"Exorbitant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hear a man so highly praised for common honesty I am of course led to suppose that dishonesty in his particular trade is the common rule. The body of English landlords must be exorbitant tyrants when one among them is so highly eulogised for taking no more than his own." Luckily at that moment dinner was announced, and the exceptional character of the Duke of Mayfair ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... and the success which I hoped would attend it. I was compelled, therefore, to turn all my energies to the raising of the money wherewith to publish my two operas, to which in all probability Tannhauser would shortly have to be added. I first applied to my friends, and in some cases had to pay exorbitant rates of interest, even for short terms. For the present these details are sufficient to prepare the reader for the catastrophe towards which I was now ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... townsmen. The chancellor, Peter Flotte, foresaw this; he distributed among the public, instead of the original bull, a species of resume in which he had assembled, in a few lines, in the crudest terms, the most exorbitant pretensions of Boniface, at the same time suppressing everything which touched on the troubles of the nation against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "you have been the ruin of us all. Look you, Chandra Babu, we are all Khataks (customers) of yours whom you have fleeced by levying exorbitant interest on loans and falsifying our accounts. It's no use going to law for our rights; you are hand in glove with the civil court amla (clerks) and peons (menials) and can get them to do whatever you wish. So we have determined to take the law into our own hands. We have made up our ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... its charter. She was wealthy and in earnest. She pushed her advantage. The Apothecaries' Hall prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be granted. These she attended in private, paying the most exorbitant fees to her teachers. In one instance, in which a man's fee would have been five guineas she paid fifty! I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps must have been L2,000. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Remonstrants was, whether the latter would submit to acknowledge the authority of the former. This, the Remonstrants uniformly refused to do. In almost every Synod there was a repetition of the same demand, and of the same answer. By every English reader, the demand of the Synod will be thought exorbitant. ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... husband, Potiphar's wife sent a eunuch to the Ishmaelites, bidding him to buy Joseph, but he returned and reported that they demanded an exorbitant price for the slave. She dispatched a second eunuch, charging him to conclude the bargain, and though they asked one mina of gold, or even two, he was not to be sparing of money, he was to be sure to buy the slave and bring him to her. The eunuch gave the Ishmaelites ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... to the opera for the singers merely, or rather to notice the difference between them in point of execution. What supports the theatre is this: the women are a spectacle before and after the play. Vanity alone will pay the exorbitant price of forty francs for three hours of questionable pleasure, in a bad atmosphere and at great expense, without counting the colds caught in going out. But to exhibit themselves, to see and be seen, to be the observed ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... of food, for, to the great surprise of my companions, the people of Kangenke gave nothing except by way of sale, and charged the most exorbitant prices for the little meal and manioc they brought. The only article of barter my men had was a little fat saved from the ox we slaughtered at Katema's, so I was obliged to give them a portion of the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... prospective employer. Despite his assurance that the law was on his side, I had grave doubts. If everything was perfectly square and above board why the deuce didn't he report the affair to the police and give them the task of looking after him, instead of hiring me at an exorbitant wage? He seemed anxious to fight shy of publicity in any shape or form and, though he had been very cordial, even familiar with me, his very apparent frankness and joviality had awakened my suspicions. There was something fishy going on, and that something, ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... country where money is only obtainable at such an exorbitant rate of interest as in China, it is but natural that some attempt should be made to obviate the necessity of appealing to a professional money-lender. Three per cent. per month is the maximum rate permitted by Chinese law, which cannot be regarded as excessive ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Ferrier. With the last of these revolutionists Gustave had become intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? "Es-tu fou d'en douter?" cried Edgar. "What a sublime occasion to manifest ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Pierrots occupied the theatre which was packed nightly, and the Club, the "Union Jack" Shop, and other famous establishments, not to mention the "Oyster Shop," provided excellent fare at wonderfully exorbitant prices. ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... of the officers. He knew that I was a stranger, and with a show of cordiality, for which I was very thankful, he invited me to accompany him to a quiet, respectable hotel, where the charges were not exorbitant. As his proposal suited my purse and my humor, I acquiesced willingly enough, little suspecting into what hands I had fallen. In less than an hour we were seated at a capital dinner, the best that I ever remembered to have eaten, so exquisite is the relish imparted by a keen appetite ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... men will cursorily represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners; but separate them and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character which no man realizes. We have such exorbitant eyes that on seeing the smallest arc we complete the curve, and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no more was drawn than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld. We are greatly too liberal in our ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... more than a just compensation, while their opponents would declare that the prices adopted by the pool favor some points to the prejudice of others, and that the statement that they were on the whole exorbitant was proven by the fact that the railway lines in the coal regions, where honestly managed, have paid great dividends on ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... were established, which educated a race of excellent warriors by whom the army might recruit itself in the course of a long campaign. No wonder, then, if these wandering nations exhausted every territory in which they encamped, and by their immense consumption raised the necessaries of life to an exorbitant price. All the mills of Nuremberg were insufficient to grind the corn required for each day; and 15,000 pounds of bread, which were daily delivered by the town into the Swedish camp, excited, without allaying, the hunger of the soldiers. The laudable exertions of the magistrates ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... [202] The clergy were masters of Spain and of the King: their influence daily outweighed even that of Ferdinand's own Ministers, when, under the pressure of financial necessity, the Ministers began to offer some resistance to the exorbitant demands of the priesthood. On the 23rd of May the King signed an edict restoring all monasteries throughout Spain, and reinstating them in their lands. On the 24th of June the clergy were declared exempt from taxation. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... merciless, inclement, unsparing, stern, unrelenting, ruthless, brutal, incompassionate, unkind; (Colloq.) excessive, fabulous, exorbitant, immoderate. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... different to those entertained by the boatmen. Only fourteen or fifteen shillings remained out of the sovereign Margaret had lent her, and the boatmen, imagining "plenty" to mean no less than several pounds, insisted upon receiving a sovereign (an exorbitant fare, by-the-bye, although reduced from their first demand of ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the project, and agreed to buy us a machine. He thought it better to begin with only one, to see whether we could understand it, and find a sale for our work, as well as how we liked it. Besides, when these machines were first made, the inventors exacted an exorbitant price for them,—they, too, in this way levying a cruel tax on the sewing-women. The cost at that time was from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty dollars. My father could manage to provide us with one, but the expense of two was more than he could assume. I was then within a few weeks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... treatment. Indeed, according to the best reports, the malady had spread. How serious the insurrection was, appears from the frequency of the monarch's exhortations. All through the winter he was writing to the people, condoling with them for the exorbitant price of food, and attributing all their evils to the continuance of wars in Europe. The Cabinet also addressed the Dalesmen, urging them not to ally themselves with Sunnanvaeder, who was disgruntled, so they heard, because he had not been given the bishopric ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... but was unfortunately taken by a pirate, carried to Tripoli, and sold as a slave. In a letter we have received from him, he informs that he has luckily fallen into the hands of a master who treats him with great humanity; but the sum demanded for the ransom is so exorbitant, that it will be impossible for him ever to raise it. He adds, that we must therefore relinquish all hope of ever seeing him again. With the hopes of restoring to his family a beloved father, we are striving by every honest means in our power to collect the sum necessary for ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... drive to distraction even a more patient man than Herr von Schalckenberg. The applicants proved to be, almost without exception, trades-unionists, out on strike because their employers had declined or had been unable to accede to the exorbitant demands of the workmen. These workmen had in many cases been idle for months; yet they now unhesitatingly refused employment, and refused it insolently too, because the wages offered by the professor, though fully equal to those paid by other employers, were ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... is not to be had for less, go where you will for it; and if obtained from a merchant, his 2.5 per cent. commission, repeated at intervals of six months, makes a nominal 10 per cent. into 15. I mention this to show you that, if it pays people to give this exorbitant rate of interest (and the current rate MUST be one that will pay the borrower), the means of increasing capital in this settlement are great. For young men, however, sons of gentlemen and gentlemen themselves, sheep or cattle are the most obvious and best investment. They can buy and put ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... made great profits on his goods. Being excused from military duty, he could come and go at will. But the great danger was of his being captured or his tent raided by his own men, the risk therefore being so great that he had to ask exorbitant prices for his goods. He kept crackers, cards, oysters and sardines, paper and envelopes, etc., and often a bottle; would purchase all the plunder brought him and peddle the same to citizens in the rear. After the battle of Chancellorsville a member ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. (supreme) 33; complete &c. 52. august, grand, dignified, sublime, majestic &c. (repute) 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c. 870. unlimited &c. (infinite) 105; unapproachable, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his great talents entitle him to exceptional treatment; moreover, he has displayed such audacity, blent with so much ingenuity, that his exploit might seem superhuman. We know not for what crimes you Holiness has kept him so long in prison; however, if those crimes are too exorbitant, your Holiness is wise and holy, and may your will be done unquestioned; still, if they are such as can be condoned, we entreat you to pardon him for our sake." The Pope, when he heard this, felt ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... monuments of antiquity, and often depends more on the caprice of the buyer than the intrinsic merit of the work, some piquing themselves upon the possession of things from no other consideration than their exorbitant price." ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... after disposing of his beaver, occupied himself in attending to his ranche, and was thus employed when news was brought to New Mexico of the exorbitant prices which sheep were bringing in California. He made up his mind to embark in a speculation in those animals by collecting a herd and driving it to that territory. He set out for the valley of Rio Abajo, which lies to the south of Santa Fe, and there, to his satisfaction, made his purchases. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... military, he expended, in less than one year, besides the current revenue of the empire, the sum of 21,796,875 pounds sterling, which had been left by Tiberius at his death. To supply the extravagance of future years, new and exorbitant taxes were imposed upon the people, and those too on the necessaries of life. There existed now amongst the Romans every motive that could excite a general indignation against the government; yet such was still the dread of imperial power, though vested ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... workmen chose to take lower wages, he was not bound actually to make them a present of more than they asked for? They would go to the cheapest market for anything they wanted, and so must he. Besides, wages had really been quite exorbitant. Half his men threw each of them as much money away in gin and beer yearly, as would pay two workmen at cheap house. Why was he to be robbing his family of comforts to pay for their extravagance? And charging his customers, too, unnecessarily ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... auction. Some idea of the number of these establishments may be formed from an estimate (in the Examiner) of the cost of the entertainment prepared for visitors being not less than $10,000 daily. Their agents bought the best articles offered for sale in the markets, and never hesitated to pay the most exorbitant prices. I hope now the absence of such customers may have a good effect. But I fear the currency, so ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Carl Gwinnett, who wants to handle the collection for us, for twenty per cent. I'm told that that isn't an unusually exorbitant commission, but I'm not exactly crazy about ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... sense of his soul; there was no room to doubt his sincerity. I told him I once thought myself a kind of monarch in my old station, of which I had given him an account; but that I thought he was not only a monarch, but a great conqueror; for he that had got a victory over his own exorbitant desires, and the absolute dominion over himself, he whose reason entirely governs his will, is certainly greater than ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... price of real estate doubled, quadrupled, and Gordon bought just enough to establish the price firmly. The money he paid was deposited again in his new bank, and he proceeded to use it over and over in maintaining exorbitant prices and in advancing his grandiose schemes. His business took him often to Seattle, where by his whirlwind methods he duplicated his success in a measure: his sensational attack upon the money powers got a wide hearing, ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... literally, would mean 3,000 men, under Donald Kavanagh; Raymond the Fat followed "with 800 British;" Dermid led on "the chief part of the Irish" (number not given), in person; Richard commanded the rear-guard, "300 British and 1,000 Irish soldiers." Altogether, it is not exorbitant to conjecture that the Leinster Prince led to the siege of Dublin an army of about 10,000 native troops, 1,500 Welsh and Flemish archers, and 250 knights. Except the handful who remained with Fitzstephen to defend his fort at Carrick, on the Slaney, and ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... false and faithless Fair, Gods above forbid my Fate, First me Joys you do prepare, Then you Sorrows do create; For 'tis the Nature of your Sex, First to pleasure, then perplex, Happy's he without your Smiles. Ever-blest he lives content; In exorbitant Exiles, Never can his Fate repent; All his Wishes and Desires, To destroy ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... confinement they proposed to him to redeem his liberty with the sum of L3000, and to persuade the king to purchase their departure out of the kingdom, with a further sum of L10,000. As Alphage's circumstances would not allow him to satisfy the exorbitant demand, they bound him, and put him to severe torments, to oblige him to discover the treasure of the church; upon which they assured him of his life and liberty, but the prelate piously persisted in refusing to give the pagans any account ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... travelers, whose voyages to the New World occupied much of the public attention. The exaggeration which from love of importance inflated the narratives, the poets also take note of. There was also a universal taste for hazard in money as well as in travel, for putting it out on risks at exorbitant interest, and the habit of gaming reached prodigious excess. The passion for sudden wealth was fired by the success of the sea-rovers, news of which inflamed the imagination. Samuel Kiechel, a merchant ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by their pillow, wearing himself to death to spare them the slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps their secret like the dead; they send to ask for his bill, and think it horribly exorbitant. Who saved them? Nature. Far from recommending him, they speak ill of him, fearing lest he should become the physician ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... went on, "what is the lowest price that one of you will take me and my horse down to Dresden for? I am disposed to pay a fair price and not more, and if you attempt to charge an exorbitant one, I shall take guides and follow ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... behavior, and for the very novelty of the thing, crowds of disciples soon gathered about him. At the town of Aspenda he made a great hit, when he "pitched into" the corn merchants who had bought up all the grain during a period of scarcity, and sold it to the people at exorbitant prices. Of course, such things are not permitted in our day! Apollonius moved by the sufferings of women and children, took his stand in the market place, and with his stylus wrote in large characters upon a tablet the following advice to the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... his interview was not entirely satisfactory. Editors, one and all, as he called upon them in succession, didn't seem especially anxious to send the young man abroad for an indefinite period; the salary requested seemed exorbitant. They each made a proposition; all said: "This is the best I can do at present; go to the other offices, and if you receive a better offer we advise you to take it." This seemed reasonable enough, but as their best rate was fifteen dollars for one letter a week he feared that even ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... America. He will be remembered by those who have read "Paul the Peddler." Though nearly as poverty-stricken in appearance as his poorest customers, the old man was rich, if reports were true. His business was a very profitable one, allowing the most exorbitant rates of interest, and, being a miser, he spent almost nothing on himself, so that his hoards had ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... resolution to wrest his former possessions from the Moslems; and although Portugal was impoverished and weak, he resolved at once to enter on a crusade against Muley Moluc and the Moors. The protests of his ministers were unheeded; he laid new and exorbitant imposts on his people, caused mercenaries to be levied in Italy and the Low Countries, and reluctantly persuaded his uncle, Philip I. of Spain, to promise a contingent. His preparations being at last completed, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... discovered in Herr von Batocki's new Imperial Food Department. One of his officials, Bernot by name, was bribed by numerous East Prussian landowners to have the crops from their estates bought by the Government at exorbitant prices. Bernot pocketed some L15,000, and the landowners in question sold their wheat at a profit ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... have taken rooms at Rochester, running back and forth each day in the machine,—though Rochester was by no means beyond the zone of exorbitant charges. Notions of value become very much congested within a radius of two or three hundred miles of ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... Upperton continued, "who goes in rather strong. He makes grand speeches in the Commons; but almost always gets fleeced at Almack's. The Jews, who are usually on hand in one of the outside rooms with their shekels, waiting to lend money, charge exorbitant interest. Charley calls it the Jerusalem Chamber. Sometimes he gets completely cleaned out, and has to borrow a guinea to pay the waiter who brings him his brandy. One night at the beginning he won eight thousand pounds, but before ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... before we were well out of the machine, we had begun negotiations for its exclusive possession on the morrow; and by the time we were fairly installed in the inn at Shiwojiri, the bargain stood complete. In consideration of no exorbitant sum, the vehicle, with all appertaining thereto, was to be taken off its regular route and wander, like any tramp, at our sweet will, in quite a contrary direction. The boy with the horn was expressly included ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... places the water was stinking. We looked back upon Sinde as a paradise compared to the country we were now in. All the little grain that was supplied to the bazaars by the commissariat was sold at the most exorbitant price, yet we were obliged to buy it, and as much as we could get of it too, and lucky we thought ourselves to get any of it, even at this rate, at times, in order to feed our horses and camels, which were beginning to knock ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... qu'il est comme il a toujours ete et comme il sera a toute eternite. I am very angry with Emily, that he will not write to me; is he afraid that his style is not good, or of what? . . . The play at Brooks's is exorbitant, I hear; Grady and Sir Godfrey Whistler and the General and Admiral are at the head of it. Charles looks wretchedly, I am told, but I have scarce seen him. Richard is in high cash, and that is all I know of that infernal ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... it. They told me the price—swindlingly exorbitant for the unwary traveller who might wander ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... parties, subsequently organized, taught, that to vote for a slaveholder, or a pro-slavery man, was sinful, and could not be done without violence to conscience; while, at the same time, they made no scruples of using the products of slave labor—the exorbitant demand for which was the great bulwark of the institution. This was a radical error. It laid all who adopted it open to the charge of practical inconsistency, and left them without any moral power over the consciences of others. As long as all used their products, so long the ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... the representative of the Society of Friends was a proper man of business, as, indeed, most of them are, and that he drove rather a hard bargain with the railway directors, who at last were obliged to give in to what they considered to be an exorbitant demand for such a small bit of freehold. The agreement was made and the contract signed, and Friend Broadbrim went on his way rejoicing; but not for long. In selling the land he apparently forgot that the land contained bones, for when the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... civilization were not spared. Their monuments, which have been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed. Open cities were bombarded. Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns, and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of their houses were set on fire. That is what happened to Wavre, among other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of $600,000. Termonde, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... who talk airily and foolishly of "revolutions after the war"—of great labour troubles, of exorbitant and impossible demands, of irreconcilable quarrels. These people are themselves the creators and begettors of trouble, and mischievous in the highest degree. They belong, though they are much less attractive, ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... cheese or ham; they were free to ruin it, or leave it waste, or erect upon it horrible and devastating eyesores. If the community needed a road or a tramway, if it wanted a town or a village in any position, nay, even if it wanted to go to and fro, it had to do so by exorbitant treaties with each of the monarchs whose territory was involved. No man could find foothold on the face of the earth until he had paid toll and homage to one of them. They had practically no relations and no duties to the nominal, municipal, or national Government amidst ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... large tracts of wild land in remote and unfavourable situations. This, while it impoverished and often proved the ruin of the unfortunate immigrant, possessed a double advantage to the seller. He obtained an exorbitant price for the land which he actually sold, while the residence of a respectable settler upon the spot greatly enhanced the value and price of all other lands in ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Persons in some of the neighbouring Towns, to discourage the Market-People coming into this Town with their Provisions, and that they may have an Opportunity to purchase at low Rates, and sell them here at an exorbitant Price, have industriously reported that the Small-Pox for some Time past has been in this Town, and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... Canon Law, many ordinances and statutes have been framed by the Holy Fathers, teachers, Pope and Councils with a good design, yet since this Canon Law and these statutes have been increased by degrees and made more severe; since many of them are exorbitant and have been misused against us laity, so as to cause us great injury and ruin; and since in this sad time, when the wolf has broken into the sheep-fold of Christ, the Chief Watchman and Shepherd slumbers, we deem it our duty, as civil authorities, to come to the rescue in some measure; not that ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... and then abandon the original employer to his old embarrassment, leaving him, (a resident probably in the capital, and already a prey to multitudinous distractions,) to find out a new shepherd on still more exorbitant terms. As large grants of land may be obtained by tenants for merely nominal rents, or in consideration of their erecting stock-yards or farm-buildings in the course of a term of years, there is every inducement to men of this ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... great Founder. In the second century Montanus the Phrygian claimed to be the incarnate Trinity, uniting in his single person God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Nor is this an isolated case, the exorbitant pretension of a single ill-balanced mind. From the earliest times down to the present day many sects have believed that Christ, nay God himself, is incarnate in every fully initiated Christian, and they have carried this belief to its logical conclusion by adoring each other. Tertullian ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... levying of these taxes was a frequent cause of tumult amongst the people, who saw with marked displeasure the exigencies of the excise gradually raising the price of an article of primary necessity. We have already mentioned times during which the price of salt was so exorbitant that the rich alone could put it in their bread. Thus, in the reign of Francis I., it was almost as dear as ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... among prominent Mormons when the "we" are voicing the conclusions of the hierarchy—"wouldn't like to do anything to hurt the sugar interests of the country. I've looked into this differential, and I don't see that it is particularly exorbitant. As a matter of fact, the American Sugar Refining Company is doing all it can to help us get our needed protection, and we have promised to do what we can for it, in return. I hope you can see your way clear to vote for the bill. I know that the brethren"—meaning the Church ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... committed than to permit, as the Prince had just permitted, the right of worship in a Christian land to Calvinists and Lutherans? As a matter of course, therefore, Margaret of Parma denounced the terms by which Antwerp had been saved as a "novel and exorbitant capitulation," and had no intention of signifying her approbation either ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the price for board was two dollars and a half a day! I was startled at this announcement. The amount struck me as exorbitant when compared with the accommodations. I had a secret misgiving that the good woman had not scrupled in this case to add at least a hundred and fifty per centum to her customary charges. I told her I would consult Mr. Bohun, and be ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... allow anyone to be grateful, for a gift is never sufficient for its exorbitant expectations. Of all these hindrances to gratitude, the most violent and distressing vice is jealousy, which torments us with comparisons of this nature: "He bestowed this on me, but more upon him, and he gave it him earlier." There is no kindness so complete ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... from this historical fiction, the other claims that are made for the endowment of the clergy are, however exorbitant, nevertheless practicable and seriously meant. So far as the circumstances of their origin are concerned, two possibilities present themselves. Either the priests demanded what they could hope to obtain, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... turf undrawn, he must suffer his oats, hay, and turf, to be lost, in order to secure the crops of the agent. If he had spirit to refuse, he must expect to become a martyr to his resentment. In renewing leases his extortions were exorbitant; ten, thirty, forty, and fifty guineas he claimed as a fee for his favor, according to the ability of the party; yet this was quite distinct from the renewal tine, and went into his own pocket. When such "glove money" was not to be had, he would accept ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... time in this long course of English history were the claims of the monarchy more exorbitant than under James I. and Charles I., from 1603 to 1642, just when the tide of immigration began to flow towards America, and when the governments of the colonies were being established. "What God hath joined, then, let no man separate. ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... these words and deeds, and with all this sagacity and eloquence, he intermingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore long purple robes like a woman, which dragged after him as he went through the market-place; caused the planks of his galley to be cut ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... (Memoirs iii. 178), complaining of the high prices of English books, describes 'the excessive artifices made use of to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet, a pamphlet into an octavo, and an octavo into a quarto with white-lines, exorbitant margins, &c., to such a degree that the selling of paper seems now the object, and printing on it only ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... conscientious discharge of official duty; and he, when he lays his head upon his respectable pillow any time after 1 a.m., may surely go to sleep in the comfortable consciousness that he has done a fair day's work for a not exorbitant remuneration. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... and '91; that the farmer's products have been refused a market within a year past because there was not money to handle them; that present rates of interest consume him; and that, with good security to offer, he is obliged to pay exorbitant rates for money and in many ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit. But captiousness and jealousy are likewise easily offended, and to him who studiously looks for an affront, every mode of behaviour will supply it; freedom will be rudeness, and reserve sullenness; mirth will be negligence, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... such motives are not as you may conceive sold till the temptation of an exorbitant profit seduces the proprietor to risk a momentary possession of assignats, which are again disposed of in a similar way. Thus many necessaries of life are withdrawn from circulation, and when a real scarcity ensues, they are produced to the people, charged ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... I ventured to suggest last week, the CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER had laid in a stock of tobacco before the Budget he has evidently exhausted it by now, for, on his attention again being called to the exorbitant charge of the tobacconists, he no longer pooh-poohed the matter, but sternly declared that the situation was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... the planters endeavored to keep the negroes on the estates are too well known to require detail. Summary ejectments of the refractory from their dwellings, destruction of their provision grounds, refusal to sell them land except at exorbitant prices, were all tried. But there is too much land in Jamaica, and too few people, to make this game successful. There were abundance of thrown-up estates, and especially of coffee properties in the mountains, whose owners were ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his all-commanding authority, free it from this euil and base custom of torturing people to confess themselves witches, and burning them after extorted confessions. Surely the blood of men ought not to be so cheap, nor so easily to be shed by those who, under the name of God, do gratifie exorbitant passions and selfish ends; for without question, under this side heaven, there is nothing so sacred as the life of man; for the preservation whereof all policies and forms of government, all laws and magistrates are ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... silver. To convert their property into bills of exchange and movables was their only resource. The market speedily was glutted: a house was given for an ass, a vineyard for a suit of clothes. Vainly did the persecuted race endeavor to purchase a remission of the sentence by the payment of an exorbitant ransom. Torquemada appeared before Ferdinand and his consort, raising the crucifix, and crying: 'Judas sold Christ for 30 pieces of silver; sell ye him for a larger sum, and account for the same to God!' The exodus began. Eight hundred thousand Jews left Spain[1]—some ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... was astonished that nothing was done in the eight months that the renewal of the alliance had been negotiating at Hamburg; that it would seem the regents of Sweden imagined by these delays to obtain better conditions; but the King could add nothing to the former subsidies by reason of his exorbitant expences both on his own account and that of the allies; that he was desirous of being speedily informed of the intentions of the Swedish Ministers; that the renewal of the treaty would contribute to the obtaining a good peace; that if they would not renew it, it was time the King ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... ceremony, they quitted Florence; nor did they rest until they had arrived in England and established themselves in a small house in London, where, by living with extreme parsimony and lending at exorbitant usances, they prospered so well that in the course of a few years they amassed a fortune; and so, one by one, they returned to Florence, purchased not a few of their former estates besides many others, and married. The management of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... found any where: and the Italians, on account of their familiarity with the objects it describes, must have a higher relish of it. This poem likewise shews his gratitude to lord Hallifax, who had been that year impeached by the Commons in Parliament, for procuring exorbitant grants from the crown to his own use; and further charged with cutting down, and wasting the timber in his Majesty's forests, and with holding several offices in his Majesty's Exchequer, that were inconsistent, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... you what conditions I proposed and under what circumstances I made him this offer; you will then be better able to judge if my demands were exorbitant. Furthermore, if I disturb you in your conversation, gentlemen, you may enter the drawing-room. If M. Richard wishes to consult you on the subject, I shall ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... of trouble and money on the adornment of the high altar. A letter to him from the Dean, dated July 8th, A.D. 1634, is quoted by Prynne, "We have obeyed your Grace's direction in pulling down the exorbitant seates within our Quire whereby the church is very much beautified.... Lastly wee most humbly beseech your Grace to take notice that many and most necessary have beene the occasions of extraordinary expences this yeare for ornaments, etc." And another Puritan scribe tells us that "At ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... inexpensive ways for the poor to get land, the laws were distorted into a highly effective mechanism by which companies of capitalists, and individual capitalists, secured vast tracts for trivial sums. These capitalists then either held the land, or forced settlers to pay exorbitant prices for comparatively small plots. No laws were in existence compelling the purchaser to be a bona fide settler. Absentee landlordism was the rule. The capitalist companies were largely composed of Northern, Eastern and Southern ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the Cacklogallinians Taxes are laid, the Money is brought into the publick Treasury, of which the Minister keeps the Keys: He lets this Money out upon Pawns, at an exorbitant Interest. If an inferior Agent is to pass his Accounts, he must share the Pillage with the Minister, and some few Heads of the Grand Council. I knew one paid him Three Hundred Thousand Rackfantassines, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... The duties upon many parts of the French rivers were so exorbitant that the poorer people, deprived of the benefit of water carriage, were obliged to transport their goods ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... out of the sight of land; for, except when the captain launched forth his own boat, which he did always with great reluctance, we were incapable of procuring anything from Deal, but at a price too exorbitant, and beyond the reach even of modern luxury—the fare of a boat from Deal, which lay at two miles' distance, being at least three half-crowns, and, if we had been in any distress for it, as many half-guineas; for these ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... drew the attention of the legislature, who were determined to prune the exorbitant shoot. For in 1465 we find an order of council, prohibiting the growth of the shoe toe, to more than two inches, under the penalty of a dreadful curse from the priest, and, which was worse, the payment of twenty shillings to ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... your life, does he not give, think you, a valuable consideration for the money you engage your honour to send him? If not, the sum must be exorbitant, or your life is a very paltry one, even in your ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... as disturbing to the usurers and those who through special privileges in money have amassed fortunes of unearned wealth as his sound position on railroads is distasteful to the monopolists who impoverish the producer and consumer by exorbitant ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... of 1870-1 he showed France on her knees but defying the new Caesar, and arraigned Bismarck before the altar of Justice for demanding exorbitant securities. ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Exorbitant desire for uniformity of procedure and for prompt external results are the chief foes which the open-minded attitude meets in school. The teacher who does not permit and encourage diversity of operation in dealing with questions is imposing intellectual blinders upon pupils—restricting ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... gone up so high that it was hard for the poor to make ends meet. It was almost impossible to get about in the city, as the war had reduced the number of cabs and the few that did business asked such exorbitant fares that only the rich could afford to ride in them. The street car situation was in a hopeless tangle. Even before the war there were not enough accommodations for the public, but since the opening of hostilities ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... attitude of preparation they walked into the audience room, which was crowded with a host of enemies. The council decided, that if on a certain day he would produce a specified sum of money the girl should be his, and he should return unmolested. The sum named was exorbitant, but the Malay chief agreed to the payment, and was ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... his country a republic—it is so in name only. The majority of the population, representing the wealth and intelligence of the country—the Uitlanders—are refused almost every civil right, except the privilege of paying exorbitant taxes to swell an already overgorged treasury. Under this ideal(?) government, which is really a sixteenth-century oligarchy flourishing at the end of the nineteenth, and is, certainly not a ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... stake out small claims in the auriferous soil. What a wild life! How we suffered! We had to pay a shilling for a biscuit and a dollar for a box of sardines. We were glad when a hunter shot elk and reindeer, and sold the meat for an exorbitant price in gold dust. We lived huddled up in wretched tents and were perished with cold. Furious snowstorms swept during winter over the dreary country and the temperature fell to-67 deg. And what a toil to get hold of the miserable gold! The ground is always frozen up there. To work in it ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... like many of his contemporaries, had been a victim to the South-sea speculation, which appears to have made all the debtors' prisons more than usually full between the years 1720 and 1725. He refused to pay the exorbitant fees demanded by the keeper for accommodation, and maintained that they were illegal. To silence so troublesome a person, he was turned, unsheltered, into the yard, where he had to remain exposed to the weather day and night. 'He sat quietly,' said the committee, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... Behmen both failed by attaching themselves to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities in its bosom." The men of science will smile at the exorbitant claims put forward in behalf of Swedenborg as a scientific discoverer. "Philosophers" will not be pleased to be reminded that Swedenborg called them "cockatrices," "asps," or "flying serpents;" "literary men" will not agree that ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... who are willing to get you out of prison at no great cost; and as for the informers they are far from being exorbitant in their demands—a little money will satisfy them. My means, which are certainly ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the use of theirs; and ...
— Crito • Plato
... of $15,000,000 paid for it was considered exorbitant by those who were opposed to the purchase in 1803, yet the possibilities of the country, then so vague and ill-defined, so amply justified the prophetic faith of its advocates that a century later many millions ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the silk emporium of the empire. A ton of silk goods is worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. Nearly all of the silk is now shipped by the Peninsular and Oriental line, at a charge of $125 to $150 per ton; and notwithstanding these exorbitant rates, Shanghai merchants are compelled to make written application weeks in advance, and accept proportional allotments for shipping. In May, 1863, the screw-steamer Bahama made the trip from Foochow to London in eighty days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... point of justice or exaggerated in amount. He supported his motion at great length, entering into a detailed history of the whole matter, and accusing the government of having, through its foreign minister, insisted on exorbitant demands, oppressed the weak, and endangered the peace of Europe. He was sustained by the Earl of Aberdeen, Lord Brougham and others, and was answered by the Marquis of LANSDOWNE who, with others, defended the government. The resolution was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various |
