"Usurious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slaves are natives of the islands, and not strangers. It is thought that they were made in their wars and quarrels. The most certain knowledge is that the most powerful made the others slaves, and seized them for slight cause or occasion, and many times for loans and usurious contracts which were current among them. The interest, capital, and debt, increased so much with delay that the borrowers became slaves. Consequently all these slaveries have violent and unjust beginnings; and most of the suits among the natives are over these, and they occupy the judges in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... lost. You will receive with the daughter of Don Augustin, at least two hundred thousand dollars of dowry. Half of this you are to employ in making partisans in the Senate, and in what you are pleased to call your army. This sum you will not lose: it will be repaid to you, and with usurious interest; or if it never should, you still make a good thing of it. The end you will keep in view, is to detach the Senate of Sonora from the Federal alliance. You will find no lack of reasons for this policy. For instance, your State has now scarcely ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... impossible for Secretary Cobb to stab the national credit. He would have been dealing constantly with a surplus instead of a deficit, and could not have put the nation to shame by forcing it to hawk its paper in the money markets at the usurious rate of one per cent. a month. One of the wisest financiers in the United States has expressed the belief that two hundred millions of coin, which might easily have been saved to the country by a protective tariff between 1850 and 1860, would have kept the National debt a thousand ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... "Shall I lend mine only ready-money 'now,' "For vain usurious 'Then' like thine, avaunt, a ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... years when he entered the House of Commons, quickly took the measure of the members, and conceived for them a fine scorn, which some say he exhibited in italics and upper case. This was charged up against him to be paid for later at usurious interest. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... flitted through Mr. Wilkins's confused brain that he should find it impossible to produce the thousands required without having recourse to the money lenders, who were already making difficulties, and charging him usurious interest for the advances they had lately made; and he unwisely tried to obtain a diminution in the sum he had originally proposed to give Ellinor. "Unwisely," because he might have read Ralph's character better than ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... one or two of these Mestizo traders whose fortunes amount to more than this; but such occurances are rare, and are seldom heard of. Many of these amounts have been collected together by their possessors by their engaging in a sort of usurious money-lending or banking business with the poverty-struck cultivators of the soil, by advancing seed to many of them for their paddy fields, and making the hard condition of exacting in return about ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... hesitated. If he had found the first subsidy difficult to refuse, how might he resist the second, or, he added to himself, with a sort of usurious exaltation, the depravity of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... and industrious race. Cortez found you so, and you astounded him with your civilization. But the conditions that followed have enslaved you. Enslaved, I repeat, for you are bound by debt. Your hacendado master contrives that you cannot pay even his usurious interest. The food you eat, you must buy from him, at his prices, of the quality he prescribes. And if your debt be not sufficient, that is, if there seems a chance of your paying it off, then you must increase it to obtain your daily bread. Your very children are slaves at birth, since with their ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... drinking the pure wine, the old doctor entered the cabinet and caught them at their wicked work. It was an act never to be forgotten by him, and he was astounded beyond measure. About this time he also discovered that Eugene had been borrowing money at usurious interest to pay debts he had contracted, and he was so indignant that he ordered him to leave his house. Eugene joined the army and went to Spain. His father became anxious for his safety, and had him attached to the staff of the duke of Augouleme. But young Sue took good care not to expose ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the Restoration; brother of Abbe Cruchot; uncle of President Cruchot de Bonfons. He as well as the prelate was much concerned with making the match between his nephew and Eugenie Grandet. The young girl's father entrusted M. Cruchot with his usurious dealings and probably with all his money ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... spoil were two persons destined to occupy a prominent position in our history. They were Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell,—both names held in general dread and detestation, though no man ventured to speak ill of them openly, since they were as implacable in their animosities, as usurious and griping in their demands; and many an ear had been lost, many a nose slit, many a back scourged at the cart's tail, because the unfortunate owners had stigmatized them according to their deserts. Thus they enjoyed a complete immunity of wrong; and, with the terrible court of Star-Chamber ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... western farm loans; Philadelphia alone was said to absorb $15,000,000 annually. The advantage to the West, if conditions were right, is too manifest to need explanation. But sometimes the over-optimistic farmer borrowed too heavily; sometimes the rates demanded of the needy westerners were usurious; often it seemed as if interest charges were like "a mammoth sponge," constantly absorbing the labor of the husbandman. The demand of the West for a greater currency supply has already been seen, for it appeared in the platforms of minor parties immediately after the Civil War. Sometimes ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... well-beloved Ximen," cried one, a wealthy and usurious merchant, with a twinkling and humid eye, and a sleek and unctuous aspect, which did not, however, suffice to disguise something fierce and crafty in his low brow and pinched lips—"trusty and well-beloved ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... large increase On fair demand, she could not rest in peace; (Beside th' affront to call th' adviser in, Who would prevent, to justify the sin): She therefore told him that "he vainly tried To soothe her anger, conscious that he lied; If thus he grasp'd at such usurious gains, He must deserve, and should expect her pains." The charge was strong; he would in part confess Offence there was—But, who offended less? "What! is a mere assertion call'd a lie? And if it be, are men compell'd to buy? 'Twas strange that Conscience on such ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... times; That ne'er, with anxious heart, explores The rugged heights Ambition climbs; Exempt from all the din, the toil, the care, That Cities for their busy Sons prepare; Fatigue, beneath the name of pleasure, Contentious law, usurious treasure, A tedious mean attendance on the Great, And emulation vain of ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Commerce and agriculture languished. Misery spread over the land. The treasury was empty, for no contributions could be collected from an impoverished population, and the island's future was compromised by loans at usurious rates. ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... young unthrift, whom Foster had more than once accommodated with loans on usurious interest, acknowledged, on this appeal, that he knew him as a wealthy and independent franklin, supposed to be worth much money, and verified the certificate produced to be ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... explaining to her carefully that she herself was satisfied with forty. To strengthen her despotism by the power of money, Brigitte laid by the surplus of her own funds. She made, so it was said in business offices, usurious loans by means of her brother, who appeared as a money-lender. If, between the years 1813 and 1830, Brigitte had capitalized sixty thousand francs, that sum can be explained by the rise in the Funds, and there is no need to have recourse to accusations more or less well founded, which have nothing ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... he told the story of the old Governor of Goa, who wanted money and summoned the usurers, and they wanted security; whereupon he laid his Hidalgo hand on a cataract of Kronos-beard across his breast, and pulled forth three white hairs, and presented them: 'And as honourably to the usurious Jews as to the noble gentleman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with the necklace, and was as full of censure for the sexton's wife for having demanded such usurious interest from a poor girl, as she was full of praise for the ornament itself. She promised to pay the loan that very day and to deduct it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... conviction is expressed in the condemnation of usurious interest and of rack-rent? Should ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... him and his friends still more, so that more advantageous salvage terms might be made, hurriedly cast about for other succour, and alighted on one William Wood, printer, who lent money, but whose agreement as a whole was not executed, as it was considered "either usurious or exorbitant" by their solicitors, who characteristically concluded their bill thus:—"Afterwards attending at the office in Wellington Street to see as to making the tender, and to advise you on the sufficiency thereof, but you were not there; ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... authority at Calais have got wind of it, and therefore his masters must take care and make Wyllykyn and Peter Bale pay at Calais, 'but as for your dealings knoweth no man, without they search Peter Bale's books.'[41] The upright Betson no doubt eschewed such tricks and resented particularly the clever usurious Lombards, so full of financial dodges to trick the English merchant, for did they not buy the wool in England on credit, riding about as they list ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... nation has sustained. Numerous are the cases in which those who have become deeply in debt to them for borrowed money, have procured their banishment, and the confiscation of their property, as the readiest way to cancel their demands; and, as they have ever been addicted to usurious practices, they have, by this means, furnished plausible pretexts to their foes to ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... would have no necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable.—He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out of Cannon's ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... greater precision, declares in the tribune that, "commerce is usurious, monarchical and anti-revolutionary."[41136] Considered in itself, it may be defined as an appeal to bad instincts; it seems a corrupting, incivique, anti-fraternal institution, many Jacobins having proposed either to interdict it to private persons and attribute it wholly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... pleasures, and under the influence of those allurements, which the various places of fashionable resort hold out; and seldom fail to obtain from them securities and obligations for large sums; upon the credit of which they are enabled, perhaps at usurious interest, to borrow money or discount bills, and thus supply their unfortunate customers upon the most ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... be stupid dolts, only so they do not interfere with the usurious principle in its eternal pull on the ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... newspapers and showed once more the cleavage of Northern public opinion. The radical East approved, the nationalist West disapproved, and business men, bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, whom Seward best represented, went on their indifferent ways, refusing to lend money to the Government save on usurious terms, and at the same time denouncing its policy of paying debts by issuing irredeemable paper. Lincoln had lost the confidence of the public, even of Congress; but, as he himself said, no other man possessed more of that confidence. An honest German merchant wrote home to friends that if the ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... you with the various practices of usurious oppression; but cannot omit my transaction with Squeeze on Tower-hill, who, finding me a young man of considerable expectations, employed an agent to persuade me to borrow five hundred pounds, to be refunded by an annual payment of twenty per cent. during ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... task to purvey luxuries to the imperious Briton, to hold the extravagant underlings in his usurious clutches, to be at peace with Hindu, Moslem, Sikh, Pathan, Ghoorka, Persian, and Armenian, and to blur his easy-going Mohammedanism in a generous participation in all sins of omission and commission. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... picture, but his creditors seemed to resent his marriage, and during the months that followed, gave him little peace. He was obliged, in the intervals of painting, to rush hither and thither to pacify this creditor, quiet the fears of that, remove the ill-will of a third, and borrow money at usurious interest from a fourth in order to keep his engagements with a fifth. In spite of all his compromises and arrangements, he was arrested more than once during this year, but so far he had been able to keep out of prison. His favourite pupil Bewick, who sat to him for the head ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... v.; illiberal, ungenerous, churlish, hidebound, sordid, mercenary, venal, covetous, usurious, avaricious, greedy, extortionate, rapacious. Adv. with a sparing hand. Phr. desunt inopioe multa avaritiae omnia [Latin][Syrus]; "hoards after hoards his rising raptures fill" [Goldsmith]; "the unsunn'd ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... uniformly friendly to Jews. On his way back from Austerlitz in 1805 he learnt at Strassburg of the wide distress caused in Alsace by the exactions of certain Jewish usurers in that province, and on his return to Paris issued edicts directed against the Alsatian Jews, restricting their usurious activity. It is fair to add that these enactments were obviously directed against the usury of the Alsatian Jews, and not against the Jews in general, since they were specifically declared not to apply to the Jews of Bordeaux in the South or Northern Italy, then ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... to boast openly that its rewards consisted in the consciousness of work well done. Instead, idleness became the badge of gentility, and trade a slur upon a man's reputation. No city can long survive so listless and languid an ideal. The Archbishop, therefore, denounced this new method of usurious traffic, and hinted further that to it was due the fierce rebellion which had for a while plunged Florence into the horrors of the Jacquerie. Wealth, he taught, should not of itself breed wealth, but only through the toil of honest labour, and that labour should be the labour of oneself, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... outrages upon the Jews as have disgraced the Eastern nations who have been guilty of them, Englishmen should hesitate before they fix the blame upon the government of any country in which they occur. The Jews are the chief traders in Roumania, and if they are exorbitant and usurious the way to meet them is by competition and enterprise on the part of the native traders, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... Straudenheim's, through the steadily falling rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line. But, inspection of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the second floor, convinced me that there was something more precious than liver in the case. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and rich. A large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though near-sighted. He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... this grave are those of his wife, his favorite daughter, Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full-length effigy of his old friend John Combe, of usurious memory, on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph. There are other monuments around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not connected with Shakespeare. His idea pervades the place; the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum. The ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... "This is usurious vengeance, Signor Giacomo," returned the less resolute Jew. "'Twill be more than sufficient for our purposes, if we cause the Neapolitan to keep house for ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... through not having his money, he might charge something for its use. In time people began to distinguish between interest moderate in amount and an excessive charge for the use of money. The latter alone was henceforth prohibited as usurious. Most modern states still have usury laws which fix the legal rate ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... planted in 1793, grew and flourished; and finally, the house in which he lived. Such was his visible estate; as to his other property, only two persons could give even a vague guess at its value: one was Monsieur Cruchot, a notary employed in the usurious investments of Monsieur Grandet; the other was Monsieur des Grassins, the richest banker in Saumur, in whose profits Grandet had a ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... The object of the association being to establish a harmonious society of persons of different religious sentiments, all intractable people shall be excluded from it, such as those in communion with the Roman See usurious Jews, English stiff-necked Quakers, Puritans, fool-hardy believers in the Millenium and ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... fellow Vauvinet to call on me to-morrow," replied Victorin, "but will he be satisfied by my guarantee on a mortgage? I doubt it. Those men insist on ready money to sweat others on usurious terms." ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... ululation, umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... man was glad to leave the district. The villagers celebrated their freedom by eating the "red rice" which is prepared on occasions of festivity. In another village, the guncho who spoke to me of these things said, there were several usurious landlords. "The village headman got angry. He called the landlords to him. He said to them that if they continued to lend at high interest the people would set fire to their houses and he would not ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... passing along; And public misfortunes, in all their variety, Need not be told in a holyday song. The troubles of Wall-street, I'm sure that you all meet, And they're not at all sweet—but look at their pranks: Usurious cravings, and discounts and shavings, With maniac ravings and Lombardy banks. ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... surely, when at length her master knew all, with the depth of her sorrow and repentance, he could not refuse his forgiveness! Would he not even, she dared to hope, remit the interest due on his money?—of which she entertained, in her ignorance, a usurious ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... Prussian relations supported me, and the Countess Bestuchef sent me the four thousand roubles I had refused at Petersburg. I had also remittances from my faithful mistress in Prussia; and, in addition, was obliged to borrow money at the usurious rate of sixty per cent. Bewildered as I was among lawyers and knaves, my ambition still prompted me to proceed, and all things are possible to labour and perseverance; but my property was expended: and, at length, I could only ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... the clergy, who are now too timid, may be induced to follow. But even the civil magistrates must also suffer reforms to be enacted in their particular spheres; especially are they called on to do away with the rude "gluttony and drunkenness," luxury in clothing, the usurious sale of rents and the common brothels. This, by divine and human right, is a part of their enjoined works according ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther
... people here—though by no means what they might be with more thrift and knowledge—much better off than the same class in many other parts of Ireland. There are no "Gombeen men" here, he says, and no usurious shopkeepers. "The people back each other in a friendly way when they need help." Many of the labourers, he says, are in debt to him, but he never presses them, and they are very patient with each other. They would do much better if any pains were taken to teach them. It is his belief that agricultural ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... failed, through no fault of his own, and as he had borrowed money at usurious rates on his expected profits, he found himself compelled to fly once more from his creditors. After spending a short time in Switzerland, he went to Stuttgart, where he persuaded his friend Weissheimer to go with him into the Suabian Alps, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... matter of precept not to seek profit by lending: although it may be called a matter of counsel in comparison with the maxims of the Pharisees, who deemed some kinds of usury to be lawful, just as love of one's enemies is a matter of counsel. Or again, He speaks here not of the hope of usurious gain, but of the hope which is put in man. For we ought not to lend or do any good deed through hope in man, but only through hope ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... in the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... indulged our every whim, and have spent gold like water, while our friend garnered his harvest and stored it away. But poor Catenac has no expensive tastes, nor does he care for women or the pleasures of the table. While we indulged in every pleasure, he lent out his money at usurious interest. But, stop,—how much do you spend ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... specially to the Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages, and was both the cause of their prosperity and of their misfortune. Of their prosperity, because they cleverly contrived to become possessors of all the coin; and of their misfortune, because their usurious demands became so detrimental to the public welfare, and were often exacted with such unscrupulous severity, that people not unfrequently became exasperated, and acts of violence were committed, which as often fell upon the innocent as upon the guilty. The greater number ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... was a religious man. Oh, yes, always a pillar of some church until his avarice grew so upon him that he could no longer bring himself to subscribe. My father learned that he was using his position in our church to lend money to other members at usurious interest, and to collect it under threats of exposure. My father showed him up, and Deaves was put out of the church. He set about a cold and patient scheme of revenge, but we didn't learn this until the crash came ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner |
