"Avarice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brutality of his manner, but she ruled herself to outward composure. She was about to reply when he added, with a sneer: "Avarice is a debasing vice—Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but spring from different motives. Prince, we implore, we entreat you to return; no longer give us over to the caprice, the villainy, the tyranny and avarice of Count von Schwarzenberg. He is the evil demon of your father, of your country. Come home and ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again the old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Apollodorus, Apothecaries, Aquinas, St. Thomas, Archezille, Arismetryque, Arispe, Aristides, Aristippus, Aristotle, Armour, Astronomy, Athenes, Aubrey, John, Audley, Lord, Augustine, St., Augustus, Caesar, Aulus Gellius, Austyn, Saynt. See Augustine. Auycene, Auycenne, Avarice, Avicenna, Axedrez, ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... of the cottage-girl, wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream. If I must be cast, in sickness or destitution, on the care of a stranger, let it be in California; but let it be before avarice has hardened the heart and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... remarkable: he was still more so, by his constancy for cut doublets, which he supported a long time after they had been universally suppressed; but, what was more surprising than all, was a certain mixture of avarice and liberality, constantly at war with each other, ever since he had entered the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... and died without honor—in most cases by violence. Only one of them had any ambition; he was an Irishman named Connor. He tried to raise a family of fifty children, and scored forty-eight. He died lamenting his failure. It was a foolish sort of avarice. Many a father would have been rich enough ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with which any Inca had ever reached the House of the Sun, bringing with him people of many different races, strange animals, innumerable quantities of riches. But behold the evil condition of Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui and his avarice, for though Tupac Inca was his son whose promotion he had procured, he felt such jealousy that his son should have gained such honour and fame in those conquests, that he publicly showed annoyance that it ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... able to expel from his mind, until he hath had recourse to me to obtain farther knowledge concerning it.—And now let this singular person remain for a time unmentioned; yet, trust me, though flattery, avarice, and ambition may fail to gain him, a bait nevertheless remains, that shall make him as completely our own as any that is bound within our mystic and inviolable contract. Tell me then, how go on the affairs ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... widened; his face took an expression of childlike goodness; it was the mask with which he habitually covered his avarice. Then he said: "I understood Hollis Tisdale had exclusive, brass-bound, double-rivited possession ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Thornow when the '90's were young, and everybody said it was a love match. To be sure, she was wealthy, but so was he. She had declined offers of a half-dozen other noblemen; therefore it was not ambition on her part. He could have married any number of wealthier American girls; therefore it was not avarice on his part. He was a good-looking, stalwart chap with a very fetching drawl, infinite gentility, and a man despite his monocle, while she was beautiful, witty and womanly; therefore it is reasonable to suspect that it must have been love that ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 humanity ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Susannah, was possessed of two devils—the love of strong drink and avarice—and the only thing the twain had in common was to get a drink without paying for it. When Mr. Lister paid for a drink, the demon of avarice masquerading as conscience preached a teetotal lecture, and when he showed signs of profiting by it, the demon ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... who combined great courage with uncommon good sense, had not lost her head over the wonderful good fortune of the modern Caesar. Having a presentiment that all this could not last, she economized from motives of prudence, not of avarice. While the courtiers were celebrating the Emperor's new triumphs, she lingered in Rome with her son Lucien, whom she had followed in his voluntary exile, having pronounced in his favor in his quarrel with Napoleon. As for Joseph and Louis, who, with ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... struggle for mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, "To be, or Not to be;" to conquer, means Adept-ship: to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity, selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood. The Chela is not only called to face all the latent evil propensities of his nature, but, in addition, the momentum of maleficent forces accumulated by the community ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... an uncouth peasant with a stubby nose, carroty cheeks, abundant breasts and hips, could give lessons in avarice to her sister, while in the matter of immodesty and undignified comportment she outdistanced her. She would go about the store with her bosom exposed and there wasn't a delivery-man who missed a chance ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... general, Simon grew irritable and wild. He cursed, and stormed, and raved, till his people trembled for their master's reason. Vexation ate his flesh away, and Avarice, which had gained entire possession of His soul, drove him restlessly about in the endeavour to save and to secure as much as still remained to him. At night, with his sullenly-burning lamp, he sped from room to room, bearing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... 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 plains of ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... 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 her scolding with ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Englishmen for that favor; nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them, and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me—the laws and customs of my country, my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not insuperable. I will do as much as I can in my time, and leave the rest to a better hand."[2] Stronger than all else, however, were the immortal words of the Declaration of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... cleared a handsome fortune; that he was a strict business man, and looked after his affairs in person, passing between New York and Slapmansville (the name of the new settlement) twice a week, and spending the larger part of his time at the latter place. Also that, next to avarice, which was his crowning trait, his chief fault was jealousy. It galled him to think that his wife had obtained a settlement in bank from him before marriage, which enabled her to indulge her tastes for society; and it enraged him still more to observe how much she was loved and ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... devotees,—persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike dumb the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... angry. Why? On the score of morality? No, certainly. The virtue of a girl is of slight importance in the country. But his avarice, his deep, fierce instinct for saving, revolted at the idea that his son should bring up a child which he had not begotten himself. He had thought suddenly, in one second, of the soup the little ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and writer, went into ecstasies over the affair. Paganini, he said, who had been attacked for hard-heartedness and avarice, was present at the concert, and at the end prostrated himself before Berlioz, and shed tears. Hope returned and Berlioz went home in triumph, for he had satisfied one great musical critic. The next day he received a note from Paganini enclosing twenty thousand francs, to be devoted ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... New York Island, White Plains, and New Jersey, being the only parts they have yet set foot on. Should they get this fine city, they will be satiated, if the ruin of thousands of worthy citizens can satisfy their avarice. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... together with more or less ingenuity, Hymen's Triumph is as a whole an original composition. The play is preceded by a prologue in which Daniel departs from his models in employing the dialogue form, the speakers being Hymen, Avarice, Envy, and Jealousy[252]. In the opening scene we find Thirsis lamenting the loss of his love Silvia, who is supposed to have been devoured by wild beasts while wandering alone upon the shore—we are once again on the sea-board of Arcadia—her rent veil and a lock of her ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... young man, hurried on through a succession of profligate pursuits, for the few years Nature was able to support itself; and this from the instant he might be said to enter into the world, till the time of his leaving it. But, as the vice of avarice is equal to that of prodigality, and the ruin of children is often owing to the indiscretion of their parents, he has opened the piece with a scene, which, at the same time that it exposes the folly of the youth, shews us the imprudence of the father, who is supposed ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... suppose all men have moments when they are not exactly themselves, in which they act very differently from what it has been their practice to act. On this occasion, I was not alarmed for myself, but I thought the course I took was necessary to save that dross which lures so many to perdition. Avarice blinded me to the ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... prosaic: "mad avarice" is an unhappy combination; and "the coward distance yet with kindling pride" is not only reprehensible for the antithetical turn, but as it is a quotation: "safe distance" and "coward distance" you have more than once ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... do you want to paint professionally?" inquired Scott, with unsatisfied curiosity. "It isn't avarice, is it?" ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... solemn words of absolution and then required him to accept some punishment, which varied according to the nature of the offense. There was a regular code of penalties for such sins as drunkenness, avarice, perjury, murder, and heresy. Penances often consisted in fasting, reciting prayers, abstaining from one's ordinary amusements, or beating oneself with bundles of rods. A man who had sinned grievously might be ordered ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... at a large party. Political subjects were talked of, and the conversation finally turned on the famous Duke of Marlborough. Every one had something to say against him, many blaming his avarice. Bolingbroke was silent. One of the company inquired, "How is it that you say nothing? You knew him better than all of us, and could tell us a good deal about him." Bolingbroke replied, "He was a great man, and I ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... Where Avarice lurks in sordid cell, 5 Or mad Ambition builds the dream, Or Pleasure plots th' unholy scheme There ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... expensive thing.' If the taste for pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in no degree avaricious it will be found that real money anxieties are more felt and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is then the sense ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... your garden. Take likewise a vase of the same water, and 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 ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... individuals to be placed in competition with the essential rights and liberties of the present generation, and of millions yet unborn? Shall a few designing men, for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing, at the expense of so much time, blood, and treasure? And shall we at last become the victims of our own lust of gain? Forbid it, Heaven! Forbid it, all and every ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... preacher, who dabbled in politics—the fanner's son of a remote district, who had the presumption to attack the great ones of the land, the old patrician families, and who, though himself not pure, nevertheless cast blame on others. Full of avarice, envy and hypocrisy, the proud, the fault-finders and the spiritual dwarfs met together. They whispered, fanned their rage, shook their heads, reviled, threatened; in a short time they had no rest, till he wished himself away; and hence, at a later period, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... afternoon, and that is all he sees of her. A more despicable scene cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court presents— every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness, avarice, and a life of petty ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... underlying the delusional system of litigious paranoiacs is avarice, and the whole may be looked upon as the slow and permanent triumph of a preconception. "The paranoiacal preconception gradually conquers all evidence to the contrary, and in spite of reality, public opinion and common sense, it becomes organized into a cooerdinated ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... that while you have to deal both with psychological and sociological elements, with human desires, and with those desires modified by social relations, it is impossible to find any data which can be mathematically stated. There is no arithmetical measure of the forces of love, or hunger, or avarice, by which (among others) the whole problem ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... recompensed by her love." In The Convent of the Grey Penitents, Rosalthe happily avoids the opiate, as she overhears the plans of her unscrupulous husband, who, it seems, has "an unquenchable thirst of avarice," and desires to win a wealthier bride. She flees to a "cottage ornee" on Finchley Common, the home, it may be remembered, of Thackeray's Washerwoman; and the thrills we expect from a novel of terror are reserved for the second volume, and arise out of the adventures of the next generation. After ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... WITHOUT IT.—The wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... king] may ravage them; you furnish and fill your houses that he may have something to steal; you bring up your daughters that he may slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure your forms by labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... simple—and, evidently, it had been effective, as witness the renewal of their operations in the murder of Roessle that afternoon. Fear and avarice had both probably played their part; fear of the man who would with such consummate nerve fling his life into the balance to turn the tables upon them, while he jeered at them; avarice that prompted them to get what they could out of Stangeist's brains and leadership, and to be satisfied ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... has been given stands out more prominently in Swiss history than any other. Gessler's residence, according to tradition, was a strongly fortified castle built in the valley of Uri, near Altorf, and this he named Zwing Uri ("Uri's Restraint"). He used every means that cruelty or avarice could suggest in his conduct as governor, and incurred additional hatred from the methods he adopted to discover the members of a secret conspiracy he believed existed against him in the district. With this object in view, Gessler ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... practicable. Thus life passes away in the feverish irritation of pursuit and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, nothing but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us: and all common pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is overwrought: the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy; and any pause, any release from the rack of ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more insupportable than the pangs which ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Stella good! I suppose Mrs. Edgworth set out last Monday se'ennight. Yes, I do read the Examiners, and they are written very finely, as you judge. I do not think they are too severe on the Duke;(16) they only tax him of avarice, and his avarice has ruined us. You may count upon all things in them to be true. The author has said it is not Prior, but perhaps it may be Atterbury.—Now, Madam Dingley, says she, 'tis fine weather, says she; yes, says she, and we have ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... length, 'YOU contract to marry Ellen Heathcote? the poor, innocent, confiding, light-hearted girl. No, no, Edward Dwyer, I know you too well for that—your services, be they what they will, must not, shall not go unrewarded—your avarice shall be appeased—but not with a human sacrifice! Dwyer, I speak to you without disguise; you know me to be acquainted with your history, and what's more, with your character. Now tell me frankly, were I to do as you desire me, in cool blood, should I not prove myself a more uncompromising ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... progress in either art; but by allowing a handsome margin for "wear and tear" in his estimates, he managed to pay a foreman's wages. The once easy-going journeyman was a terror to his "bears" and "monkeys." Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. From the day when Sechard first caught a glimpse of the possibility of making a fortune, a growing covetousness developed and sharpened in him a certain practical faculty for business—greedy, suspicious, and keen-eyed. He carried on his craft in ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... is no incentive to avarice, and the accumulation of large personal fortunes. When a Pima dies, most of his personal property, that is, house and household belongings, which he had used during life, is committed to the flames as a sanitary measure, and whatever he may have left of ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... that threatened to prove fatal to the expedition were far from ended. It seemed that the rebels were the enemies it had least to fear. Avarice, incapacity, and treachery at home had conspired with the elements against it. Many of the larger vessels drew too much water for the passage into the sound, and were wholly ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... rendered herself, by the exertion of indomitable valor, the supreme mistress of every foreign power that bordered on the Mediterranean, wealth, avarice, and luxury, like some contagious pestilence, had crept into the inmost vitals of the commonwealth, until the very features, which had once made her famous, no less for her virtues than her valor, were utterly obliterated and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... knowing that her guests would forgive her for any prodigality that conduced to their comfort, she left nothing undone where their personal enjoyment was concerned; her dinners, for instance, were excellent. She even went so far as to affect avarice to recommend herself to these sordid natures; and had the ingenuity to make it appear that certain concessions to luxury had been made at the instance of others, to whom ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... America beyond those acquired by discovery, followed up by possession. But the King of Spain was too good a Catholic to have his right called in question, and when a heretic ship was caught among the West Indies, the avarice of priests and officials, and their holy horror at the approach of heresy to these regions, were exhibited in their dealings with the cargo and the unhappy crew. The inhuman treatment that the Spaniards inflicted upon honest traders aroused men to reprisals; ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... and on the material advantages she would gain by clinging to him, to hold her to him. And with Katrine this was a rope of sand. She cared no more for Stephen's wealth and for his claims than if they had been ash heaps. There was not a touch of avarice, of calculating greed, in her whole character, and to gratify her own impulse she would have cast all material advantages aside. From Stephen she wanted love, and that only, and this was the only chain that could hold for an instant her proud, independent, ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... neighbouring Indians, and cut us off from the supply of horses so useful and almost so essential to our success: he was at the same time consoled by remembering that his hopes of assistance rested on better foundations than their generosity—their avarice, and their curiosity. He had promised liberal exchanges for their horses; but what was still move seductive, he had told them that one of their country-women who had been taken with the Minnetarees ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... a cavern Death and Avarice watched them, and Death said, 'I am weary; give me a third of them and let me go.' But Avarice shook her head. 'They are my ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... or happiness as it has always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he had exhausted it, and found it no more than a monotonous grind of gain which ended in a loathing of the thing gained. Others might and would consume themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,—but for him such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,—a change of surroundings, a change of associations—and for this, what could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In his time he had met men who, worn out with the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the mutinous disposition of his crew, maintained a serene and steady countenance, using gentle words with some, stimulating the pride and avarice of others, and ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... society. In one of his sketches, Chelkash is a smuggler, a reckless fellow, who induces a poor peasant to serve as his accomplice in a nocturnal burglary. This rustic is a contemptible creature. His avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake of his gold pieces. The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him contemptuously. Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives in his struggle ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... replied Brotteaux, "that in their hearty desire to hang the pilferer, these folks were like to do a mischief to this good cleric, to his champion and to his champion's champion. Their avarice itself and their selfish eagerness to safeguard their own welfare were motives enough; the thief in attacking one of them threatened all; self-preservation urged them to punish him.... At the same time, it is like enough ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... were practised under the reign of Domitian were unknown in the time of Augustus Caesar; that therefore Juvenal had a larger field than Horace. Little follies were out of doors when oppression was to be scourged instead of avarice; it was no longer time to turn into ridicule the false opinions of philosophers when the Roman liberty was to be asserted. There was more need of a Brutus in Domitian's days to redeem or mend, than of a Horace, if he had then been living, to laugh at a fly-catcher. This reflection ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... a certain species of Tories with whom conscience or principle has nothing to do, and who are so from avarice only. Some of the first fortunes on the continent, on the part of the Whigs, are staked on the issue of our present measures. And shall disaffection only be rewarded with security? Can any thing be a greater inducement to a miserly man, than the hope of making his Mammon safe? And though the scheme ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... people are evil judges of honest things." But the thirteen years of his imprisonment caused a reaction. People forgot how troublesome he had been and only recollected his magnificence. They remembered nothing but that he had spent his whole energy and fortune in resisting the brutality and avarice of the Spaniard. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... this fall of Rachel, without resorting to the theory of superior genius in Ristori. Undoubtedly Paris loves novelty, and has been impatient of the disdainful sway of Rachel. Her reputed avarice and want of courtesy and generosity, her total failure to charm as a woman while she fascinated as an artist, have, naturally enough, after many years, fatigued the patience and disappointed the humane sympathies of a public whose mere curiosity had been long satisfied. Rachel ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... idea. He was a brilliant writer as well as a brilliant speaker. His private character would have little blame if it were not that a fondness for money kept growing with his growing years. "For a good old-gentlemanly vice," says Byron, "I think I must take up with avarice." Pulteney did not even wait to be an old gentleman to take up with "the good old-gentlemanly vice." We have in some measure now to take his talents on trust, as we have those of Carteret. He proved to be little more than the comet of a season; when he had ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of this wicked woman was visited with the trouble which is always the lot of avarice and inhumanity. Her secretly-cherished god was gold, and she had lent the bulk of her money to a merchant to use in his business, on his promise to pay her a large interest for the loan. Her greatest pleasure was in making calculations, ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... translator) how in a dream he seemed to himself to wake up on a May morning. Sauntering forth, he came to a garden surrounded by a wall, on which were depicted many unkindly figures, such as Hate and Villainy, and Avarice and Old Age, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... one side, and his sense of duty on another. At such a crisis he is trebly armed, if he is able from his heart to say—"I have vowed a vow before God. I have put on the robe of justice. Farewell avarice, farewell ambition. Pass me who will, slight me who will, I will live henceforward only for the great duties of life. My business is on earth. My hope and ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... their travels, with his nephew and niece, young Melford and Lydia Melford, with Miss Jenkins, and the squire's tart, greedy, and amorous old maid of a sister, Tabitha Bramble. This lady's persistent amours and mean avarice scarcely strike modern readers as amusing. Smollett gave aspects of his own character in the choleric, kind, benevolent Matthew Bramble, and in the patriotic and paradoxical Lieutenant Lismahago. Bramble, a gouty invalid, is as full of medical abominations ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... distinguished church in this island. Let my golden ring be given to the priests who shall celebrate my obsequies, and do thou indemnify thyself for the funeral charges out of my remaining effects. To thy wife I bequeath my purple mantle, in order that, by this sacrifice to her avarice, I may secure the right of disposing of the rest of my effects at my own pleasure. But for my bed, with its coverings, hangings, and furniture, I entreat they may be all consigned to the flames. I do not desire this because I envy any one the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... country, supposed by many to be the region of cold and sterility, I could not have believed there was in it such a store of blessings yet to be drawn forth by the labor and enterprise of man, for succeeding generations. As yet, there are too many objects to tempt and attract the avarice of man to more mild, but more dangerous climates. But the progress of population and improvement is certain in many parts of the country, and with them will ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... determined, with sword in hand, cleared for themselves a horrible passage. Others, still more cruel, opened a way for their wagons by driving them without mercy over the crowds of unfortunate persons who stood in their way, and crushed them to death. Their detestable avarice made them sacrifice their companions in misfortune to the preservation of their baggage. Others again, seized with a pusillanimous terror, wept, supplicated, and sank under the influence of a passion which completed the exhaustion of their strength. Some were observed (and these were principally ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... none dare to pause in this race which they so madly run, in which happiness and mental and bodily health are among the least of their considerations. All are spurred on by the real or imaginary necessities of their position, driven along their headlong course by avarice, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... avarice is the cassock's," said the visitor. "A day of blood approaches, a day of cutting of priests' ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... cheerfully paid. I carried the manumission home to my sorrowing Mary. From her I learned, as she lay in bed—her beautiful face buried in the clothes, and her voice choked by sobs—that the wretch who had called on me was her own father, whose avarice could not let slip this opportunity of extorting money. With an inconsistency often found in man, he had given Mary one of the best of educations, and for long treated her as a favoured child, during the life of her mother, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... parts of the principality on draft by feudal barons in the days before real law obtained, it was something of a historic place. Parts of the structure are said to be no less than five hundred years old, but time and avarice have relegated history to a rather uncertain background, and unless one is pretty well up in the traditions of the town, he may be taken in nicely by shameless attendants who make no distinction between the old and the new so long as it pays them ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... call, and had himself, in arms, on a gray war-horse, led the onset before which the worshippers of false gods had given way. After the battle, every excess of rapacity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. Avarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated avarice. Proselytes and gold mines were sought with equal ardor. In the very year in which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... instinctively the well-worn path of my imagination, the favourite theme of my song, and is with difficulty restrained from giving you a couple of paragraphs on the love-adventures of my compeers, the humble inmates of the farm-house and cottage; but the grave sons of science, ambition, or avarice, baptise these things by the name of follies. To the sons and daughters of labour and poverty they are matters of the most serious nature: to them the ardent hope, the stolen interview, the tender farewell, are the greatest and most ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... more to your honour; for the jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible to destroy, the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.—And if the public interest, liberty and happiness have been in danger, from the ambition or avarice of any great man, or number of great men, whatever may be their politeness, address, learning, ingenuity, and in other respects integrity and humanity, you have done yourselves honour, and your country service, by publishing and pointing out that avarice and ambition.—These ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... as the water-fall To one by deserts bound— Making the air all musical With cool, inviting sound— Is oft some unpretending strain Of rural song, to him whose brain Is fevered in the sordid strife That Avarice breeds 'twixt man and man, While moving on, in caravan, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... be known by its forbearance with the weak; hence we should bear and forgive. Yea, we admit that her footprints are marked with blood—that her history has numberless pages written in blood—that her arrogance and avarice have blotted out her national virtue, and now work like a battering-ram her downfall. Yet, as arrogance is but another name for weakness, is it not better to brush off than kill the wasp? The principle herein contained we have, in the sublimity of our power, adopted ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... suggested and pressed to success, prompted by mixed motives of personal acquisition and fatherly providence. This man is not a villain from mere criminal impulse. His tastes have an elegant bent. Relentless tenacity, overpowering avarice, and dissembling craft are his cardinal traits. To these all aesthetic impulses and higher ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... other hand, could have acquiesced in the suggestion to marry Vannozza only from avarice, and his willingness proves that he had not grown rich in his former places at the courts ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his 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 is ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... children to fear and obey; the avarice, pride, or timidity of the fathers, instructs the children in economy, arrogance, or submission. We stir them up to be yet more and more copyists, which they are only too disposed to be, as it is; nobody thinks of making them original, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... Edinburgh, where he discharged a noble part "self pulling like Captain Crowe 'for dear life, for dear life' against the whole boat's crew," speaking, that is, against 30 members of a drunken company and maintaining the predominance. Mons Meg was at that time his idol. He had a sort of avarice of proper names, and, besides half a dozen which were his legitimately, he had a claim to be called Garvadh, which uncouth appellation he claimed on no very good authority to be the ancient name of the Hays—a tale. I loved him dearly; he had high spirits, a zealous faith, good-humour, and enthusiasm, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... ascribed to narrowness of mind, while others thought that he carried parsimony and avarice to excess in himself in order by his example to reform and restrain others. Be this as it may, I for my own part consider that his conduct in treating his slaves like beasts of burden, and selling them ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... service of Alphonso II.; while Panigarola and several other distinguished men were compelled to leave the service of the ducal family by persecution. Benvenuto Cellini, who resided at the court of Ferrara twenty-five years before Tasso, gives a very unfavourable account of the avarice and rapacity which characterised it; and Serassi, the biographer of Tasso, remarks that the court seems to have been extremely dangerous, especially to literary men. It was not therefore, we may suppose, without other reasons than his being merely a Guelph, that Dante in his Inferno ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the priesthood and the functions of a confessor are either unknown 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; ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... bow-legs, with his suspiciously calculating blink, with his avarice and his sharp tongue, he stood between her and the world, permitting only so much of it to approach her as seemed, at a ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... that we got our grip when the civic conscience awoke in 1879. In that year the slum was arraigned in the churches. The sad and shameful story was told of how it grew and was fostered by avarice that saw in the homeless crowds from over the sea only a chance for business, and exploited them to the uttermost; how Christianity, citizenship, human fellowship, shook their skirts clear of the rabble that was only ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... motives of the Philistine," interrupted Abel-Phittim' "for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or by his generosity; but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven can not extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... (1844-1847), Stephenson might easily have made himself "rich beyond the dreams of avarice,"—or at least of the avarice of that day. All he had to do was to lend the use of his name to new and doubtful railway projects; but he refused on the ground that he did not care "to make money without labor or honor." Meanwhile the whole country became involved ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Furthermore, the most weighty cause of the abolishment of certain Ceremonies was, That they were so far abused, partly by the superstitious blindness of the rude and unlearned, and partly by the unsatiable avarice of such as sought more their own lucre, than the glory of God, that the abuses could not well be taken away, the ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... but their look 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 most ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... what will be my powers over you? I know the first generous impulse of your heart is always good; but then ambition,—let me speak truth to you,—avarice, the offspring of ambition, leads you astray, and contaminates the ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... whose avarice was notorious in the neighborhood, and who was terribly thin, in the room above them. She was always cross, and she never passed a day without quarreling and flying into furious tempers. She would apostrophize the neighbors, who were standing at their own doors, the coster-mongers, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which the astral plane puts in their power in order to lead others into the same excesses which have proved so fatal to themselves. Quoting again from the same letter:—"These are the Pisachas the incubi and succubae of mediaeval writers—demons of thirst and gluttony, of lust and avarice, of intensified craft, wickedness and cruelty, provoking their victims to horrible crimes, and revelling in their commission". From this class and the last are drawn the tempters—the devils of ecclesiastical literature; but their power fails utterly before purity of mind and purpose; they can ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... 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; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that is said to be richer than the land, but is not able to make any use of it at all, and only keeps it from those that know how to enjoy it if they had it. The devil understood his business very well when he made choice of Judas's avarice to betray Christ, for no other vice would have undertaken it; and it is to be feared that his Vicars now on earth, by the tenderness they have to the bag, do not use Him much better than His steward did then. He gathers wealth to ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... heard the Earth-song I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... emotions, set into a tumult by the discovery, some trace of the first awe alone remained. Not the awe of the man himself—he could blow him up sky-high with six words—rather it was an awestruck indignation at the reckless perversity of avarice (what else could it be?), at the mad and somber resolution that for the sake of a few dollars more seemed to set at naught the common rule of conscience and pretended to struggle against the very decree ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... defend him from the wrath of God; if you would warrant him immunity in doing as he likes; if you could shelter him as in an inaccessible castle from the retributions of eternity; with what a delirium of pleasure would he plunge into the sin that he loves. Tell the avaricious man, that his avarice shall never have any evil consequences here or hereafter; and with what an energy would he apply himself to the acquisition of wealth. Tell the luxurious man, full of passion and full of blood, that his pleasures shall never ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... jealousy contend. Disturbed ambition presented next, to bid him grasp the moon and waste his days in angry sighs, add deep rivalry for shadows, till to conclude the wretched catalogue, appears pale avarice, straining delusive counters to his breast, e'en in the hour of death." Such are ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... and turned round so as to allow of his looking fully at her. He muttered to himself: "Young, beautiful, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice—and bored! What flattering unction that is to the soul ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... against the ignoble treatment which that same Court had inflicted on him. He became sordid and grasping in money matters, basely begging for money, which he did not require, from those who, like Gustavus III. of Sweden, discovered only too late that he was demeaning himself from avarice and not from necessity. While keeping a certain maudlin sentiment about his exploits and those of his followers, which manifested itself in cruelly pathetic scenes when, as in his old age, people talked to him of the Highlands and the Rebellion; he was wholly without ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... brought me to this country was urged with all the zeal which the subject inspired, both in our Privy Council and Assembly; but the single voice of reason was drowned by the howling of a triple-headed monster, in which prejudice, avarice, and pusillanimity were united. It was some degree of consolation to me, however, to perceive that the truth and philosophy had gained some ground; the suffrages in favor of the measure being twice as numerous as on a former occasion. Some hopes have been lately given me from Georgia; ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... Italian tongue, could not have had this service. And those who know Latin, if we wish to see clearly who they are, we shall find that, out of a thousand one only would have been reasonably served by it, because they would not have received it, so prompt are they to avarice, which removes them from each nobility of soul that especially desires this food. And to the shame of them, I say that they ought not to be called learned men: because they do not acquire knowledge for the use of it, but forasmuch as they gain money or dignity thereby; even as one ought ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... reasoning will apply with greater force to the use of condiments. Such 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 ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... dead now. Three of the quartette who had been joined by avarice and lawless actions were taken care of—Burkhardt a prisoner, Gordon dead by self-administered poison, Vorse by bullets. Almost did Steele Weir feel himself an embodiment of Fate, clipping the strands of these men's power and lives as with shears. Sorenson alone ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... 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 ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... between niggardliness and extravagance; courage is a mean between foolhardiness and cowardice; dignity is a mean between haughtiness and loutishness; humility is a mean between arrogance and self-abasement; contentment is a mean between avarice and slothful indifference; kindness is a mean between baseness and excessive self-denial; gentleness is a mean between irascibility and insensibility to insult; modesty is a mean between impudence and shamefacedness. ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... O, but to strike blind the people with our wealth and pomp is the thing! What a wretchedness is this, to thrust all our riches outward, and be beggars within; to contemplate nothing but the little, vile, and sordid things of the world; not the great, noble, and precious! We serve our avarice, and, not content with the good of the earth that is offered us, we search and dig for the evil that is hidden. God offered us those things, and placed them at hand, and near us, that He knew were profitable for us, but the hurtful He laid ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... central fountain in stately procession, McGee fell to thinking how little those lovely creatures knew of tragedy and sorrow. Theirs was a world secure in beauty, unmarred by the things which man brings upon himself, and this was true because they knew nothing of avarice or grasping greed. Could it be that man, in all his pride, was one of the least sensible of ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... that, just as it is not every wine, so it is not every life, that turns sour from keeping, Serious gravity I approve of in old age, but, as in other things, it must be within due limits: bitterness I can in no case approve. What the object of senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... are friends; we must assist each other to bear our burdens. The blood of many of our fathers and brothers has run like water on the ground, to satisfy the avarice of the white men. We, ourselves, are threatened with a great evil; nothing will pacify them but the destruction of ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... enjoyments, were participated in by all. Knowledge and ability were respectfully looked up to, yet those who possessed these seemed hardly conscious of their gifts. The frequent occasions which called for the exercise of the mind, sharpened sagacity, and gave strength to character. Avarice and vanity were confined to narrow limits. Of money there was little. Dress was coarse and plain, and was not subject to the whims or caprices of fashion. The girls, from the examples set them by their mothers, were industrious and constantly employed. Pride of birth was unknown, and the affections ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... kneeling, to baggages who, to use Asie's word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands of these women, whose social function, in Fourier's scheme, is perhaps to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed broadcast on trade more than two hundred ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... had done and all that I knew. I observed that the Governor during my recital turned first pale, then red, and when I concluded, became furious. "How, wretch!" he cried out to me, "wishest thou thus to lay upon another, the crime thy avarice ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff |
