"Avaricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the old couple were saving, if not avaricious. But when it was known, through the indiscreet volubility of Mammy Downey, that Daddy Downey sent the bulk of their savings, gratuities, and gifts to a dissipated and prodigal son in the East,—whose photograph the old man always carried with him,—it rather elevated ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... island, and killed him on the spot. He had quitted his house in the storm, under an apprehension of its falling upon him, and was returning through his own garden when this fortunate accident happened. The word fortunate, here, requires some explanation. This chief was a man of a very avaricious and oppressive disposition, and though he had no family, the natives of the island were half starved by ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... greatly changed by the death of the Conqueror in 1087. William Rufus was a fierce, hot-tempered man, without respect for religion, delighting in revelry, and in being surrounded with boisterous, hardy soldiers, whom he paid lavishly, though at the same time he was excessively avaricious. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... of Louis XV. sowed the seeds of the French Revolution. Two dissolute women, notorious on the page of history, each, in their turn, governed him and France. The Marchioness du Pompadour was his first favorite. Ambitious, shrewd, unprincipled, and avaricious, she held the weak-minded king entirely under her control, and spread throughout the court an influence so contaminating that the whole empire was infected with the demoralization. Upon this woman he squandered almost the revenues ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... been guarded by a noble, loving husband, and her powers of resource had never been called out. Of all the women I have ever known, she was least fitted to match her sense of honor, her faith in mankind, and her inexperience and lack of business knowledge against such an unprincipled, avaricious man as the one who ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... generous: to chain down the genius of a writer to an annual panegyrick, showed in the queen too much desire of hearing her own praises, and a greater regard to herself than to him on whom her bounty was conferred. It was a kind of avaricious generosity, by which flattery was rather purchased ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... is wise. Avarice destroys what the avaricious gathers. Allah will reward the spy according ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... properly understood, to see the father and daughter forced, by the painful peculiarity of their circumstances, thus to conceal their natural sentiments from each other. Love, however, is often a disturber of families, as in the case of Reilly and Cooleen Bawn; and so is an avaricious ambition, when united to a selfish and a sensual attachment, as in the case ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... then, as I remark, takes care of itself, but is niggardly and avaricious when its own ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... live with you and your wife no more. I should grow avaricious in my old age, were I to remain with you. I should long for money to call my own. Those doled out shillings which I received wakened within me feelings of a dark nature—covetousness, and envy, and discontent—which must ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... seem too that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would purchase for ever the constant labour of from above sixty to eighty men, would have avoided the hazards of trade.—Yet in England it is not so—the avaricious spirit of commerce despises all mediocrity—care is preferred to enjoyment—and the ends of life are sacrificed to the means! It has always been the foible of man not to be contented with the good he possesses, but to look forward to happiness in ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... waistcoat, 'is for you, to buy presents with for them at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper. Last of all take notice, Pa, that it's not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't make so free ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Void of all honor, avaricious, rash, The daring tribe compound their boasted trash— Tincture of syrup, lotion, drop, or pill: All tempt the sick to trust the lying bill. 1412 CRABBE: Borough, Letter ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... high as he could reach," and he stood on tiptoe as he put his uplifted hand against the wall. This extraordinary offer filled Pizarro with intense astonishment. That such a thing could be done seemed utterly incredible, despite all they had learned of the riches of Peru. The avaricious conqueror, dazzled by the munificent offer, hastened to accept it, drawing a red line along the wall at the height the Inca had touched. How remarkable the ransom was may be judged from the fact that the room was about seventeen ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... is but one of many such examples of ancient luxury. Unfortunately, however, most of these extravagant affairs have been melted up by avaricious monarchs who coveted the gems and gold. Such ornate mirrors are a relic of the Renaissance when each object made was considered an art work on which every means of enrichment was lavished. I do not know that I think ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... accomplishment for a Theban was that of eloquence, which he possessed in no ordinary degree. These intellectual qualities were matched with moral virtues worthy to consort with them. Though eloquent, he was discreet; though poor, he was neither avaricious nor corrupt; though naturally firm and courageous, he was averse to cruelty, violence, and bloodshed; though a patriot, he was a stranger to personal ambition, and scorned the little arts by which popularity is too often courted. Pelopidas, as we have already said, was ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... were planted in Paris, it would open new fields to Parisian labor? Moreover, gentlemen, is it not very likely, as Mr. Lestiboudois said, that we buy these Poitevin salted meats, not with our income, but our capital? Where will this land us? Let us not allow greedy, avaricious and perfidious rivals to come here and sell things cheaply, thus making it impossible for us to produce them ourselves. Aldermen, Paris has given us its confidence, and we must show ourselves worthy of it. The people are without labor, and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... intellectual perceptions are stronger than his natural impulses, should go into charity work at all. The only man they are accustomed to see whose intellectual perceptions are stronger than his tenderness of heart, is the selfish and avaricious man who is frankly "on the make." If the charity visitor is such a person, why does she pretend to like the poor? Why does she not go ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... autograph from his hand. I would gladly satisfy your wish sooner, but that the letters which Wagner writes to me are a perfectly inalienable benefit to me, and you will not take it amiss if I am more than avaricious with them. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... prevailing, sometimes disappointed, always honest and steadfast. The more gentle Archbishop gave up the contest, worn out by the vain attempt to preserve purity and order between the fickle King, the oppressive Pope, the turbulent nobles, and the avaricious clergy. Orders to him, to Robert, and to the Bishop of Salisbury, to appoint no one to a benefice till three hundred Italians were provided for, seemed finally to overpower him; he, with Richard Wych, secretly left London, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... heart is cowed And dares not use her strength, Hears the kind impulse plead Against the common avaricious fear, Grants it but life, though sovereignty was due Or doles it sway but one day out of seven ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... young soldiers in excess of his number awaiting him at Seville; he likewise found a goodly number of avaricious old men, the majority of whom asked merely to be allowed to follow him at their own cost, without receiving the royal pay. Rather than overcrowd his ships and to spare his supplies, he refused to take any of the latter. Care was taken that no foreigner should mingle with the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... together with the persistency with which the religious begged Taico to restore the merchandise to the Spaniards, resulted in angering him thoroughly, and like the barbarous and so avaricious tyrant that he was, he gave orders to crucify them all and all the religious who preached the religion of Namban [86] in his kingdoms. Five religious who were in the house at Miaco were immediately seized, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... so did he to the women upon the calends of March [766]; notwithstanding which, he could not wipe off the disrepute of his former stinginess. The Alexandrians called him constantly Cybiosactes; a name which had been given to one of their kings who was sordidly avaricious. Nay, at his funeral, Favo, the principal mimic, personating him, and imitating, as actors do, both his manner of speaking and his gestures, asked aloud of the procurators, "how much his funeral and the procession would cost?" And being answered "ten millions of sesterces," he cried out, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... you mean?" she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers? "What are ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... so, they will choose the ant. They do not care to abase themselves, they will always choose the principal part—this is the choice of self-love, a very natural choice. But what a dreadful lesson for children! There could be no monster more detestable than a harsh and avaricious child, who realised what he was asked to give and what he refused. The ant does more; she teaches him not merely to ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... them. And on the whole, things, you believed, were going well. Though they were not scrupulously just, these big men were generous, and were willing to give away what they had acquired. Though grasping, they were not avaricious. They grasped things with the strong prehensile grasp of the infant, rather than with the clutch of the miser. They took them because they were there, and not because they had any well-defined idea as to whether they belonged to them ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... famous statesman Peter de Vineis, Dante learns that at the judgement they will recover their bodies, like others, but will not be allowed to reassume them. The body will be hung on the tree to which it belongs. Here, as in the case of the avaricious and the wrathful, the spirits of other sinners take a part in the infliction of the punishment. The wood is inhabited by the souls of those who had wasted their substance in life, and these are constantly chased through it by hounds, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... wealthy capitalists or enterprising captains of industry. "Why do you suppose that there is so much talk now of an independent little state centering around Klagenfurt?" one of them asked me. "I will tell you: for the sake of some avaricious capitalists. Already arrangements are being pushed forward for the establishment of a bank of which most of the shares are to belong to X." Another said: "Dantzig is needed for politico-commercial reasons. Therefore it will not be made part of Poland.[106] Already conversations have ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to return to the great South Sea gulf, that swallowed the fortunes of so many thousands of the avaricious and the credulous. On May 29th the stock had risen as high as 500, and about two-thirds of the government annuitants had exchanged the securities of the state for those of the South Sea Company. During the whole of the month of May the stock continued ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... of the hopelessness of their cause, emigrated in crowds and attempted to form another France on the borders of their country in the German Rhenish provinces. Worms and Coblentz were their chief places of resort. In the latter city, they continued their Parisian mode of life at the expense of the avaricious elector of Treves, Clement Wenzel, a Saxon prince, by whose powerful minister, Dominique, they were supported, and acted with unparalleled impudence. They were headed by the two brothers of the French king, who entered ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... in a quieter tone, "that I see life in the hands of enemies, not only enemies of the noble but of everything good, avaricious and incapable of adorning ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... an elder brother; and he must have been less avaricious than the rest of them, as he sacrificed a fortune for love. It was quite a little romance, you know. He and his brother Hugh were both in love with the same lady. The father did not approve, and gave his sons their choice between love without a fortune or a fortune without ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... play in which characters are overwhelmed by fate, but in which our sympathy is not with them, is, if we follow Coleridge, really farce. Whatever "The Building Fund" is, its characterization is admirable. Some might say its men and women approximate to types, that Mrs. Grogan is the avaricious old woman, Shan the sanctimonious miser, Sheila the sly minx, Michael the benevolent old man, and Dan the gay blade. Types or not, you will find all of them in Ireland, and all of them wherever human ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... restrictive influences of those who had sought perfection. To organize and administer the new industrial-financial-commercial regime, the leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick-skinned, unscrupulous, hard-headed, and avaricious; yet daring, dominating, and gifted with keen prevision and vivid imagination. These qualities had not been bred under any of the Mediterranean civilizations, or that of Central Europe in the Middle Ages, which had ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... Sancho, [10] as if from his time up to now prices had not risen. Ha, ha, ha! Why should a baptism cost less than a chicken? But I play the deaf man, collect what I can, and never complain. We're not avaricious, are we, Padre Salvi?" ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... the infamous project had been crowned with complete success, the old libertine was overjoyed beyond measure; but when Mike demanded the one hundred dollars, his face lengthened—for he was avaricious as well as villainous, and his recent loss of five thousand dollars, in favor of the Chevalier and the Duchess, made him exceedingly loth to part with a cool hundred so easily.—Not exactly knowing the sort of a man he had to deal ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... that. So this witness is a liar too! Answer me. Is he a liar? [Silence] You don't answer. It's just as well. Come now, Etchepare, why do you persist in these denials—eh? Isn't it all plain enough? You are avaricious, ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... eldest, was gifted with a fearless soul and a powerful arm; Otter, the second, with snare and net, and the power of changing his form at will; and Regin, the youngest, with all wisdom and deftness of hand. To please the avaricious Hreidmar, this youngest son fashioned for him a house lined with glittering gold and flashing gems, and this was guarded by Fafnir, whose fierce glances and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... "Well, if you can't control your avaricious tendencies you'll have to pay," she said. "Send to the bank and get the money so George can ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of this convenience abound. The Barbary Jews were rich and industrious, and, accordingly, their wealth provoke the cupidity of the indolent and avaricious Mussulmans. These latter, whenever a long drought had destroyed vegetation, and the strenuous prayers offered up in the mosques had proved unavailing for its removal, were accustomed to argue—and a mighty convenient argument it was—that it was the foul breath of the Jews that had offended Heaven, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... establishments" are well managed. The majority are conducted by ignorant, avaricious quacks, who have no knowledge of surgery or medicine, and who either kill or injure their victims for life. Frequent arrests of these people are made every year, but the punishment is seldom inflicted as it should ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... we believe him" choose according to the sight of the eye? Would he turn away from the child born in sin and taught iniquity, on whose pinched face hunger and courage and love of praise have combined to stamp the cunning of avaricious age, and take to his arms the child of honest parents, such as Peter and his wife, who could not help looking more good than the other? That were not he who came to seek and to save that which was lost. Let the man who loves his brother say which, in his highest moments of love to God, which, when ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... seemed unreal, a place of thin shadow, the future unsubstantial as well; only the past was actual in Lemuel Doret's mind—the gray cold prison, the city at night, locked rooms filled with smoke and lurid lights, avaricious voices in the mechanical sentences of gambling, agonized tones begging for a shot, just a shot, of an addicted ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as for Robert Bartley his very character was shaken to the foundation by his crime and its terrible consequences. He was now like a man who had glided down a soft sunny slope, and was suddenly arrested at the brink of a fathomless precipice. Bartley was cunning, selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous in reality, so long as he could appear respectable, but he was not violent, nor physically reckless, still less cruel. A deed of blood shocked him as much as it would shock an honest man. Yet now through following his natural ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... had, during the reign of Charles I, made a good governor, and had won the respect of the people, but as he became old there was a decided change for the worse in his nature. He is depicted in his declining years, as arbitrary, crabbed and avaricious. ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... been used prior to and during the war—namely, the use of agents provocateurs to corrupt the ignorant and incite the lawless, the instigation of Indian massacres to daunt the brave, and the distribution of gold to buy the avaricious. ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... considerations weigh even with the noblest nations, how vain are the strongest appeals to justice, humanity, and national honour, unless when the public mind is under the immediate influence of the cheerful or vehement passions, indignation or avaricious hope. In the whole class of human infirmities there is none that make such loud appeals to prudence, and yet so frequently outrages its plainest dictates, as the spirit of fear. The worst cause conducted in hope is an overmatch for ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... (ibid., p. 326), "lived a long time in habits of intimacy with him, and was so obliging as to delineate it at our solicitation." "In his person were collected the most opposite defects and advantages of every kind. He was avaricious and ostentatious, ... haughty and obliging, politic and confiding, licentious and superstitious, bold and timid, ambitious and indiscreet; lavish of his bounties to his relations, his mistresses, and his favourites, yet frequently paying neither his household ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... an heiress, Dulcibel naturally attracted the attention of her near neighbor in the village, Jethro Sands. Jethro was quite a handsome young man after a certain style, though, as his life proved, narrow minded, vindictive and avaricious. Still he had a high reputation as a young man with the elders of the village; for he had early seen how advantageous it was to have a good standing in the church, and was very orthodox in his faith, and very regular in his attendance at all the ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... two, in Latin, were compiled by Dr. Johnson at a daily wage, and the third and fourth (which are a repetition of the first two), in English, are by Oldys. A charge of 5s. was made for the first two volumes, which caused a good deal of grumbling among the trade, and was resented 'as an avaricious innovation,' but Osborne replied that the volumes could be either returned in exchange for books or for the original purchase-money. He was also charged with rating his books at too high a price, but a glance through the catalogue will prove ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... one of strength and depth. Even now no Jew in fiction is ever a weakling or a trifler. In whatever light he is presented, a Shylock of Shakespeare, an Isaac of Scott, a Nathan of Lessing, a Sidonia of Disraeli—revengeful, avaricious, bigoted, benevolent, magnificent, talented—he is always a character of striking power and intensity. The ancient type of Greek does not appear in modern fiction. If he did, it would be as a subtle reasoner, perfect critic, polished man of the world, full of the intellectual ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... a hare and managed easily enough to outstrip the miser, and to conceal himself in a den where he was well known. But unfortunately the matter did not end there. The Sieur de Ranquet was influential at Court; he was implacable as well as avaricious, and his disposition positively forbade him to forgive any one who had nearly picked his pocket. Besides which he knew that Jean had often stolen his horses. He made a formal complaint at high quarters, and a warrant was issued against Jean, offering a large sum in silver coin to the man who should ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... a place where he had a complete view of all that was going on. He did not cry out, or frighten himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed all the cash and papers ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... having first given Mother Guttersnipe some loose silver, which she seized on with an avaricious clutch. ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... accursed; for it seemed to them that they could not live a righteous life therein; and therefore went they into the wilderness, where they trowed to serve GOD in peace. Therefore says Seneca, "I have become more avaricious, and more cruel, and more inhuman because ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... understand that five sixths of the people of the millionaire's metropolis, New York, live in the tenement-house region, a breeding centre of intemperance, pestilence, crime, and future mobs, where wretched life is crushed to deeper wretchedness by the avaricious exaction of unfeeling landlords[10] worse than those against whom the Irish rebel. Is not the splendor of such a city like the hectic flush on the consumptive's cheek? The statistics of the past year reveal the startling fact ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... but even to Adela's inexperienced ears it was not like the ring of genuine silver. After all, mock virtue imposes on but few people. The man of the world is personally known for such; as also are known the cruel, the griping, the avaricious, the unjust. That which enables the avaricious and the unjust to pass scatheless through the world is not the ignorance of the world as to their sins, but the indifference of the world whether they be sinful ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... is the subject of a story which has given rise to a wide-spread proverb. She was, so runs the story, an avaricious woman, who never was known to do good to any one. In fact, during her whole life she never gave anything away, except the top of an onion to a beggar woman. After her death St. Peter's mother went to hell, and the saint begged our Lord to release her. In consideration of her one charitable ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... a soul deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem the base pleasant, ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... seventeenth year he lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher, who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boy—or endeavored to do so—according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits were always too sharp for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... much effort. In this way their very soul enters into you, and it is but fair that you should reward them as they deserve. Young as you are, too, you have a recompense in your power: one more acceptable even than Academic prizes—of which it is indispensable not to be too avaricious—you can give ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... ages there have been those whom nature has qualified for a better life, who wish to live in harmony, and turn with weariness and disgust from the present forms of avaricious strife, rivalry, and fraud. If the best of these could be gathered in one community, a better state of society could ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... and delicate melody. The story is simplicity itself, but the situations are amusing in themselves, and are led up to with no little adroitness, Paolino, a young lawyer, has secretly married Carolina, the daughter of Geronimo, a rich and avaricious merchant. In order to smooth away the difficulties which must arise when the inevitable discovery of the marriage takes place, he tries to secure a rich friend of his own, Count Robinson, for Geronimo's other daughter, Elisetta. Unfortunately Robinson prefers Carolina, and proposes ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Florence I was the only Englishman there, I believe, who never went to court, leaving it to my hatter, who was a very honest man, and my breeches-maker, who never failed to fit me. [99] The Italians were always—far exceeding all other nations—parsimonious and avaricious, the Tuscans beyond all other Italians, the Florentines beyond all other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... believed that his reserved wife would take such high measures, and he felt miserably lonely after the usual round of elaborate dinners to which he had grown grumblingly accustomed. His one senile passion was his pride in her, and he was avaricious of the lost days while she was absent from her usual victorious post as the mistress of that great house. The next day his heart sank still lower, for he saw in the Sunday papers a little paragraph to the effect that Mrs. Stuart had invited a brilliant house-party ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... of old institutions and prejudices, a mushroom growth has sprouted of child-atheists and precocious profligates, calculating debauchees while their cheeks are still innocent of down, who, after the effervescence of a foul, vicious youth has spent itself, simmer down into avaricious, dishonest bourgeois and bloated cafe politicians. The teeth of the Republican dragon have been drawn, but they are sown broadcast from Dan even to Beersheba. Ancient realm of Capet, Valois, and Bourbon—motherland of Du Guesclin ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... the great pillars of our politics; and this attachment should not be slight and accidental, but regular, consistent, and founded in strong conviction. His manners, gentle and polite; above all things, honest, and least of all things, avaricious. His circumstances and connections should be such as to give solid pledges for his fidelity; and he should by no means be disagreeable to the prince with whom we are in alliance, his ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... happy as the 22nd day of June is long in each year. At initiative conclusions he would be classified with the freak species of humanity, but beneath his raw exterior there lurked rich mines which the moss kept a secret from the inquisitive, avaricious world. ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... attached to it. Our very clothes are an appeal to the goodwill of our neighbours, and a refuge from their contempt. Society would be transformed if the distinction were reversed, if admiration were no longer rendered to the luxurious and avaricious and were accorded only to talent and virtue. Let not the necessity of rewarding virtue be suggested as a justification for the inequalities of fortune. Shall we say, to a virtuous man: "If you show yourself deserving, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to judge only by this bill (in which Karl Ivanitch demanded repayment of all the money he had spent on presents, as well as the value of a present promised to himself), they would take him to have been a callous, avaricious egotist ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... would double the quantity of beads; the next day with a great deal of importunity on his part I received the skin in exchange for a few strans of the same beads he had refused the day before. I therefore believe this trait in their character proceeds from an avaricious all grasping disposition. in this rispect they differ from all Indians I ever became acquainted with, for their dispositions invariably lead them to give whatever they are possessed off no matter ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the tomb of the count and countess de Monterey, which was also the work of Algardi. From an artistic point of view, he was most successful in his portrait-statues and groups of children, where he was obliged to follow nature most closely. In his later years he became very avaricious and amassed a great fortune. He died in Rome on the 10th of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... This morning I might have doubted, but now, thanks to that vain idiot who goes by the name of Wilkie, I am sure, perfectly, mathematically sure of success. Maumejan, who is entirely devoted to me, and who is the greediest, most avaricious scoundrel alive, will draw up such a complaint that Marguerite will sleep in prison. Moreover, other witnesses will be summoned. By what Casimir has said, you can judge what the other servants will say. ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... no, cannot help himself. He must needs accede, proudly and joyfully, to my proposal. He knows his estates to be in my power far too deeply to resist. Nay, more, though he be somewhat selfish, and ambitious, and avaricious, I know nothing of him that should justify me in believing that he would sell his daughter's honor, even to a king, for wealth or title! My good wife is all too doubtful and suspicious. But, hark! here comes the mob, returning ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... to judge what that profit and advantage ought to be? Certainly no authority on earth. It is a matter of convention dictated by the reciprocal conveniences of the parties, and indeed by their reciprocal necessities.—But, if the farmer is excessively avaricious?—why so much the better—the more he desires to increase his gains, the more interested is he in the good condition of those upon whose labour his gains must ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... of his letters, mentions that his wife's maid, Harpaste, had nearly lost her eyesight, but "she knoweth not she is blind, she saith the house is dark. This that seemeth ridiculous unto us in her, happeneth unto us all. No man understandeth that he is covetous, or avaricious. He saith, I am not ambitious, but no man can otherwise live in Rome; I am not sumptuous, but the ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... is waking up now rapidly from the lethargic sleep of ages. Men's minds are keenly alive to what is passing; communications are much improved; the dissemination of news is rapid; the old race of besotted, ignorant tenants, and grasping, avaricious, domineering tyrants of landlords is fast dying out; and there could be no difficulty in establishing in such village or district courts as I have indicated. All educated respectable Europeans with a stake in the country should be made Justices of the Peace, with limited powers ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... learn chastity; they would not have done worse in sending me to a roundhead to learn generosity, or to a quaker to learn manners, than to a papist to learn honor." "Destruction," said another, "seize my mother for her avaricious pride in preventing my obtaining a husband when I wanted one, and thus obliging me to purloin the thing I might have honorably come by." "Hell, and double Hell to the lustful wretch of a gentleman, who ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... of Lupicinus, and his military skill, are acknowledged by the historian, who, in his affected language, accuses the general of exalting the horns of his pride, bellowing in a tragic tone, and exciting a doubt whether he was more cruel or avaricious. The danger from the Scots and Picts was so serious that Julian himself had some thoughts of passing over into ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... poet sees the souls of the prodigal and avaricious rolling heavy stones, against each other with ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... witnesses—each ardently on the side of the bird—watched intently. Decently mannered, it refused to clamber on to the edge of the plate, for it was ever averse from defilement of food. The tit-bit was just beyond avaricious exertions—just at that tantalising distance and just so irresistibly desirable as might be directly stimulative ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... with all the tenacity of a long established habit, and he became a usurer. He was known to all the young profligates, the bad young men who throng our city, and became as necessary to them as the poor avaricious Jew was in former days to the spendthrifts and gamesters in London. He told me frightful stories, my children, of tyranny and fraud, of ruined young men led on by him till they committed self-murder, of old men shorn of their fortunes ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... if only you would be cold, unfriendly, avaricious. Be stone and rule with a rod of iron. Make the people fear you, since they refuse to love you; ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey's house had been a shock to the lad's ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sacramento Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see such disfigurements far and wide over California—and in some such places, where only meadows and forests are visible—not a living creature, not a house, no stick or stone or remnant of a ruin, and not a sound, not even ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... society in which they both move there is but one way in which she can be his—the way sanctioned by society, blessed by the church. Society and the church will bless and smile upon any union: the decrepit old man with the blooming child; the drunkard and adulterer with the pure young girl; the avaricious youth with the doting old woman. Marriage purifies, sanctifies, hallows sensuality, greed, any, every base motive. To love as God made you free to love, unfettered, and with a true heart, is a crime; to live together full of hatred, loathing, and revolt, is to perform a sacred duty once ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... people justly chastised. They suffer because of their disobedience to Holy Church. From the least to the greatest in the realm each vies with the other in evil-doing. The husbandmen, citizens, lawyers and priests are hard and avaricious; the princes, dukes and noble lords are proud, vain, cursers, swearers, and traitors. The corruptness of their lives infects the air. It is just ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the ordinary course of things; whatever forms a singular exception, and is only conceivable amid an utter perversion of ideas, belongs to the arbitrary exaggeration of farce. Hence since (and it was undoubtedly the case long before) the time of Moliere, the enamoured and avaricious old man has been the peculiar common-place of the Italian masked comedy and opera buffa, to which in truth it certainly belongs. Moliere has treated the main incident, the theft of the chest of gold, with an uncommon want of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... shelves, picking out volumes here and there with an unwonted glow and interest all the while. He sent for a case, and made a youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them. And still as he went back to his own work new names would occur to him, and full of the scholar's avaricious sense of the shortness of time, he would shake his head and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had already passed, grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the spread of Monasticism in Gaul, and Heaven knows what besides, half a mile ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... illness again seized Laudonniere and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... involves many other things; but this is what it is. Is it then worth all the apprehension and grief it occasions? Is it an adequate cause for the gloom of the merchant, the discontent of the artisan, the foreboding sighs of the mother, the ghastly dreams which haunt the avaricious, the conscious debasement of the subservient, the humiliation of the proud? These are severe sufferings; are they authorised by the nature of poverty? Certainly not, if poverty induced no adventitious evils, involved nothing but a deficiency of the comforts of life, leaving ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... aright. "Have you a daughter?" inquires the Hollander. "I have, indeed, a most dear child."—"Let her be my wife!" Again Daland cannot believe his ears, cannot be sure whether he is asleep or awake. It is suggested later that he cares unduly for wealth; but, without supposing him avaricious, we can realise how what is offered at this moment should seem such to his simple sailor mind that a man must be outright mad not to grasp at it for the inconceivable happiness and splendour of himself and ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the young American caused an avaricious glint to leap into the other's eyes. Plainly, two master passions fought for supremacy: an inordinate greed for money and a choleric determination to prohibit any further attentions to his wife. The struggle was ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... passage, Luther himself declared that the last state of things was worse than the first; that vice of every kind had increased since the Reformation; that the nobles were more greedy, the burghers more avaricious, the peasants more brutal; that Christian charity and liberality had almost ceased to flow; and that the authorised preachers of religion were neither heeded, respected nor supported by the people: all of which he characteristically attributed to the workings of the devil, a personage ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... of his agents he discovered a warder who had been in some trouble with the authorities, a man who was avaricious and was even then on the brink of being discharged from the service for trafficking with prisoners. The bribe he offered this man was a heavy one and the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... father's execrations, but as my father commanded me, I laid my hand upon the Bible and vowed eternal, inextinguishable hatred of the Prussians. And the boy's vow has been kept by the man. I have struggled ceaselessly against these ambitious land-greedy, avaricious Prussians; fought with my tongue, my sword, and my pen. And when at last, at Jena, they were vanquished and forced to bow to the very dust, I exulted, for their defeat was Poland's vengeance. God was requiting the wrong they had done to Poland. Since ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... "Oh, you avaricious! Mr. Marshman!" cried Margaret, as the old gentleman was just then passing through the room, "here's Ellen Montgomery says she'd rather have money than ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... the traders at Chena would provide a site, the offer was scornfully rejected. "They would have to come, anyway, or go out of business." But they did not come; rather they put their backs up and fought. And because Fairbanks was enterprising and far-sighted, while Chena was avaricious and narrow, because Fairbanks offered free sites and Chena charged enormously for water-front, business went the ten miles up the often unnavigable slough and settled there, and by and by built a little railway that it might be independent of the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... myself to effect my passage, but I should think it an unfortunate introduction to an ally, who has already done so much for us, were I to add to his losses and disbursements, that of a valuable ship and crew. I wish that the present delay offered some, period less distant than the lassitude of an avaricious enemy to watch for prey. Perhaps you may be able to put me on some more expeditious mode of passage than the one under which I am acquiescing at present. I shall be much pleased to adopt any such, which may come recommended ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... Avarice proceeds upon the principle that all pleasure is only negative in its operation and that the happiness which consists of a series of pleasures is a chimaera; that, on the contrary, it is pains which are positive and extremely real. Accordingly, the avaricious man foregoes the former in order that he may be the better preserved from the latter, and thus it is that bear and forbear—sustine et abstine—is his maxim. And because he knows, further, how inexhaustible are the ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his headman Quonga announced that the king would pay me a visit on the following morning. Although I had but little remaining from my stock of baggage except the guns, ammunition, and astronomical instruments, I was obliged to hide everything underneath the beds, lest the avaricious eyes of Kamrasi should detect a "want." True to his appointment, he appeared with numerous attendants, and was ushered into my little hut. I had a very rude but serviceable armchair that one of my men had constructed; in this ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... their magnanimity, faith, truth, purity, simplicity and mercy, are published to the world in the records of former times by sacred bards of great learning. Though endued with every noble virtue, these have yielded up their lives. Thy sons were malevolent, inflamed with passion, avaricious, and of very evil- disposition. Thou art versed in the Sastras, O Bharata, and art intelligent and wise; they never sink under misfortunes whose understandings are guided by the Sastras. Thou art acquainted, O prince, with the lenity ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... good deeds. Let your voice be heard in the high court of which you will be a member, whenever the artizan and the laborer need a defender from the foul enactments that are there consummated. Let your passions be subjected to the control of religion and morality—let no avaricious knave oppress the hard-toiling farmer in your name, but see to these things yourself. Let your ear be easy of access, and your heart be open, and then, my Lord, I shall be more than repaid, you will have had a nobler vengeance than any man could give you, and will earn in truth ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... people will use any other puffed and advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. I'm not an avaricious man. But a great business requires capital—and to spend money merely in flogging the invertebrate is ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... received from himself, and not from elsewhere; but let him rejoice humbly in the Lord, from whom and by whom are all things, and without whom is nothing; nor let him wrap his gifts in the folds of envy, nor hide them in the closet of an avaricious heart; but all pride of heart being repelled, let him with a cheerful mind give with simplicity to all who ask of him, and let him fear the judgment of the Gospel upon that merchant, who, failing to return to his lord a talent with accumulated interest, deprived of all ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... and unaccountable scene meant; but her eyes filled with tears, her face became as pale as marble, and her resolution failed her. Her little, happy home had been rudely invaded, and a grasping, avaricious enemy had shown himself where she expected to ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... me in the possession of my wealth and dignities, he has sent robbers to invade my patrimony. Avaricious and sparing of his own possessions, he is lavish of those of others, and thus enriches libertines and profligates who have consumed the patrimony of their fathers ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... narrates the sufferings of the Catholic laity, many of whom he says are reduced to "extreme poverty and misery;" "if they have any property, they are doubly persecuted by the avaricious courtiers." But so many have given a glorious testimony of their faith, he thinks their enemies and persecutors have gained but little. Thus, while one party was rejoicing in their temporal gain, the other ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... see, are grown rich and avaricious. They have uprooted the old pomegranate hedges, and have built high walls to prohibit the wayfarer from ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... tightly in their hands. One woman in the house of the Faun was loaded with jewels, and had died in the vain effort to hold up with her outstretched arms the ceiling that was crushing down upon her. But women were not the only ones who showed an avaricious disposition in the midst of the thunders and flames of Vesuvius. Men had tried to carry off their money, and the delay had cost them their lives, and they were buried in the ashes with the coins they so highly valued. Diomed, one of the richest men of Pompeii, abandoned his wife and daughters ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... so sure of that," replied Paul. He knew instinctively that she was avaricious by nature, and would be likely to do ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... The avaricious, gold-seeking, Suchong Pollyhong Ka-te-tow had performed his task; wealth poured into his coffers from the ambitious parents, who longed to boast of an alliance with the brother of the sun and moon, and many ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... they obeyed and from that time he grew richer than ever. And the youth returned to his mother and told her all that had happened and they understood the meaning of the advice which Chando had given to the two men and acted accordingly. And it is true that we see that avaricious men who trespass across boundaries ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... the crowd, and Salve's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... hold of education, they will dominate the university, and eradicate sound letters. Yet why do I speak of healthy literature? I ought to have said good and wholesome doctrine, the which is verily mortal to that Company' (ibid. p. 162). 'Every species of vice finds its patronage in them. The avaricious trust their maxims, for trafficking in spiritual commodities; the superstitious, for substituting kisses upon images for the exercise of Christian virtues; the base fry of ambitious upstarts, for cloaking every ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... indescribably clumsy, when they are walking on level ground, and as unsteady as that of a person under the influence of liquor; but they appear the reverse of awkward when engaged in the avocations incident to their primitive life. They are exceedingly phlegmatic in temperament, greedy, avaricious, suspicious, very indolent and filthy, and by no means celebrated for strict adherence to truth. The Nordlanders one and all spoke of them, in answer to my questions, with mingled distrust and contempt, and my own limited experiences most assuredly did not tend much toward impressing me with a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... youth he was luxurious; In manhood he was cruel; In old age he was avaricious: What could be ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... used to comment on the resemblance of certain youths laboring here the same as the others, galloping from the first streak of dawn over the fields, attending to the various duties of pasturing. The overseer, Celedonio, a half-breed thirty years old, generally detested for his hard and avaricious character, also bore a distant ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... others by himself. The tenants had been in the reluctant but constant practice of making him continual petty offerings; and he resolved to try the same course with Sir Arthur, whose resolution to be his own agent, he thought, argued a close, saving, avaricious disposition. He had heard the housekeeper at the Abbey inquiring, as he passed through the servants, whether there was any lamb to be gotten? She said that Sir Arthur was remarkably fond of lamb, and that she wished she could get a quarter for him. Immediately he sallied ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... that, if he was to succeed in England, he could not have too little connection with Rome. D'Argenson describes his brother Henry as 'Italian, superstitious, a rogue, avaricious, fond of ease, and jealous of the Prince.' Cardinal Tencin, he says, and Lord and Lady Lismore, have been bribed by England to wheedle Henry into the cardinalate, 'which England desires more than anything in ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... if he perches near by perhaps you will also see the crown of gold on the head and a spot of yellow on each side of the breast. They say there was once a great king named Midas, whose touch turned everything to gold, he was such an avaricious old miser. If that be true he must have put his finger on the Myrtlebird in four different places. Unlike most of his family the Yellow-rump is fond of seeds and berries; and so he is able to live further north in winter than any of his brothers. Unless you are spending the summer near ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... need As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (That I should be So avaricious ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... works), and settled there for life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several of his etchings at Venice, to make ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... Dii Involuti! Fortunate provision of fate, which leaves us at least liberty to deify, you perhaps family pride, Venus, or even avaricious Pluto; I possibly ambition or revenge. We all have our veiled gods, shrouded close from curious gaze; 'the heart knoweth his own bitterness, and the stranger doth not ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to his income. He did not build any houses, except the one in which he lived, for he agreed with the proverb which says that fools build houses for wise men to live in, though "the greatest part of Rome sooner or later came into his hands," as Plutarch observes. He was of that sordid, avaricious character which covets wealth merely for the desire to be considered rich, for the vulgar popularity that accompanies that reputation, and not for ambition or enjoyment. He was said to be uninfluenced by the love of luxury or by the other passions of humanity. He ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... become blind, and he who ought to hear distinctly hath become deaf, and he who ought to be a just guide hath become one who leadeth into error. Observe! thou art strong and powerful. Thine arm is able to do deeds of might, and [yet] thy heart is avaricious. Compassion hath removed itself from thee. The wretched man whom thou hast destroyed crieth aloud in his anguish. Thou art like unto the messenger of the god Henti (the Crocodile-god). Set not out [to do evil] for the Lady of the Plague (i.e. Sekhmet).... As there is nothing ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... fury spread itself over the nation, because they had no king to keep the multitude in good order, and because those foreigners who came to reduce the seditious to sobriety did, on the contrary, set them more in a flame, because of the injuries they offered them, and the avaricious management of their affairs. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... K'ang was perplexed how to deal with the prevailing brigandage. "If you, sir, were not avaricious, though you might offer rewards to induce people to steal, they would not." This answer sufficiently indicates the estimate formed by Confucius of Ke K'ang and therefore of the duke Gae, for so entirely were the two of one mind that the acts of Ke K'ang appear to have been invariably indorsed by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... the profits, you avaricious Jew," replied Lawless. "Yes, I've been trying effects, as the painters call it—putting down two or three beginnings to find out which looked the most like the time of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... an effort to see the heroes who were conquering Europe in obedience to a word from the Emperor in the order of the day; the heroes of a modern time who outdid the mythical feats of paladins of old. The cities of France, however avaricious or refractory, must perforce do honor to the Imperial Guard, and mayors and prefects went out to meet them with set speeches as if the conquerors had been crowned kings. Mme. de Bargeton went to a ridotto given to the town by a regiment, and fell in love with an officer of a good family, a sub-lieutenant, ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... was naturally avaricious; nobody loved money better than he, or more respected those that had it. When people would talk of a rich man in company, Whang would say, "I know him very well; he and I are intimate; he stood for a child of mine." But if ever a poor ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... her peculiar state of mind. She had many comforts about her house when she died which were not in it when I called to see her at the time when she was first ill; but her purchasing the large Bible on account of the print was to me a satisfactory proof that she had no longer such avaricious feelings." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... period of exile the church government of Italy was conducted by proud and avaricious legates, who lived as dukes or provincial kings, and in the name of the church assumed to dictate the policy of government to many small potentates, maintaining a standing array of condottieri made up of English, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... they exhibited in public, he saw that they were gluttons and drunkards, so much so that they were more the slaves of the belly than are the greediest of animals. When he looked a little further, he found them so avaricious and fond of money that they sold for hard cash both human bodies and divine offices, and with less conscience than a man in Paris would sell cloth or any other merchandise. Seeing this and much more that it would not be proper to set down here, it seemed to Abraham, himself a chaste, ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the smallest weight the most value. It made him groan every time he passed an ingot of gold or some massive vase which he knew must run into the thousands, but at the end of ten minutes he felt better; the stones alone were sufficient to satisfy even the most avaricious. About the base of the grinning idol they found fourteen leather bags, each filled with gems. The loose diamonds which had been roughly thrown into a small pile would fill four bags more. Even Wilson became roused at sight of these. He began to realize their ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... these trees, though of fair size, were second-growth timber. The avaricious lumberman had long ago been through all this section, and only in patches was it possible to find any of the original great trees that were possibly growing a century or two back, when the whites were wresting this land from the possession ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... ought to seem very small and easy to you. While I starve for you, do, now and then, by words, bring back your presence to me! How can you be generous in deeds if you are so avaricious in words? I have done everything for your sake. It was not religion that dragged me, a young girl, so fond of life, so ardent, to the harshness of the convent, but only your command. If I deserve nothing from you, how vain is my labor! God ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to it; he could no more formulate a course of action to his certain disadvantage than an Englishman could, or a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a German. But to say that the advantage he pursues is always, or even usually, a monetary one—to argue that he is avaricious, or even, in these later years, a sharp trader—is to spit directly into the eye of the truth. There is probably, indeed, no country in the world in which mere money is held in less esteem than in these United States. Even more than the Russian Bolshevik ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... whom many of the villagers have known since she was born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her fellow-townspeople with affectionate esteem, ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... Jews have generally been the bankers and brokers of the people among whom they have resided, and have made a show of much wealth, this has tempted their avaricious adversaries to impose upon them enormous ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... is one of the most powerful writers of modern Syria. The paper of the Sitt Mariana is long, and the introduction is most ornate and flowery. She writes on the condition of woman among the Arabs, and refutes an ancient Arab slander against women that they are cowardly and avaricious, because they will not fight, and carefully hoard the ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... as we have to some extent seen already, felt the horrors of Indian warfare. Kieft, the Dutch director-general, a man cruel, avaricious, and obstinate, angered the red men by demanding tribute from them as their protector, while he refused them guns or ammunition. The savages replied that they had to their own cost shown kindness to the Dutch when in need of food, ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... An insatiable, avaricious desire to accumulate riches, cooperating with a spirit of luxury and injustice, seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without labour, we become soft and voluptuous; and rather than afterwards forego ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... an old woman who lived all alone in a little cottage in an extensive forest in Norway. Her name was Gertrude, and she was a hard, avaricious old creature, who had not a kind word for anybody, and although she was not badly off in a worldly point of view, she was too stingy and selfish to assist any poor wayfarer who by chance passed her cottage door. One day our Lord happened to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... you're right," blurted out Andy with an avaricious glitter in his shifty eyes. "Let's go there to-night and see ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... and dark, the magnet lies, Nor lures the search of avaricious eyes, Nor binds the neck, nor sparkles in the hair, Nor dignifies the great, nor decks the fair. But search the wonders of the dusky stone, And own all glories of the mine outdone, Each grace of form, each ornament of state, That decks the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... loseth all, By striving all to gain, I need no witness call But him whose thrifty hen, As by the fable we are told, Laid every day an egg of gold. "She hath a treasure in her body," Bethinks the avaricious noddy. He kills and opens—vexed to find All things like hens of common kind. Thus spoil'd the source of all his riches, To misers he a lesson teaches. In these last changes of the moon, How often doth one see Men made as poor as he By force ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... carry what they hear to him; so every one endeavors to stand well with him. In a word he is very politic; being governor and, changeably, a trader, he appears friendly because he is both; severe because he is avaricious; and well in neither capacity because they are commingled. The Lord be praised who has delivered us safely, and the more, because we were in every one's eye and yet nobody knew what to make of us; we were an enigma to all. Some declared ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... at which Muley-Hassan's band traversed the jungle paths it was evident to the two young captives that there was imperative need in Muley-Hassan's mind of arriving somewhere at a set time. The usual noonday rest, which even the avaricious slave-trader was in the habit of taking, was not observed and the travelers pressed straight on. Lathrop and Billy were almost ready to drop with fatigue when that evening, just at dusk, they arrived ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... be carried on among the natives. The constitution fixed a scale of revenue, and levied a tariff on all imported articles. A customs-service was introduced, and many reforms enforced which greatly angered a few avaricious white men whose profession as men-stealers was abolished by the constitution. Moreover, there were others who for years had been trading and doing business along the coast, without paying any duties on the articles they exported. The new ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... fierce enmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they ruled their husbands, oppressed their vassals, and inspired terror in various ways. But still their characters were very different. Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious. Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved and esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight's armour when her vassals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men- at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla ..." More than three hundred years afterwards, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... came. Its purpose was not to render men happy on earth, and we do not find that it made rulers less avaricious or less sanguinary, peoples more patient or quiet, crimes rarer, punishments less cruel, treaties more faithfully observed, or wars waged more humanely. The conclusion is that it is only those who are profoundly ignorant of the past who can ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... honour, testified great affection to him, and discoursed with him the better part of the night. They could not but be astonished, that he and his companions were come from another world, and had passed through so many stormy seas, not out of an avaricious design of enriching themselves with the gold of Japan, but only to teach the Japonese the true way of eternal life. From the very first meeting, the king cautioned Xavier to keep safely all the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden |
