"Avarice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... How avarice loseth all, By striving all to gain, I need no witness call But him whose thrifty hen, As by the fable we are told, Laid every day an egg of gold. 'She hath a treasure in her body,' Bethinks the avaricious noddy. He kills and opens—vexed to find All things ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... hath,—a bosom-enemy. All men's inventions, thoughts, cogitations, projects, and endeavours, what do they tend to but to the satisfaction of their lusts,—either the lusts of the mind, as ambition, pride, avarice, passion, revenge, and such like,—or the lust of the body, as pleasure to the ears and eyes, and to the flesh? Man was made with an upright soul, with a dominion over that brutish part, more like angels, but now, all his invention runs ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... reason he had addressed himself to Alla ad Deen, whom he looked upon as a young lad whose life was of no consequence, and fit to serve his purpose, resolving, as soon as he should get the lamp into his hands, to sacrifice him to his avarice and wickedness, by making the fumigation mentioned before, and repeating two magical words, the effect of which would remove the stone into its place, so that no witness would remain ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... word miser was anciently used without comprehending any idea of avarice. See note on "King Henry VI, Part I.," edit. of Shakespeare, 1778, vol. vi. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... floods came, the lords (i.e. the producers) of wheat and barley, the lords of products of every kind, I did not cut off (or deduct) what was due on the land [from the years of low Nile floods], I Ameni, the vassal of Horus, the Smiter of the Rekhti,[2] generous of hand, stable of feet, lacking avarice because of his love for his town, learned in traditions (?), who appeareth at the right moment, without thought of guile, the vassal of Khnemu, highly favoured in the king's house, who boweth before ambassadors, who performeth the behests of ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Elliot's opinions as to the value of a baronetcy. Upon all points of blood and connexion he is a completely altered man. Having long had as much money as he could spend, nothing to wish for on the side of avarice or indulgence, he has been gradually learning to pin his happiness upon the consequence he is heir to. I thought it coming on before our acquaintance ceased, but it is now a confirmed feeling. He cannot bear the idea of not being Sir William. You may guess, therefore, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... landed properties and an aristocracy. Nor should the importation of rum be permitted, for if men have rum, they are prone to drink it, and drunkenness was incompatible with the kind of existence which the good General wished his colonists to lead. In a word, by removing temptations to vice and avarice, he thought he could make his people forget that such evils had ever belonged to human nature. But experiments founded upon the innate impeccability of man have furnished many comedies and not a few ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... beloved companion—for in his own selfish way he loved her after a sort, and perhaps more than he loved any human being in the world—and who must expect before many years to follow her, should be so full of this world's avarice and ambition; so eager to make more, and more, and more money, and to stand at the head of the list of all the wealthiest men in the land. Strange, yet the name of such a one is legion. But in the case of Old Aaron Rockharrt there might have been this ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... ressource assuree, Viens ranimer leur langueur desoeuvree: Leur ame vide est du moins amusee Par l'avarice en plaisir deguisee." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... look or turn, I suddenly saw drop from the ash, the form of a woman, a Highland girl, with bold, handsome features, raven black hair, and the whitest of arms and feet. In one hand she carried a wicker basket, in the other a knife, a broad-bladed, sharp-edged, horn-handled knife. A gleam of avarice and cruelty came into her large dark eyes, as, wandering around her, they rested on the rich facings of the English officers' uniforms. I knew what was in her mind, and—forgetting she was but a ghost—that they were all ghosts—I moved heaven and earth to stop her. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... which, if properly weighed, must be the deepest motive of humiliation to all? A good-natured man will be so far from rejoicing, that he will be secretly troubled, whenever he reads that the greatest Roman moralist was tainted with avarice, and the greatest ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... of goodness that cleaves even to the heart of an intrigante revolted against her avarice. "Nay, poor soul, I'll not take it," said she; and put her hands before her eyes not to see it, for she knew she could not look at it long and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... a benefactor of humanity, but why not tap the wealth of the Incas! If the mere invention of a folding toothbrush could open the sacred precincts of Fifth Avenue, what realms beyond the dreams of avarice were waiting for him who should revolutionize ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... responsibility for, the economic relations of society. An unjust distribution of goods, the withholding from the producer of his fair share of the wealth which he creates, profiteering, predatory riches—these were ranked under one term as avarice, and they were counted not among the venial offenses, like aberrations of the flesh, but avarice was considered one of the seven deadly sins of the spirit. The application of the ethics of Jesus to social control ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed have taken it for flattery, but she did, and literally gave me a box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her languages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained me at first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian, all men servants, and something she calls an old secretary, but whose age ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... discontented Duke of Guienne in France, had been vanquished by Charles Martel, who derived that humble but glorious surname from the event we are now to record. Charles had left Eude the enjoyment of his dukedom, provided that he held it as a fief from the crown; but blind with ambition and avarice, Eude adopted a scheme which threw Christianity itself, as well as Europe, into a crisis of peril which has never since occurred. By marrying a daughter with a Mahometan emir, he rashly began an intercourse with the Ishmaelites, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Nicklaus Wagner announced that the spirit of avarice was still active as ever in his bosom. Even Baptiste, who had lost all his dogmatism and his disposition to command, under the imposing omens which had now made themselves apparent even to him, loudly joined in the protest against this waste of property. It is rare ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Aventine is glory's tomb; her pomp and power lie low in dust. Our land, more favored, had its Pilgrim Fathers. On shores of solitude at Plymouth Rock, they planted a nation's heart,—the rights of conscience, imperishable glory. No dream of avarice or ambition broke their exalted purpose, theirs was the wish to reign in hope's ...
— Pulpit and Press (6th Edition) • Mary Baker Eddy
... fell a victim to the avarice of Omar, who desired to possess himself of the Jew's wealth. Being an autocrat, he easily found means to accomplish his purpose. He invited Bacri to the palace, conversed affably for a time, and then bowed him out with a smile. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... at the will of avarice, for the aid of cruelty and injustice; it was an African slaver—the schooner Panda. She was commanded by Don Pedro Gilbert, a native of Catalonia, in Spain, and son of a grandee; a man thirty-six years of age, and exceeding handsome, having a round face, pearly teeth, round forehead, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... summed up as a respect for ecclesiastics. The spread of this misconception inflamed every worthless fellow with an intense desire to enter holy orders, and thus the love of diffusing God's religion degenerated into sordid avarice and ambition. Every church became a theater, where orators, instead of church teachers harangued, caring not to instruct the people, but striving to attract admiration, to bring opponents to public scorn, and to preach only novelties and paradoxes, such ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... outrageously misrepresented, and also as an instance of his ordinary conduct towards the servants of his house; it shows too, at the same time, whether the severe economy that he required in his domestic management, and of which I will speak elsewhere, was the result, as has been stated, of sordid avarice, or whether it was not rather a rule of prudence, from which he departed willingly whenever his kindness of heart or his ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... there be any evil propensities, such as a quarrelsome, irritable temper, a love of turbulence and cruelty, selfishness, avarice, jealousy, etc., all of which lie at the base of the brain, they may be for the time entirely suppressed by gentle dispersive manipulations from the organs of such propensities either down toward ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... tenderest ties of human nature, and plunging villages and families into mourning and despair. The hyena, the tiger, the crocodile, are creatures existing by the will of God; the man-stealer is a sin-created monster! The depredations of the former are the effects of hunger; those of the latter avarice—the meanest passion that ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... of New York City real estate held out dazzling opportunities gratifying his acquisitiveness for wealth and power—the wealth that fed his avarice, and the power flowing from the ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief which your avarice has occasioned." ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... a large stock of avarice, ignorance, and vanity, this superior had certain ridiculous peculiarities in his person, such as a hunch upon his back, and distorted limbs, that seemed to attract the satirical notice of Peregrine, who, young as he was, took offence at his want of reverence for ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... by a young girl guided by the courage of love. It was by this path that the beautiful Mary of Vestfjordal went with light and firm foot to meet the friend of her childhood and her beloved, Ejstein Halfvordsen. But the avarice of her father separated them, and Mary's tears and prayers obliged Ejstein to fly, in order to escape the schemes of a treacherous rival against his life. Years passed on, and Mary remained steadfast in ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... washed up on the land from the ocean. Now Licinnius was originally a Gaul but was captured, brought among Romans, and made a slave to Caesar, by whom he was set free, and then by Augustus he had been made procurator of Gaul. He had barbarian avarice and Roman haughtiness, and tried to overthrow every person and thing deemed superior to himself and to annihilate any power which temporarily appeared strong. It was his care to supply himself with plenty ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... his fears and appealed to his avarice. Harry had too much money and some follies, I confessed, but he was sound at heart, and I had hope of making a strong man of him, and of course his money might be a great lever ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller
... sister of Mr Morgan's, who till then had kept his house and he intended should still remain in it; for as through the partiality of an aunt who had bred her up she was possessed of a large fortune, her brother, in whom avarice was the ruling passion, was very desirous of keeping in ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... the law, one man might trail another with murder stronger than avarice in his heart, and none ever be the wiser. To hide secrets such as these the unfathomed mountains reached out their ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... about Alice's "things"—Alice was being re-costumed from garret to cellar, with a walking-dress and walking-boots to measure, and a bride's costume of the most ravishing description, and stockings and such like beyond the dreams of avarice—and a constant and increasing dripping into the house of irrelevant remarkable objects, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the money realised by the sale of her possessions, which she intends to give to the poor. Her face displays contempt for money and other earthly things, which she seems to abhor, while the usurers are the very picture of human avarice and greed. Similarly the face of one who is counting the money, which he appears to be communicating to the notary who is writing, is very fine, for although his eyes are turned towards the notary, yet he keeps his hand over the money, thus betraying his greed, avarice, and mistrust. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Parthians had brought him to his death. [14] So Sabinus gave thence a signal to the Romans to fall upon the Jews, although he did not himself venture so much as to come down to his friends, and thought he might expect that the others should expose themselves first to die on account of his avarice. However, the Romans ventured to make a sally out of the place, and a terrible battle ensued; wherein, though it is true the Romans beat their adversaries, yet were not the Jews daunted in their resolutions, even when they had ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... object of preventing renewed intercourse with the Loyalists and the restitution of Loyalist property. 'The proceedings of these people,' wrote Sir Guy Carleton, 'are not to be attributed to politics alone—it serves as a pretence, and under that cloak they act more boldly, but avarice and a desire of rapine ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... they introduce a miser, make him address his gold as his mistress; as something to be seen, felt, and hugged; as capable of satisfying two of the senses at least. The substitution of a thin, unsatisfying medium in the place of the good old tangible metal, has made avarice quite a Platonic affection in comparison with the seeing, touching, and handling pleasures of the old Chrysophilites. A bank-note can no more satisfy the touch of a true sensualist in this passion, than Creusa could return her husband's embrace in the shades. See the Cave ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... tortoise. I have read somewhere that the race is not always to the swift. You must treat your fellow men and women as if you had just arrived on this earth from the planet Mars. You must dig through the strata of conventionality to the virgin soil beneath. The great human passions are lust and avarice, though they take a thousand forms, in many of which they have more polite names. For instance, the former, when kept within polite boundaries, is usually known as Love. As Avarice makes but a sorry theme for the romantic writer, Love is the subject that ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... a gentle Avarice And hoard the soft Allurements that entice; For One will come who holds the Golden Means To buy your ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... swing himself nimbly up the face of the great rock. Werper, clawing fearfully during the perilous ascent, sweating in terror, almost palsied by fear, but spurred on by avarice, following upward, until at last he stood upon the summit of the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin's death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, abrief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.[9] The author's relation to his parents is adapted directly ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... able to give your Hon'ble House of Commons such satisfaction as was Expected from me. I hope I have not offended against the Law, but if I have, It was the fault of others who knew better, and made me the Tool of their Ambition and Avarice, and who now perhaps think it their Interest that I should be removed out of ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... shine to be seen in the heap of copper, but one of the gleaming sixpences was almost sure to have dropped from the hand of Thomas Crann. Not that this generosity sprung altogether from disinterested motives; for the fact was, that he had a morbid fear of avarice; a fear I believe not altogether groundless; for he was independent in his feelings almost to fierceness—certainly to ungraciousness; and this strengthened a natural tendency to saving and hoarding. The consciousness ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... slaves northward of Maryland. In Maryland, I do not find such a disposition to begin the redress of this enormity, as in Virginia. This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice, in conflict with avarice and oppression: a conflict wherein the sacred side is gaining daily recruits, from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty, as it were, with their mothers' ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... remained for him was to look back upon an unbroken line of seduction and profligacy—upon wealth and influence not merely abused, but prostituted to the lowest and grossest purposes of our worst passions—upon systematic crime—unmanly treachery—and that dishonest avarice which constituted the act of heartless desertion in himself the ultimate ruin and degradation of his victims. Such was this well known squire of the old school, whose portrait, taken from life, will be recognized by every one who ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... vault, coffer, and garde-robe—stall and meuse.-are well nigh drained," answered the monk, with a sour look at the Norman, whose native avarice gleamed in his dark eyes as ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wide, with her leading families connected by marriage with those of Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important relations with the South, there was no city—not even Baltimore—that was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,—that horrid blending of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens, having first ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the dreams of avarice." They spoke in low tones, and there was something in the hush that suggested to Colville the feasibility of taking into his unoccupied hand one of the pretty hands which the pale night-light showed him lying in Mrs. Bowen's lap. But he forbore, and only sighed. "Well, then, I will say ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... was so hard for boys, where temptations and danger stood all round her boy's pathway. Not only hidden perils, concealed from sight, so he might possibly escape them, but open temptations, open dangers, made as alluring as private avarice could make them, and made as respectable as dignified legal enactments could make them,—all to draw her boy down the pathway his poor father descended." For one of the curius things about Cicely wuz, she didn't seem to blame Paul hardly a mite, nor not so very ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... that it is not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... earthly passions which bind them to familiar scenes, they are enticed by the opportunities which mediums afford to gratify them vicariously. They are the Pishachas, the Incubi and Succubae of mediaeval times; the demons of thirst, gluttony, lust, and avarice—Elementaries of intensified craft, wickedness, and cruelty; provoking their victims to horrid crimes, and revelling in their commission! They not only ruin their victims, but these psychic vampires, borne along by the torrent of their hellish ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... early manhood and pulled off the biggest business deal of his life; here you find the first milepost that the American mining engineer set up in the mineral development of Africa: here is produced in greater quantities than in any other place in the world the glittering jewel that vanity and avarice set ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... he had never been a man greedy of money, so was he now more indifferent to it than in his earlier days. It is a mistake, I think, to suppose that men become greedy as they grow old. The avaricious man will show his avarice as he gets into years, because avarice is a passion compatible with old age,—and will become more avaricious as his other passions fall off from him. And so will it be with the man that is open-handed. Mr. Underwood, when struggling at the Bar, had fought as hard as any of his compeers ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... a lower degree of the same class as the third-rate working farmer of the past. He is the old small dairy farmer in a coarser shape. With a little less education, ruder manners, with the instincts of eating, drinking, and avarice more prominently displayed, he presents in his actual condition at this day a striking analogy to the agriculturist of a bygone time. In fact, those farmers of twenty or thirty acres, living in cottage-like homesteads, were barely distinguishable as far as personnel ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... quiet wombe Of his great Grandmother{26} with steele to wound, And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe With Sacriledge to dig. Therein he fownd Fountaines of gold and silver to abownd, Of which the matter of his huge desire And pompous pride eftsoones he did compownd; Then avarice gan through his veines inspire His greedy ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... they sink deep into the hearts of sinners; set up a glass in which vice sees its own image, and bring back many from the paths of error into the high-road of repentance. What a heavenly sight, when a miser, scared at the hideous picture of his avarice drawn by my eloquence, opens his coffers to the poor and needy, and dispenses the accumulated store with a liberal hand! The voluptuary, too, is snatched from the pleasures of the table; ambition ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... is injurious to the health of our entire body politic. It stifles in those for whose benefit it is permitted all patriotic love of country, and substitutes in its place selfish greed and grasping avarice. Devotion to American citizenship for its own sake and for what it should accomplish as a motive to our nation's advancement and the happiness of all our people is displaced by the assumption that the Government, instead of being the embodiment of equality, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... agents were gradually raised to the rank of knights, the State thereby showing its appreciation of their service and of the importance of money itself. How closely this was connected with the luxury and avarice of the Romans may be imagined. Not so with the Precepts of Knighthood. These persisted in systematically regarding finance as something low—low as compared with moral and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... that neither our sons nor we can allow Clementina to take the veil? Can we so reward Laurana for her cruelty? Especially now, that we suspect the motives for her barbarity? Could I have thought that my sister Sforza—But what will not love and avarice do, their powers united to compass the same end; the one reigning in the bosom of the mother, the other in that of the daughter? Alas! alas! they have, between them, broken the spirit of my Clementina. The very name of Laurana gives her terror—So far is she sensible. But, O ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... his footing: no other was put over his head, and in time he came to be called Roy the bailiff, without having ever been formally appointed as bailiff. He drew his two pounds per week—his stipulated wages—and he made, it is hard to say what, besides. Avarice and tyranny were the predominant passions of Roy's mind; bad qualities, and likely to bring forth bad fruits when ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... almost incapable of retaining it; he himself had the one talent of his race, but was an exception to their incapacity. In justice to our family I may add that we are said to make indulgent husbands and fathers,—two characters incompatible with avarice, and sometimes even with prudence when ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... Claude Seyssel, Archbishop of Turin from the close of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, and whose diocese extended to the valleys of Piedmont, says that the Waldenses took their origin from Leo, a person in the time of ye Emperor Constantine, who, hating the avarice of Pope Sylvester and the immoderate endowment of the Church of Rome, seceded from her communion, and "drew after him all who entertained right sentiments about the ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... Indians were now very rapidly passing away from the native proprietors to the new-comers, and English settlements were every where springing up in the wilderness. The Indian power was evidently declining, while that of the white man was on the increase. With prosperity came avarice. Unprincipled men flocked to the colonies; the Indians were despised, and often harshly treated; and the forbearance which marked the early intercourse of the Pilgrims with the natives was forgotten. The colonists had generally become exasperated ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... that they would murder the people. In order to incite the starvelings against Pierre, Macquart went so far as to circulate a report that the retired oil-dealer was not so poor as he pretended, but that he concealed his treasures through avarice and fear of robbery. His tactics thus tended to rouse the poor people by a repetition of absurdly ridiculous tales, which he often came to believe in himself. His personal animosity and his desire for revenge were ill concealed ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... take her, take her, by all means; you will be the prettiest, finest, loveliest, sweetest couple. Augh! what a delicate dish of matrimony you will make! Her age with your youth, her avarice with your extravagance, and ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's. So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice. Several times he visited the husband and wife, always borrowing considerable sums, and threatening to reveal their crime if they refused him. The first few times the poor creatures gave in to his exactions; but the moment came at last when, robbed of all ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... state, and judging by the rumor of cliques]; a general discontent reigning in the Country, love of his subjects pretty much gone; people speaking of him in no measured terms [in certain cliques]. Cares nothing about those who helped him as Prince Royal, say some; others complain of his avarice [meaning steady vigilance in outlay] as surpassing the late King's; this one complained of his violences of temper (EMPORTEMENS); that one of his suspicions, of his distrust, his haughtinesses, his dissimulation" (meaning polite impenetrability when he saw good). Several circumstances, known to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... people of England to consider how the House of Commons under the operation of these examples must of necessity be constituted. On the side of the Court will be, all honours, offices, emoluments; every sort of personal gratification to avarice or vanity; and, what is of more moment to most gentlemen, the means of growing, by innumerable petty services to individuals, into a spreading interest in their country. On the other hand, let us suppose a person unconnected with the Court, and in opposition to its system. For his own ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... legendary treasures of the New Indies—yet all of them were serving unconsciously the genius of their race in laying the foundations of new worlds. Perhaps of them all Smith saw most clearly the value of the settlement in Virginia, and just as clearly was he aware that the jealousies and avarice of many of his fellow colonists would threaten seriously its growth and indeed ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... them up in his belt, and seemed prepared to defend them with his very life-blood, Guy couldn't conceal from himself-the fact that he fairly despised him. Such vulgar, common-place, unredeemed love of pelf! Such mere bourgeois avarice! Of what use could those wretched pebbles be to him here in the dusty ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to avarice, Teach pride its mean condition, And preach good sense to dull pretence, Was honest Jack's high mission. Our simple statesman found his rule Of moral in the flagon, And held his philosophic school Beneath the "George ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is what you covet, you greedy curmudgeon—that is it? Do not all the crimes you have committed out of avarice weigh upon you heavily enough? Gold, and yet more gold—that is the end, the foul end, of all your desires. A fat morsel, no doubt: the Mukaukas' estates, his talents of gold, his gems, slaves, and horses; I admit that. But thank God the All-merciful, we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... always go to the other side.... To be proud of buying high-priced articles cheap is the good fortune of merchants, but should be unknown to samurai. Let it not be even so much as mentioned.... Samurai must have a care of their words, and are not to speak of avarice, ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... also, what may be the probability of our being able to borrow the whole sum. Under these dispositions and prospects, it would grieve us extremely to see our debt pass into the hands of speculators, and be subjected ourselves to the chicaneries and vexations of private avarice. We desire you, therefore, to dissuade the government, as far as you can prudently, from listening from any overtures of that kind, and as to the speculators themselves, whether native or foreign, to inform them, without ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... be wasted, and worse than wasted; and all this, that the producers and venders may feed and fatten on the gains? This objection lies equally against the temperance reform and every other reform, where cupidity and avarice are involved. ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... chill'd,—like vampire, now, He sucks the life-blood of his friends or foes Until he viler grows than savage beast. And when, at length, stretch'd on his bed of death, And powerless, friendless, o'er his clammy brow The dark'ning shades descend, strong to the last His avarice lives; and while he feebly plucks His wretched coverlet, he gasps for breath, ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to require some simple pleasures and excitement, which would cost money. And money should not be wanting. Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of her age. Only Willie was never stinted nor hindered of anything that the two women thought could give him pleasure, for ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... might see the world a little, for the first time. Her sorrow on this occasion has in it something beautiful, in so bright and gay a woman: shows us the mother strong in her, to a touching degree. The rough cub, in whom she noticed rugged perverse elements, "tendencies to avarice," and a want of princely graces, and the more brilliant qualities in mind and manner, had given her many thoughts and some uneasy ones. But he was evidently all she had to love in the world; a rugged creature inexpressibly ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... greatly mistaken. Chupin had sufficient experience and common sense to read his master's character and discern his motives. He saw plainly enough that this honest impulse on M. Fortunat's part came from disappointed avarice and wounded vanity, and that the agent would have allowed the Marquis de Valorsay to carry out his infamous scheme without any compunctions of conscience, providing he, himself, had not been injured by it. Still, the young fellow did not allow his real ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... and taste are afterwards very different, entirely from the careless way in which they have been cooked. They are in greatest perfection when in greatest plenty, i.e., when in full season. By season, we do not mean those early days, when luxury in the buyers, and avarice in the sellers about London, force the various vegetables, but the time of the year in which, by nature and common culture, and the mere operation of the sun and climate, they are ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... hitherto competitors, would disappear. The world would wear a smile instead of a frown! Brotherly love between man and man, would become the rule in place of the exception! Gold would lose its charm! Avarice would pass away! Selfish instincts, born of bitter years under a cruel system would soon follow! Long dormant, spiritual natures would be awakened! A new spiritual growth would take place! A vastly ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... very much, my child,' he continued, sympathetically, 'if it turned out that he had either' altered his mind or by some accident had neglected to make his will? I speak as your father, Janey, and I think I have some knowledge of your character. I think I know that you are as free from avarice as anyone could be.' ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... concealed the heart of an Atheist.' Now, these priests were also the philosophers of Rome, and it is not impossible that some modern philosophical priests, like their Pagan prototypes, secretly despise the religion they openly profess. Avarice, and lust of power, are potent underminers of human virtue. The mighty genius of Bacon was not proof against them, and he who deserves to occupy a place among 'the wisest and greatest' has been 'damned to eternal fame' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderate desire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is kept within due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty (modestia). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have no contraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chastity are not emotions (passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the former are moderated, and which is discussed later under ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... acting rashly, that a bet of twenty thousand pounds was at stake, that the elephant was absolutely necessary to him, and that he would secure him if he had to pay twenty times his value. Returning to the Indian, whose small, sharp eyes, glistening with avarice, betrayed that with him it was only a question of how great a price he could obtain. Mr. Fogg offered first twelve hundred, then fifteen hundred, eighteen hundred, two thousand pounds. Passepartout, usually so rubicund, was fairly white ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... products of fear, insanity, idiocy, paralysis of various muscles and organs, profuse perspiration, cholerina, jaundice, sudden decay of teeth, fatal anaemia, skin diseases, erysipelas, and eczema. Passion, sinful thought, avarice, envy, jealousy, selfishness, all press for external bodily expression. Even false philosophies, false theology, and false conceptions of God make their unwholesome influence felt in every bodily tissue. By infallible law, mental ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... growing woodland that might have made their owners rich at some later day were sacrificed to his greed of gain. You had to give him half your trees to make him give half price for the rest. Some men yielded to him out of ignorance, or avarice for immediate gains, and others out of bitter necessity. Once or twice he had even brought men to their knees and gained his point by involving them in money difficulties, through buying up their mortgages and notes. He could sell ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... conclusions appear to us to be scarcely warranted. If the extensive or even universal practice of a thing proves its necessity, then has there been justification, either now or in the past, for war, lying, avarice and other vices. It is strange that drugs differing so greatly in their immediate and obvious effects as, for example, alcohol and opium, or coffee and tobacco should be used. Should it he said that only some of the much used stimulants are useful, there is an end to the argument based on their universal ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... contemporaries by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... new division of the lands. For he found a prodigious inequality, the city overcharged with many indigent persons, who had no land, and the wealth centred in the hands of a few. Determined, therefore, to root out the evils of insolence, envy, avarice, and luxury, and those distempers of a state still more inveterate and fatal, I mean poverty and riches, he persuaded them to cancel all former divisions of land, and to make new ones, in such a manner that they might be perfectly equal in their possessions and way of ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... few years there was peace in the grasslands, and the settlers prospered as others joined. But it was not always so. For with more settlers came greed and avarice. Laws were made, regulations were had, rules announced and they were not always fair. Greed, sometimes sat in the councils, and the avaricious bent the rules. Then, there were other wars in which justice and fairness ran not ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... yet she did not go to bed. She feared to sleep, to lose the consciousness of her joy of the glory which had come into her life. She was a miser of the golden hours of this black and howling night. To sleep would be to be robbed. A splendid avarice in her rebelled against ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and, among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' 'These,' said the Genius, 'are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love, with the like cares and passions that infest ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... rather by reason of his avarice and grasping disposition; for, indeed, he was Theodoromedes originally ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... of the kind, ensues. Commonly, however, the tragedy is different from this, and deeper. Commonly, in these cases, action loses height as it gains lateral surface; the superior faculties starve, being robbed of sustenance by this avarice of performance, and consequently of supply, on the part of the lower,—they sit at second table, and eat of remainder-crumbs. The delicate and divine sprites, that should bear the behests of the soul to the will and to the houses of thought in the brain her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... heard the Earth-song I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... enraged pessimist; and I could believe, that he seriously attributed to Providence, some quality inconceivably malignant, directed in all things personally against himself. His immense bitterness and his careful avarice, alike, I could explain, and in a measure justify, when I came to understand that he had felt the sharpest stings of poverty, and, moreover, was passionately in love, in love comme on ne l'est plus. As to what ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... tomb— Be proud today, oh, portico of gloom!— Where lies the man in solitary state Who never caused a tear but when he died And set the flags around the world half-mast— The gentle Tribune and so grandly great That e'en the utter avarice of Death That claims the world, and will not be denied, Could only rob him of his mortal breath. How strange the splendor, though the man be past! His noblest inspiration was his last. The statues of the Capitol are there. As when he stood upon the marble stair ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... profession to which the man belongs. He is thoroughly conversant with questions of taxation and income and the agricultural conditions. He is not ignorant of the fact that Grandet cannot make his fortune by the same methods employed by Gobseck, his rival in avarice; nor Ferdinand du Tillet, that jackal, with the same magnitude of operations worked out by that elephant of a Nucingen. He has outlined and measured the exact relation of each character to his environment ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... You have come to gamble, and your gambling is attended by every form of intemperance and immorality. I am not afraid to tell you so, for God has laid upon me a plain message, and I intend to do my duty. These race-courses are not for horse-racing, but for reservoirs of avarice and drunkenness and prostitution. Don't think"—he was looking straight into the painted faces of the women in pink and yellow, who were trying to smile and look amused—"don't think I am going to abuse the unhappy girls who are forced by a corrupt civilization to live by their looks. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Spanish councils, to discontinue and to discourage any farther researches in that quarter. Already masters of a larger empire on the continent of America than they could conveniently govern, and of richer mines of the precious metals on that continent than they could convert into use, neither avarice nor ambition furnished reasons for aiming at a fresh accession of dominions. And thus, though settled all along the shores of this ocean, in a situation so commodious for prosecuting discoveries throughout its wide extent, the Spaniards remained satisfied with a coasting intercourse between ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... through the rest of his days. Packed about the long tables were young faces flushed with hope or grey with despair; middle-aged faces which expressed excitement or indifference; old, old faces, scarred and lined and seamed, where avarice, selfishness, cruelty, dishonesty crossed and recrossed till human semblance was literally blotted out. Light-o'-loves, gay and careless; hideous old crones, who watched the unwary and stole the unwary's ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... that it should never be made the residence of the general of the East. This interval of repose had been solicited, and was diligently improved, by the ambition of the emperor: his African conquests were the first fruits of the Persian treaty; and the avarice of Chosroes was soothed by a large portion of the spoils of Carthage, which his ambassadors required in a tone of pleasantry and under the color of friendship. [58] But the trophies of Belisarius disturbed the slumbers of the great king; and he heard with astonishment, envy, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... perhaps, may call profound policy, was indispensable to the accomplishment of his projects; and sometimes, as if to keep himself in practice, he would do it in matters of secondary importance. For example, his opinion of the insatiable avarice of Sieyes is well known; yet when he proposed, in his message to the Council of Ancients, to give his colleague, under the title of national recompense, the price of his obedient secession, it was, in the words of the message, a recompense worthily ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... absorbing study of the effects of heredity; 'L'Auberge rouge' is an analysis of remorse, as is also 'Un Drame au bord de la mer'; while 'L'Enfant maudit' is an analysis of the effects of extreme sensibility, especially as manifested in the passion of poetic love. Finally, 'Maitre Cornelius' is a study of avarice, in which is set a remarkable portrait of Louis XI.; 'Les Proscrits' is a masterly sketch of the exile of Dante at Paris; and 'Jesus-Christ en Flandre' is an exquisite allegory, the most delicate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... of colonization remained long unknown on the New Continent. If the Spaniards visited its shores, it was only to procure, either by violence or exchange, slaves, pearls, grains of gold, and dye-woods; and endeavours were made to ennoble the motives of this insatiable avarice by the pretence of enthusiastic zeal in ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... numbers which diminished the comfort or increased the toil of the mass would then cause (which now it does not) immediate and unmistakable inconvenience to every individual in the association; inconvenience which could not then be imputed to the avarice of employers, or the unjust ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... doubt, that the corrupt lives of Christians in the later centuries of the middle ages, the avarice of the Avignon popes, the selfishness shown in the great schism, the simony and nepotism of the Roman court of the fifteenth century, excited disgust and hatred toward Christianity in the hearts of the literary men of the Renaissance, which disqualified them for the reception of the Christian evidences; ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Plowman: [Footnote: The Plowman's Tale, which was printed as one of the Canterbury Tales in Speght's editions. It is now rejected by all authorities.] yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest deserved the lashes which he gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury tales: neither has his contemporary Boccace spared them. Yet both these poets lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Mankind. The World is avaritious, and I hate Avarice. A covetous fellow, like a Jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the Robbers of Mankind, for Money was made for the Free-hearted and Generous, and where is ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay |
