"Greed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... PUNCHINELLO does not intend to engage in private practice. His purpose is to throw the light directly into the Body Politic, whether the B.P. requests him to do it or not. Dr. P. confidently expects to make some most extraordinary discoveries of various diseases—of greed, foolish ambition, ossification of the heart, moral leprosy, chronic stupidity, latent idiocy, and that very common and often unsuspected complaint usually known as Humbug. (Humbugna Communis.) His fee in no case will exceed ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... three days, and suns his nets for the next two; simply presenting his school-fee gift to Chia Tai-jui and making not the least progress in his studies; his sole dream being to knit a number of familiar friendships. Who would have thought it, there were in this school young pupils, who, in their greed to obtain money, clothes and eatables from Hsueeh P'an, allowed themselves to be cajoled by him, and played tricks upon; but on this topic, it is likewise superfluous to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... "that wot I well, that these are of the kin of the daughters of the horse-leech; but how shall they slake their greed, seeing that as thou sayest villeinage shall be gone? Belike their men shall pay them quit-rents and do them service, as free men may, but all this according to law and not beyond it; so that though the workers shall be richer than they now be, the lords shall be no richer, and so all shall ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... to catch men and destroy them. You destroy alike your victims and your tools. The poor boy, Peter Gudge, whom you sent to my home—my heart bleeds when I think of him, and what you have put him up to! A wretched, feeble-minded victim of greed, who ought to be sent to a hospital for deformed souls, you have taken him and taught him a piece of villainy to recite, so that he may send a group ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... opened by Mr. Sheridan on the 2nd of April. It was clear that Hastings had been singularly indifferent as to riches for his own use yet the orator imputed to him the grossest corruption and most ravenous greed for money. He remarked:—"He is changeable in every thing but corruption; there, and only there he is systematic, methodical, immutable. His revenge is furious as a tempest, or a tornado; but his corruption is a monsoon; a trade-wind, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... solid work the demands of time had not been duly considered. Certainly, the display was not punctual to the appointed period of opening. Exceptionally bad weather was another drawback, and the greed of the Viennese hotel-keepers a third. For such, among other reasons, the enterprise was financially a failure—a fact which little concerns those who went to study and learn, and those who three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries with such inconsiderate greed that its numbers have been greatly reduced, and many have been driven ...
— Birds, Illustrated by Color Photography [July 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... expeditions in search of gold and precious stones. When Zamorra spoke of gold his whole attitude changed, the fires of his youth blazed up afresh, his face glowed with excitement, and his eyes sparkled with greed. At these times I saw in him a true type of the old Spanish Conquestadores, who would baptize a cacique to save him from hell one day, and kill him and ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... ye mete shall be measured to you again,' you know," softly returned her companion, "and love begets love. You, long since, threw the mantle of Love over your 'brother,' and Truth has uncovered and destroyed the error—in other words, the greed—that seemed to rob you ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... and unknown. On me the most severe was the strain; for myself I cared not, I had so often died in spirit in my direful journeys that actual death was nothing to me. But for vanity, or fame, or honour, or greed, and to seek the bubble reputation, I had brought six other human beings into a dreadful strait, and the hollow eyes and gaunt, appealing glances that were always fixed on me were terrible to bear; ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about their business. Squirrels raced across ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... venerable Bishop of Petraea, is wholly to their honour; it was a question of saving even against their will the unfortunate children of the woods who were addicted to the fatal passion of intoxication. Unhappily, the Governors d'Avaugour and de Mezy, in supporting the greed of the traders, were perhaps right from the political point of view, but certainly wrong from a ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... to resume the character of the Mpongwe, a nervous and excitable race of negroes. The men are deficient in courage, as the women are in chastity, and neither sex has a tincture of what we call morality. To commercial shrewdness and eagerness they add exceptional greed of gain and rascality; foreign rum and tobacco, dress and ornaments, arms and ammunition have been necessaries to them; they will have them, and, unless they can supply themselves by licit, they naturally ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... of Nero clanking at his side, His giant hand made crimson in the tide Of Life, insatiate Mammon feigns to bow Before the altar of the Prince of Peace. How long, O God in heaven, wilt thou bide This mockery of the lowly Christ who died That sin and greed and enmity ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... he exhibited the most deferential consideration. He had a quick insight into character, and at a glance could tell a man who would resist and resent from one who would silently submit. He was ambitious to the point of uncontrollable greed for fame, and by this quality was subject to its counterpart of jealousy, and to an envy of the increasing reputation of others. It was a sore trial to him that after his able and persistent organization of all the elements of victory, the share of credit which justly belonged ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement. It pleased Isabel to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war—a war like the Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... have reached to be seized by the inspectors, it is impossible to believe that the workers obtain good and nourishing meat as a usual thing. But they are victimised in yet another way by the money-greed of the middle-class. Dealers and manufacturers adulterate all kinds of provisions in an atrocious manner, and without the slightest regard to the health of the consumers. We have heard the Manchester ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... round the idea of a pilgrimage, with all people and at all times—I except those very rare and highly decadent generations of history in which no pilgrimages are made, nor any journeys, save for curiosity or greed—there has always hung round it, I say, something more than the mere objective. Just as in general worship you will have noble gowns, vivid colour, and majestic music (symbols, but necessary symbols of the great business you are at); so, in this particular case of worship, clothes, as it were, and ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... courted more than the Graces: talents were held in higher esteem than the virtues. Men were unremitting, indiscriminate worshippers of money; they were not trained in the school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities, they become easily pervious to the promptings of ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... trading people, even for the daily necessaries of life." And furthermore, what we were not prepared for, "No police in the Towns: to habits of equity and order had succeeded a vile greed of gain and an anarchic disorder. The Colleges of Justice and of Finance had, by these frequent invasions of so many enemies, been reduced to inaction:" no Judge, in many places not even a Tax-gatherer: the silence of the Laws had ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a profitable possession of the community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly handed over to be worked out by the burgesses. Not only was free scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbouring lands were sacrificed, not to the barbarism of the lust of power, but to the far ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... until at last he had reached the gates. There he bade Tsamanni fling a purse to the crouching beggars—for is it not written in the Most Perspicuous Book that of alms ye shall bestow what ye can spare, for such as are saved from their own greed shall prosper, and whatever ye give in alms, as seeking the face of Allah shall be doubled ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... not been oppressed? Have not our children been butchered and our gains wrung from us to fill the bottomless greed and lust of the Lagidae? Have not the temples been forsaken?—ay, have not the majesties of the Eternal Gods been set at naught by these Grecian babblers, who have dared to meddle with the immortal truths, and name the Most High by another name—by the name of Serapis—confounding ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... every great city men are drifting daily from the strange and remote places of the world where they have survived perilous hazards and seen rare spectacles. Such adventures are the treasure troves of the skilful reporter. The cross currents and reactions that lead up to any explosion of greed or passion that we call crime are often worth following, not only for their plots, but as proofs of the pain and terror of transgression. Brave deeds or heroic resistances are all too seldom presented in full length in the news, and generously portrayed prove ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... of the minor group first shows the figure of Greed, with his worldly goods now turned literally to a ball of clay in his hands, gazing back at earth in puzzlement. The next two figures show Faith offering the hope of immortality (as symbolized in ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... condition of grief it would be worse than useless to worry her with suggestions of matrimony. Girls had been known to do desperate things if they were overharassed, and Kapus Irma was no fool; she knew what she wanted, and her instinct, coupled with her greed and cupidity, showed her the best way to ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for the payment of his army. He had taken a tithe from the revenues of the churches and convents for that purpose. The ignorant clergy, alive only to their present temporal interests, and not appreciating the great salvation he had wrought out for them, could never forgive him. Their inconceivable greed could not bear to be taxed even in its own defence. "It is because Prince Charles," says the Council of Kiersi to one of his descendants, "was the first of all the kings and princes of the Franks who separated and dismembered the goods of the Church; it is for that sole ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... not be done again; it was too painful in result Mahomet undertook to distribute the remainder of our stock through an inlet in the wall, and we drew away sick in head and heart from that den of repulsive degradation, greed, brutality, cruelty, selfishness, and all infuriate and debased passion—that damnable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were passport ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... unless his demands were satisfied, is doubtful. At any rate, it was considered prudent to pacify him, and he was accordingly told that he should receive the sum he named. Clive, and the members of the council, however, although willing to gratify their own extortionate greed, at the expense of Meer Jaffier, determined to rob Omichund of his share. In order to do this, two copies of the treaty with Meer Jaffier were drawn up, on different coloured papers. They were exactly alike, except that, in one, the amount to be given to Omichund was entirely omitted. This ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... man whose hands, whose lips are free from greed, Who curbs his senses, he is man indeed. He little recks, if kingdoms fall or stand; For heaven is in the hollow ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... Mesopotamia, 5-6; greed and oppressiveness of their officials, 7-8; one of the principal modern representatives ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... and intrigue swayed all Europe, and poisons and poisoners stalked forth unblushingly from cottage and palace; when crowned and mitered heads, prelates, noblemen, beneficed clergymen, courtiers, and burghers became Borgias and De Medicis in hideous infamy in their greed for power and affluence; and when the civilized world feared to retire to rest, partake of the daily repast, inhale the odors of flower or perfume, light a wax taper, or even approach the waters of the holy font. These horrors ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... and Sir Arthur very weak. Today a gleam of hope. Canaris, after many trials, caught a fish a foot long. We devoured it raw with the utmost greed. Our strength is ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... repast with some show of self-restraint. This, however, wholly forsook him before it was finished. He ate voraciously, consuming more than the four young hunters together. This, however, he did not do without making an apology for his apparent greed; stating that he had been nearly two days ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... feeling shocked that those who ought to be so far above the greed of gain have let their honor be trampled in the mire for the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Wend. Take away the imported and imposed elements from the things we fight to-day, leave nothing but what is purely and originally German, and you leave very little. We fight dynastic ambition, national vanity, greed, and the fruits of fifty years of basely conceived ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... were one race among hundreds that had fallen before the fierceness and the greed of men. But unlike most others, the Varl were not ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... man with two faces. We look at one and we see a kindly face full of pity and sorrow for all wrong and pain that men must suffer, we see there a longing to help man, to be his friend. We look at the other face and there we see the greed of gain, the desire for power and place. Yet it may be that Bacon only strove to be great so that he might have more power and freedom to be pitiful. In spite of Bacon's hard work, in spite of his flattery and begging, he did not rise fast. After ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... enterprises and bloody cruelties of the early buccaneers were therefore not merely a brutal exhibition of unpitying greed, indicative of the scum of nations as yet barely emerging from barbarism. They were this, doubtless, but they were something more. In the march of events, these early marauders played the same part, in relation to what was to succeed ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... failure forced on him when victory was within his grasp, Hamilcar was shortly after summoned back to Carthage to put down a rebellion which the government by its greed and folly had provoked. The neighbouring tribes and subject cities joined the foreign troops whose pay had been held back, and soon an army of seventy thousand men under a good general was marching upon Carthage. So widespread was the revolt that it took Hamilcar, to whom the people had insisted ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... one vice that is absolutely unknown to the red man; he was born without it, and amongst all the deplorable things he has learned from the white races, this, at least, he has never acquired. That is the vice of avarice. That the Indian looks upon greed of gain, miserliness, avariciousness and wealth accumulated above the head of his poorer neighbor as one of the lowest degradations he can fall to, is perhaps more aptly illustrated in this legend than anything I could quote to demonstrate his horror ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... industry, and even permitted a printing press to be set up, though only for official purposes. From all these benevolent activities Brazil derived great advantages. On the other hand, the Prince Regent's aversion to popular education or anything that might savor of democracy and the greed of his followers for place and distinction alienated his colonial subjects. They could not fail to contrast autocracy in Brazil with the liberal ideas that had made headway elsewhere in Spanish America. As a consequence a spirit ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... place which I now give it.] Then, if friendships are of longer duration, they yet, as Scipio said, are liable to be undermined by competition for office; and indeed there is nothing more fatal to friendship than, in very many cases, the greed of gain, and among some of the best of men the contest for place and fame, which has often engendered the most intense enmity between those who had been the closest friends. Strong and generally just aversion, also, springs ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... drink as he could get treated to or credit for, and still the mother condoned, the wife complained, and Jenny carried the family load. Mart loved to tread the rostrum boards and portray himself as a typical victim of corporation perfidy and capitalistic greed. The railway company from which he had seceded refused to take him back, and other companies, edified by the reports of his speeches in The Switch Light, The Danger Signal, and other publications avowedly devoted to the interest of the down-trodden operatives of the railway and manufacturing ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... the great cauldron of its politics. Here they mingle with State and regional and local loyalties and private self-interests into a fine American soup of eagerness and reluctance, faith and apprehension, awareness and befuddlement, chicanery and square dealing, altruism and frank greed, rage and reasonableness, that is as real as any mountain in the Basin and as inevitable a consideration for realistic planning as the river's own characteristics of flow. For any proposal or set of proposals for action in the Basin that does not take into account what the ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... prince in scorn: "My curse upon thee, viper! What to thee Is Caius? Still I live! And he was born To ape the others—lies, greed, roguery, And aught but manhood. If he had, 'twere vain; No hero now Rome's downfall may restrain. If gods there were, upon this ruined soil No god could bring forth fruit; but that weak lad! Nay, nay, not him—the spirits stern and sad That dog my steps and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... the wings of the Tower draw their inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as a part of the historical significance of the Tower in the legend of that Fountain ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... took it to the kingdom of Siam and ascended the river for thirty leguas, unladed his goods, and disposed of them as well as possible, for they were injured by the water. The Japanese, many of whom live there, tried, in their greed, to attack the Spaniards; but Don Fernando de Silva understood them, and resisted them with his infantry. The Dutch, who have their factory there, notified others near there to come to their aid, in order to attack ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... embarrassment, and unveracious assertions, the jury were soon convinced of their guilt. The unhappy youth was their brother, and had inherited property from their mother, he being her child by a second husband. So these monsters murdered him for revenge and greed. The King sentenced them to be bound hand and foot, and flung into the river in the selfsame place "where they killed ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... in the old days the "medicine-man" received no payment for his services, which were of the nature of an honorable function or office. When the idea of payment and barter was introduced among us, and valuable presents or fees began to be demanded for treating the sick, the ensuing greed and rivalry led to many demoralizing practices, and in time to the rise of the modern "conjurer," who is generally a fraud and trickster of the grossest kind. It is fortunate that ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... the right, among other things, of undisputed authority over us, he has held the best half of the conscience of the race in abeyance until now, and so checked the general progress; he has confirmed himself in his own worst vices, arrogance, egotism, injustice, and greed, and has developed the worst in us also, among which I class that tendency to sycophantic adulation, which is an effort of nature to secure the necessaries of life ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... people of pessimistic disposition say much about greed in American life. One would think to hear them talk that we were a race of misers in this country. To lay too much stress upon the reports of greed in the newspapers would be folly, since their function is to report the unusual and even the abnormal. When a man goes properly ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... other thing of womanhood was sacred; by whom in their wrath or their crime no friend and no brother was spared, whose law was license, and whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these brutes whose greed was like the tiger's, whose hate was like the devouring flame; and any who should have harmed a single lock of her curling hair would have had the spears of the African Mussulmans buried by the score in his body. They loved her, with the one ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... tool? Shall I by thy hand fall? Stain not thy soul with guiltless blood. Take all I have, if money be thy greed. But know Without a struggle I'll not ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... fabric of the spider's web? Indeed, should we ever have given a single thought to the honey-comb if it had had no honey in it? Do we become lyrical about the wasp's comb? We do not. It is a case where greed and materialism have warped our artistic perceptions. The spider can lower itself from the drawing-room ceiling to the floor by a silken thread produced out of itself. Still more marvellous, he can climb up the same thread to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... to his lead, and indulged in a few feeble jests, the farmer and foresters hardly vouchsafed a word or a smile. In part, maybe, this was due to the poverty of the wit of their sable companions, but the three were obviously ill at ease. Greed and a sort of religious fanaticism had brought them into the ranks of the conspirators, but their national instincts were rebuking them each moment. They felt traitors, and not all the sophistries of the priests—which put the Church first, and country a long way after—could ease their ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... born to evil, and society is but his multiplication; but society could exist only by the compromise that the hostility of man against neighbor should mask itself as mutual forbearance. Impossible that every one should possess every thing; therefore dissimulate your greed and divide. But certain persons, missing their share either through non-conformity with the doctrine, or by force of circumstances, stuck to the old principle of each man for himself, and became "criminals." Their hand was against society, ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... not the first or the last maiden whom greed of gold has led to defile the temple of Love; and not maids alone, but men in the race of life, sink from the high and generous ideals of youth to the gambler's code of the Bourse; and in all our Nation's striving is not the Gospel of ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... view neither Mr. Trebell, nor you, nor the men you have just defeated, nor any discoverable man or body of men will make laws which matter ... or differ in the slightest. You are all part of your age and you all voice—though in separate keys, or even tunes they may be—only the greed and follies of your age. That you should do this and nothing more is, of course, the democratic ideal. You will forgive my thinking tenderly of the statesmanship of the ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... handkerchief, and adding to it the last silver piece he had held in his teeth, the loathsome cripple stirred the heap around and around with one dirty forefinger, his mouth stretched in a cackle of greed. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... threat? Then let the louns beware, Sir! Scotland, they'll find, is Scotland yet, And for hersel' can fare, Sir. The Thames shall run to join the Tweed, Criffel adorn Thames valley, 'Ere wanton wrath and vulgar greed On Scottish ground shall rally. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... from his great friends, Ralegh and perhaps Essex, who were busy on their own schemes. Ralegh, from whom Spenser might hope most, was just beginning to plunge into that extraordinary career, in the thread of which, glory and disgrace, far-sighted and princely public spirit and insatiate private greed, were to be so strangely intertwined. In 1592 he planned the great adventure which astonished London by the fabulous plunder of the Spanish treasure-ships; in the same year he was in the Tower, under the Queen's displeasure for ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... more than twice as large as that of the present United States. Through half a dozen generations they had been governed with all the short-sighted tyranny for which the Spanish Government is famous; the resources of the countries had been crippled in order that each day's greed might be satisfied; and the inhabitants, who, for the most part, were the mixed offspring of Spanish and native parents, had been kept in abject dependence and in ignorant ferocity. There was plenty of internal hatred and strife; ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... whose dishonorable Government produced this terrible world war by the most contemptible means, and solely in selfish greed of gain, has always been able to enjoy the fruits of its unscrupulousness because it was reckoned as unassailable. But everything is subject to change, and that applies today to the security of England's position. Thank God, the time has now come when ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... this hollow need. All that I now call me, Might wallow with demons of hate and greed In a lawless ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... have taken place in the Temple, for youth, however poor, is hopeful. It takes time to make a man despair, and when he despairs, the devil is soon at his elbow. Nevertheless, greed and madness have upset some Templars' brains. In October, 1573, a crazed, fanatical man of the Middle Temple, named Peter Burchet, mistaking John Hawkins (afterwards the naval hero) for Sir Christopher Hatton, flew at him in the Strand, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... administrative power in at least three of the great belligerents—in Great Britain and Germany perhaps most so—must be prepared to see itself taxed, and must be willing to assist in its own taxation to the very limit of its statistical increment. The almost vindictive greed of the landowners that blackened the history of England after Waterloo, and brought Great Britain within sight of revolution, must not be repeated. The British Empire cannot afford a revolution in the face ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... this point fairly stamped with rage; but before he could muster up speech the street-door opened and the child Lizzie slipped into the kitchen. Slight noise though she made, her grandfather caught the sound of her footsteps. A look of greed crept into his face, as he made hurriedly ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reduced, for the latest news I have had from the Whale Sound region informs me that quite a number of deaths have occurred, and the birth-rate is not high. It is sad to think of the fate of my friends who live in what was once a land of plenty, but which is, through the greed of the commercial hunter, becoming a land of frigid desolation. The seals are practically gone, and the walrus are being quickly exterminated. The reindeer and the musk-oxen are going the same way, for the Esquimos themselves ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... of Ninety-eight, but its woe no man may tell; It was all of a piece and a whole yard wide, and the name of the brand was "Hell". We heard the call and we staked our all; we were plungers playing blind, And no man cared how his neighbor fared, and no man looked behind; For a ruthless greed was born of need, and the weakling went to the wall, And a curse might avail where a prayer would fail, and the gold ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... before. They're all out lookin' for you—Nim, an' the whole "Corner" bodily. Your brother's distracted ravin' mad this two days huntin' the bush; but I told him you'd be sartin sure to turn up somehow. Now, whar are you runnin' so fast? There ain't nobody to hum, an' we 'greed to fire the rifles as a signal whoever fust got tidins of you. Three shots arter another,' as young Wynn fired in the air. 'Come, quick as ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... 'with the most indefatigable industry and insatiable greediness, darkening in clouds the levees of kings and ministers,' &c., quoted in Phillimore's History of England, during the reign of George III. Phillimore himself makes some very severe strictures on the sycophancy and greed of the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... plaace for un, come to think on 't. Awver-balanced for sheer greed of gawld he was. My! what a wild-goose chase! An the things he've said to me! Not that I'd allow myself—awuly from common humanity I must see un an' let un knaw I bear no more malice than ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the people of the country which had thus been arbitrarily allotted, and the dying Charles of Spain was infuriated by this conspiracy to break up and divide his dominion. His jealousy of France would have led him to select the Austrian claimant; but the emperor's undisguised greed for a portion of the Spanish empire, and the overbearing and unpleasant manner of the Austrian ambassador in the Spanish court, drove him to listen to the overtures of Louis, who had a powerful ally in Cardinal Portocarrero, Archbishop ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... to Thyself, for all our fires are dim, Stamp Thou Thine image on our coin, for Caesar's face grows dim, And a dumb devil of pride and greed has taken ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... City alone, but took possession of the whole world under its dominion, with whose inhabitants the theatre was customarily filled. The Romans, defeated, gave up their war against the barbarians and likewise received great detriment from the greed and factional differences of the soldiers. The progress of both these evils I am now to describe.] Macrinus, seeing that Artabanus was exceedingly angry at the way he had been treated and had invaded Mesopotamia with a large force, at first ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... world was an aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which particulars were fitted by force; and society was a gathering of mere individuals, repelling each other by their needs and greed, with a ring of natural necessity to bind them together. It was a fit time for political economy to supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which could lift man above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to find a higher life. And, as a necessary ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard high lust and wilful deed, And all thy glory loves to tell Of specious ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... way. On the contrary, their goodwill would probably be with Monmouth, for had I not seen the day before a whole regiment of foot in his army, raised from among the coaster folk? On the other hand, their greed might be stronger than their loyalty, and might lead them to hand me over to justice in the hope of reward. On the whole it would be best, I thought, to say nothing of my mission, and to keep my papers ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that the unfortunate monk had died without repenting of his sins. Dame Cicely and the children cried for a week, and Farmer Gilbert recounted all the virtues of the deceased and added solemnly: "May Heaven pardon Brother Timothy and keep us from the deadly sin of greed!" ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... beginning; Apollonius attributed that to the influence of his sister-in-law; since then he had grown even more estranged from him—and no wonder! Apollonius had already become acquainted with his brother's vanity and greed for honor, and what had happened since then had made the latter feel himself slighted in favor of Apollonius. His sister-in-law's dislike Apollonius thought he could overcome in time by honest endeavor, his brother's injured ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the development of the non-European world in a more direct way than by sending emigrants to America or the British lands. But it is quite certain that the growth of British territory is not to be attributed in any degree to the deliberate policy, or to the greed, of the home government, which did everything in its power ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... the greatest deed of arms that was ever done. The men who fought in it were not urged by ambition or greed, nor were they soldiers who knew not why they went to battle. They warred for the freedom of their country, they were few against many, they might have retreated with honour, after inflicting great loss on the enemy, but they preferred, with ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... comprehensive policy which marked the climax of the career of Maurice Grau as an operatic director, I have witnessed since then, many of the fruits of wise endeavor and astute management frittered away by managerial incapacity and greed, and fad and fashion come to rule again, where for a brief, but eventful period, serious artistic interest and endeavor had ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sure of a little fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in fact, the very ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered the title and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... if he has to found a business in times when the shareholder is as covetous and keen as the inventor! What a great magnetizer must he be that can create a Claparon and hit upon expedients never tried before! Do you know the moral of it all? Our age is no better than we are; we live in an era of greed; no one troubles himself about the intrinsic value of a thing if he can only make a profit on it by selling it to somebody else; so he passes it on to his neighbor. The shareholder that thinks he sees a chance of making money is just as covetous as the founder ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... us who work hard for our living. He pocketed his check with a smile, as if it were quite in the nature of things that ten thousand pounds should drop upon him from the clouds without rhyme or reason. To Tyrrel, on the other hand, with his sensitive conscience, the man's greed and callousness seemed simply incomprehensible. He stood aghast at such sharp practice. But for Cleer's sake, and to ease his own soul, he paid it all over ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... I must remind you that "I told you so." True enough, it was history pure and simple that I had in mind while enjoying the large hospitality of your gulf-side home. Gaspard Roussillon's letter then appealed to my greed for materials which would help along the making of my little book "The Story of Louisiana." Later, however, as my frequent calls upon you for both documents and suggestions have informed you, I fell to strumming a different guitar. And now to you I dedicate ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... looked as if a heavy finger had settled upon its point, and pressed it downwards: its nostrils swelled wide beyond their base; underneath was a big mouth with a good set of teeth, and a strong upturning chin—an ambitious and greedy face. But ambition is a form of greed. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... in the world and see what way it is that has brought your fellow-men to peace and quietness of heart, to security and honour of life. Is it the way of unbridled self-indulgence, of unscrupulous greed, of aimless indolence? Or is it the way of self-denial, of cheerful industry, of fair dealing, of faithful service? If true honour lies in the respect and grateful love of one's fellow-men, if true success lies in a contented heart and a ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... Perhaps no other field of industry comes so near being common ground for all classes of people. The mineral industry is a field in which it is easy to capitalize not only honest and skillful endeavor, but hopes, guesses, and greed. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the popular mind the valuation of a mineral resource is little more than a guess, and sometimes not even an ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... as he thought of her, for, in spite of his greed and his slyness, Sir Juden was an affectionate father, as fathers went in those days, and the lot of unmarried ladies of the upper class, at that time, ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... One reads, in Halevy's French, of Madame Cardinal, and, in your Greek, of the mother of Philinna, and marvels that eighteen hundred years have not in one single trifle altered the mould. Still the old shabby light-loves, the old greed, the old luxury and squalor. Still the unconquerable superstition that now seeks to tell fortunes by the cards, and, in your time, resorted to the sorceress with her magical "bull-roarer" or ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... and my greed,' said the old man sadly, 'and bitterly have I repented me of my wrong. I am Earl Inewl, but I have lost the lands that made my earldom. For I have a nephew, whom his father, on his deathbed, gave into my keeping, with all his lands. And ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... must be mainly a laymen's battle. There may have to be financial martyrdoms for the sake of Christ before the victory is won. But the prize and the goal is worth striving for, for it is nothing less than the redemption of a large element in human life from the tyranny of selfishness and greed. [Footnote: It may, of course, be argued that so long as the competitive system prevails in the business world, a Christian man in business must compete, just as in the existing state; though in an ideally Christian world competition would be replaced ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... of Rolandine, who, debarred from marriage by her father's greed, betrothes herself to a gentleman to whom, despite his faithlessness, she keeps her plighted word, and does not marry until after ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... accessible, except to Roman Catholics, whom he would not admit to his presence, and against whom he enforced the utmost rigour of the penal code. He had himself conformed to the Church of England. Swift accused him, as Lord-lieutenant, of shameless depravity of manners, of injustice, greed, and gross venality. This Lord Wharton died in 1715, and was succeeded by his son Philip, whom George I., in 1718, made Duke of Wharton for his fathers vigorous support of the Hanoverian succession. His character was much worse than that of his father, the energetic politician and the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and aeroplane sharpshooters in the same army, or illiterate peasant industries and power-driven factories in the same world. And still less it was possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions and greed and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances of the new age. If there had been no atomic bombs to bring together most of the directing intelligence of the world to that hasty conference at Brissago, there would still have been, extended over great areas and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... the horror of these nightmare days. Was all sweetness gone out of the world? Was the world no more than four square walls peopled with devils who asked and asked and asked? Was there nothing else but greed of money, hatred, want, and damnable persecution? A voice within cried aloud: "Why suffer it all? Why bear the brunt of other men's adventure?" Five thousand pounds. Was it a fair price for breaking one's body against rocks, for shattering one's ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... tainted steam of slaughter's breath, And lulled by agony's despairing shriek. For it is he who hath the power of death, Even the devil, by whom entereth sin Into the world, and death engendereth: Yea! by whom entereth whatsoe'er within Warreth against the spirit,—sordid greed, Pride, carnal lust, envy to lust akin, And malice, and deceit, whose treacheries breed Strife between brethren, and the faith o'erthrow Of many, and the duped deserters lead, Beneath the banner of their deadliest foe, In rebel arms a ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... mention the exact size or weight of things, in a way which appears to us as irrelevant. It is as if we were to say that a man came to see us carrying three feet of walking stick and four inches of cigar. It is so in cases that have no possible connection with any avarice or greed for gain. An American will praise the prodigal generosity of some other man in giving up his own estate for the good of the poor. But he will generally say that the philanthropist gave them a 200-acre park, where an Englishman would think it quite sufficient ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Bohun, and his great-aunt, Lady Coke, both possessed very valuable jewels; and his cousin, Sir Leopold Coke, had left some priceless heirlooms in his mother's care at the Moat House. Perhaps Thomas had heard somebody speak of these treasures, and his greed had been excited. He required help in his enterprise, too; it must be of some difficulty, therefore he had spoken of it to his friend. Together they had planned how the burglary was to be carried out, and were only waiting till Thomas obtained all ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... broken out in the Gardens of Pompey, when he is interrupted by Trimalchio asking when the Gardens of Pompey had been purchased for him, and is informed that they had been in his possession for a year.[7] So it appears that Trimalchio, in whom Petronius has personified the pride, the greed, and the vices of the rich men of his time, did not know that he was the possessor of a magnificent domain. In another place Petronius causes Trimalchio to say that everything which could appeal to the appetite of his companions is raised upon one of his farms which he has not yet ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... more pleased with the story Daniel had told her than Herr Carovius's ravings. Her eyes were opened wide, her mouth was thirsty. If she had hesitated at times before, she did so no more. She loved money; greed was a part of her make-up from the hour she was born. But if Herr Carovius had laid the whole of his treasures at her feet, and said to her, "You may have them if you will renounce Daniel Nothafft," she would have replied, "Your ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... with farce. Both species were playing to-night, and in jargon to boot. In real life you always get your drama mixed, and the sock of comedy galls the buskin of tragedy. It was an episode in the pitiful tussle of hunger and greed, yet its ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... perishable matter, which, like all perishable things, is swept away in due course, while he who accumulated it is of no more account as a mere corpse than his poverty-stricken brother. What a foolish striving it all is! What envyings, spites, meannesses and miserable pettinesses arise from this greed of money! Yes, I have learned my lesson! I wonder whether I shall now be permitted to pass into a ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... twelve miles is but a short distance, to go to Pictou without stopping at West River. For John Frazer's is a house of petty annoyances. From the moment you enter, you feel the insolence of the surly, snarling landlord, and his no less gifted lady; the same old greed which has no eye except for money; the miserly table, for which you are obliged to pay before hand; the lack of attendance; the abundance of impertinence. Just as you are getting into bed you are peremptorily called to the door to pay for your room, which haply you had ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... aptly be termed "Europeans translated into Americans;" and it is very natural, that in this "translation" many peculiarities have been lost, while others have stood forth in greater relief. The strongest feature in the character of the European-American is the greed for gold; this often becomes a passion, and transforms the most faint-hearted white into a hero, for it certainly requires the courage of one to live alone, as planter, on a plantation with perhaps some hundred slaves, far removed from all assistance, and with the prospect ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... seen, the pirate of the brook— The pike, whose jaunty hulk denotes his speed— Swings pivoting about, with wary look Of low and cunning greed. ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... brother of that traitor Who met his doom by Drake's own hand, intrigued With Spain abroad and Spain's dark emissaries At home to avenge his brother. Burleigh still Beset Drake's path with pitfalls: treacherous greed For Spain's blood-money daggered all the dark Around him, and John Doughty without cease Sought to make use of all; until, by chance, Drake gat the proof of treasonable intrigue With Spain, against him, up to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... states. The fact that they could all combine against the Turks in the First Balkan War seems evidence enough that union is not impossible, if only the various kings and their supporters would suppress their personal ambitions and greed and consider the welfare of their respective people as of the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... young Barbee was pale and grew paler; that a shiver ran through him; that he was, for the moment, like one drugged. And, side by side, two emotions, both primal and unmistakable, peered out of his eyes: a savage hatred of Blenham, a leaping greed of gold. ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... but with the facts of history, of geography, and of the political evolution of the world. The British Empire has not been built up, like the German, by the work of statesmen and thinkers; it is not the result, as Germans think, of far-seeing national policy or persistent ambition and "greed." It has slowly taken shape, during the last four centuries, since intercourse was opened up by sea between the different races of mankind, in accordance with the needs of the world as a whole. Its collapse, at the hands of Germany or any other Power, would not mean ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... must always frame her beauty worthily, even for her own eyes alone), poured out half a glass of absinthe, dropped in her allowance of the drug, added water, till the mixture looked like liquid opal, and sipped the beverage with a kind of dainty greed. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... everywhere. I can see how men down in the great city are weaving their nets of selfishness and falsehood, and calling them industrial enterprises or political combinations. I can see how the wheels of society are moved by the hidden springs of avarice and greed and rivalry. I can see how children drink in the fables of religion, without understanding them, and how prudent men repeat them without believing them. I can see how the illusions of love appear and ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... to show that the Earl was not prompted to spend his life and fortune on buccaneering voyages merely by greed of plunder, but was chiefly inspired by intense love of his country, loyalty to his Queen, and ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Presently a recollection of the sombre things that he had seen in his rambles through France crossed Rousseau's pastoral visions, and he admitted that there were some lands in which the publican devours the fruits of the earth; where the misery that covers the fields, the bitter greed of some grasping farmer, the inflexible rigour of an inhuman master, take something from the charm of his rural scenes. "Worn-out horses ready to expire under the blows they receive, wretched peasants attenuated by hunger, broken by weariness, clad in rags, hamlets all in ruins—these things offer ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... all, did our young Cossacks, disgusted with pillage, greed, and a feeble foe, and burning with the desire to distinguish themselves in presence of their chiefs, seek to measure themselves in single combat with the warlike and boastful Lyakhs, prancing on their spirited horses, with the sleeves of their jackets thrown back and streaming ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... despite his previous defence of Peg, had no liking for her. His fastidious taste rejected her uncomeliness; his habits of thought and life were all antagonistic to what he had heard of her niggardliness and greed. As she stood there, in a dirty calico wrapper, still redolent with the day's cuisine, crimson with embarrassment and the recent heat of the kitchen range, she certainly was not an alluring apparition. Happily for the lateness ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... for one who knows how to make something out of it. First of all I must appear to have a great deal of say with the burgomaster, and when people get that article of faith through their heads, Henrich will make at least a hundred or two hundred thalers a year, which I shall take not out of greed, but only to show that I understand my business as reutendiener. If any one wants to talk to the burgomaster, I say he is not at home. If they say they saw him at the window, I answer that it makes no difference, he is still not at home. People ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... evidence tended in the same direction. It was affirmed that (some would say) he had been baffled by Price in an attempt to rob the house, had sacrificed the poor fellow to the fury of his checked greed, and had afterwards escaped by the window. The jury found that Price had died by the hand of some ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the man. "There's a locker forrard and there's a locker aft, for we never know how long we may be getting back when we're out fishing. I say I'm going to put you aboard that there schooner for the dollars as we 'greed on first, and if I don't, why I'm more of a Dutchman than lots o' them as comes from the east to set up ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... that the Cardinal had given me a simple task, for my brain was in a whirl. The man was a marvel, he seemed aware of everything one did and said, and perhaps everything one thought. His spies were all over the city, and, whether from fear or greed, they served ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... all as much empty talk as any random arguments?" Pao-ch'ai exclaimed. "Why every sentence in it is founded on fact. You've only had the management of affairs in your hands for a couple of days, and already greed and ambition have so beclouded your mind that you've come to look upon Chu-tzu as full of fraud and falsehood. But when you by and bye go out into the world and see all those mighty concerns reeking with greed and corruption, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... with which a literary education had formerly familiarized the nation, lost their influence in this military era. There was no inordinate desire for landed property until the Gen-Hei epoch, when a manor became the principal reward of a successful soldier. Thereafter, greed for domains acquired strength every year. Again, when Yoritomo became so-tsuihoshi (commander-in-chief) and so-jito (general steward) of the whole country, and his meritorious vassals were appointed shugo and jito in each province, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 1400, and was buried with honor in Westminster Abbey. The last period of his life, though outwardly most troubled, was the most fruitful of all. His "Truth," or "Good Counsel," reveals the quiet, beautiful spirit of his life, unspoiled either by the greed of trade ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... lepers, foundlings, the blind, aged men and aged women, dating from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, originally well conceived and noble institutions, but reduced into inefficiency and degradation by the greed and corruption of generations of officials; of the "Beggars' Square" and beggars' customs; of the trades, and of the shops with their splendors; of the Examination Hall with its streets numbering eleven thousand ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... looking him straight between the eyes, so that again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto I had addressed him, "Your cupidity," said I, "your greed for the estates of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me impoverished and so ousted from my position at Court, to leave you supreme in His Majesty's favour, have put you to strange shifts for ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... old Master took a lot of his slaves and went to Natchez, Mississippi. He thought he'd have a better chance of keeping us there I guess, and he was afraid we'd be greed [TR: freed?] and he started running with us. I remember when General Grant blowed up Vicksburg. I had a free born Uncle and Aunt who sometimes visited in the North and they'd till us how easy it was up there and it sho' made us all want to ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... of Russia was stigmatised as the outcome of ambition and greed, rendered all the more odious by the cloak of philanthropy which she had hitherto worn. The time has not come when an exhaustive and decisive verdict can be given on this charge. Few movements have been free from all taint of meanness; but it is clearly ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... brief, swift glance, he found himself estimating the cost of all the treasures that it contained, and the price that was to be paid in order that they might not be threatened. These things represented greed. They had always represented greed. They had been saved out of the wreck that befell the Tresslyn fortunes when Anne was a young girl entering her teens, the wreck that destroyed Arthur Tresslyn and left his widow with barely enough to sustain herself and children ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... she cast before her young, The man in a nook she throws: “Assuage your greed upon the steed, But I will ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master's eyes. But he perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... natural law of the "survival of the fittest" may doubtless be pleaded in explanation of all that has happened; but that is not a law of Christianity, nor of civilization, nor of wisdom. It is the law of greed and cruelty, which generally works in the end the destruction of its devotees. In their greedy and blind pursuit of their own prey, they lose sight of the shark that is waiting to devour them. It is still the "fittest" that survives. It were wiser ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the universe as a whole, we must forgo the ingrained habit of abstraction, and must remember that for a complete treatment nothing must permanently be ignored. So if life and mind and will, and curiosity and mischief and folly, and greed and fraud and malice, and a whole catalogue of attributes and things not contemplated in Natural Philosophy—if these are known to have any real existence in the larger world of total experience, and if ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... knowledge, short of a Government grab, and your imagination does you credit. It's easy to see what's been done. You've got a fake title from Marchmont, antedating ours; you've got a crooked judge here, to befuddle the thing with legal technicalities; you've got the money, the power, the greed, and the cold-blooded determination. But I don't think you understand what you're up against—do you? Nearly every man who owns this land that you want has worked hard for it. It's been bought with work, man—work and lonesomeness ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... at the table, all the five of them, and some while their greed kept them wakeful, and they called the mains, but their drought kept them drinking. And, one by one, their heads fell heavy on the table, or they sprawled on their stools, and so sank on to the floor, so potent were the poppy and mandragora of ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... necessary to go down to Kongone for the repair of the ship. Livingstone was greatly disappointed with it, and thought the greed of the vendor had supplied him with a very inferior article for the price of a good one. He thus pours forth his vexation in writing to a friend: "Very grievous it is to be standing here tinkering when we might ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... war was a profiteering enterprise engineered by capital and greed for the exploiting of labor and the common people. Whenever he thought it safe to do so he aired these opinions and, as there were a few of what Captain Hunniwell called "yellow-backed swabs" in Orham ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... with me to the days of my youth, those merry days of California before the gold was about her dear form like prisoner's chains; before the greed of the States and England had forced us into the weary drudgery of the earth, and made us the slaves of ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... neither in my god nor in their own—men who do not know the meaning of the word religion—when these men drag me to the foot of an iron statue that has become the symbol of the terror and darkness through which they walk, of their cruelty and greed, of their hatred of God and their oppression of man—when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people that this hideous idol is God, and that all this wickedness and falsehood is divine truth, I cannot do it, ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... he now denied a number of books published under supposititious names, and which had been universally attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published under the comprehensive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... of anxious thought that greed has builded, From the fetters that envy has wrought and pride has gilded, From the noise of the crowded ways and the fierce confusion, From the folly that wastes its days in a world of illusion, (Ah, but the life is lost ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... For mortifying brick and mortar, Or pocketing the odd piastre By substituting lath and plaster? With plan and two-foot rule in hand, He by the foreman took his stand, With boisterous voice, with eagle glance To stamp upon extravagance. Far thrift of bricks and greed of guilders, He was the Buonaparte ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he'd rather, Rubbish such as stocks his own: Need and greed (O strange) the Father Fashioned not for him alone! Whence—the comfort set a-strutting, Whence—the outcry "Haste, behold! Bard's breast open wide, past shutting, Shows what brass we ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... merry in the greenwood, and said the sheriff had been rightly paid for the greed and tyranny with which he performed the duties of his office, for by bribery and oppression he had got his ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... and twelve strikes last year, of which only six had cause. The others were brought about by politicians and greedy unions. Dishonesty finds the line of least resistance in greed. Now, I have studied the strike problem from beginning to end. There can be no strike at the Bennington shops for a just cause. Had I lived long enough, the shops would have been open-shop. My son, never ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Rokens. "Moreover, we tried to git round to the hut, but as we wos twice nearly blowed away w'en we tried for to double the point, we 'greed to stay where we wos till the back o' the gale should be broke. But, now, let's ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... my foot in it," Hal a I greed. "But here we are, six of us, captured by the enemy with the chances that our days of ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... more! he said; and at the end of twenty paces, he saw much more; the campaign gathered a circling suggestive brilliancy, like the lamps about the winter park; the Society, lured with glitter, hooked by greed, composed a ravishing picture; the little woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant; and her hand was a small soft one, agreeable to fondle—and avaunt! But so it is in war: we must pay for our allies. What if it had been, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Here and there in a family is an artist who can make a bit of porcelain, a few cups, plates, or saucers stamped with his own individual mark. The quality varies, of course, with the skill of the maker, but the poorest work is beautiful; and one develops an insatiate greed to possess this and ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... tread. Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns Lies richer dust than ever nature hid Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart, Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand— The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul. How vain and all ignoble seems that greed To him who stands in this dim claustral air With these most sacred ashes at his feet! This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this— The spark that once illumed it lingers still. O ever-hallowed spot of English earth! If the unleashed and happy spirit of man Have option to ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... and he habitually reverts to them in the intervals between his stricter hours of thought. Such stricter hours he is far from lacking. They address themselves especially to the task of showing why and how corruption works in politics and of tracing those effects of private greed which ruin souls and torture societies. The hero-villains of A Certain Rich Man and of In the Heart of a Fool tread all the paths of selfishness and come to hard ends in punishment for the offense of counting the head higher ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... habitually in the background, kept there either by her stepmother's will or her own desire to hide her shabbiness, and when need had at last forced her to initiative, she had received such humiliating stabs from the greed of men—could it be that she was to walk surrounded by ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... General was dead what could he do? There was no doubting the identity or intentions of that gentleman, thought Loring as he gravely replied that they would only be defeated in any such attempt. Then with swimming eyes she had bemoaned her past, her fatal errors, her greed for wealth and position that had led her to stifle her own heart throbs and deceive the one true friend she had ever known, and Loring broke short the conversation by leaving the room. Then she came again, alone, and he refused to see ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... been afraid. Whenever she attempted to discuss any point of theology with her aunt, such attempts always ended in renewed assurances of the devil's greediness, and in some harder, more crushing rule by which the devil's greed might be outwitted. ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... was the same world that surrounds us. In truth, it was a richer world in some ways, for since then many of its treasures have been lost through greed ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... the ultimate triumph of the British arms. Nobody outside of America believes that she can ever make good her claims of independence. No one has ever taken seriously her attempt at self-government. France, alone, actuated by that ancient hatred for England, inspired by the lust of conquest and the greed of spoliation, has sent her ships to our aid. But has she furnished the Colonies with a superior force of arms? Has she rendered herself liable for any indebtedness? Your mother country alone has made this benign offer to you, and it is to her alone that you can look and be assured of any reconciliation ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett |
