"Greed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... satisfaction if it answered to his expectations. Beth watched him at such times with sensations that passed through various degrees of irritation from positive contempt to the kindly tolerance one feels for the greed of a hungry child. Dan had been "doing himself well," as he called it, during her absence, and was looking somewhat bloated and blotched. His wonderful complexion was no longer so clear and bright as it had been; the red was redder and the white opaque. A ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... blessedness of being, an openness to calm yet rousing influences, appear in the man. These are the descending angels of God. The passion that had blotted out the child will revive; the strife of the world will renew wrath and hate; ambition and greed will blot out the beauty of the earth; envy of others will blind the man to his own blessedness; and self-conceit will revive in him all those prejudices whose very strength lies in his weakness; but the man has had a glimpse of the peace to gain which he must fight with himself; he has for one ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald
... gardens, and the grace of its buildings. Into this gem of cities the savage soldiery of Spain marched in the bright autumnal weather, and turned the paradise into a hell. It is even now impossible to read of what they did in Prato without shuddering.[16] Cruelty and lust, sordid greed for gold, and cold delight in bloodshed, could go no further. Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild and voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds, had to smile approval, while the Spanish Viceroy knocked thus with mailed hand for him at the door of Florence. The Florentines were paralysed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of this blackest of calamities? The speaker went on to show that the determining motive was not racial jealousy, but commercial greed. The fountain-head of the war was world-capitalism, clamouring for markets, seeking to get rid of its surplus products, to keep busy its hordes of wage-slaves at home. He analysed the various factors; and ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... cessation of the sound of the feeding of pigs caught him from his mournful reflections. He looked up quickly, to see Mr. Biggleswade staring at his newspaper with a most striking expression of triumphant greed. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... me by the captain, Don Jose Marie Baca y Artiaga, and in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. "Valga me, Dios, Senor! What an experience was that trip to Arizona! It began and ended with disappointment and disaster. All the men of our party seemed to have lost their wits from the greed of gold. They began by hurrying. Those who had the best mounts rushed on ahead, carrying the Indian along with them, and strove to leave their companions who were not so well mounted behind. The first night's camp had of necessity to be made at a point on the Rio Puerco, distant about ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... Cistercian College of St. Bernard, it owed its origin to Archbishop Chichele, the founder of All Souls', and it continued to exist for a century as a monastic institution. At the Reformation it was swept away with other monastic foundations by the greed of Henry VIII, but it was almost immediately refounded, in the reign of Mary, by Sir Thomas White, one of the greatest of London's Lord Mayors. In all these respects it has an exact parallel in Trinity, which had existed as a Benedictine foundation, being then called "Durham College," ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... parley, and opened a door adjoining the entrance pigeon-hole. A man was seated at the table within, reckoning the night's takings by the light of a candle. It was strange to see one so near the grave counting coppers with such avid greed. His withered old face was long and yellow, and the prominent cheekbones and fallen cheeks gave it a coffinlike shape. His sunken little eyes were almost lost to view beneath bushy overhanging eyebrows, and from his shrunken mouth a single black tusk protruded upward, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... returned and there was no possible excuse for such greed, Mr. Wolverine continued to stuff himself until it seemed that instead of eating in order to live, as the rest of us do, he lived in order to eat. Of course it wasn't long before some one called him a glutton, and presently ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... talk of stopping transportation and abolishing the system. I never cease to pray that the system may be spared to us. If it is done away with before I have gratified the magnificent malice I have stored up in this breast, morsel by morsel, hoarding it with the greed of a miser, I am afraid I shall lose my ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... asunder," surely does not apply to these marriages; for that very admission would be a condemnation of the wisdom of God. He surely never would give his sanction to many of the marriages contracted in a spirit of lust or of greed. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... petitions sent in to Carleton will suggest the answer. 'If we have to encounter this inexpressible misfortune we beg consideration for our lives, fortunes, and property, and not by mere terms of treaty.' What this means cannot be appreciated unless we fully realize how strong the spirit of hate and greed had grown, and why it ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... float through the inverted sky, Still round and round the baited hook— Now paced the room with rapid stride, And, pausing at the Poet's side, Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed, And said: "Alas for human greed, That with cold hand and stony eye Thus turns an old friend out to die, Or beg his food from gate to gate! This brings a tale into my mind, Which, if you are not disinclined To listen, I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... threat? Then let the louns beware, Sir! Scotland, they'll find, is Scotland yet, And for hersel' can fare, Sir. The Thames shall run to join the Tweed, Criffel adorn Thames valley, 'Ere wanton wrath and vulgar greed On Scottish ground shall rally. Fal ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... some details of his trial, public feeling was generally and very strongly in his favor. He was an old and faithful servant of the crown; and Francis I. had for a long time called him "his father." He was evidently the victim of the queen-mother's greed and vengeance. The firmness of his behavior, at the time of his execution, became a popular theme in the verses of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and greediness, and vain glory are the chief qualities of most men, so no man, not even a Johnson, acts, or can think of acting, on any other principle. Whatever, therefore, cannot be referred to the two former categories, Need and Greed, is without ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... for a moment, but squinted up at the tall buildings, temples of Mammon and of Greed, filled from pave to cornice with toiling, sweated hordes of men and women, all laboring for Capitalism; many of them, directly or indirectly, for him. Then, as the limousine slowed at Spring Street, to let a cross-town ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... in the beauty of its skin, has been long since driven away not only from Behring Island but also from most of the hunting-grounds where it was commonly killed by thousands, and if an effective law be not soon put in force to keep the hunting in bounds, and check the war of extermination which greed now carries on against it, no longer with clubs and darts but with powder and breechloaders, the sea-otter will meet the same fate which has already befallen Steller's sea-cow. Of the sea-lion (Eumetopias Stelleri, Lesson), which in ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... behind him. Duane needed only one glance to tell him that they were fast and hard-riding cowboys in a land where all riders were good. They would not have owned any but strong, swift horses. Moreover, it was a district where ranchers had suffered beyond all endurance the greed and brutality of outlaws. Duane had simply been so unfortunate as to run right into a lynching party at a time of all times when any stranger would be in danger and any outlaw put to his limit ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... class, because it contained the Protestants. There was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon English opinion. It was the notion that Home Rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands. Parnell's campaign diluted the greed of landlords, but Ireland, politically, is yet where she has been for two ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... "the day." It was a Prussian phrase. The revolution was Prussian. And like the Germans, they offered loot as a reward. They appealed to the ugliest passions in the world, to lust and greed and idleness. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... nothing better for a great journal to do. The average girl is so helpless, and the greed of the employer is such, that unless some newspaper or some person of great influence comes to her assistance, she is liable not simply to be imposed upon, but to be made a slave. Girls, as a rule, are so anxious to please, so willing ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... some degree by the interests of party; many would be hot partisans. Cicero, in his treatise on 'Oratory', explains clearly for the pleader's guidance the nature of the tribunals to which he had to appeal. "Men are influenced in their verdicts much more by prejudice or favour, or greed of gain, or anger, or indignation, or pleasure, or hope or fear, or by misapprehension, or by some excitement of their feelings, than either by the facts of the case, or by established precedents, or by any rules or principles whatever either ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell". We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold lust ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... the story of the greatest deed of arms that was ever done. The men who fought in it were not urged by ambition or greed, nor were they soldiers who knew not why they went to battle. They warred for the freedom of their country, they were few against many, they might have retreated with honour, after inflicting great loss on the enemy, but they preferred, ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... ways of wisdom, until enlightenment came to him sitting under his Bo tree. He said faith was the best wealth here. And, 'Not to commit any sin, to do good and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the awakened'; 'not hating those who hate us,' 'free from greed among the greedy.' They must have been glad of Buddhism in their day, teaching them to honour their parents, to be kind to the sick and poor and sorrowing, to forgive their enemies and return good for evil. And there was ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... slaughterous, and lustful warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood was sacred; by whom in their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one fond, triumphant love these ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... probability of murder, and the police evidence tended in the same direction. It was affirmed that (some would say) he had been baffled by Price in an attempt to rob the house, had sacrificed the poor fellow to the fury of his checked greed, and had afterwards escaped by the window. The jury found that Price had died by the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... complaint of the lungs; yet all this served to excite rather than to diminish public interest in her. The newspapers published daily bulletins of her health, and her door was besieged by anxious callers who wished to know her condition. As for the greed of her parents, every one said she was not to blame for that. And so she passed from poverty to riches, from squalor to something like splendor, and from obscurity ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental way of serving for reward; and what we take to be contempt of self is only greed of hire. ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... abolish the overtime work? Are they, moreover, to return to the old principles of prohibiting an operative from doing more than a certain amount of work in a certain time—a practice quite defensible so far as it arose from the greed of employers who, with their men on piece-work, finding the rate of production increased, promptly put back the rate of payment so that workpeople should never earn more than a certain amount by day or by week? Is there to be a reaction in all ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... pray thee reach him certain cords to fasten the burden which is falling from the ass: but be thou cautious to pass on in silence. And soon as thou comest to the river of the dead, Charon, in that crazy bark he hath, will put thee over upon the further side. There is greed even among the dead: and thou shalt deliver to him, for the ferrying, one of those two pieces of money, in such wise that he take [88] it with his hand from between thy lips. And as thou passest over the stream, a dead old man, rising on the water, will put up to thee his mouldering ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Cuthbert said, "that when ambition and greed are in one scale, reverence for the holy church will not weigh much in the other. Had King Richard been killed upon his way home, or so long as nothing was heard of him, Sir Rudolph might have been content to allow matters to remain ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... race-suicide evil, the greed for ill-gotten gold, things like these the reformers touch not. And these things it is which harm the soul. Abolishing the use of alcoholic drinks and of tobacco, putting the blue laws into effect, suppressing all ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... will not be long in coming, for our tariff-system has already begun to be discussed, and in the light of our present knowledge discussion means its doom. Born of crass ignorance and self-defeating greed, it cannot bear the light. When this curse to American labour—scarcely less blighting than the; curse of negro slavery—shall have been once removed, the economic pressure exerted upon Europe by the United ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... sheriff of Warwickshire, was executed in 1583, for plotting against her majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the Pope and King Henry the Eighth, banished, burned and hung presumptive heretics for opinion's sake! The lechery and greed of King Hal was the primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... and had ever personified, chivalry, loyalty, piety; but its chivalry, loyalty, and piety, were now in a corrupted condition. The form was hollow, and the sacred spark had fled. In Holland and England intelligent enterprise had not yet degenerated into mere greed for material prosperity. The love of danger, the thirst for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human dignity—not the base love for land and lucre—were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fortification (six feet broad and twenty feet high) which was built of large stones and earth, and must have belonged to an early date after the destruction of Troy. In order to withdraw the Treasure from the greed of my workmen, and to save it for archaeology, I had to be most expeditious, and although it was not yet time for breakfast, I immediately had breakfast called. While the men were eating and resting I cut out the Treasure with a large knife, which ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... The greed of provision dealers angered Governor Ralston to such an extent that he started an investigation. Before the supply of bread available on the West Side had been exhausted, loaves were selling at twenty cents each. The supply of meat ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... a real library, just the kind of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... surnamed the Extortionate, was the chief poet and satirist of Ulster in the reign of Conor mac Nessa. Greed and arrogance were in his heart and poison on his tongue, and the kings and lords of whom he asked rewards for his poems dared not refuse him aught, partly because of the poisonous satires and lampoons which he would otherwise make upon them for their niggardliness, and partly for that in Ireland ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... in mock dismay. "This grasping greed for gain is blighting the most promising young men of our avaricious country. Why, it's positively shameful, Bobby, when your father must have ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... our present scientific knowledge, we should have been able to produce it very easily and quickly, and have had abundant leisure and sound nerves and bodies wherewith to enjoy nature, art, and the domestic affections. The tragedy of man, sir, is his senseless and insatiate curiosity and greed, together with his incurable habit of neglecting the present for the sake of a future which will ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... condition "the incentive of private initiative would disappear" and that no other motive could take its place, is an argument based upon the assumption that human nature derives more inspiration from the idea of dishonourable greed than it derives from the idea of honourable and useful labour; which is an assumption so wholly opposed to true psychology that it has only to be nakedly stated to be ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... settle what remains. Will you be wise? will you be guided? will you suffer me to take this glass in my hand and to go forth from your house without further parley? or has the greed of curiosity too much command of you? Think before you answer, for it shall be done as you decide. As you decide, you shall be left as you were before, and neither richer nor wiser, unless the sense ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... match for the crafty Ivan, who moved slowly but ever steadily to his goal, and made secure each footstep before taking a step in advance. His insidious policy roused three separate hostilities against Novgorod. The pride of the nobles was stirred up against its democracy; the greed of the princes made them eager to seize its wealth; the fanatical people were taught that this great city was an apostate to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... news from Palestine: news that there, too, after all the safeguards, the greed of a few was working to plant the old European wrong: for, the Sanhedrim being short of funds for a railway, a syndicate of five merchant-princes had offered to buy from it an estate between Jerusalem and the Jordan, and when the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... the Evil One. Not only did I steal that child from his home, and from the good people who have always befriended me, but I have left him to be devoured by a wild beast of the forest. Whatever shall I do? Satan himself has got me in his power, through my own covetousness and greed. How—oh! how—can I ever get away ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... eats one rusk, then a second, then a third, and, looking sideways, with embarrassment, at the man of learning, timidly stretches after a fourth. . . . The noise he makes in swallowing, the relish with which he smacks his lips, and the expression of hungry greed in his raised eyebrows irritate ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... administrative power in at least three of the great belligerents—in Great Britain and Germany perhaps most so—must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face of the Central European Powers. But in the past century there has been ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... of the chests and, still more, the sight of their contents was naturally productive of the utmost excitement, and, also quite naturally, it at once roused all the greed that was latent in our natures. So far as Enderby and I were concerned we were quite able to control ourselves; but no sooner did the four Dagoes set eyes upon the gold coins with which one of the chests was filled than they threw themselves upon that chest, as starving wolves might throw themselves ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... demoralising Malay influence which has overcome their natural scruples about stealing. It must be admitted that the Dayaks wherever I have been are fond of wang (money), and they are inclined to charge high prices for the articles they are asked to sell. They have, if you like, a childish greed, which, however, is curbed by the influence of their religious belief before it has carried them to the point of stealing. Under continued Malay influence the innate longing for the possession of things very much desired overwhelms them and conquers ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... miniature army at his back; for civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two strongest of human motives, greed and fear. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... character in both capitalist and worker; to try to hold the classes together by upholding the sacred character of the State, and the solemn responsibility of each individual for the right use of whatever property or cleverness he might possess; to warn against the dangers of wealth and also against the greed for its possession; to point to ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... backward people should be absorbed or ruled by a stronger power; but the sentiment which leads it to fight against absorption or subjugation is none the less admirable. And when the foreign domination is reckless and inhuman, standing for nothing but vindictive malice and the greed of empire; and when the victims of the misrule are strong in the simple virtues of the poor, we have the case in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... waste to Scotia, The giver of gold fared with up-lifted sword in Man. The bearer of the elm-bow brought death to the hosts Of the Isle of Erin, for fame yearned the lord; Four winters did the King smite the dwellers in Wales, And Northumbrians hewed he ere the greed ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... have even threatened to ascend the Tiber and attack Rome, and though I trust that we might resist their attacks, yet rather than such misfortune as a siege should fall upon my people I have paid a large sum of money to the leader of the Northmen to abstain from coming hither; but I know that the greed of these pirates does but increase with their gains, and that ere long we may see their pagan banner floated before our walls. A few galleys I could man and place under your orders, but in truth the people of this town are not skilled in naval fighting. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... heard rumors of a wonderful tree which, in some unknown land, yielded golden apples, was moved with great greed to have some of this remarkable fruit. Hence he commanded Hercules to make the quest of this tree his eleventh labor. The hero had no notion where the tree grew, but he was bound by his bond to obey the King, so he set out and after a time reached the kingdom of Atlas, King ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... out of a sense of duty borne in upon a reluctant spirit, but because the wind happens to be in the east, or the preacher's nerves are badly out of order. The Church is told of her coldness, her indolence and unfaithfulness, her narrowness, bigotry and greed, not because, after a struggle to win permission to tell a more flattering tale, the preacher comes forth under a divine compulsion to "cry aloud and spare not," but because his digestion is upset, or his temporal concerns are awry, or even ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... of greed became too great to bear. A few unruly stragglers, far down the line, no longer to be held in check, bent portions of the long formation inward as they started out across the land. The human stampede began almost upon ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... better hear, and then ye will understand what manner of man in his walk and conversation we are harboring beneath our roof. For a' he look so grand and carries his head so high, he has little gold in his purse, but the black devil of greed is in his heart. So, like the lave of the gallants that drink and gamble and do waur things at the king's court, he has been hunting for some lass that will bring him a tocher (dowry) and a title. For this ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... centuries against the Faith in Ireland: and it has completely failed. I know of no example in history of failure following upon such effort. It had behind it in combination the two most powerful of the evil passions of men, terror and greed. And so amazing is it that they did not attain their end, that perpetually as one reads one finds the authors of the dreadful business now at one period, now at another, assuming with certitude that their ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... been oppressed? Have not our children been butchered and our gains wrung from us to fill the bottomless greed and lust of the Lagidae? Have not the temples been forsaken?—ay, have not the majesties of the Eternal Gods been set at naught by these Grecian babblers, who have dared to meddle with the immortal truths, and name the Most High by another name—by the name of Serapis—confounding ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... schools of England, or adequately supply the blank in our educational system created by their spoliation and abolition. Here, too, wise reform might have spared and remodelled what misguided zeal, allied with unprincipled greed, destroyed. ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... to be killed, they know not why; at the abominable wrongs and cruelties going on in Poland at this moment—the cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of Hosts, and surely not in vain; when one thinks of all the cries which have gone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty, tyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer the sneer, 'Believe, if you can, that this foolish, unjust, cruel being called man, is made in ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... very remorseless person; she was more—she was a woman actuated by passion and by greed: the two strongest motives known to the human heart. But with her recklessness she united a considerable degree of intelligence, or rather of intellect. Had she been a savage she might have removed her sister from ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... looked at each other, greed rising in their eyes. They had no love for the partners of the Three Star nor for Molly Casey. A big ransom was possible ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... I answered bowing. Then I began and told him of the Spaniards—of their country, their greatness, their cruelty and their greed of gold, and he listened eagerly, though I think that he believed little of what I said, for his fear had made him very suspicious. When I had done, he spoke ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... olive-trees, has the effect of a marvelous ripe fruit among the leaves. In Italy seeing is sensual: the eyes enjoy color, as the palate and the tongue delight in a juicy, scented fruit. Christophe flung himself at this new repast with eager childlike greed: he made up for the asceticism of the gray visions to which till then he had been condemned. His abounding nature, stifled by Fate, suddenly became conscious of powers of enjoyment which he had never used: they pounced on the prey presented to them; scents, colors, the music of voices, bells ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... France, killed in action by shell or bullet in the midst of his youth and strength and joy in life, to gratify the damned dreams of the man who had been the honoured guest at Ashbridge, and those who had advised and flattered and at the end perhaps just used him as their dupe. To their insensate greed and swollen-headed lust for world-power was this hecatomb of sweet and pleasant lives offered, and in their onward course through the vines and corn of France they waded through the blood of the slain whose only ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... greedy, was not dishonest. He was born a gentleman, but his son was born a trader. The son is a still cleverer man of business; the son is consulted and trusted. Aha! He too goes with the age; to greed he links ambition. The trader's son wishes to return—what? to the rank of gentleman?—gentleman! nonsense! everybody is a gentleman nowadays,—to the title of Lord. How ends it all! Could I sit but for twelve hours in the innermost heart of that Alfred Fletwode; could I see how, step ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... eyes gleaming, Hagen told the King of the great treasure Siegfried had won from the Nibelungs. His eyes gleamed with a greed he could not hide as he told King Gunther of the gold that had been strewed upon the mountain-side, of the jewels that had sparkled there, for Hagen was envious of the riches ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor
... for the acquisition of lands. This has been manifested in every form. Carried into effect it has made them powerful, until, not long since, they thought they might get entire dominion at no distant day. Then arose in their hearts a desire greater than the greed of land—the greed of office and power. They then saw that perhaps the North alone might control the national government, and with it the South. Then, too, the great class of protected interests ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Major replied, with a drawl, "for I felt that it would have too much the appearance of my own greed. I have hounded you—" The old fellow seized him, and stopped his utterance. "Don't say that, John. You have kept me out of hell and you ought to complete my ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... grasping. The Sikh Jat finds an honourable outlet for his overflowing energy in the army and in the service of the Crown beyond the bounds of India. When he misses that he sometimes takes to dacoity. Unfortunately he is often given to strong drink, and, when his passions or his greed are aroused, can be exceedingly brutal. Jat in the Western Panjab is applied to a large number of tribes, whose ethnical ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... sat upon his heels, and his crooked hands all dark with the dusty earth clutched at the stones beside him. He remained thus a long time, staring at the empty hole. Then caution, which was even stronger in his nature than greed, brought him to himself. His thin face was grey and haggard as he carefully swept the earth back to its place, removing all traces of what he had done. Then he knew how foolish he had been to let Zorzi know what he had ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... into the alluvial flats of that continent; where they have perished in large numbers, or have become the prey of the more powerful tribes, who consort with slave-hunters. Disease, tribal wars in Africa, and the merciless greed of slave-hunters, peopled the colony of Virginia with a class that was expected to till the soil. African criminals, by an immemorial usage, were sold into slavery as the highest penalty, save death; and often ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the little one-story house where the Ballards lived. Grandsir was by the fire, pounding walnuts in a little wooden mortar, to make a paste for his toothless jaws, and little 'Melia, a bowl of nuts before her, sat in a high chair at the table, lost in reckless greed. Her doll, forgotten, lay across a corner of the table, in limp abandon, the buttonholed eyes staring nowhere. Grandsir ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... all-powerful evil passion of mankind—greed of gold; lust of filthy lucre. He was first robbed, then murdered by the thief, to avoid detection and punishment. There is unmistakable evidence that the General was chloroformed while asleep; but he must have awakened in ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... His first care was to draw down the blind, for Mr. Rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of perplexity and thought. Then he emptied the broken bandbox on the table, and stood before the treasure, thus fully displayed, with an expression of rapturous greed, and rubbing his hand upon his thighs. For Harry, the sight of the man's face under the influence of this base emotion added another pang to those he was already suffering. It seemed incredible that, from his life of pure and delicate trifling, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... greed and delight, as he looked within. He spread out his long fingers, as if to grasp all ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... gives it an interest beyond that of almost any region known, and it certainly appeals to any nature which has an enthusiasm for the heroic and noble. Many countries have been acquired through bloodshed, by conquest and because of greed and glory, but a country whose foundations were laid in the rights of conscience only, whose progenitors took God alone for their Leader, and his rules and service for their code—who came in peace and poverty, demanding nothing but the right to live and die true men—ah! ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and deprived of any a priori objection by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology, show themselves ready to take poor Sludge seriously, and to believe that he is possessed by other devils than those of need, greed, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to Thyself, for all our fires are dim, Stamp Thou Thine image on our coin, for Caesar's face grows dim, And a dumb devil of pride and greed ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... these sources, during from two to three years, in the manner described, in the hospitals, I bestowed, as almoner for others, many, many thousands of dollars. I learn'd one thing conclusively—that beneath all the ostensible greed and heartlessness of our times there is no end to the generous benevolence of men and women in the United States, when once sure of their object. Another thing became clear to me—while cash is not amiss to bring ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... wrong which is done to popes, kings, princes, bishops and other big-wigs. Here each wants to be the most pious, where there is no great need. O how sly is here the deceitful Adam with his demand; how finely does he cover his greed of profit with the name of truth and righteousness and God's honor! But when something happens to a poor and insignificant man, there the deceitful eye does not find much profit, but cannot help seeing the disfavor of the powerful; ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... no longer girt by foes, He darkly stood beside that sullen wave, Watching the sluggish waters, whose repose Imaged the gloomy shadows in his heart; Vultures, that, in the greed of appetite, Still sating blind their passionate delight, Lose all the wing for flight, And, brooding deafly o'er the prey they tear, Hear never the low voice that cries, "depart, Lest with your surfeit you partake the snare!" Thus fixed by brooding and rapacious thought, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... attributes the glaring discrepancy between the figures which have just been quoted and the ratio of Catholics and Protestants in the population of Ireland to "a union of Protestant fanaticism and place-hunting greed." That it is due to any lack of ability among Irish Catholics I scarcely think anyone will urge, and in this connection an amazing article, which I remember reading in an English paper, is of interest. The writer, a Unionist from Ulster, strove to show the ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Caesar's sovereignty and rejected it entirely from the constitution: but is it not true that Antony, though he has avoided adopting it (as if the name in itself could do any harm), has exhibited the behavior belonging to it and the greed for gain, under the title of consulship? You assigned to him the duty of promoting harmony, and has he not on his own responsibility begun this great war, neither necessary nor sanctioned, against Caesar ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... end of it was, accordin' to the story, that the youngster 'greed to go 'long weth un: so up the two of ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... easy to travel, for at the barriers, as you approach the territories of every prince, they demand your business and your papers; nor even if you establish the fact that you are innocent of designs against the State, shall you hardly enter without satisfying the greed of the officials. ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... were mortals, and your praiser an immortal, then never should your praiser be unwelcome, like a deer in pasture grass, nor should he go on the path of Yama. Let not one sin after another, difficult to be conquered, overcome us; may it depart together with greed. Truly they are terrible and powerful; even to the desert the Rudriyas bring rain that is never dried up. The lightning lows like a cow, it follows as a mother follows after her young, when the shower ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... George Eastman had built up Yerbury on borrowed capital, lived on it in luxury, speculated, lost and won like any other gaming. He had persuaded each individual that he was on the high road to wealth. There had been a peculiar fascination about the man; or is it that the appeal to greed and covetousness is so much more convincing than that to honor and truth, that the baser impulses are quicker with their response? It was a great bubble upon credit, and carried with it the seeds of self-destruction. True, the bank held mortgages on rows of flimsy-built houses where walls ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... that to know human nature—at least to know it as its worst—one must be the victim of some discreditable misfortune in a small community. Moral cowardice, ingratitude, the greed which is ready to take advantage of some one unable to make an effective protest, the gratuitous insults offered the 'under dog' because he is helpless to fight back—he discovers it all, and when all is done he has little ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... world, and among many different nations. It is a fine thing or a foolish thing, as the case may be; an encouragement to friendliness, or a tribute to fashion; an expression of good nature, or a bid for favour; an outgoing of generosity, or a disguise of greed; a cheerful old custom, or a futile old farce, according to the spirit which animates it and ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I think do women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just how far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. The fierce jealousy of men for women and women for men is the very heart of all our social jealousies, the underlying tension of this crowded modern life ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... off at sunrise, shot a fine waterbuck, and down came the provision market to the lower figure; they even became eager to sell, but our men were angry with them for trying compulsion, and would not buy. Black greed had outwitted itself, as happens often with white cupidity; and not only here did the traits of Africans remind us of Anglo-Saxons elsewhere: the notoriously ready world- wide disposition to take an unfair advantage of a man's necessities shows that the same mean motives are pretty widely diffused ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... giglio—the modestly unfolding fragrant iris of the unsophisticated countryside, drooped before the flaming, passionate tiger-lily of the formal garden of debauchery, with its pungent odour and its secretive, incurled scarlet petals—splashed with the blacks and yellows of crime and greed! ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... presence at home had not pleased his brother from the beginning; Apollonius attributed that to the influence of his sister-in-law; since then he had grown even more estranged from him—and no wonder! Apollonius had already become acquainted with his brother's vanity and greed for honor, and what had happened since then had made the latter feel himself slighted in favor of Apollonius. His sister-in-law's dislike Apollonius thought he could overcome in time by honest endeavor, his brother's injured greed of honor by outward subordination. If there was no further obstacle ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... rich idlers with bloated faces, with bleary eyes, with swollen limbs, with bodies covered with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside down. No longer, said Comenius, did men in Bohemia call things by their right names. They called drunkenness, merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the vilest fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified;56 some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... defiant as a wind-lashed reed, Wounded he faced you as he stood at bay; You dared not lynch him in the light of day, But on your dungeon stones you let him bleed; Night came . . . and you black vigilants of Greed . . . Like human wolves, seized hard upon your prey, Tortured and killed . . . and, silent slunk away Without one qualm ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... creature of the devil, Harietta, there is not one of thy evil qualities of greed and extortion which I do not know. Thou liest to me and to all men—the only good thing in thee is thy body—and for that all ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn |
