"Usury" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is it but a refined species of usury? a hoard lodged beyond all reach of bankruptcy? a store for futurity? exempt from the numerous losses and disappointments of those who mistake the blessing of wealth to consist in ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... usury, that is to say, the lending of money at fixed rates of interest. They are still under that interdiction, but since our commercial code practically prevents usury altogether, and our law will not recognize contracts for interest upon private accommodation loans to unprosperous ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Eckert sprang from the door; Pollnitz followed him with a mocking glance. "Revenge is sweet," he said, drawing a long breath; "he has often done me wrong, and now I have paid him back with usury. Eckert is lost. Would that I had his house! I must have it! I will have it! Oh, I will make myself absolutely necessary to the king; I will flatter, I will praise, I will find out and fulfil his most secret, his unspoken wishes. I will force him to give me ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... belly began to swell, and his eyes to stare, and suddainly he cried out, 'Ten pounds in the hundred!' he called for a scrivener to make a bond, swearing that he would not lend his money without a pawne.... There could be no other talke had with this spirit but money and usury, so as all the company deemed this devil to be the author ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... have done my duty in all honor and honesty," he cries, softly, as if the dead man's spirit were there to hear. "I have defrauded no one, I have taken no money upon usury, I have been true to the living, true to the dead." And again he seems to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... proposition in 'Das Kapital' that Jesus of Nazareth did not inculcate. Is it a question of rent? You are as much entitled to immunity from it as the birds of the air, or the grass of the fields. Is it a question of usury or interest? Lend, hoping for nothing again. Is it a question of profit or inequitable exchange? Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you."[87] "Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism? Unless we are prepared to deny the truth of the Gospel, there can be but one answer—Yes. And Socialism ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... that since my severance from thee, * I wept till forced to borrow tears at usury: 'Patience!' my blamer cried, 'Heartsease right soon shalt see!' * Quoth I, 'Say, blamer, where ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... closer contact with the urgent questions of the day. Mill still held to competition, to the full liberty of individuals, to the inevitable mechanical working of economic laws; he still doubted the expediency of factory legislation, and condemned any laws in restraint of usury. He was opposed, broadly, to all authoritative intrusion upon human existence wherever its necessity could not be proved conclusively to be in the interest of a self-reliant community. Yet he was forced ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... say also that usury is no deadly sin. And they sell benefices of Holy Church. And so do men in other places: God amend it when his will is! And that is great sclaundre, for now is simony king crowned in Holy Church: God amend it ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown
... the entire manuscript of the Aurora. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melancholy, feeling that he was "entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the lazy servant." "It was with me," he writes, describing his years of silence, "as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather, against all ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... Interest And, for that principall you have credited To Eleonora her heart is paid backe As the iust Usury. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... ago, when to his overwhelming astonishment it was first made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the patrimony had not been squandered—had been put out to usury rather, bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold—a man living in luxury and holding the respect ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... no other than Rabbi Aser Abarbanel, a Jew of Arragon, who—accused of usury and pitiless scorn for the poor—had been daily subjected to torture for more than a year. Yet "his blindness was as dense as his hide," and he had ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of an oppressed and a noble nation, which has partaken of the proscription and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, without the sullenness of the former or the servility of the latter. This people has attained riches without usury, and all the honours that can be awarded to slavery without intrigue. But they have long occupied, nevertheless, a part of 'the House of Bondage,' who has lately multiplied her many mansions. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... stand up for our doctrine and defend our discipline pointing to you? If you go on to be a Puritan, said Shame to Faithful, you will have to ask your neighbour's forgiveness even for petty faults, and you will have to make restitution with usury where you have taken anything from any one, and ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... an exclusive metallic currency. Or if there is a process by which the character of the country for generosity and nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the great increase and neck toleration of usury, it is an exclusive ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... as perfect as mortal laws can possibly be made. Caveat vendor will be a sound qualification of Caveat emptor in the beautifully codified Utopian law. Whether the Utopian company will be allowed to prefer this class of share to that or to issue debentures, whether indeed usury, that is to say lending money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all in Utopia, one may venture to doubt. But whatever the nature of the shares a man may hold, they will all be sold at his ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... prohibition against unnatural sins, according to Lev. 28:22, 23: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind . . . thou shalt not copulate with any beast." To the seventh commandment which prohibits theft, is added the precept forbidding usury, according to Deut. 23:19: "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury"; and the prohibition against fraud, according to Deut. 25:13: "Thou shalt not have divers weights in thy bag"; and universally all prohibitions relating to peculations and larceny. To the eighth ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... formed. I bear with him no longer. Here I've been running to each dirty Moor, Inquiring who will lend him. I, who ne'er Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing, And that for others. Borrowing's much the same As begging; just as lending upon usury Is much the same as thieving—decency Makes not of lewdness virtue. On the Ganges, Among my ghebers, I have need of neither: Nor need I be the tool or pimp of either - Upon the Ganges only there are men. Here, thou alone art somehow almost worthy To have lived upon the Ganges. ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... feet with an angry flush in her face, exclaiming: "Insolent fellow, I am the Princess Mary; if you have a message, deliver it and be gone." You may be sure this sort of treatment was such as the cool-headed, daring Brandon would repay with usury; so, turning upon his heel and almost presenting his back to Mary, he ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... prayer and the fulfilment of the law, of master and servant and of practical charity, of marriage, divorce, and the relation of children to parents; of manners, serenity, and battlings; of working and food and prophecy; of trade and usury, of sin and righteousness, of repentance and salvation. Yet by means of all this he made noble the daily living of our earthly lives and gloriously triumphant the ending ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... revenues without exception; the third of such as were exceeded a hundred marks a year; the half of such as were possessed by non-residents.[****] He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen;[*****] he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury: he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same censures which he had emitted against the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... relations External commercial relations Exploitation by Christian natives Exploitation by falsification Defraudation by usury and excessive prices Exploitation by the system of commutation Wheedling or the punak system Bartering transactions General conditions of trading Internal commercial relations Money and substitutes for it Prevailing Manbo prices Weights and measures ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... to these pretended creditors his territory and his subjects. It is, therefore, not from treasuries and mines, but from the food of your unpaid armies, from the blood withheld from the veins and whipped out of the backs of the most miserable of men, that we are to pamper extortion, usury, and peculation, under the false names of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... usury! 'Tis an offensive word: Our enemies, like arrow from the bow, Are aiming it to pierce our very heart While 'tis a practice which costumbre shields. The slothful servant, so the Good Book says, Was he who in a napkin ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... discharged by prompt payment—and it was never forgotten! If the account could not be balanced now, the obligation was treasured up for a time to come—and, when least expected, the debtor came, and paid with usury! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... proclaim the Siberian banishment over the trembling people; the scourged might howl, and the banished might lament, the great and powerful might dispose of the souls and bodies of their serfs; rare honesty might be oppressed by consuming usury; offices, honors, and titles might be gambled for; justice and punishment might be bought and sold; vice and immorality might universally prevail—Anna would not know it. She would neither see nor hear any thing of this outside world! The palace is her world, in which she is happy, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... in his day: the enhancing of rents, the daily oppression of poor tenants by the lords of manors, and the practice of usury—a trade brought in by the Jews, but now practiced by almost every Christian, so that he is accounted a fool that doth lend his money for nothing. He prays the reader to help him, in a lawful manner, to hang up all those that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... many heads. For what shall I follow, or whom? One set of men delight to farm the public revenues: there are some, who would inveigle covetous widows with sweet-meats and fruits, and insnare old men, whom they would send [like fish] into their ponds: the fortunes of many grow by concealed usury. But be it, that different men are engaged in different employments and pursuits: can the same persons continue an hour together approving the same things? If the man of wealth has said, "No bay in the world outshines delightful Baiae," the lake and ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... regulate his morals, no conscience to restrain his iniquity, and who worships no God but Mammon; an insinuating miscreant, who undertakes for the dirtiest work of the vilest administration; who practises national usury, receiving by wholesale the rewards of venality, and distributing the wages ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... he begins, "in fulfilling my promise of an essay on the taste for beauty in works of art, in the words of Pindar. He says to Agesidamus, a youth of Locri—ideai te kalon, horai te kekramenon—whom he had kept waiting for an intended ode, that a debt paid with usury is the end of reproach. This may win your good-nature on behalf of my present essay, which has turned out far more detailed and circumstantial than I had ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... narrow path; and that when he reaches down to pick up the money there's usually a string tied to it and a small boy in the bushes to give it a yank. Easy-come money never draws interest; easy-borrowed dollars pay usury. ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... gain, mother, it will never prosper; you had better go to bed, and I will do the same. I suppose it would be impossible to sleep with that yellow usury on the floor. I should have Plutus at the head of the imps of darkness about my bed, instead of "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," that I used to pray to "bless the bed ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Gang; where we play'd at small Game, and stopp'd the small Caravans; thus I gradually lessen'd the wide Disproportion, which there was at first between me and the rest of Mankind: I enjoy'd not only my full Share of the good Things of this Life, but enjoy'd them with Usury. I was look'd upon as a Man of Consequence, and I procur'd this Castle by my military Atchievements. The Satrap of Syria had Thoughts of dispossessing me; but I was then too rich to be any Ways afraid of ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... wight— A mortal wight distressed as thou seest: My father here is King of Arragon: I, Amadine, his only daughter am, And after him sole heir unto the crown. Now, whereas it is my father's will To marry me unto Segasto, one, Whose wealth through father's former usury Is known to be no less than wonderful, We both of custom oftentimes did use, Leaving the court, to walk within the fields For recreation, especially [in] the spring, In that it yields great store of rare delights; And, passing farther than our wonted walks, Scarce ent'red were within ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... freely and with understanding. Large voluntary gifts or beneficial contracts, outside the limits within which natural affection and common practice justify them, are indeed not encouraged in any system of civilized law. Professional money lenders were formerly checked by the usury law: since those laws were repealed in 1854, courts and juries have shown a certain astuteness in applying the rules of law as to fraud and undue influence—the latter with certain special features—to transactions with needy "expectant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... of hunger, crushed down by taxes. The only reform that has been accomplished is that the men have taken to wearing caps and the women have left off their head-dresses! And the poverty! the drunkenness! the usury!" ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... the man, in busy schemes unskilled, Who, living simply, like our sires of old, Tills the few acres, which his father tilled, Vexed by no thoughts of usury or gold; ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... be supposed, however, that the life of feminine Germany is entirely a gloomy round of duty and suffering. Among the women of the poor, things are as bad as they can be. They are getting higher wages than ever, but the food usury and the blockade rob them of ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... other countries, their laws respecting debt and usury underwent some changes, according as society advanced, and as ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame A growing Maiden, who, from day to day Advancing still in stature, and in grace, Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, And his paternal cares with usury pay. I still retain the phantom, as I can; And call the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... honourably can, will we not, Dale?" cried Max, appealing to his friend. "It is stratagem that we shall use in making our war—not force. We have thought it all out together, and hope to give a good account of ourselves without giving the Germans a chance to pay us back with usury." ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... his Pegasus bestride And keeps the War from spoiling on the side, Fails to be fostered by the sensuous sprout Or with horse carrots blow its waistcoat out. So, though I loathe thee, butcher, I must buy The tokens of thy heartless usury. Yet oft I dream that in some life to come, Where no sharp pangs assail the poet's tum, Athwart high sunburnt plains I drive my plough, Untouched by earth's gross appetites, and thou, My ox, my beast, goest groaning at the tugs, And do I spare thy feelings? No, by jugs! With tireless lash I probe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 5, 1917 • Various
... Senate and from Plebs: Consul and Tribune break the laws alike: Bought are the fasces, and the people sell For gain their favour: bribery's fatal curse Corrupts the annual contests of the Field. Then covetous usury rose, and interest Was greedier ever as the seasons came; Faith tottered; thousands saw their ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... Paris. Consider what loss of time is there, and consider what hindrance to the trade of the provinces from which so much specie is taken bodily, and to which it can return later only a little at a time. Is it any wonder that usury is eating up France? There is not money enough—it is the one priceless thing; by which I mean only that there is not belief, not confidence, not credit enough in France. Now, given a bank which holds the confidence of the people, ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... reason, notorious enough at the time, why the squadron was not paid even its wages. The Government had provided the means, but those to whom the distribution was entrusted retained the money during their pleasure, employing it for their own advantage in trading speculations or in usury, only applying it to a legitimate purpose when further delay became dangerous to themselves. One great cause of the hatred displayed towards me by these people, was my incessant demands that the claims of the squadron should be satisfied ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... nationality. She might have been the cultivated English-speaking daughter of almost any land of high civilization, or she might have been its princess. Her face showed her imaginative; her serene manner reassured one that she had not, in consequence, to pay the usury of lack of judgment; she seemed reflective, tender, and of a fine independence, tempered, however, by tradition and unerring taste. Above all, she seemed alive, receptive, like a woman with ten senses. ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... the shadows fear lest ever again they be lured by specious promises to suffer usury at the hands of Yahn, who is overskilled in Law. Only Yahn sits and smiles, watching his hoard increase in preciousness, and hath no pity for the poor shadows whom he hath lured from their quiet to toil ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... cautious, moral, money-loving man, three months afterwards, suffered a rogue—almost a stranger—to decoy him into a speculation that promised to bring him fifty per cent. He invested in the traffic of usury what had sufficed to save a hundred such as I am from perdition, and he lost it all. It was nearly his whole fortune; but he lives and has his luxuries still: he cannot speculate, but he can save: he cared not if I starved, for he finds an ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tribes," where the Tribunes and Aediles acted as the accusers. The offences for which persons were summoned before the tribes, were, bad conduct of a magistrate in performance of his duties, neglect of duty, mismanagement of a war, embezzlement of the public money, breaches of the peace, usury, adultery, and some other crimes. The "Comitia Tributa" were used as courts of appeal, when a person protested against a fine ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... The usury in the market is no longer to be endured. We can do nothing more there, but she is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... hundred dollars unless you want to. Let it be in Mr Slight's hands, and while I have the books you will have the interest. I don't suppose you know it, but he had that much of me when he built his new tannery, eight years ago, and he has paid me regular ten per cent, ever since. It looks like usury, don't it? But he says it's worth that to him; and I'm sure, if it is, he's welcome to it. Now, if you'll take that while I have the books, I'll call it even—risk or no risk; and you can give it up and have the books when you want them. I call that ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... forestaller of the market. Valiant men, forsooth, shall arise in the beginning of these evil times, but though they shall die as ye shall, yet shall not their deaths be fruitful as yours shall be; because ye, forsooth, are fighting against villeinage which is waning, but they shall fight against usury which is waxing. And, moreover, I have been telling thee how it shall be when the measure of the time is full; and we, looking at these things from afar, can see them as they are indeed; but they who live at the beginning of those times and amidst them, shall not know what is doing ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... some of these unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures; by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. [140] But as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not be very frequent, and the general uses to which their liberality was applied reflected honor on the religious society. A decent ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thou receivest over and above, that Thou mayest owe; and who hath aught that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what had I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... this difference between them and me so wide? The grandsire of Sir Robert Aleys, I had been told, gathered his wealth by trade and usury in the old wars; indeed, it was said that he was one who dealt in cattle, while Lord Deleroy was reported to be a bastard, if of the bluest blood, so blue that it ran nigh to the royal purple. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... repository. There, money was lent on them at an interest of 10 per cent; and if the article pledged was not redeemed by a certain time, it was sold by public auction, and, the principal and interest being deducted, the surplus was paid to the holder of the duplicate. Thus the iniquitous projects of usury were defeated; and the rich, as well as the poor, went to borrow at the Mont de Piete. To obtain a sum for the discharge of a debt of honour, a dutchess here deposited her diamond ear-rings; while a washerwoman slipped off her petticoat, and pawned it to satisfy ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... if it please you,' said Isaac, 'before I depart. The gentile despises the Jew. He charges upon him usury and extortion. He accuses him of avarice. He believes him to subsist upon the very life blood of whomsoever he can draw into his meshes. I have known those who have firm faith that the Jew feeds but upon the flesh and blood of Pagan and Christian ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... militant" of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no other country are they so numerous; in no other country is the trade in material and industrial capital so far exceeded by the wholesale and retail trade, the traffic and the usury, in the intellectual capital of the nation. Germany yields more intellectual produce than it can use ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... contempt, such scorn, such repulsion, concentrated in one single ejaculation! It told the woman everything. It told of a failure so complete that hope became an emotion driven forever from her heart. It told her that the usury of life was beyond all belief. It told her that the interest demanded for every pledged moment was without pity, or mercy, or justice. Now she knew how she had pawned, and, oh God, the interest which was being torn ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... and Stepniak tells us it was not an unusual thing for more than one thousand peasants in the winter—in a single commune—to be seen awaiting their turn to have their taxes "flogged out." Of course, before this was endured all means had been exhausted for raising the required amount. Usury, that surest road to ruin, and the one offering the least resistance, was the one ordinarily followed. Thus was created that destructive class called Koulaks, or Mir-eaters, who, while they fattened upon the necessities ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... and told them his political principles.[37] He was in favor of internal improvements, such as opening roads, clearing streams, building a railroad across Sangamon County, and making the Sangamon River straight and navigable. He advocated a usury law, and hazarded the extraordinary argument that "in cases of extreme necessity there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have its intended effect." A law ameliorated by infractions is no uncommon thing, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... console my mind thou now dost fly; Hope therefore stills the pangs of memory, Which coupled with desire my soul distress. So finding in thee grace to plead for me— Thy thoughts for me sunk in so sad a case— He who now writes, returns thee thanks for these. Lo, it were foul and monstrous usury To send thee ugliest paintings in the place Of thy fair ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... natural agents—capital is the requisite which is most perfectly secured from the control of monopoly. The rate of interest for the use of capital is regulated so perfectly by the law of supply and demand, that all the anti-usury laws which have ever been enacted have been able to accomplish but little in enabling the borrower to secure loans at a less rate than that prescribed by competition. The reason for this is plain on consideration. The ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... selling?" "The Koranic are: (1) offer and acceptance and (2) if the thing sold be a white slave, by whom one profiteth, all possible endeavour to convert him to Al-Islam; and (3) to abstain from usury; the traditional are: making void[FN329] and option before not after separating, according to his saying (whom Allah bless and preserve!), 'The parties to a sale shall have the option of cancelling or altering terms whilst they are yet unseparated.'", Q "What is it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the law, for no Jew was allowed to take interest, or increase, of another Jew, much less to exact usury: see Exod. xxii. 25; Ezek. ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... a dunghill of flowers, among which here and there we find a bright rose plucked but yesterday and worn for a day; and on this an old hag is always to be seen crouching—first cousin to Usury, the skinflint bargainer, bald and toothless, and ever ready to sell the contents, so well is she used to sell the covering—the gown without the woman, or the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Menippus was a Cynic philosopher of Gadara, who made money in Thebes by usury, lost it, and hanged himself. He wrote satirical pieces, which are lost; some said that they were the joint work of two friends, Dionysius and Zopyrus of Colophon, in whom it was one jest the more to ascribe ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... their contempt for the Catholic worship, their desecration of its most holy symbols, and of their crucifixion, or other sacrifice, of Christian children, at the celebration of their own passover. [14] With these foolish calumnies, the more probable charge of usury and extortion was industriously preferred against them, till at length, towards the close of the fourteenth century, the fanatical populace, stimulated in many instances by the no less fanatical clergy, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... reproach against his neighbour. In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear the Lord: he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... dividing property, and in the absence of any organized agency to receive lapsed property, inheritance and preferably primogeniture were of such manifest advantage that the old social organization always tended in the direction of these institutions. Such usury as was practised relied entirely on the land and the anticipated agricultural produce ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... to set up schools for their own employees. The women of all classes are almost without exception illiterate. The church refuses to educate them, and sternly forbids any one else to do so. An American Catholic long resident reported even the priests ignorant beyond belief, and asserted that usury and immorality was almost universal among the churchmen of all grades. The peasants are forced to give a tenth of all they produce, be it only a patch of corn, to the church, which holds its stores until prices are high, while the poverty-stricken peon must sell for what he ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... but that is brute stupidity. A few brave souls swagger through their prime with some bravado, knowing the final cost, but willing to pay it by installments through the dribbling years which follow; but the usury of time makes that folly. The wise choke such gypsy impulses—admit the mortgage of the Present to the Future—and surrender the brisk liberty of youth to the limping freedom of old age. But Donaldson was too thoughtful a man ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he had taken to the company. Upon hearing his name, I knew him to be a gentleman of a considerable fortune in this county, but greatly in debt. What gives the unhappy man this peevishness of spirit is, that his estate is dipped, and is eating out with usury; and yet he has not the heart to sell any part of it. His proud stomach, at the cost of restless nights, constant inquietudes, danger of affronts, and a thousand nameless inconveniences, preserves this ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and made him feel that he had played the man. That alone seems to him the real measure of himself, the real standard of his manhood. And so men grow by having responsibility laid upon them, the burden of other people's business. Their powers are put out at interest, and they get usury in kind. They are like men multiplied. Each counts manifold. Men who live with an eye only upon what is their own are dwarfed beside them—seem fractions while they are integers. The trustworthiness of men trusted seems often to ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... end to forced loans and arbitrary imposts; he would bring about a general pacification, and grant a general amnesty for political offences; he would guard against the extortions of the rich, and the usury of the Jews, who lent money at thirty-three per cent, with compound interest; he secured the establishment of a bank for charitable loans; he sought to make the people good citizens, and to advance their temporal as well as spiritual interests. All his reforms, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... Lands, Assessments, Customs, Poll-monies, Lotteries, Benevolence, Penalty Monopolies, Offices, Tythes, Raising of Coines, Hearth-money, Excise, and with several intersperst Discourses and Digressions concerning Wars, the Church Universities, Rents, and Purchases, Usury and Exchange, Banks and Lumbards, Registers for Conveyances, Buyers, Insurances, Exportation of Money and Wool, Free Ports Coynes Housing Liberty of Conscience; by Sir ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... stranger things than that,' he answered, 'ere your head be hoarier by twain s'ennight from now.'—'Well! say on,' quoth I.—'Have you,' pursueth he, 'any money lent unto any friend, or set out at usury? You were best to call it in, if you would see it at all.'—'Friend,' said I, 'my money floweth not in so fast that my back lacketh it not so soon as it entereth my purse.'—'The better,' quo' he.—'Good lack!' said I, 'I alway thought it the worse.'—'The worse ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... I am not a great writer, and do not understand usury and speculation," said D'Argens, quietly. "Besides, no courtesan made me her heir, and no mistress obtained ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... nor requite them with a Sicilian Vesper as they deserve. Preventive economical regulations are much more effective than the above-named measures.'[40] It is needless to remark what a pernicious influence such an article as this would have upon an excitable people who had been the victims of usury and oppression; and whilst no language is sufficiently strong to apply to the perpetrators of such outrages upon the Jews as have disgraced the Eastern nations who have been guilty of them, Englishmen should hesitate before they ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... therefore instruct their legislators to fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... caresses without any ill feeling, and to be able to love her, as she loves me. And if I must expiate my old faults, and this infamous doubt which I am ashamed of not being immediately able to cast from me, if I must pay for my unmerited happiness with usury, I hope that I may be given to death as a prey, only provided that I might belong to her, idolize her, believe in her kisses, believe in her beauty and in her love, for one hour, for ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... Under what conditions? According to what laws?" And the conclusion arrived at by this monograph of property was this: Property indicates function or attribution; community; reciprocity of action; usury ever decreasing, the identity of labour and capital (sic!). In order to set free and to realise all these terms, until now hidden beneath the old symbols of property, what must be done? The workers must ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... Gaubertin had lived at Ville-aux-Fayes, they would have quarrelled; their various pretensions would have clashed; but fate ordained that the Lucullus of Blangy felt too strongly the need of solitude, in which to wallow at his ease in usury and sensuality, to live anywhere but at Blangy; that Madame Soudry had sense enough to see that she could reign nowhere else except at Soulanges; and that Ville-aux-Fayes was Gaubertin's place of business. Those who enjoy studying social ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... his speech. Daily he taught in the Temple and though he is called a Galilean peasant, he hath much knowledge. A strange people were those of his race, and strange were the kings that once sat on their thrones, for out of the Galilean's mouth their law allowed no usury, left fruit on the vine for the poor, and turned vast estates back to be redistributed. Aye, this stirrer up of sedition makes much of the poor. Perchance hunger hath gnawed at his own vitals. By traffic in 'traditions' and sacrifices have their priests grown rich filching from the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... improvement of the Sangamon River was the next best thing. Its channel could be straightened and cleared of driftwood and made navigable for small vessels under thirty tons' burden. He favored a usury law and said, in view of the talk he had just heard, he was going to favor the improvement and building of schools, so that every one could learn how to read, at least, and learn for himself what is in the Bible and other great books. ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... ille qui procul negotiis") that Alfius, like many a modern amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land" and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town and sought to get his money out again at usury. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... slander with his tongue, Who does no wrong to his friend, Who makes no charge against his neighbor; In whose sight the vile are despised, But he honors those who revere the Lord. He keeps his oath at all costs, His money he puts not out to usury, And cannot be bribed ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors as well as of debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons, by whom they would lose their ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... extortions of legates; and persons were excommunicated, under various pretenses, to compel them to purchase absolution at an exorbitant price. The ecclesiastical revenues of all Europe were flowing into Rome, a sink of corruption, simony, usury, bribery, extortion. The popes, since 1066, when the great centralizing movement began, had no time to pay attention to the internal affairs of their own special flock in the city of Rome. There were thousands of foreign ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... but only change one kind of death for another; and if I get out of this fatal place, I shall not only avoid the fate of my comrades, but perhaps find some new occasion of enriching myself. Who knows but fortune waits, upon my getting off this dangerous shelve, to compensate my shipwreck with usury? After this, I immediately went to work on a float. I made it of good large pieces of timber and cables, for I had choice of them, and tied them together so strong, that I had made a very solid little float. When I had finished it, I loaded it with some bales ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... property does not amount to half as much, and there are many who have three or four times as many cattle. I have heard of some who are possessed of property in cattle and cash to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand piastres. Such sums are gained by the trade with Aleppo and by usury ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... his future states was to expose himself to the dislike of the Flemings; and Joyeuse knew the Flemings too well not to feel sure that if the duke did take Antwerp, sooner or later they would revenge themselves with usury. This opinion Joyeuse did not hesitate to declare in the ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... maritime risks twelve; but it was unlawful to charge interest upon interest. [Footnote: C. 4, 32, 26, Section 1.] Property would double, at eight and one third, in twelve years, not so rapidly as by our system of compound interest, especially at the rate of seven per cent. In England the usury laws of different monarchs limited interest from ten per cent, to five; but these were repealed in 1854. Only five per cent. can now be ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... What I want to prevent," said Mr. Giles, musingly, "is any thing absurd happening. There is no doubt if your lordship went into the street and said you wanted ten thousand pounds, or a hundred thousand, fifty people would supply you immediately—but you would have to pay for it. Some enormous usury! That would be bad; but the absurdity of the thing would be greater than the mischief. Roundells, Giles, and Roundell could not help you in that manner. That is not our business. We are glad to find money for our clients at a legal ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... bad wit! O, where dwells faith or truth? Ill usury my favours reap from thee, Usurping Sol, the hate of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... then, in his looking behind and before, to return with peace to his own soul, that man must needs find honey in this lion, that can plead his innocency and uprightness. All the people curse me, saith Jeremiah, but that without a cause, for I have neither lent nor taken on usury; which it seems was a sin ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... countenance of sensuality by his own practice, as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... printing enterprise which failed in 1827, leaving him still more embarrassed financially, but endowed with a fund of experience which he turned to rich account as a novelist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt, bankruptcy, usury, and speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid it bare in novel after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained of the law, and even pressing into service the technicalities of the printing ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... their brains to guess the secret of his influence and the nature of his services; while, on the other hand, the aristocrats in all the various ministries looked upon him as a dangerous Mephistopheles, courted him, and gave him back with usury the flatteries he bestowed in the higher sphere. As difficult to decipher as a hieroglyphic inscription to the clerks, the vocation of the secretary and his usefulness were as plain as the rule of three to the self-interested. ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... friends. But she accepted her riches soberly, and did not fret that they must be so hoarded. If, by moments, as she saw herself, or looked at herself, in the glass, a grain of bitterness surged up in her throat, that all this fair seeming could not be put out to usury—! well, she put it to herself very differently, not at all in words, but in narrowed scrutinising eyes, half-turns of the pretty head, a sigh and lips pressed together. There had been—nay, there was—Lancelot, her darling. That was usufruct; but usury was a ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... for every fictitious god-like moment an equivalent time in reptilian slime. For every feat of telescoping long days and weeks of life into mad magnificent instants, one must pay with shortened life, and, oft-times, with savage usury added. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... many a bachelor to waite on him, In theyr fresh garments trim. Bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight, For lo! the wished day is come at last, That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past, Pay to her usury of long delight: And, whylest she doth her dight, Doe ye to her of joy and solace sing, That all the woods may answer, and your ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... should have done in 1874 and taken actual possession, for Coomassie is a grand position that, if properly managed for a few years, will become a great interior market, attracting to itself the routes of interior trade. It is not now a great centre; because of the oppression and usury which the Kings of Ashantee have inflicted on all in their power, and which have caused Coomassie mainly to attract one form of trade, viz., slaves; who were used in their constant human sacrifices, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... no less than 93 inches round the chest, had landed in their country 150,000 years previously, and finding them very barbarous, slaying one another and unacquainted with the use of letters, the precious metals, or the art of usury, had instructed them in civilization, endowed them with letters, a coinage, police, lawyers, instruments of torture, and all the other requisites of a great State, and had finally drawn up for them this code of law or custom, which they carefully preserved ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... position in a characteristic speech, especially answering General Banks's argument that we should pay this amount from a spirit of friendship for Russia. "If," said General Butler, "we are to pay this price as usury on the friendship of Russia, we are paying for it very dear indeed. If we are to pay for her friendship, I desire to give her the seven million two hundred thousand dollars in cash, and let her keep Alaska, because I think it may be a small ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... law of usury among its followers. With the Jew, the Mohammedan has been strictly forbidden to make money by the use of money. And though they find ways of evading this law, to some extent, the ideal which they have before them ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... Willy renewed the bill another three months on usurious terms; those months over, he came to town to find your father hiding between four walls, unable to stir out for fear of arrest. Willy had no option but to pay the money; and when your father knew that it was so paid, and that the usury had swallowed up the whole of Willy's little capital, then, I say, I saw upon Charles Haughton's once radiant face the saddest expression I ever saw on mortal man's. And sure I am that all the joys your father ever knew as a man of pleasure were not worth the agony and remorse of that moment. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... greatest and the best talent that God gives to any man or woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer. And those servants best put their Lord's money to the exchangers who rise early and sit late, as long as they ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... angels laden. But to mount it now None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; The walls, for abbey rear'd, turned into dens, The cowls to sacks choak'd up with musty meal. Foul usury doth not more lift itself Against God's pleasure, than that fruit which makes The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate'er Is in the church's keeping, all pertains. To such, as sue for heav'n's sweet sake, and not To those who in respect of kindred claim, Or on more vile allowance. Mortal ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Commandment is to do good, to give and lend willingly, to be liberal; the contrary is covetousness, stealing, usury, fraud, and to wrong ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... time immemorial turned aside from their course the waters of human morality, and forced them into a stagnant pool, around which our memory still lingers. Nor do I speak of a cunning humility that is often mere calculation, or, taken at its best, a timidity that has its root in pride—a loan at usury that our vanity of to-day extends to our vanity of to-morrow. And even the sage at times conceives it well to lower himself in his own self-esteem, and to deny superior merits that are his when comparing himself with other men. Humility of this kind may throw a charm around ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... splendid carriages, surrounded by elegance and wealth, while he was obliged to creep along, bowed down with sorrow? He had gone down, while Ephraim had risen higher and higher. He had become poor because he was honest; but Ephraim had grown rich on usury. His firm had failed, while Ephraim continued to coin money. What did the Jew care that his name was branded by the people, that they spoke with cutting sarcasm of the pewter-money to which he had so skilfully imparted the appearance of silver coin, and that he was derided ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... think that, considering the great risk he was taking, a hundred per cent per annum was not an exorbitant usury. ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... varied use of capital is closely connected with the payment of interest. In accord with a strict interpretation of certain passages in both the Old and the New Testament, the Middle Ages regarded the payment of interest for the use of money as wicked. Interest was the same as usury and was illegal. As a matter of fact, most regular occupations in the Middle Ages required very little capital, and this was usually owned by the agriculturists, handicraftsmen, or merchants themselves; so that borrowing was only necessary for personal expenses or in occasional ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... to this baneful and corroding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the general interests of the community as a direct tax of several thousand dollars annually laid on each county for the benefit of a few individuals only, unless there be a law made fixing the limits of usury. A law for this purpose, I am of opinion, may be made without materially injuring any class of people. In cases of extreme necessity, there could always be means found to cheat the law; while in all other cases it would have ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... need not stop to defend the mediaeval position or to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity for profit—that is, a potential property interest—was outlawed. In consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests may be protected by ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... usury, this was not bad. We thanked him acidly, offered the Bonds for sale, and, after a little calculation, accepted two hundred and forty-three ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... us! True, indeed! They ne'er cared for us yet. Suffer us to famish, and their storehouses crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and there's all the love they bear ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... headquarters—Isca Silurum (Caerleon-on-Usk), Viroconium (Wroxeter), Deva (Chester) and Lindum (Lincoln). This disposition, which faced north and west, came near to breaking down in 61, when the east rose under Boudicca (Boadicea), queen of the Iceni, partly in protest against the usury of Seneca, the philosopher ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Labor. Usury. Economics. Punishment for Debts. Healing. Peace. Marriage. Celibacy. Adultery. Divorce. Faulty Judgment. Unconvincing. ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... little good at it is that merchant like to do, if following the precepts of wisdom, he should boggle at perjury; or being taken in a lie, blush; or in the least regard the sad scruples of those wise men touching rapine and usury. Again, if a man sue for honors or church preferments, an ass or wild ox shall sooner get them than a wise man. If a man's in love with a young wench, none of the least humors in this comedy, they are wholly ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall only notice the more striking articles. ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... 1832-'3 were brought forward three important measures in Parliament. One was the abolishment of the death penalty for forgery; another was the modification of the usury laws; the third was ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... despair; for his debts are great, and his character nothing but new wealth can support. I knew that he was able, bold, determined, and that he had taken with him a large supply of money borrowed upon usury,—in a word, I trembled for you both. I have now seen your daughter, and I tremble no more. Accomplished seducer as Peschiera boasts himself, the first look upon her face so sweet, yet so noble, convinced ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... often become the bankers of, the inhabitants, who entrust them with the care of their money. My old chief (whose name I should have mentioned before was Ulu-bibi), held large sums in trust for many of the people with whom he was acquainted; but his avarice inducing him to lend the money out on usury, it was very difficult to recover it when it was desired, although it was always religiously paid back. I had not been many months at Scutari, before I found myself in high favour, from my superior howling, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... landlords to him. He said to them that if they continued to lend at high interest the people would set fire to their houses and he would not proceed against them. So the landlords became affrighted and amended their lives." The rural people of Japan have always three weapons against usury, it was explained to me. First, there may be tried injuring the offending person's house—rural dwellings are mainly bamboo work and mud—by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin which is carried about the roadway at the time of the annual festival. If such a hint should ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... to keep afloat from day to day. They will not submit to their full share of taxation. When they advance money on the pledge of some income, it is on the most onerous terms, so that at least one quarter of the revenue of Mexico is used up in interest or usury. Long experience has reduced the business of shaving the revenue to a system. The most common way to do this is to buy up some claim at twelve and a half cents on a dollar, and then couple it at par with a loan of money on the assignment of some rent. Every thing ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... how his feet Plunge floundering mid the marshes yellow-flowered, His restless head just reaching to the rocks, His bosom tossing with black weeds besmeared, How writhes he twixt the continent and isle! What tyrant with more insolence e'er claimed Dominion? when from the heart of Usury Rose more intense the pale-flamed thirst for gold? And called forsooth DELIVERER! False or fools Who praised the dull-eared miscreant, or who hoped To soothe your folly and disgrace with praise! Hearest thou not the harp's gay simpering air And merriment afar? then come, advance; And ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor |
