in taking of revenge that nather have they regard to person, eage, tyme, or caus; sa ar they generallie all sa far ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the avaricious getter, like some obsolescent organ in the body, consumes strength and threatens health. And to-day he is far more mischievous than ever he was before, because of the weakened hold of the old religious organization upon his imagination. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... so sure of that," replied Paul. He knew instinctively that she was avaricious by nature, and would be likely ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... our priests supported without money? But you are unwise to reproach us with a desire of obtaining money; you forget that your own Church, if the Church of England be your own Church, as I suppose it is from the willingness which you displayed in the public-house to fight for it, is equally avaricious; look at your greedy Bishops and your corpulent Rectors—do they imitate Christ in His disregard for money? You might as well tell me that they imitate Christ in ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... or indeed any other form of donation, is after all a cheap description of charity. The most avaricious persons may sometimes. resort to annual or other stated contributions, as expedients to save trouble and to pacify conscience; and while we duly appreciate this periodical goodness, it is insufficient as the basis of a claim to philanthropy of spirit. How many in the carpeted walks of wealth ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... of greed, so with anger, love, ambition for power, and all the other forms of desire which lodge in the human heart. Make them your slaves, or they will make you theirs. Like wrath, they are all forms of madness. The man who becomes avaricious has thrown away the armor of life, has abandoned the post of virtue. Once let a man submit to desire of an unworthy kind, and he will find himself in the case of the horse that called a rider to help him drive ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... obstacles and discouragements. They had no sympathy with progress; they belonged to the Dark Ages; they were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures; they were pedlers of indulgences and relics; impostors, frauds, vagabonds, gluttons, worldly, sensual, and avaricious. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... concerns The avaricious, cautious, fearful Jew; And not the good wise man: for he is ours Without a snare. Then the delight of hearing How such a man speaks out; with what stern strength He tears the net, or with what prudent foresight He ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... very soul enters into you, and it is but fair that you should reward them as they deserve. Young as you are, too, you have a recompense in your power: one more acceptable even than Academic prizes—of which it is indispensable not to be too avaricious—you ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... themselves, they will always choose the principal part—this is the choice of self-love, a very natural choice. But what a dreadful lesson for children! There could be no monster more detestable than a harsh and avaricious child, who realised what he was asked to give and what he refused. The ant does more; she teaches him not merely ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... of his discourses, the eminent sanctity of his life, the evidence of his miracles, changed the face of the towns in which he announced the word of God. His auditors, penetrated with conjunction, and bursting into tears, excited each other to works of penance; the revengeful, the lascivious, the avaricious, the usurers became converted, and resorted so to the tribunals of penance that the number of priests were insufficient to ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... and her lover. In the Adelphi there are two old men of dissimilar character, who give a different education to the children they bring up. One of them is a dotard, who, after having for sixty years been sullen, grumpy and avaricious, becomes suddenly lively, polite, and prodigal; this Molire had too ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... inspection—to see, examine and test every length of pipe and every joint; who have the might of the law to strike down the offender who shall make bold to violate their mandates, fail to give protection to the innocent owners and purchasers of property, or curb the avaricious hands of unscrupulous builders and ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... goodly of person, and inordinately fond of women, it so befell that of the ladies of Florence she that he regarded with especial favour was the very beautiful niece of a brother of the said bishop. And having learned that her husband, though of good family, was but a caitiff, and avaricious in the last degree, he struck a bargain with him that he should lie one night with the lady for five hundred florins of gold: whereupon he had the same number of popolins(1) of silver, which were then current, gilded, and having lain with the ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the woman solemnly, for she was as superstitious as avaricious, and though she had no hesitancy in breaking the rules and taking a bribe, she would not have dared for her life to have risked treachery to a ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... for it seemed to them that they could not live a righteous life therein; and therefore went they into the wilderness, where they trowed to serve GOD in peace. Therefore says Seneca, "I have become more avaricious, and more cruel, and more inhuman ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... to my satisfaction, I told him the business which now brought me to Tippoo's court, and showed him my rose-coloured diamond. His eyes opened at the sight with a prodigious expression of avaricious eagerness. 'Trust me,' said he, 'keep this diamond. I know Tippoo better than you do; he will not grant those privileges to the slaves that you talk about; and, after all, what concern are they of yours? They are used to the life they lead. They are not Europeans. What concern are they of yours? ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... though rather dingy, covered her head; and her nose was bestridden by a pair of gold- bowed spectacles with enormous glasses. But the old lady's face was pinched, sharp and sallow, wearing a niggardly and avaricious expression, and forming an odd contrast to the splendor of her attire, as did likewise the implement which she held in her hand. It was a sort of iron shovel (by housewives termed a "slice"), such as is used in clearing the oven, ...
— An Old Woman's Tale - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Miseries and Misfortunes attending Mankind. "Hard is the Case (says she) that Leander, one of the finest young Gentlemen of Naples, should be sacrific'd to a mercenary Wretch, a Wretch, that in the midst of plenty is poor and miserable, and who, tho' he has all Things to compleat his Happiness, his avaricious Temper will not permit him to enjoy the common Necessaries of Life: The Pleasures of living he's a Stranger to, he lives despis'd, and will die unpitied: But such is the inequality of Fortune's Favours, that Merit must stoop and Ideots be advanc'd to ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... they exhibited in public, he saw that they were gluttons and drunkards, so much so that they were more the slaves of the belly than are the greediest of animals. When he looked a little further, he found them so avaricious and fond of money that they sold for hard cash both human bodies and divine offices, and with less conscience than a man in Paris would sell cloth or any other merchandise. Seeing this and much more that it would not be proper to set down here, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the one heaven-sent remedy, people will use any other puffed and advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. I'm not an avaricious man. But a great business requires capital—and to spend money merely in flogging the invertebrate ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... then," said Dam in the vernacular, to the malodorous, hideous, avaricious Abdul who reappeared from Kot Ghazi a few days later, "you return here again, one week from to-day, bringing the things written down on this paper, from the shop of Rustomji at Kot Ghazi. Here you wait until I come. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the sway of laws which precisely interdict their satisfying that double and fundamental concupiscence. These ingenious animals, having become citizens, voluntarily impose on themselves all sorts of privations; they respect the property of their neighbours, which is prodigious, if you take their avaricious nature into consideration; they observe the rules of modesty, which is an enormous hypocrisy, but generally consists in but seldom speaking of that of which they think without ceasing. Then, let's be true and honest, gentlemen, when we look on a woman, we do not attach our thoughts to the ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... and in the early part of June 1659 Captain Myngs was sent home in the "Marston Moor," suspended for disobeying orders and plundering the hold of one of the prizes to the value of 12,000 pieces of eight. Myngs was an active, intrepid commander, but apparently avaricious and impatient of control. He seems to have endeavoured to divert most of the prize money into the pockets of his officers and men, by disposing of the booty on his own initiative before giving a strict account of it to the governor or steward-general of the island. Doyley writes ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... wooer, the mean avaricious Dietrich of Berg, presented himself. It was certain that George Broemser must be dead, and he was come again to sue for the hand of so desirable a young lady. The dejected maiden informed her eager wooer that she had plighted her troth to her absent lover beside the linden-tree ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... unwonted glow and interest all the while. He sent for a case, and made a youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them. And still as he went back to his own work new names would occur to him, and full of the scholar's avaricious sense of the shortness of time, he would shake his head and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had already passed, grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the spread of Monasticism in ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I had hoped to be rewarded," Michael said to me just now. "I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has given me an ambitious and avaricious one! I had always said to myself that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us, to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts. His mother was always thinking of getting him married and having children again to care for. You know women always will busy themselves about ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... joined in the cry through the mouths of its best accredited representatives. As at the Crucifixion it is written, "On that day Herod and Pilate were friends," so on the outbreak of a singularly unjust, avaricious, and cruel war, the Christian Churches of England displayed for the first and last time some signs of unity. Canterbury and Armagh kissed each other, and the City Temple applauded the embraces of unrighteousness and war. Dean Farrar of Canterbury, concluding his glorification ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... frequently in private interviews, where we enjoyed the conversation of one another, in all the elevation of fancy and impatience of hope that reciprocal adoration can inspire. He professed his honourable intentions, of which I made no question; lamented the avaricious disposition of his father, who had destined him for the arms of another, and vowed eternal fidelity with such an appearance of candour and devotion—that I became a dupe to his deceit. Cursed be ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... these trees, though of fair size, were second-growth timber. The avaricious lumberman had long ago been through all this section, and only in patches was it possible to find any of the original great trees that were possibly growing a century or two back, when the whites were wresting this land from the possession of ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... capitation tax of three dollars per head on every Chinaman. There are thirty thousand Chinese in the Sambas districts, and they feel themselves strong enough to oppose or evade this tax; it hence becomes a perpetual contest between greedy extortion on the one side, and avaricious chicane on the other; there are beside about ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... transferred from my name, as trustee, to you individually. Now it is up to you to prove that you are a careful little business woman. With more than a thousand dollars in the bank you may feel quite like an heiress, but I warn you that a big city is a glutton and its avaricious maw is always open for money. Be warned by one who knows. If you need any advice of any nature that a man can give better than Miss Merriman, I want you to promise to call on Phil ... Dr. Bentley, that is, for I mean to put ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and Christianity came. Its purpose was not to render men happy on earth, and we do not find that it made rulers less avaricious or less sanguinary, peoples more patient or quiet, crimes rarer, punishments less cruel, treaties more faithfully observed, or wars waged more humanely. The conclusion is that it is only those who are profoundly ignorant of the past who can regret ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... of reason, and consequently forces us to produce those symptoms, which many, when sober, have art enough to conceal. It heightens and inflames our passions (generally indeed that passion which is uppermost in our mind), so that the angry temper, the amorous, the generous, the good-humoured, the avaricious, and all other dispositions of men, are in their cups ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... a quieter tone, "that I see life in the hands of enemies, not only enemies of the noble but of everything good, avaricious and incapable of ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... ablest and most successful of ministers, had one damning vice. He was shamefully avaricious. He amassed, in the service of the State, therefore dishonestly, an income larger than that of the King of England or the King of Spain. The necklace of pearls which he gave to one of his nieces, and which is at Rome, is said to be still the finest in existence. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... resumed Montoni, 'I cannot believe you will oppose, where you know you cannot conquer, or, indeed, that you would wish to conquer, or be avaricious of any property, when you have not justice on your side. I think it proper, however, to acquaint you with the alternative. If you have a just opinion of the subject in question, you shall be allowed a safe conveyance to France, within a short period; but, if you are so unhappy as to be misled by ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... from agitation and had recourse to compromise. In his contests for personal influence there was no timidity, no flinching. He would have all or none. Every member of the Government who would not submit to his ascendency was turned out or forced to resign. Liberal of everything else, he was avaricious of power. Cautious everywhere else, when power was at stake he had all the boldness of Richelieu or Chatham. He might easily have secured his authority if he could have been induced to divide it with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... This morning I might have doubted, but now, thanks to that vain idiot who goes by the name of Wilkie, I am sure, perfectly, mathematically sure of success. Maumejan, who is entirely devoted to me, and who is the greediest, most avaricious scoundrel alive, will draw up such a complaint that Marguerite will sleep in prison. Moreover, other witnesses will be summoned. By what Casimir has said, you can judge what the other servants will say. This testimony will be sufficient to convict ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... her father-in-law. "Well, if you can't control your avaricious tendencies you'll have to pay," she said. "Send to the bank and get the money so George can take it ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... succeed. So from the fact that sometimes people make mistakes in their choice, it is concluded that we ought never to choose.' Condorcet, we may remember, many years after, insisted on the banishment by public opinion of avaricious and mercenary considerations from marriage, as one of the most important means of diminishing the great inequalities in the accumulation ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... him bloody, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin That has a name: but there's no bottom, none, In my voluptuousness: your wives, your daughters, Your matrons, and your maids, could not fill up The cistern of my lust; and my ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... considerable portion of them are persuaded to cultivate the soil and engage in agricultural pursuits. Thus we are presented with the disgraceful, if not singular spectacle of a rivalry in cunning and trickishness between a colony of soi-disant missionaries (really avaricious and unscrupulous foreigners) and the tribes who are to come under their pious pupilage. If equal dexterity in trade is not apparent, each party is equally pleased with its successful attempts at deception, and both ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... filling, or weighting. Soapstone and similar mineral substances are added to the finished soap to increase its weight. But it may be added that this fraudulent weighting is rare. Large establishments cannot take the risk of being detected in such avaricious practices, and small ones scarcely have the apparatus at their disposal for making a uniform mixture which will ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... statesman Peter de Vineis, Dante learns that at the judgement they will recover their bodies, like others, but will not be allowed to reassume them. The body will be hung on the tree to which it belongs. Here, as in the case of the avaricious and the wrathful, the spirits of other sinners take a part in the infliction of the punishment. The wood is inhabited by the souls of those who had wasted their substance in life, and these are constantly chased ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... no rarity to the terrible Turk, for it was from Damascus in his part of the world that this precious fabric came most plentifully. So de Helly took Arras tapestries into Turkey, a suite representing the history of Alexander the Great, and the avaricious monarch was persuaded by reason of this and other ransom ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... had sought perfection. To organize and administer the new industrial-financial-commercial regime, the leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick-skinned, unscrupulous, hard-headed, and avaricious; yet daring, dominating, and gifted with keen prevision and vivid imagination. These qualities had not been bred under any of the Mediterranean civilizations, or that of Central Europe in the Middle Ages, which had inherited so much therefrom. The pursuit of ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... "The Countess of Ingenheim is cruelly regretted by the people, the royal family, and even the Queen, much less for the person of the said Countess as because of the increase of credit which her death will bring to Dame Rietz, the old habitual mistress, who is said to be very avaricious and a ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... quota, by striking them with his fists, tying handkerchiefs or pieces of string to them, fastening tags around their necks, regardless of tribe, family, or condition. The negroes, not yet recovered from their melancholy voyage, were amazed and panic-stricken at this horrible onslaught of avaricious men; they frequently scaled the walls, and ran frantically ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and after visiting Jidda, arrived at Masuah [Massowah] on September 19, 1769. Masuah, which means the "Harbour of the Shepherds," is a small island close upon the Abyssinian shore, and the governor is called the naybe. He himself was cruel, avaricious, and a drunkard, but Achmet, his son, became my friend, as I had cured him of an intermittent fever, and on November 10 he carried me, my servants and baggage, from the island of Masuah to Arkeeko, on the mainland, from which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... men from New York and South Carolina, he failed to accomplish, having been compelled by De Villiers, at the head of a force of 1,500 French soldiers, to capitulate, with the privilege of marching back to Virginia unmolested. In Canada, De la Jonquiere was by no means a favorite. Terribly avaricious, while the Intendant sold licenses to trade, the Governor and his Secretary sold brandy to the Indians. De la Jonquiere became enormously wealthy, but his grasping disposition so annoyed the people of Quebec ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger |
