"Exactor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... persecutions of their mother. This lady belonged, by birth, to a more elevated rank than that of her husband, and she was remarkably well bred as regarded her manners. But she had probably a weak understanding; she was shrewish in her temper; was a severe economist; a merciless exactor of what she viewed as duty; and, in persecuting her two unhappy daughters, though she yielded blindly to her unconscious dislike of them, as creatures that disgraced her, she was not aware, perhaps, of ever having put forth more expressions of ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... revenge is, in such a case, too potent,—a meritorious disobedience too novel a temptation,—to have a chance of being rejected. Never, indeed, does erring human nature look more abject than in the person of a severe exactor of duty, who has immolated thousands to the wrath of offended law, suddenly himself becoming a capital offender, a glozing tempter in search of accomplices, and in that character at once standing ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey |
