"Usurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rather she sells them to you; she at last becomes lower than a chorus girl, for she prostitutes herself to her husband. In her sweetest kisses there is money; in all her words there is money. In playing this part her heart becomes like lead towards you. The most polished, the most treacherous usurer never weighs so completely with a single glance the future value in bullion of a son of a family who may sign a note to him, than your wife appraises one of your desires as she leaps from branch to branch like an escaping squirrel, in order to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... to a very doleful tune. How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she long'd to eat adders' heads ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... oligarchy; and they encourage expensive habits in order that they may gain by the ruin of extravagant youth. Thus men of family often lose their property or rights of citizenship; but they remain in the city, full of hatred against the new owners of their estates and ripe for revolution. The usurer with stooping walk pretends not to see them; he passes by, and leaves his sting—that is, his money—in some other victim; and many a man has to pay the parent or principal sum multiplied into a family of children, and is reduced into a state of dronage by him. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... rather a weird case to me," said T. X., as he came back to the table, "can't you see the unusual features yourself, Lexman! It isn't unusual for you to owe money and it isn't unusual for the usurer to demand the return of that money, but in this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with a loaded revolver. Another peculiar thing ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced to work. [653]"For I see no reason" (as [654]he said) "why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, when as in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual labour, as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Hence the peasant suffers, and except a generally futile appeal to the Rajah, he has no redress. The law secures him tenure as long as he can pay his rent, and to do this he has recourse to the usurer; borrowing in spring (at 50, and oftener 100 per cent.) the seed, plough, and bullocks: he reaps in autumn, and what is then not required for his own use, is sold to pay off part of his original debt, the rest standing over till the next season; and thus it continues to accumulate, till, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... my friend the usurer's," said Bixiou. "His name is Vauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describe our manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days all trades change. The grocer becomes a peer ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... various loans, with relatively easy terms, were contracted for amounts of 90, 110 and 150 millions. One saw the peasant, who a short time before had sold his harvest while it was still green (zeleno) to the local usurer (hence called the "Zelenac"), now demanding every day by telegram via Belgrade or Smederevo the market prices at Antwerp. In 1895 Serbia had sunk to such depths that a Dalmatian leader said openly to a German journalist that the Yugoslav idea could only be realized by Bulgaria; in 1910 the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... now and then to send parcels of his little furniture of plate to pawn upon usury; and that he did so oft, till no more could be sent. After the same manner went his wives' jewels of gold, rings, bracelets, chains, and other their rarities, under the thraldom of the usurer's gripes: 'till non plus was written upon the boxes at home." In the 11th chapter, he anticipates the dreadful lot of being brought "to the stepping out of doors (his house being sold). He, and his, with bottles and wallets furnished, to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... all evils, to borrow money is perhaps the worst. If of a friend, he ceases to be one the moment you feel that you are bound to him by the heavy clog of obligation. If of a usurer, the interest, in this country, soon doubles the original sum, and you owe an increasing debt, which in time swallows up all ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse; but he, as Jortin ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... principles of Machiavel. With the most sordid love of money he combined boorish manners. Lies [of the distilled kind chiefly] had so become a habit with him, that he had altogether lost notion of employing truth in speech. It was the soul of a usurer, inhabiting now the body of a war-captain, now transmigrating into that of a huckster. False oaths, and the abominablest basenesses, cost him nothing, so his object might be reached. He was miserly with his own, but lavish with ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and alderman as ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... course of hoarding up all his savings, until it became a passion with him. After a while he retired from business, but the passion clung to him with all the tenacity of a long established habit, and he became a usurer. He was known to all the young profligates, the bad young men who throng our city, and became as necessary to them as the poor avaricious Jew was in former days to the spendthrifts and gamesters in London. He told me frightful stories, my children, of tyranny and fraud, of ruined ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... Venetian people, and how they are all perfect in the faith of Jesu Christ and obedient to holy Church, and how they never disobey the commandment of holy Church. Within this noble Venice there dares to dwell neither heretic, nor usurer, murderer, thief nor robber. And I will tell you the names of all the Doges that have been in Venice, one after the other, and what they did to the honour of holy Church and of their noble City. And I will tell you the names of the noble captains whom the noble Doges sent in their time to lay ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... tells us a similar tale: A merchant of Venice, having been informed by private letter that Drake had taken and plundered St. Domingo, sent word to Sampson Ceneda, a Jewish usurer. Ceneda would not believe it, and bet a pound of flesh it was not true. When the report was confirmed the pope told Secchi he might lawfully claim his bet if he chose, only he must draw no blood, nor take either more or less than an exact pound, on the penalty ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... behind them an operative model, in Germany, as now constituted. Other walks of emolument are still more despised. Alfieri, a continental "noble," that is, a born gentleman, speaks of bankers as we in England should of a Jewish usurer, or tricking money-changer. The liberal trades, such as those which minister to literature or the fine arts, which, with us, confer the station of gentleman upon those who exercise them, are, in the estimate of a continental "noble," fitted to assign a certain rank or place ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... dividing his face and distracting one's attention from his eyes. We sat down to tea, and he told the other men the tale of our meeting, omitting any mention of the fourteen pounds, however, for which I was rather glad. I shouldn't like those chaps to think I was a bally usurer. I made a move to go, but he wouldn't hear of it. I was to go to his place to dinner. We went in the car. It was more like an omnibus than a private vehicle. I sat beside him as we flew down Dover Street, across Piccadilly and into St. James'. He told me he had sold three ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... O'Combe, who we thought might have hailed from the neighbourhood of the old abbey of that name which we passed the night before. In spite of his benefactions recorded in the church, he was looked upon as a usurer, because he charged 10 per cent, for his money. He was at one time a friend of Shakespeare, and often asked the poet, who was no doubt acquainted with his rate of interest, to write him an epitaph. When at length he acceded to his request he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... Sherwood ye shall bring to dine With Robin, saving carriers, posts and folk That ride with food to serve the market towns Or any, indeed, that serve their fellow men. Fifth, you shall never do the poor man wrong, Nor spare a priest or usurer. You shall take The waste wealth of the rich to help the poor, The baron's gold to stock the widow's cupboard, The naked ye shall clothe, the hungry feed, And lastly shall defend with all your power All that are trampled under ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... smallest cost afford; Though ne'er so mean the viands be, They well content my Prue and me: Or pea or bean, or wort or beet, Whatever comes, Content makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement; Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night: We eat our own, and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of other's meat. ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... the roads; had been a kind of toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer. His reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... mind about the signature and discharging the amount claimed! If the continuance of the prosecution had depended on either payer or payee, this would have been the end of it. What the creditor—a usurer—wanted was his money, not revenge. Indeed, Thornton would never have been made the subject of a criminal indictment at his instance, except to put pressure on Isaac Runciman for payment for ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... convenient he seems to be a power. So soon as the State is intelligent enough and strong enough it can do without him. It can take what it wants, and tell him to go and hang himself. That is the melancholy ultimate of the usurer. That is the quintessence of "finance." All credit is State-made, and what the State has made the State can alter ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Karpathy, contemptuously. A feeling of noble pride awoke within him for an instant, and he coldly withdrew his arm from the banker's hand. "You are only a usurer, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... of German paper will filter right through the Empire. At the same time a German expert, Dr. Kautz, was appointed to start banks throughout Turkey in order to free the peasants from the Turkish village usurer, and in consequence enslave them to the German banks. Similarly a German was put at the head of the Ottoman Agricultural Bank. These new branches worked very well, but it is pleasant to think that ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... decree, which, reviewing the accounts presented by Pierre, disallowed them, and condemned the dishonest guardian to pay his nephew four hundred livres for each year of his administration. The day on which this sum had to be disbursed from his strong box the old usurer vowed vengeance, but until he could gratify his hatred he was forced to conceal it, and to receive attempts at reconciliation with a friendly smile. It was not until six months later, on the occasion of a joyous festivity, that Martin again set foot ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... as far as Wallingford," he said, "and Simeon the usurer, who has a strong guard, will go thence ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... ought rather to fill the audience with horror than pleasure and mirth; and if in the conclusion their plots should be baffled, even this would come too late to prevent that ill impression. But in the Lawsuit this is admirably avoided: for the character chosen is a rich, avaricious usurer: the pecuniary distresses of such a person can never be looked upon with horror; and if he should be even handled unjustly, we always wait ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the guests; "thanks to him, creditors take care of the health of their debtors. This morning a usurer, who feels a particular interest in my existence, brought me all sorts of anti-choleraic drugs, and begged me to make ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Well, then, justice, only justice. Listen, my young friend. Once upon a time, I was deprived of my money and in a disagreeable manner. When I wrote you a courteous letter, asking how much time you needed, you saw fit to answer with an uncourteous note—and treated me as if I were a usurer, a plunderer of widows and children—altho' I was really the one plundered, and you belonged to the plunderer's party. But as I was more judicious, I contented myself with answering your note courteously, but to the point. You know ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... the novelist. [Footnote: Lord Thurlow was accustomed to find a later likeness to Fielding's hero in his protege, the poet Crabbe.] Another tradition connects Mr. Peter Pounce with the scrivener and usurer Peter Walter, whom Pope had satirised, and whom Hogarth is thought to have introduced into Plate i. of Marriage a-la-Mode. His sister lived at Salisbury; and he himself had an estate at Stalbridge Park, which was close to East Stour. From references to Walter in the Champion ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... or stolen on the erection of the present building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker—a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon). After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... my money, my back was turned—and away! As for stooping to coax him as Mowbray would, when he had a point to gain, I could not have done it. To ask Jacob to lend me money, to beg him to give me more time to pay a debt, to cajole and bully him by turns, to call him alternately usurer and my honest fellow, extortioner and my friend Jacob—my tongue could not have uttered the words, my soul detested the thought; yet all this, and more, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... spoken of in the Revelations." The "moderate" Udall, after publishing a dialogue (in which an Anglican bishop called Diotrephes is represented, among other things, as planning measures against the Puritans in consort with a papist and an usurer), further composed a Demonstration of Discipline in which, writing, according to Mr. Arber, "without any satire or invective," he calls the bishops merely qua bishops, "the wretched fathers of a filthy mother," with ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... drunken usurer, stumpy and fat, choleric, a coward, and a bully. He fancies money will buy everything and every one.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... strangest of all, good comrade," I observed pleasantly to the tripping presence at my elbow, "is that these countrymen of yours who shirk to climb a flight of steps, and have palms as soft as rose petals, these wide ways paved with stones as hard as a usurer's heart." ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Antonio more than he valued money, and this hatred, though it may have its root in love of money, half redeems him in our eyes. Shakespeare could not imagine a man who loved money more than anything else; his hated and hateful usurer is more a man of passion than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... humanized, solicit the attentions of their feathered ladies, and fly with gay inspirations amongst the neighbouring bushes. But though as much in love as a widow, the woodcock does not on that account forget its habitual prudence; like the usurer who lends his money, and takes every precaution, the woodcock is equally careful, and does not leave its nest till twilight has draped the earth in the gray mantle of evening. When the humid atmosphere descends slowly on the ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... mind to prefer you to Monsieur de Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and, although these ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... be disastrously torn by any considerable war; and that in consequence it is to the interest of the usurers to preserve peace. But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear differentiation. It may easily be to the interest of a particular usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr. Angell anticipates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers to fight is very probable. That such a nation would not ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... Alan Hawke cheerfully joined his obese and crafty friend and host, Ram Lal Singh. For an hour the soft, oily voice of the old jewel merchant flowed on in a purring monologue. The ease and mastery of the Conqueror's language showed that the usurer had well studied the masters of Delhi. Sixty years had given Ram Lal added cunning. A crafty conspirator of the old days when the mystic "chupatties" were sent out on their dark errand, the sly jewel merchant ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... as nurse for Rosia the wife of Bonamy the rich usurer, and Pucella would be no good,—she's as frightened of the fever as a chicken, and she has ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Usurer, Old fat Guts he came grunting; The Devil left all care, For joy he fell a Jumping—To ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... "You must know," said she, "that my husband's birthday approaches, and I wish to surprise him with a gift. It is therefore necessary that I raise some money without troubling him. How much—abominable usurer!—could you ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... backwoods usurer, "I'll charge you twelve per cent. I do love a good interest. There is no Antonio about me. I'll lend no money gratis and bring down the rate ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... body of the day before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable. Janet knew what was in his mind. She drew the lamb a little closer and tucked her skirt in around it. Again she fell to contemplating the prairie—and the sky. The birds ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... 'ballad in print,' which Mopsa says she loves—'for then we are sure it is true.' Immediately after, however, we discover that the 'ballad in print' is the broadside, the narrative ballad, sung of a usurer's wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as Martin Mar-sixtus says (1592), 'scarce a cat can look out of a ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... muscular, agricultural people, marked by all the characteristics of a peasantry of the highest character." With them the colonies began to flourish, the debts were paid off, and a better regime set in. "There was no crime or drunkenness," says Bentwich, "in those settlements, and the only usurer was a Russian peasant, who charged the Jewish borrowers thirty-six per cent for loans. If ever I saw practical religion carried into daily life, it was among those brave ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Thermopylae. Next to him was the Austrian diplomatist, the Sosia of all cabinets, in whose gay address and rattling conversation you could hardly recognise the sophistical defender of unauthorised invasion, and the subtle inventor of Holy Alliances and Imperial Leagues. Then came the rich usurer from Frankfort or the prosperous merchant from Hamburgh, who, with his wife and daughters, were seeking some recreation from his flourishing counting-house in the sylvan gaieties of a German bathing-place. Flirting with these was an adventurous dancing-master from Paris, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... show you that I am not a usurer, I will decline to ask of you a single kopeck for the serfs. All that you need do is to buy that colt of mine, and then I will throw in ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... profession of the liberal arts: but every other branch of commercial industry was affected by the severity of the law. The honorable merchant of Alexandria, who imported the gems and spices of India for the use of the western world; the usurer, who derived from the interest of money a silent and ignominious profit; the ingenious manufacturer, the diligent mechanic, and even the most obscure retailer of a sequestered village, were obliged to admit the officers of the revenue into the partnership of their gain; and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... unlocked the treasure houses of souls, and brought its own soul to each body. All came to life except one man, who, as God explained to the prophet, was excluded from the resurrection because he was a usurer. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... The one-eyed usurer looked wicked at this remark, but he said nothing, being occupied at the moment rolling up a paper cigar with one hand, and wetting the brown ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... years flit by And after them at headlong pace The evanescent fashions fly In motley and amusing chase. The world is ever altering! Farthingales, patches, were the thing, And courtier, fop, and usurer Would once in powdered wig appear; Time was, the poet's tender quill In hopes of everlasting fame A finished madrigal would frame Or couplets more ingenious still; Time was, a valiant general might Serve who could neither ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... long ago that you were an old usurer," Cabinska was thinking, tinkling her glass ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... always happy and careless Marie Antoinette, had shed tears? Oh, my God!" she cried, raising her large eyes to heaven, "I have today paid interest enough for my happiness; preserve for me at least the capital, and I will cheerfully pay the world the highest rates, such as only a miserly usurer can desire." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... that greeted us with a shrewd and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious confidence, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... called it a lark? Do you think a great fortune will all of a sudden change such a chap as that into an honest man? No, what's ill got is ill spent, and old Giffrey Jenkins's money 'ill never turn to good account. He that grinds the poor, and goes against scripture as a usurer, 'ill never find his son do well. Howel shall never have my consent to marry Netta, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... together. The belted lords of Britain, her ancient peers, must decide, if it is their will that a house, not the least noble of their members, shall be stripped of their possessions, the reward of the patriotism of generations, as the pawn of a wretched mechanic becomes forfeit to the usurer the instant the hour of redemption has passed away. If they yield to the grasping severity of the creditor, and to the gnawing usury that eats into our lands as moths into a raiment, it will be of more evil consequence ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Gray's Inn money-lender. Usury was not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in Charles II.'s London. But the Hon. Francis North was placed comfortably beneath the prejudices of his order and time of life. He was of noble birth, but quite ready to marry into a plebeian family; he was young, but loved money more than aught else. So ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... circumstances. You were bound to keep up appearances, and, in order to do so, got into the hands of Eli Moser, the moneylender. You married Lady Orlebar, and had entered London society when, of a sudden, the scoundrelly usurer began to put the screw upon you. At that moment you—luckily, I think, for yourself—met me, and—well, I was your salvation, for I pointed out to you an easy way by which to pay your creditors and rearrange ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... and Lodge's "Looking Glass for London and England," 1594, a gentleman thus addresses a usurer, in hopes of inducing him to relent: "I pray you, sir, consider that my loss was great by the commodity I took up: you know, sir, I borrowed of you forty pounds, whereof I had ten pounds in money, and thirty pounds in lute-strings, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... upon essaies morall and divine, 1615," dedicated to Bacon, and concerning wisdom, learning, knowledge, patience, love, peace, war and other, even then, rather trite subjects. "The good and badde," 1616, contains characters of a knave, an usurer, a virgin, a parasite, a goodman, an "atheist or most badde man: hee makes robberie his purchase, lecherie his solace, mirth his exercise, and drunkennesse his glory," &c. These books of "Characters" were extremely popular. Cf. ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of incidents of which the issue is life or death, happiness or misery, to men and women perfectly unknown to them, and to whom they are unknown. Attorneys of all possible grades, law clerks of every conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in the dramas I have named was extended, and was genuine. In Daddy Hardacre, a skilful adaptation of the usurer in Balzac's "Eugenie Grandet," he was tremendous. It made me more than ever wishful to see him in the griping, ruthless Overreach, foiled at last in his wicked ambition and driven to frenzy by the destruction of the document by which he thought to satisfy his lust ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... wear. I am going to dine with the Kellers and my mistress to-night," he continued; "and to me it is easier to find thirty sous than two hundred francs, so I keep my wardrobe here. It has brought the charitable usurer a hundred francs in the last six months. Samanon has devoured my library already, volume by volume" ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... for a little variety, once met a beggar with whom he exchanged garments. Soon after, meeting four other mendicants, Robin joined them, and having gotten into a quarrel with them had the satisfaction of routing all four. A little later he met an usurer, whom he gradually induced to reveal the fact that he had never lost his money because he always carried his fortune in the thick soles of his shoes. Of course Robin immediately compelled the usurer to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... for his pithy analysis of character, I enlarged upon my theme. "He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he'll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, and gets a fresh sample every time. Even against the Bonnie Lassie, ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Francesco Vertua, or else you would have no fault to find with us and our behaviour towards him; you would rather approve of it. For let me tell you that this Vertua, a Neapolitan by birth, who has been fifteen years in Paris, is the meanest, dirtiest, most pestilent miser and usurer who can be found anywhere. He is a stranger to every human feeling; if he saw his own brother writhing at his feet in the agonies of death, it would be an utter waste of pains to try to entice a single Louis d'or from him, even if it were to save his brother's ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the hundred thousand francs, the usurer wished to make himself more secure, and asked for a certificate from some one who had seen me. This person was his friend. He spoke to me of a medical man, a specialist, who would understand my case at once. Would I not ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... brood of rage That slumber, tongueless, in their cage; I stabbed in turn with silent oaths The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes, The snaky usurer, him that crawls And cheats beneath the golden balls, Moses and Levi, all the horde, Spawn of the race ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have lost his senses!" said the usurer. "My dear young fellow, I speak to you of millions, of thirty thousand francs yearly, and you ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... amongst her three sons, there should not be a man of superior intellect, who would enrich them all. She felt it, she said. Accordingly, she nursed the children with a fervour in which maternal severity was blended with an usurer's solicitude. She amused herself by fattening them as though they constituted a capital which, later on, would return ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Usurer, for money lent, Making out his cent per cent - Widow plump or maiden rare, Deaf and dumb to suitor's prayer - Tax collectors, whom in vain You implore to "call again" - Cautious voter, whom you find Slow in making up his mind - If you'd move them on ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... in them. Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains, insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer; hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian, one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his precious, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... for foreign fashions pay, And English legs are dress'd th' outlandish way, So fine too, that they their own shadows woo, While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe; I'm mad at Fate, and angry ev'n to sin, To see deserts and learning clad so thin; To think how th' earthly usurer can brood Upon his bags, and weigh the precious food With palsied hands, as if his soul did fear The scales could rob him of what he laid there. Like devils that on hid treasures sit, or those Whose jealous ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... bezants; the synagogue was razed to the ground. In this Close the palace was afterwards built. The wise custom of Normandy was mooted on the spot where the law of Moses had once been taught; and, by a strange, perhaps an ominous, fatality, the judge held the scales of justice, where whilome the usurer had ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow, When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries: No broker's usurer's, or lawyer's gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams. Tut, these are so innate and popular, That drunken custom would not shame to laugh, In ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... was fine and dry. At this moment the artist, who ate his bread with that patient, resigned air that tells so much, heard and recognized the step of a man who had upon his life the influence such men have on the lives of nearly all artists,—the step of Elie Magus, a picture-dealer, a usurer in canvas. The next moment Elie Magus entered and found the painter in the act of beginning his work ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... why I moved away from that place? You'll find it out some day. The man is a usurer ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... continued he who acted the part of leader of the motley crowd; "you have sold your birthright—you have betrayed our interests. What punishment is fit for such a usurer?" ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... manner of life both delightful and lasting, that neither would the people long endure their governors, nor the servant his master, nor the master his footman, nor the scholar his tutor, nor one friend another, nor the wife her husband, nor the usurer the borrower, nor a soldier his commander, nor one companion another, unless all of them had their interchangeable failings, one while flattering, other while prudently conniving, and generally sweetening one another with some ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... Diagoras, the Usurer, in Love with his Cook-Maid; he peeped several times over the Precipice, but his Heart misgiving him, he went back, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... added, with a conscious blush, "you may accuse me of deception in this instance. He has not asked me the sum I owe—and Heaven knows I could not go and thrust my bills in his face. I thought perhaps there was some usurer, whom you had heard of, who could let me have the money. They are debts of honor, and must ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... significance went round the circle. The fame of Eli or "Skinner" Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had passed ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... life," said their prisoner, "and I will give you good money to the sum of one hundred pieces. It is all my savings, which I promised to give into the hands of a wicked usurer ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... yes, you did, with wonderous care, Against his rebels prosecute the war, While he secure in your protection slept; For him you took, but for yourself you kept. Thus, as some fawning usurer does feed, With present sums, the unwary spendthrift's need, You sold your kindness at a boundless rate, And then o'erpaid the debt from his estate; Which, mouldering piecemeal, in your hands did fall, Till now at last you come to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... energy; if he takes the food provided by a Sudra, it dims his Brahmanic lustre; and if he takes the food provided by a goldsmith or a woman who has neither husband nor children it lessens the period of his life. The food provided by a usurer is equivalent to dirt, while that provided by a woman living by prostitution is equivalent to semen. The food also provided by persons that tolerate the unchastity of their wives, and by persons that are ruled by their spouses, is forbidden. The food provided by a person selected ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... charged upon him that he enjoys more than his share of the felicities of life? Is he to be burdened with new expenses lest he should hoard up the publick money, stop the circulation of coin, and turn broker or usurer with twopence a-day? ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... man stands single-handed against our march, we do not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not see Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen." Again she paused a moment, and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle desired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys are always aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he struck boys ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... study the effects of the mode in which Captain Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He gives them to other persons, whom he employs for his own behoof—growers of champagne, jockeys, footmen, jewelers, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... MR. BURLEY.—"Usurer! I sold it to you for three shillings. It is more than one hundred and fifty per cent you propose to gain ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bad business!" said Jacquet, examining the letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. "Ha! that's a gridiron letter! ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... instead of the dwarf demon Le Sage described, I beheld a comely man seated at the table, with a high forehead, a sharp face, and a pair of spectacles on his nose. He was employed in reading the new novel of "The Usurer's Daughter." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... the nameless words that slip From darkening soul to whitening lip. The snaky usurer,—him that crawls, And cheats beneath the golden balls, The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes— I stabbed them deep with muttered oaths: Spawn of the rebel wandering horde That stoned the saints, and ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... salvation, for he remembered how many a time he had ruthlessly fleeced the widow and the orphan. Moreover, he had robbed Florent Guillaume of his scrivenry at the sign of Our Lady. He was used to lend at high interest on sound security. Yet could no man infer he was a usurer, forasmuch as he was a Christian, and it was only the Jews practised usury,—the Jews, and, if you will, the Lombards and ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... in the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the noblest Romans of the day, only second, if second, to Cato in general virtue and philosophy. In this trade ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... the sword. They are frequently borne away with such a desperate ardor, that, when the loser has given up his arms, the only part of his property which he greatly values, he sets the power over his life at a single cast to the winner or usurer. It is a fact, that a person, known to the Roman emperor, paid the price of a servitude which he had by this means brought upon himself, by suffering death at ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... architects, physicians, jewellers, stationers, printers, upholsterers and other artisans, each name being given in full with the professions, addresses and one of the following qualifications, "hypocrite (tartufe), immoral, dishonest, bankrupt, informer, usurer, cheat," not to mention others that I cannot write down. It must be noted that this slanderous list may become a proscriptive list, and that in every town and village in France similar lists are constantly drawn up and circulated by the local ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... usurer's grasp released the forfeit land; The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand, And all men took his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... "There is every inducement to be wicked in this world. But I will say this of myself—and I dare say everybody else can say the same—that when I am good I am as good as gold, for I realise perfectly well my unusual estate and become a very usurer of virtue. But this is of rare occurrence, seeing that I am an actor. By ordinary, for the fifteen years that I have been in the world, I am ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed. The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter day. The politician would be contented to loose three years of his life, could he place things in the posture which he fancies ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... steadily pursued his great design, until death released him from the severe servitude to which he had bound himself. But, save in this entire self-abnegation and social exclusion, Mr. McDonogh had none of the habits of the miser. He was not a usurer, a money-lender, or a speculator. He did not extort his riches from the distresses and weaknesses of his fellow-men. He acquired by legitimate purchase, by entries on public lands. He dealt altogether in land. Stocks, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... delays of the court. He received a hint from some of the hangers-on of the Chancellor that a present of one hundred pounds would expedite matters. The poor man had not the sum required. However, having found out an usurer who accommodated him with it at high interest, he carried it to York House. The Chancellor took the money, and his dependants assured the suitor that all would go right. Aubrey was, however, disappointed; for, after considerable delay, "a killing decree" was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. The strategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded out the memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidences to-night, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of a business interest subjected first to excommunication—literally—and then to outlawry, is that of the usurer, or, in modern parlance, the loan shark. To the mediaeval mind there was something distinctly immoral in an income from property devoted to the furnishing of personal loans. We need not stop to defend the mediaeval position or to ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... through the tortuous passages winding between the piles of furniture, warding off with his hands the perilous swing of my coat tail, observing my elbows with the disquieting concern of an antiquarian and a usurer. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... in the world, great and grievous, and yet few on this score; rather shall men fight as they have been fighting in France at the bidding of some lord of the manor, or some king, or at last at the bidding of some usurer and forestaller of the market. Valiant men, forsooth, shall arise in the beginning of these evil times, but though they shall die as ye shall, yet shall not their deaths be fruitful as yours shall be; because ye, forsooth, are fighting against villeinage which is waning, but they ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... darkness. In this place Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts Of never-dying deaths; there damned souls Roar without pity, there are gluttons fed With toads and adders; there is burning oil Pour'd down the drunkard's throat, 'the usurer Is forced to sup whole draughts of molten gold'; There is the murderer for ever stabb'd, Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton On racks of burning steel, whilst in his soul He feels the torment ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... elder, the magician was visited by one of those worthies known among the Romans by the appellation of haeredipetae, who had amassed a large for-tune by a close attention to the immediate wants and weakness of raw, inexperienced heirs. This honourable usurer had sold an annuity upon the life of a young spendthrift, being thereto induced by the affirmation of his physician, who had assured him his patient's constitution was so rotten, that he could not live one year to an end. He had, nevertheless, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... reproach. "In other places they speak still of the common wealth but every man procureth his private wealth. Here where nothing is private the common affairs be earnestly looked upon." "What justice is this, that a rich goldsmith or usurer should have a pleasant and wealthy living either by idleness or by unnecessary occupation, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters and plowmen by so great and continual toil ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... person shall practise usury at a rate of more than one-twelfth[52] ... [if he do,] a usurer shall be condemned ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... borne by La Tremouille was that of Conseiller-Chambellan, but he was also the Grand Usurer of the kingdom. His debtors were the King and a multitude of nobles high and low.[608] He was therefore a powerful personage. In those difficult days he rendered the crown services self-interested, but none the less valuable. From January to August, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... The usurer foresaw the destruction of his oppressive extortion, and he resisted it with the vigor of his craft. The rich man foresaw his profits diminished on government contracts, and he vehemently and virtuously opposed it on all public principles. Loud therefore ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson |
