"Venality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one saw venality in full feather, serfdom crushing people like a rock, informers lurking everywhere. No one could safely express himself in the presence of his dearest friend. There was no common bond, no general interest. Fear ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... furnished secret information, for whom he procured differential favors, and by whose government he was rewarded by gold chains and presents of hard cash, bestowed as secretly as the equivalent was conveyed adroitly. Nevertheless, although his venality was already more than suspected, and although his peculation, during his long career became so extensive that he was eventually prosecuted by government, and died before the process was terminated, the lord of Grobbendonck was often employed in most delicate negotiations, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... had made an enemy of the girl and to no purpose. I had felt her physical attraction, and I knew that only by putting myself beyond its pale could I be true to my own convictions as to her venality. She was the kind of woman to whom any man, even such a one as I, is fish for her net. A girl may whet her appetite by coquetry and deprave it by flirtation, setting at last such a value upon her skill at seduction that she counts ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was not converted into a Roman province, but into a client State, because the country could not be held without an army on the frontiers. The Jugurthan war was important in its consequences, since it brought to light the venality of the governing lords, and made it evident that Rome must be governed by a degenerate and selfish oligarchy, or by a tyrant, whether in the form of a demagogue, like Gracchus, or ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... can be carried by a cry, there are men of all grades of brilliant ability, ranging from genius to talent To put the matter in plain English will offend neither honesty nor ability, and to give offence to venality or incompetence is not ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... by the species of fame to be derived from men of letters. He knew their venality and their needs. His sumptuous, well-appointed table was placed in grandiose fashion at their disposal. Moreover, he made sure of their attachment and esteem by fees and enormous pensions. The worthy La Fontaine nibbled like others at the bait, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... king and pontiff.[63] Three cardinals took part in the elaboration of the details of the instrument—two on the pontifical, the third on the royal side. The last was the notorious Cardinal Duprat, elevated by Francis to the office of chancellor—a minister of religion who was soon to introduce venality into every department of government. The source of the concordat ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... a more favorable opportunity to assail the sensualism of the century, the venality of consciences, and the corruption instituted by the government: instead of that, what does the Academy of Moral Sciences do? With the most automatic calmness, it establishes a series in which luxury, so long proscribed ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... journalist could conceive; they would alienate our best friends in the long run. The company must take account of things as they are, not as they should be—of Arab savagery, Franco-Tunisian malevolence; of journalistic venality and public credulity. Whoever is not for us is against us. That is why the only papers that dare to criticize our management are those which nobody reads; those, to put it bluntly, which are not worth bribing. For the rest, there is not a writer in the whole country capable of grasping either our ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... such a dangerous and expensive war, it would be improper to think of introducing such an alteration in the form of government. Reasons of equal strength and solidity will never be wanting to the patrons and ministers of corruption and venality. The alteration proposed was nothing less than removing and annulling an encroachment which had been made on the constitution; it might have been effected without the least pang or convulsion, to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Gaguinus's Life of St. Lewis is a sufficient Proof. "As soon (says he) as King Lewis arrived at Paris, he called a General Convention, and therein reformed the Commonwealth; making excellent Statutes relating to the Judges, and against the Venality of Offices, &c." ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... minds; while old Mark, of still more decided and exaggerated ideas of spiritual perfection, distinctly groaned aloud The stranger took a sensible pleasure in this testimony of their abhorrence of so gross and so unworthy a venality, though he saw no occasion to heighten its effect by further speech. When his host stood erect, and, in a voice that was accustomed to obedience, he called on his family to join, in behalf of the reckless ruler of the land of their fathers, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... were ever at the beck of the highest purchaser in the political market. Such a sweeping charge is most unjust; but, if granted, the admission cuts deeply in the opposite direction, requiring no analysis to discover the preponderance of venality. It may happen between the receiver of stolen goods and the thief that impulse to steal is sometimes weakened by uncertainty of market. The Negro delegate has no market to seek; the market is jammed under his nose at every ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... president a mortier was fixed at 350,000 livres, that of a maitre des requetes at 150,000 livres, that of a counselor at 90,000 to 100,000 livres. The place of First President was not venal, but held by appointment. Martin, xiii. 53 and n. The general subject of the venality of offices is considered in the chapter on Taxation.] This, while offering no guarantee of capacity, assured the independence of the judges. As the places were looked on as property, they were commonly transmitted from father ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... a belt of swamps with an annual rainfall of 150 inches into a health-resort. The yellow-lined faces of the American engineers told their own tale, although they had no longer to contend with the fearful mortality from yellow fever which, together with venality and corruption, effectually wrecked Ferdinand de Lesseps' attempt to pierce ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... affair, too,' I answered coolly, disgusted by the man's venality and meanness, and fully persuaded that I must trust him no farther than the length of my sword. 'All I want you to do, M. Fresnoy,' I continued stiffly, 'is to place yourself at my disposal and under my orders ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... failed to annex Crete, and ran the risk, if the Young Turks' experiment succeeded, of seeing the {3} fulfilment of all her national aspirations frustrated for ever. A group of military malcontents in touch with the Cretan leader translated the popular feeling into action: a revolt against the reign of venality and futility which had for so many years paralyzed every effort, which had sometimes sacrificed and always subordinated the interests of the nation to the interests of faction, and now left Greece a prey to Bulgarian and Ottoman ambition. ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the modern arsenal of prostitution which plays the principal role. The proxenets (pimps) exploit both the sexual appetites of men and the weakness and venality of women. Their chief source of gain consisting in the artificial excitation of the male sexual appetite by all possible means, their art consists in dressing their merchandise, the prostitutes, with attractive refinement, especially when dealing with rich clients who ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... corruption in England still remains to be written. No subject has called forth a greater quantity of eloquent vituperation and stinging sarcasm. Three generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughed over the venality of the senate. That venality was denounced on the hustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage; was attacked by Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in stately prose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with festive malice. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... George, now at Windsor, cannot have been pleased that Pitt and Dundas had a state secret which was withheld for him; but he replied on the morrow in terms, part of which Earl Stanhope did not publish. "I am so thoroughly convinced of the venality of that nation [France] and the strange methods used by its Directors in carrying on negotiations that I agree with him [Pitt] in thinking, strange as the proposal appears, that it may ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the clamour be, and how will the same authority foment it, when you proceed to lash, in other instances, our want of elegance even in luxury, and our wild profusion, the source of insatiable rapacity, and almost universal venality? My mind forebodes that the time will come—and who knows how near it may be?—when other powers than those of Grub Street may be drawn forth against you, and when vice and folly may be avowedly sheltered behind a power instituted for better and ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... M.P. for King's Lynn, and Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. He had been Secretary at War from February 1708 to September 1710, and the Commissioners of Public Accounts having reported, on Dec. 21, 1711, that he had been guilty of venality and corruption, he was expelled from the House of Commons, and taken ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... body without whose consent he could not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve the Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and Old Sarum against the venality of their representatives? Was he to send out privy seals? Was he to levy ship-money? If so, this boasted reform must commence in all probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must be consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this, he did not take much notice. He felt that he, himself, Gerald, had harder and more durable truths than any the other man knew. He felt himself older, more knowing. It was the quick-changing warmth and venality and brilliant warm utterance he loved in his friend. It was the rich play of words and quick interchange of feelings he enjoyed. The real content of the words he never really ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the men who denounced oppression, unscrupulousness, and venality, and who in rhetorical pronunciamentos urged the "people" to overthrow the dictators, were often actuated by motives of patriotism, even though they based their declarations on assumptions and assertions, rather than on principles and facts. Not infrequently a liberator ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... a good deal of the affair. I was charged with indifference, with cowardice, with venality. Some journals even declared that I had instigated the lynching and participated in it, and said that I ought to ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Americans, for instance, there is a chorus of complaint on the ground of incivility. Not that Americans shine in this matter of passports for their own country. America sets Europe an unenlightened example of red-tape and venality. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... hit at the venality of Chinese judges in our next story. A husbandman, who wished to rear a particular kind of vegetable, found that the plants always died. He consulted an experienced gardener as to the best means of preventing ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... languish under that enfeebling hot death in the atmosphere, which seemed to wither female beauty in the moment that it ripened. The pallidness of the European beauties, sickly as the clime, disgusted him—their venality still more. Female fortune-hunters were far more intolerable to his delicacy than the coarsest hunter of vermin—fox or hare—ever had been at his uncle's hall, whom he began to esteem, and sincerely mourned—when death had removed all of him from his memory but his kindness, his desire to amuse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... began to be aroused by a succession of statements published by Charles Lucas, a Dublin apothecary, in the Freeman's Journal, a newspaper started by him, and in which he vehemently denounced the venality of Parliament, and loudly asserted the inherent right of Ireland to govern itself, a right of which it had only been formally deprived by the Declaratory Act of George I[15]. So unequivocal was his language that the grand jury of Dublin at last gave orders for his addresses ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... increase of voters in New York City, believing that such an increase would render elections a curse rather than a blessing. But he maintained that the events of the past forty years had discredited the speculative fears of Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison; that venality in voting, in spite of property qualifications, already existed in grossest forms in parliamentary elections in England, and that property had been as safe in those American communities which had given universal suffrage ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... example, were the politics of a Rigby, or a Bubb Dodington? The diary in which the last of these eminent persons reveals his inmost soul is perhaps the most curious specimen of unconscious self-analysis extant. His utter baseness and venality, his disgust at the 'low venal wretches' to whom he had to give bribes; his creeping and crawling before those from whom he sought to extract bribes; his utter incapacity to explain a great man except on the hypothesis of insanity; or to understand that ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... successively Taunton, Liverpool, and Ipswich in Parliament; was a favourite with the queen; attached himself to Essex, but witnessed against him at his trial, which served him little; became at last in succession Attorney-General, Privy Councillor, Lord Keeper, and Lord Chancellor; was convicted of venality as a judge, deposed, fined and imprisoned, but pardoned and released; spent his retirement in his favourite studies; his great works were his "Advancement of Learning," "Novum Organum," and "De Augmentis Scientiarum," but is seen to best advantage ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... we may be disposed to think that British fastidiousness was not less ingenious than that of the Spaniards, who considered themselves contaminated by a touch of the Gypsies, unless it were to have their fortunes told. Venality and deception meeting with so much encouragement, those propensities of the human heart would be generated and fostered, which at length produced flagrant impositions, and the ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... every man of them over to the farther side before noon. Let there be largesses, a princely banquet on the farther bank—all that may increase their anxiety to pass. Then, Agelastes, we will trust to ourselves to meet this additional danger, either by bribing the venality of Bohemond, or by bidding defiance to the crusaders. Their forces are scattered, and the chief of them, with the leaders themselves, are all now—or by far the greater part—on the east side of the Bosphorus.—And ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror, intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and not we, the people, who govern ourselves; and candid men will acknowledge that in such cases choice would have little ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... unscrupulousness, iniquity, immorality, turpitude, knavishness, villainy, peccancy, baseness, profligacy, venality, licentiousness, obliquity, pravity, degeneracy, viciousness, wantonness, criminality, libertinism, malevolence, incorrigibility, rascality, malignity, noxiousness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... had availed himself of them, but this was not true. Though a cynic, and with little respect for his fellow-creatures, Ferrars had a pride in official purity, and when the Government was charged with venality and corruption, he would observe, with a dry chuckle, that he had seen a great deal of life, and that for his part he would not much trust any man out of Downing Street. He had been unable to resist the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... of espionage and secret influence becomes the ruling principle of government, it follows that the governed must counteract its designs by a similar process, and thus venality and treachery become legalized by the acknowledged laws of self-defence. Lord Bellingham had his agents in the army, as well as Cromwell, and soon discovered that the sword of Damocles was suspended over his head. Though disaffected to the cause he served, he had ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... have visited the frontier towns on the Lithuanian border, from which the Jews are to be banished, in order that the value of the real estate may be estimated. But how is the valuation calculated? Even one who is acquainted with the venality and unscrupulousness of Russian officers cannot form a correct idea of how this business is conducted. If a man has no connection with those in authority, or cannot obtain powerful intercession, or is unable to give heavy ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... feared their enmity, or solicited their favor, suddenly enriched these haughty menials. They abused their fortune, without considering their past, or their future, condition; and their rapine and venality could be equalled only by the extravagance of their dissipations. Their silken robes were embroidered with gold, their tables were served with delicacy and profusion; the houses which they built for their own use, would have covered the farm of an ancient consul; and the most honorable citizens ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... oppressors with mis-doing,—with fine, branding, and the pillory. Many were handled in this sort, and held up in terrorem to the others. Hence it came to pass, that the Star-Chamber, from the fearful nature of its machinery; its extraordinary powers; the notorious corruption and venality of its officers; the peculiarity of its practice, which always favoured the plaintiff; and the severity with which it punished any libelling or slanderous words uttered against the king's representative (as the patentees were considered), ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... gentleman in Norman or to shame him into pretense of gentlemanliness, Lockyer expostulated with him like a prophet priest in full panoply of saintly virtue. And Lockyer was passing good at that exalted gesture. He was a Websterian figure, with the venality of the great Daniel in all its pompous dignity modernized—and correspondingly expanded. He abounded in those idealist sonorosities that are the stock-in-trade of all solemn old-fashioned frauds. The young man listened with his wonted attentive courtesy until the ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to be better than his countrymen, and becomes arrogant and ambitious; and because to hold a public office is seldom a claim to confidence, but commonly a reason to lose confidence; it is not a mark of civic virtue and of patriotic devotion, but a stain of civic apostacy and of venality; it is not a claim to be honoured, but a reason to be distrusted; so much so, that in Europe the sad word of the poet is indeed ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... They won their successes for the most part on sporadic impulses of heroism; shone by an extraordinary intellectual and artistic acumen. But taking them by and large, they were too apt to ineffectualize those successes, in the fields of national and political life, by extraordinary venality and instability of character. I shall draw here deeply on Professor Mahaffy, who very wisely sets out to restore the balance as between Greeks and Persians, and burst bubble-notions commonly held. Greek culture was extremely varied, and therein lay its ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... peoples of Europe went back for their inspiration and their models to the literature and the art of Hellas, so at the Reformation they, or at all events the Teutonic races, went back to the early records of Christianity, appealing to them against the venality and corruption of the dominant Church. And ever since, at intervals, there has arisen, alike in the field of culture and in that of religion, an echo of the appeal to the classical past. It is to the New Testament that Apostles like John Wesley and George Fox made their appeal, setting ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... written Letters on England, has given a laughable instance of this promptitude of misapprehension. He says, he had heard much of the venality of the British parliament, but he had no idea of the degree to which it extended, till he actually was an eye-witness of the scene. The moment the minister entered the House, all the members ran about exclaiming, "Places! places!" which means, Give ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... without a stain upon his ermine. Millions might have been amassed by venality. He retires as poor as when he entered, owing nothing and owning little, except the title to the respect of good men, which malignant mendacity cannot wrest from a public officer who has deserved, by a long and useful career, the grateful appreciation of his fellow-citizens. ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... coming to her apartment I had thrust myself between her and the crass venality of the men of her race, but I had now to wrestle with the problem that such action had involved. If, I reasoned, I could only reveal to her my true identity the situation would be easier, for I could then tell her of the rules of the game of love in ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators. The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best policy, while the extent to which barbers are still employed as surgeons shows that the medical profession is not of sufficient ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... directness and uniqueness. It was, technically, illegal; but, even so, it was remarked that the saloons which Mrs. Nation wrecked, were themselves in brazen defiance of the laws of the state of Kansas—unenforced on account of the fear or venality of public officers. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... descend to discuss the oft-mooted point, how far the wholesale venality that based the project is justified or palliated by the object it is supposed to have had in view, because I know that with Mirabeau money was not a means to his defense of constitutional monarchy, but his defense of constitutional monarchy a means to money. If we except his relentless hate ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various |
