"Avarice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is not the grosser passions and forms of vice alone that darken the understanding and alienate the heart from the truth. Pride, vanity, ambition, avarice—in a word, the spirit of self-seeking and self-exaltation in every form—will effectually hinder the man in whose bosom they bear sway from coming to the knowledge of the truth; for they will incline him to seek a religion which flatters him and promises him impunity ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... will be my powers over you? I know the first generous impulse of your heart is always good; but then ambition,—let me speak truth to you,—avarice, the offspring of ambition, leads you astray, and contaminates the source of ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... riches you're wasting your time; And—pray, sir, excuse me—such waste is a crime. And then to be guilty of avarice, too! Alas! how I pity ...
— The Diving Bell - Or, Pearls to be Sought for • Francis C. Woodworth
... thought a happy time, Its praise is often sounded; 'Tis told in books, 'tis sung in rhyme, In every age and every clime; Of youth and manhood 'tis the prime, Except when on the sordid grime Of avarice ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... are going on at Gergovia, the Aedui, on receiving the first announcements from Litavicus, leave themselves no time to ascertain the truth of these statements. Some are stimulated by avarice, others by revenge and credulity, which is an innate propensity in that race of men to such a degree that they consider a slight rumour as an ascertained fact. They plunder the property of the Roman citizens, and either massacre them ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... shameful in the undertaking, and shameful in the result, which you may avoid. But either a fond partiality for the task I have undertaken deceives me, or there never was any state either greater, or more moral, or richer in good examples, nor one into which luxury and avarice made their entrance so late, and where poverty and frugality were so much and so long honoured; so that the less wealth there was, the less desire was there. Of late, riches have introduced avarice, and excessive pleasures ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... a person with a narrow forehead, small grey eyes, and that peculiar expression of countenance which the vice of indulged avarice seems generally to produce. Though his lips denoted sensuality, their total want of firmness showed the astute Father Mendez that he would be easily moulded to his will. The marquis was perfectly well aware of the way in which the church was at times apt to bleed those whom ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the beginning of the sixteenth, and whose diocese extended to the valleys of Piedmont, says that the Waldenses took their origin from Leo, a person in the time of ye Emperor Constantine, who, hating the avarice of Pope Sylvester and the immoderate endowment of the Church of Rome, seceded from her communion, and "drew after him all who entertained right ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... considered this objection, which in some cases is of no little weight. For example: A man may, by the influence of an over-ruling planet, be disposed or inclined to lust, rage, or avarice, and yet by the force of reason overcome that bad influence; and this was the case of Socrates: But as the great events of the world usually depend upon numbers of men, it cannot be expected they should ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... four farthings; which refusal so enraged the barbarians, that they put them all to the sword. Mauritius began then to be stung with remorse, gave large alms, and prayed that God would rather punish him in this life than in the next. His prayer was heard. His avarice and extortions had rendered him odious to all his subjects; and, in 602, he ordered the army to take winter quarters in the enemy's country, and to subsist on freebooting, without pay. The soldiers, exasperated at this treatment, chose one Phocas, a ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... look thou well to that ill-gotten coin, Which against Charles thy hardihood inspir'd. If reverence of the keys restrain'd me not, Which thou in happier time didst hold, I yet Severer speech might use. Your avarice O'ercasts the world with mourning, under foot Treading the good, and raising bad men up. Of shepherds, like to you, th' Evangelist Was ware, when her, who sits upon the waves, With kings in filthy whoredom he beheld, She who with seven heads tower'd at her ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... sincerely and with an ungrudging mind; and whoso doth otherwise sinneth.' Quoth the friar, exceeding well pleased, 'I am content that thou shouldst thus apprehend it and thy pure and good conscience therein pleaseth me exceedingly. But, tell me, hast thou sinned by way of avarice, desiring more than befitted or withholding that which it behoved thee not to withhold?' 'Father mine,' replied Ciappelletto, 'I would not have you look to my being in the house of these usurers; I have nought to do here; nay, I came hither ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... he turned the pages, came on such lamentable and humble prayers as these: "Thou who hast shapened me in my mother's womb, let me not perish.... Lord, I confess my poverty.... My conscience gnaws me and shows me the secrets of my heart. Avarice constrains me, concupiscence befouls me, gluttony disgraces me, anger torments me, inconstancy crushes me, indolence oppresses me, hypocrisy beguiles me.... and these, Lord, are the companions with whom I have spent ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... to the vessels of Genseric. In the forty-five years that had elapsed since the Gothic invasion, the pomp and luxury of Rome were in some measure restored; and it was difficult either to escape, or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... like that of the youth of Great Britain, to realize upon the magnificence of India; and this is as Dr. Johnson said of the vats and barrels of the Thrale estate—"the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." It is a new departure, but not a matter for the panic or apprehension of conservatism, that the Stars and Stripes float as the symbol of sovereignty over a group of islands in the waters of Asia, that are equal to all the West Indies. If we are strangers ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... most active vanity were disturbed; but above that rose another passion that had of late years grown strong within her—avarice. She recognized the sure ring of gold in those ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or Time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise. Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... and the gratification of my vanity. I shall not mention how diligently I cultivated this gift, which seemed capable of unlimited improvement; nor detail the various occasions on which it was successfully exerted to lead superstition, conquer avarice, or excite awe. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... the sullen creature lies Over her knees, and with concealing clay, Like hoarding Avarice, locks up his eyes, And leaves her world impoverish'd of day; Then at his cruel lips she bends to plead, But there the door is ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Publick Works in this nation,' he further expresses himself as 'extremely amazed, that where there is so great affluence of all things which may render the People of this vast City the most happy upon Earth; the sordid and accursed Avarice of some few Particular Persons should be suffered to prejudice the health and felicity of so many: That any Profit (besides what is absolute necessity) should render men regardlesse of what chiefly imports them, when it may be purchased upon so easie conditions, and with ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... through the manner in which they are kept, worse than those described to us of the times of Paganism, and of monstrous consequences to morality and the national welfare ... they may be reckoned as a barbarous mixture of idolatry and superstition, sustained by infamous avarice. The Indian who is chosen to make a feast either has to use up in it his little savings, leaving his family submerged in misery, or he has to rob in order to invest the products of his crime in paying the fees to the priest and for church ceremonies. These are simply brutal orgies that ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... their families of a property which, however, keeps their conscience unquiet." Virginia, he continued, "is the next state to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression, a conflict in which the sacred side is gaining daily recruits from the influx into office of young men grown and growing up. These have sucked in the principles of liberty as it were with their mother's milk, and it is to them that I look with anxiety to turn the fate of ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... opponent of all. The Federalists were afraid of him because they believed with William P. Van Ness, the young friend of Burr, that he was "governed by no principles or feelings except those which avarice and unprincipled ambition inspired."[121] Van Ness wrote with a pen dipped in gall, yet, if contemporary criticism be accepted, he did not exaggerate the feeling entertained for Spencer by the Federalists of that day. Like DeWitt Clinton, he was ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! Yes;—they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. They offer us their protection! Yes, such protections as vultures give to lambs,—covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all the good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the bank of a large river, with a bunch of kusa grass in his paw, calling out to every one who passed: "Ho! ho! traveller, take this golden bracelet," but every one was afraid to approach him to receive it. At length, however, a certain wayfarer, tempted by avarice, regarded it as an instance of good fortune; but, said he, in this there is personal danger, in which we are not warranted to proceed. Yet, said he, there is risk in every undertaking for the ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... betrayed, no matter to whom it was extended. There was something actually pathetic in his guilelessness. Mr. Richard Flanders admittedly was staggered, and yet somewhere down in his soul he knew there was a spark of fairness that would become a stupendous obstacle in the path of his news-getting avarice. Of course, he was no less honourable than ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... were cowardice that made the Jews shrink from military service they would not inflict on themselves physical tortures greater than any that threatened them in the army, and which often left them maimed for life. If it were avarice—the fear of losing the gains from their business for four years—they would not empty their pockets and sell their houses and sink into debt, on the chance of successfully bribing the Czar's agents. The Jewish recruit dreaded, indeed, brutality and injustice at the hands ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... hours, disappointment and shame at having been gulled, the clenching of fists, the grinding of teeth, the tearing of hair, all the outward and visible signs of those inward commotions of disappointed avarice in some, consciousness of ruin in others, and in all boiling revenge." A committee was appointed by the Stock Exchange to track out the conspiracy, as on the two days before Consols and Omnium, to the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... passion; and by adopting this rule, we shall soon obtain a satisfactory clew both to the exquisite count's penchant for the prize-ring, and his aversion to the hells. Some persons exhibit an inexplicable union of avarice and extravagance, of parsimony and prodigality—something of this kind is observable in the gentleman in question. But self predominates with him in all; and being joined to rather alow species of vanity, and a strong inclination to be what is vulgarly called ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Spaniard's luxury, The delicate living there of the Bohemian, Who still to worth has been a willing stranger. The halter of Jerusalem shall see A unit for his virtue, for his vices No less a mark than million. He, who guards The isle of fire by old Anchises honour'd Shall find his avarice there and cowardice; And better to denote his littleness, The writing must be letters maim'd, that speak Much in a narrow space. All there shall know His uncle and his brother's filthy doings, Who so renown'd a nation and two crowns Have bastardized. And they, of Portugal And Norway, there shall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... with superhuman powers to walk the earth, to administer His justice and to execute His decrees. For fourteen years was that vengeance prepared, yet delayed. At last, it fell—it fell. All who had wronged me met their dreadful doom. Ambition was changed to madness. Avarice was tortured with bankruptcy. Falsehood sought refuge in self destruction; and all—all—all—even the meanest of those who had contributed to blight my life—perished miserably at my will! And did the guilty ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... of writing for bread thus turns the ambition of every author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written many years, that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his name; he despairs of applause, and turns to profit, which invites him. He finds that money procures all those advantages, that ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... cheerful to the eye. He himself waited on us during the meal, and continually plied his guests with champagne and other rare vintages, for the Skopt, although a miser at heart, is fond of displaying his wealth. Avarice is the characteristic of these people, although they are kind to their own poor. We visited an institution maintained solely by the village for the old and decrepit of both sexes, and this place would have done credit to a European city. ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and superstition. Men, from causes too intricate to be here discussed, had become insensible and selfish: their own will had become feeble, and yet they were its slaves, and thence the slaves of the will of others: lust, fear, avarice, cruelty, and fraud characterized a race amongst whom no one was to be found capable of creating in form, language, or institution. The moral anomalies of such a state of society are not justly to be charged upon ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of Bubb Dodington, the editor of his 'Diary,' Henry Penruddocke Wyndham, who declares that all Lord Melcombe's political conduct was 'wholly directed by the base motives of vanity, selfishness, and avarice.' Lord Melcombe seems to have been a man of the world of the very worst calibre; sensual, servile, and treacherous; ready, during the lifetime of his patron, Frederick, Prince of Wales, to go any lengths ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... ecclesiastical property seized by temporal governments down to the close of the late war should be guaranteed to its new possessors; but that for the future the process of secularization should cease. Thus an artificial obstacle was placed in the way of the avarice or the desire for reform of the Protestant princes, at the very time they were given increased ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... said Miriam, smiling at the notion, "for the marble costs something, and the tools, which wear out. Oh, it would be very dear!" This she repeated, wondering what she could ask in her charitable avarice. "It would be——" yes, she would venture ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... too sordidly," observed a Frenchman to me a day or two later. "They carry thrift to the pitch of avarice and vice. Zola's 'La Terre' is not without ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to be overcome in this battle, for I had weakened my army too much by detachments. Nothing but the skill of my generals and the bravery of my troops saved me from a defeat. Something is also due to the avarice of the pandours and Croats; a branch of our laurel-wreath belongs justly to Nadasti and Trenck. It is most fortunate that the courier who brought those last dispatches from Berlin, did not arrive during the battle. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough, bristly hair was beaded with diamonds ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... youth, ambition in midlife, avarice in old age; but vanity and pride are the besetting sins that drive the angels from our cradle, pamper us with luscious and most unwholesome food, ride our first stick with us, mount our first horse with us, wake with us in the morning, dream with us in the night, ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... death by the guards. No system of slavery was ever equal in its cruel and dehumanizing details to this convict system, which, taking advantage of race prejudice on the one hand and race ignorance on the other, with cupidity and avarice as its chief characteristics, has done more to curse the South than all things else since ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... concerned with love between the sexes, illustrate the other noble passions, all of which, such as joy, are forms of, or rather children of, self-forgetful love. They do not illustrate the evil or ignoble passions—envy, jealousy, hatred, base fear, despair, revenge, avarice and remorse—which, driven by the emotion that so fiercely and swiftly accumulates around them, master the body and soul, the intellect and the will, like some furious tyrant, and in their extremes hurry their victim into madness. Browning took ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... spread from the Cities of the Great Merchants and of the Popes into the provincial and inferior towns; thus Italy was the first country in the West where good taste, enlightened views, and generous emulation in the sciences and the fine arts took the place of the ignorance, the avarice and the venality which for centuries had held sole sway in that civilized portion of the world. Princes and nobles vied with Popes and Cardinals in the restoration of letters; and now the best way for a man to advance himself was to show a desire for the promotion of letters; above ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... last point is Gehazi's avarice, and what he got by it. How differently the same sight affected the man who lived near God and the one who lived by sense! Elisha had no desires stirred by the wealth in Naaman's train. Gehazi's mouth watered after it. Regulate ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as he rose; "they would not mind if you took the whisky to the table and drank it out of the bottle. Oh, I can gauge the old dame pretty well, I think; avarice is writ large in her face, and she'll squeeze us all she can. She told me in a mysterious aside that the butler kept all the very best wines and liquor obtainable. I thanked her, and said I usually provided my own. She didn't like it a bit; but ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... his hair and raved: fear and avarice, conflicting, tore at his vitals. He owed his millions to no genuine force of character, but to luck, industry, and dishonesty. In this great crisis of his life he was helpless. Tinker, trained from babyhood by his wise father to study his fellow ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... Consideration of such avarice may well have heartened Demetrios when the well-armoured gaoler knelt in order to unlock the door of Perion's cell. As an asp leaps, the big and supple hands of the proconsul gripped Bracciolini's neck from behind, and ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... game of Regulus himself. He, in the mean time, dwells in his villa on the other side of the Tiber, where he has covered a large tract of ground with magnificent porticos, and lined the banks of the river with elegant statues; profuse, with all his avarice, and, in the depth of infamy, proud and vain-glorious. Convenitur ad eum mira celebritate: cuncti detestantur, oderunt; et, quasi probent, quasi diligant, cursant, frequentant, utque breviter, quod ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... the vintage of the Nineteen-Twenties was the avarice of the driver. For when he had been given the address of the Athenais' apartment, he announced with vinous truculence that his whim inclined to precisely the opposite direction, gathered up the reins, clucked in peremptory ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... her, take her, by all means; you will be the prettiest, finest, loveliest, sweetest couple. Augh! what a delicate dish of matrimony you will make! Her age with your youth, her avarice with your extravagance, and her ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... however, often suffice to indicate their functions. Such are Asapati (Lord of the region), Kshetrapati (Lord of the field), both invoked in ceremonies for destroying locusts and other noxious insects, Sakambhara and Apva, deities of diarrhoea, and Arati, the goddess of avarice and grudge. In one hymn[244] the poet invokes, together with many Vedic deities, all manner of nature spirits, demons, animals, healing plants, seasons and ghosts. A similar collection of queer and vague personalities is found in the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... "Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd, Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools, And think a turf or tombstone ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... none in crimes could erst beyond us go! None such a lust for sordid avarice show! Was e'er the Die so worn in ages past? Purses, nay Chests, are now ...
— The Female Gamester • Gorges Edmond Howard
... regretted, as they had lent a sense of security and maintained the old order of existing authority. Now he was thrown chiefly on his own responsibility, for Mr. Baron was broken and enfeebled by what he had passed through. Avarice spurned Perkins to carry through the crops in which he had an interest, while his hope of revenge on Chunk, Scoville and Miss Lou also tended to keep him at a post which he foresaw would be one of difficulty and danger. He had no doubt that the Union officer and his freedman would return as soon ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... distinguished from the French." But they soon became the flower of French races, and were regarded as Frenchmen in all the lands to which they were led by their valor, their enterprise, their ambition, and their avarice. They continued to avail themselves of the talents of other races long after Northmen had been converted into Normans, greatly to their own advantage, and considerably to the advantage of others. "Inclination, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... only drest For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook, Or groom!—We must run glittering like a brook In the open sunshine, or we are unblest; The wealthiest man among us is the best: No grandeur now in nature or in book Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry; and these we adore: Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence. And pure religion ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... the fables and the sayings of the sea,—the proverbs about its deafness, its avarice, its treachery, its terrific power,—especially one that haunted her for all time thereafter: Si quieres aprender a orar, entra en el mar (If thou wouldst learn to pray, go to the sea). She learned why the sea is salt,—how ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... inheritance, whilst the Danes, when they boast of their negative happiness, always mention it as the boon of the Prince Royal, under the superintending wisdom of Count Bernstorff. Vassalage is nevertheless ceasing throughout the kingdom, and with it will pass away that sordid avarice which every modification of ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... but I had told him of the circumstance. "It is a singular fact," continued he, "that all of the race of Valois have been liberal to excess; this is not precisely the case with the Bourbons, who are rather reproached with avarice! Henri IV. was said to be avaricious. He gave to his mistresses, because he could refuse them nothing; but he played with the eagerness of a man whose whole fortune depends on the game. Louis XIV. gave through ostentation. It is most astonishing," added he, "to reflect ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... victims of his vengeance. Turning his eyes on West Point as an acquisition which would give value to treason, and inflict a mortal wound on his former friends, he sought the command of that fortress for the purpose of gratifying both his avarice and his hate.[42] ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... and godly preachers of the Word is becoming less and all men are indulging their desires. The last day, however, shall assuredly come upon the world as a thief, and will overtake these men in all their security, and in the indulgence of their ambition, tyranny, lust, avarice, and vices of ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... combinations which it seemed to him at the moment might save him. Why yield to such a temptation before trying everything? And this was how he happened to appeal to Glady. But he knew him, and knew that his avarice, about which every one joked, had a certain reason for its existence. However, he said to himself that if the landed proprietor obstinately refused a friendly loan, which would only pay the debts of youth, the poet would willingly fill the role of Providence and save from shipwreck, without risking ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... face lighting up, changed in its whole character, "those were words that might make the demon that tempts to avarice fly from ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rents of the great estates in Italy and the provinces were intercepted by the calamities of war; the gold and gems had been exchanged, during the famine, for the vilest sustenance; the hoards of secret wealth were still concealed by the obstinacy of avarice; and some remains of consecrated spoils afforded the only resource that could avert the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... saved my reputation, and enabled me to retain my place as a native-born American. When the exhibition was over,—and even with the ludicrousness of my part of it, to me it was a sad one,—I went behind the scenes to take a nearer view of these poor victims of avarice. They were sitting round a warming-pan, looking jaded and worn, brutalized beyond even what I had first imagined. It was my last sight of them, and I was glad of it; how far they went, and how many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again the old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... exhibition of grief for the loss of their friends and relatives, were gashing their legs deeply with knives. A warrior in the village, who had lost a brother in the expedition; chose another mode of displaying his sorrow. The Indians, who, though often rapacious, are utterly devoid of avarice, are accustomed in times of mourning, or on other solemn occasions, to give away the whole of their possessions, and reduce themselves to nakedness and want. The warrior in question led his two best horses into the center of the village, and gave them away to his friends; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... was Bartley's idol, money was his god, and soon in his strange mind defeated avarice began to vie with nobler sorrow. His child dead! his poor little flower withered, and her death robbed him of L20,000, and indeed of ten times that sum, for he had now bought experience in trade and speculation, and had learned to make money out of money, a ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Villeneuve, on lake Geneva, Howells wrote urging him this time to spend the winter with them in Florence, where they would write their great American Comedy of 'Orme's Motor,' "which is to enrich us beyond the dreams of avarice.... We could have a lot of fun writing it, and you could go home with some of the good old Etruscan malaria in your bones, instead of the wretched pinch-beck Hartford article that you are suffering from now.... it's a great opportunity for you. Besides, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... divers Sects of Religion, you must have Priests among you, pray what sort of Men are they? I answer'd, their Lives and Doctrine were of a-piece, their Example differing nothing from their Precepts: That Hypocrisy, Avarice, Ambition, litigious Suits, Lying, Revenge, and Obscenity, were Vices known to 'em by Name only: That they were a mortify'd Set of Men, who look'd upon nothing transitory worth their Concern; and having their Thoughts ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... women talk of favours) a brutal gratification gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of prostitution, and harrass with threats the poor creatures whose occupation affords not the means to silence the growl of avarice. To escape from this persecution, I ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... that there would be any real blessedness, though the earth were ours in that outward sense. For you cannot measure happiness by the acre, nor does an outward condition of the most full-fed abundance, and of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, and above the gnawings of care, ensure to any man even the shabby blessedness that the world knows, to say nothing of the solid beatitude that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... light-winged, haunting dread took from him a little even of the blameless pleasure that naturally belonged to the paying of his debts. Also he now became plainly aware of a sore fact which he had all his life dimly suspected—namely, that there was in his nature a spot of the leprosy of avarice, the desire to accumulate. Hence he grew almost afraid of his money, and his anxiety to spend it freely and right, to keep it flowing lest it should pile up its waves and drown his heart, went on steadily increasing. That ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... three or four bets; it's Nell that catches on to his racket, an' signs up to Cherokee onder the table with her little foot. One glance an' Cherokee is loaded with information. This Silver Phil, it seems, in a sperit of avarice, equips himse'f with a copper—little wooden checker, is what this copper is—one he's done filched from Cherokee the day prior. He's fastened a long black hoss-ha'r to it, an' he ties the other end of the hoss-ha'r to his belt in front. This ha'r is long enough as he's planted ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... public were less ignorant they would soon see through their pretensions; but, as it is, things go from bad to worse, and it is not too much to say that hundreds of lives have been lost down this sordid by-path of human avarice. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... as the water-fall To one by deserts bound— Making the air all musical With cool, inviting sound— Is oft some unpretending strain Of rural song, to him whose brain Is fevered in the sordid strife That Avarice breeds 'twixt man and man, While moving on, in caravan, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... and spent whole nights in the gambling room, rendering him unfit for duty ever and anon; Badiali was singularly conscientious as an artist, and became a favorite with the public, but not with his colleagues, because of his extraordinary meanness and avarice and a jealous disposition; Marini was the greatest living Italian basso, save Lablache, but his voice was occasionally unreliable, and he frequently ill-humored, capricious, splenetic, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a great part of the night from repose to devote it to this labour; but she, formerly so ready to make presents of her flowers, and adorn with them the young girls of her acquaintance, now exacted payment for them; so that every one wondered at this new and sudden avarice. But what did she care what was said of her? What did she care for appearing without those ornaments which women so love, and which add so much to their charms? What mattered it to her that she was ruining her own health by depriving herself of rest, toiling, and weeping? One look, one smile ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... the rude floor—and the dance went on. Still the pursuit of gold went on, more frenzied than ever, and still the greater and richer claims were struck. The price of gold soared and the commodities of life were almost beyond the dreams of avarice. It was a tune in which the worst of men's natures stalked forth, hydra-headed and deaf, roaring for gold, spitting fire, and shedding blood. It was a time when gold and fire and blood were one. It was a tune when a horde of men from every class and nation, of all ages and characters, met on a ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... the noble and lesser folk. And when the Emperor had been attended to his lodging, night fell, and all returned home; and the new knights without preparation or expense celebrated their reception into chivalry with their families forthwith. He who reflects with a mind not subject to base avarice upon the coming of a new-crowned Emperor into so famous a city, and bethinks him how so many noble and rich burghers were promoted to the honour of knighthood in their native land, men too by nature ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... at least one energetic, defiant man—as a rule, one who is outside the pale of society. In one of his sketches, Chelkash is a smuggler, a reckless fellow, who induces a poor peasant to serve as his accomplice in a nocturnal burglary. This rustic is a contemptible creature. His avarice prompts him to fall on the smuggler and murder him for the sake of his gold pieces. The wounded Chelkash flings the money at him contemptuously. Gorki portrays the much-belauded moujik as a pitiable money-grubber, a detestable associate, who loses all higher motives ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... of the news, and in Yorick fashion he calls for guesses concerning the mien with which the words were said. The conversation of the various human passions with Yorick concerning the advisability of offering the lady in Calais a seat in his chaise is here directly imitated in the questions put by avarice, vanity, etc., concerning the cousin's death. The actual journey does not begin until page 97, abrief autobiography of the hero occupying the first part of the book; this inconsequence is confessedly intended to be a Tristram Shandy whim.[9] The author's ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... sacrifice. The Vaisyas attain excellent state through gifts, hospitality, and religious acts. The Kshatriyas attain the celestial regions by protecting and chastising the subjects, uninfluenced by lust, malice, avarice and anger. If kings justly punish (their subjects), they go to the place whither ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... self In keen unraveling of the threads of thought And steadfast pacing of life's labyrinths. Thus would he sit till midnight hushed the world, Save where the beasts of darkness in the brake Crept and cried out, as fear and hatred cry, As lust and avarice and anger creep In the black jungles of man's ignorance. Then slept he for what space the fleet moon asks To swim a tenth part of her cloudy sea; But rose ere the false-dawn, and stood again Wistful on some dark platform of his hill, Watching the sleeping earth with ardent eyes And thoughts ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... marched in divisions for three days previously; in slaves he had alone more than 1,500. He was attended by about ten horsemen, his particular favourites, and four flags were carried before him, through the town. The inhabitants complained dreadfully of his avarice, and declared that he had not left a dollar, or an animal ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... her, "Speak to me in Spanish, maiden, for I understand it well, and shall like to hear it." Then turning to Clotald, "You have done me wrong, Clotald," she said, "in keeping this treasure so many years concealed from me; but it is such a one as may well have excited you to avarice. You are bound however to restore it to me, for by right ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a tray on which were several little heaps of money the mahout went into abject ecstasies of mingled jubilee and reverence. His mouth betrayed unbelief and his eyes glinted avarice. His fingers twitched with agonied anticipation, and he began to praise his elephant again, as some people recite proverbs to keep themselves ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Ferocity, avarice, and sensuality were stamped upon his face, and I immediately requested him to sit for his portrait, and in about ten minutes I succeeded in placing within my portfolio an exact likeness of about the greatest rascal ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... little Stella good! I suppose Mrs. Edgworth set out last Monday se'ennight. Yes, I do read the Examiners, and they are written very finely, as you judge. I do not think they are too severe on the Duke;(16) they only tax him of avarice, and his avarice has ruined us. You may count upon all things in them to be true. The author has said it is not Prior, but perhaps it may be Atterbury.—Now, Madam Dingley, says she, 'tis fine weather, says she; yes, says she, and ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... heart, were it not that scenes still more disgraceful to both countries and more calamitous to one of them have succeeded—scenes which force the mind to revert with regret to those days of poverty and peace, when, as there existed little wealth to excite avarice, and little spirit to aggravate the ambition of party, that little remained inviolate, and the miserable cabin, though filled with objects of disgusting wretchedness, was yet the secure covering and castle of its humble owner.—How different his present situation! when in laying down his head at ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... had been spent there. "The Spaniards are a stupid, ungrateful set of ruffians," he afterwards wrote, "and are utterly incapable of appreciating generosity or forbearance." He piled up invective upon the unfortunate country. It was "the chosen land of the two fiends—assassination and murder," where avarice and envy were the prevailing passions. It was the "country of error"; yet at the same time "the land of extraordinary characters." As he saw its shores sinking beneath the horizon, he was mercifully denied the knowledge that never again was he to be so happily occupied as during ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of money and real estate, which were augmented by additional grants contributed by subsequent emperors. Hence the patrimony of the Roman Pontiffs soon became very considerable. Voltaire himself tells us that the wealth which the Popes acquired was spent not in satisfying their own avarice and ambition, but in the most laudable works of charity and religion. They expended their patrimony, he says, in sending missionaries to evangelize Pagan Europe, in giving hospitality to exiled Bishops at Rome and in feeding the poor. And ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... up in the library of Leyden all the year long, and that which, to my thinking, should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. 'I no sooner,' saith he, 'come into the library, but I bolt the door to me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is Idleness, the mother of Ignorance and Melancholy. In the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I take my seat with so lofty a spirit, and sweet content, that I pity all our great ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... up in the thirteenth century. In all the subsequent wars to which this city was exposed, it served as the last resort of the citizens, and sustained a great number of successive attacks; so that its preservation is almost miraculous. It is likely, however, to suffer much more from the Gothic avarice of its own citizens, some of whom are mutilating it every day, for the sake of the stones, which they employ in their own private buildings. It is surprizing, that the King's authority has not been exerted to put an end ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... was to gain true indications of the moral character of a woman from any study of a young girl. So, while he continued to search for a daughter-in-law whose sentiments and education offered some guarantees for the future, he endeavored to push his son into the ways of avarice; meaning to give the poor fool a sort of instinct that might eventually take the ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... has the appearance of that rare virtue in our country, called frugality—a virtue which, upon a closer inspection, is found to be nothing with them but selfishness, sharpened up into the most unscrupulous avarice and penury. ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... also was almost greater than their resources; the Romans being indignant that the conquered aggressively took up arms against their victors; the Carthaginians, because they considered that in their subjection it had been lorded over them with haughtiness and avarice. There is besides a story, that Hannibal, when about nine years old, while he boyishly coaxed his father Hamilcar that he might be taken to Spain, (at the time when the African war was completed, and he was employed in sacrificing previously to transporting ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... his house; it shows too, at the same time, whether the severe economy that he required in his domestic management, and of which I will speak elsewhere, was the result, as has been stated, of sordid avarice, or whether it was not rather a rule of prudence, from which he departed willingly whenever his kindness of heart or his humanity ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... but he doubted whether the sheriff, his deputy, or any other constable would execute the warrant in his stead; nor did any plausible excuse present itself to account for transferring it to other hands. Thus musing, with fear and avarice contending in his breast, he walked up the street. But it may be necessary to tell how Basset got into the dilemma, and, in order to do so, we must retrace ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... hast dared To tell me, what I durst not tell myself: I durst not think that I was spurned, and live; And live to hear it boasted to my face. All my long avarice of honour lost, Heaped up in youth, and hoarded up for age! Has honour's fountain then sucked back the stream? He has; and hooting boys may dry-shod pass, And gather pebbles from the naked ford. Give me my love, my honour; give ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... affectation, or of folly. Could he, for an instant, have supposed that, in my admonisher at Eton—in the destroyer of my honor at Oxford,—in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris, my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely termed my avarice in Egypt,—that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, I could fail to recognize the William Wilson of my schoolboy days: the namesake, the companion, the rival, the hated and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby's? ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... has only figured her embroidery or swept her guitar, as of the cottage-girl, wringing from her laundry the foam of the mountain stream. If I must be cast, in sickness or destitution, on the care of a stranger, let it be in California; but let it be before avarice has hardened the heart and made ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... of the character and occupation of the Congress of the United States in the third year of the revolutionary war, and in the second year of their alliance with France—idleness, dissipation, extravagance, speculation, peculation, avarice, party and personal quarrels, dancing, feasting; while the credit was reduced almost to nothing, and the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... Gaubertins, father and son. Now about sixty-seven years of age, he was treated with universal respect and affection, owing to the harmony of his nature with that of the inhabitants. Parsimonious to the verge of avarice, he was thought to be rich, and the credit of being so increased the respect that was shown to him. Monseigneur the bishop paid the greatest attention to the Abbe Mouchon, who was always spoken of as the venerable curate ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Mrs. Ashleigh still sat, her friend beside her. I looked on the fair creature whose arm was linked in mine. So young, so singularly lovely, and with all the gifts of birth and fortune which bend avarice and ambition the more submissively to youth and beauty, I felt as if I had wronged what a parent might ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old gentleman had hardly suffered more during that fatal night than he did this night, during which Dionysia was away from the house. He knew very well that Blangin and his wife were honest people, in spite of their avarice and their covetousness; he knew that Jacques de ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... Burgundy of the constable's possessions. It seemed like the price of the blood of an unhappy man, who, being rightfully sacrificed only to justice and public tranquillity, appeared to be so to vengeance, ambition, and avarice." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... reaped. This, likewise, in many places raises the price of corn. The price of wool is also so risen that the poor people, who were wont to make cloth, are no more able to buy it; and this, likewise, makes many of them idle: for since the increase of pasture God has punished the avarice of the owners by a rot among the sheep, which has destroyed vast numbers of them—to us it might have seemed more just had it fell on the owners themselves. But, suppose the sheep should increase ever so much, their price is not likely to fall; since, though they cannot be called ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... taken in battle, had exchanged itself for the profits of ransom or slavery, this relaxation of ferocity (though commencing in selfishness) gradually exalted itself into a habit of mildness, and some dim perception of a sanctity in human life. The very vice of avarice ministered to the purification of barbarism; and the very evil of slavery in its earliest form was applied to the mitigation of another evil—war conducted in the spirit of piratical outrage. The commercial instincts of men having worked one set of changes in war, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... alarming, And all resistless charming, In Love's delightful fetters she chains the willing soul! Ambition would disown The world's imperial crown, Ev'n Avarice would deny, His worshipp'd deity, And feel thro' every vein ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... supernatural intervention of the Church. The practice of witchcraft and magic involved the absolute and voluntary barter of body and soul to the Evil One, for the purpose of obtaining a few short years of superhuman power, to be employed for the gratification of the culprit's avarice, ambition, or ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... hand, could have acquiesced in the suggestion to marry Vannozza only from avarice, and his willingness proves that he had not grown rich in his former places at the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... conclusions appear to us to be scarcely warranted. If the extensive or even universal practice of a thing proves its necessity, then has there been justification, either now or in the past, for war, lying, avarice and other vices. It is strange that drugs differing so greatly in their immediate and obvious effects as, for example, alcohol and opium, or coffee and tobacco should be used. Should it he said that only some of the much used stimulants are useful, there is an end to the argument based ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... naturally conclude no one can be void of that soft and Godlike passion—pity, but either one who by some cause or other happens to be made up without a heart, or one in whom continual droppings of self-love or avarice have quite changed the nature of it; which, by the most skilful anatomist, is allowed in its natural state to be fleshy, soft, and tender; but has been found, without exception, upon inspection into the bodies of several money lovers, to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... heart and quivering lip, the old servant of the soil came to beg for time—time to enable him by hard pinching to make up his proportion of the sum spent in luxury by his landlord. Ah! reader! could those old walls reveal the sounds, the tales of human suffering, of heartless avarice, and callous indifference—of sneering assumption and hopeless woe, thy brain would be as fire, thy heart would sicken, and thy blood would boil, till rushing over every prudent thought, through grinding ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... or disapproved, no examination would be made into the source of his information, and that his evidence would have the same weight as any other accuser's. So he resolved to make a profit and gratify his own avarice. Several times he visited the husband and wife, always borrowing considerable sums, and threatening to reveal their crime if they refused him. The first few times the poor creatures gave in to his exactions; but the moment came at last when, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... 'I do not think O'Kane was obliged to give it back.' JOHNSON. 'No, sir. If a man with his eyes open, and without any means used to deceive him, gives me a thing, I am not to let him have it again when he grows wiser. I like to see how avarice defeats itself; how, when avoiding to part with money, the miser gives something more valuable.' Col said, the gentleman's relations were angry at his giving away the harp-key, for it had been long in the family. JOHNSON. 'Sir, he values a new ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... have been born among buildings raised by Benedictine hands is not incongruous; for no man ever more heartily preached and practised the virtue of open-handed charity; none was more ready to scourge the vices of arrogance, cruelty and avarice; no English novelist has left us brighter pictures of innocence and goodness. And it was surely a happy stroke of that capricious Fortune to whom Fielding so often refers, to allot a Harlequin Chamber for the birth of the author of nineteen comedies; and yet more appropriate ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... have its vent, or break her heart for ever. And, take my word for it, you foolish parents who would thwart your children in this the most sacred moment of their lives,—thwart them for no reasonable cause, but only to gratify your own pride of purse, avarice, evil tempers, or love of meddling,—you are but gathering up bunches of nettles wherewith to scourge your own shoulders, and strewing your own beds with shards and pebbles. Take the advice of old John Dangerous, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... revelation of completeness in every external charm; La Corriveau, stern, dark, angular, her fine-cut features crossed with thin lines of cruelty and cunning, no mercy in her eyes, still less on her lips, and none at all in her heart, cold to every humane feeling, and warming only to wickedness and avarice: still these women recognized each other as kindred spirits, crafty and void of conscience in the accomplishment ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... knew that to the southward were coasts as yet unmarked on any chart, seas as yet unploughed by any keel. For this work of exploration Flinders nourished a passion as intense as that which inferior natures have had for love, avarice, or honours. It absorbed all his life and thought; and opportunity, becoming in his case the handmaid of capacity, was abundantly ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... centuries God's servants perform wondrous works. Saint Dominic, possessed by holy wrath, exterminates heresy with fire and sword; Saint Francis of Assisi for the nonce founds poverty as an institution of society; Saint Antony of Padua defends merchants and artisans against the avarice and cruelty of nobles and bishops; Saint Catherine brings the Pope back to Rome. Was it impossible, therefore, for a saintly damsel, with God's aid, to re-establish within the hapless realm of France that royal power instituted by our Lord Himself and to bring to his coronation a new Joash snatched ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... in four parts, by Giles Fletcher (1610): Part i. "Christ's Victory in Heaven," when He reconciled Justice with Mercy, by taking on Himself a body of human flesh; part ii. "Christ's Triumph on Earth," when He was led up into the wilderness, and was tempted by Presumption, Avarice, and Ambition; part iii. "Christ's Triumph over Death," when He died on the Cross; part iv. "Christ's Triumph after Death," in His resurrection ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that civilisation which, by intellect and by nature, he is some five centuries behind. See him, ignoring its hidden virtues, eagerly seize and graft its most prominent vices on to his own besetting sins. Behold him by degrees adding cunning to his cruelty, avarice to his love of possession, replacing his bravery by coarse bombast and insolence, and his truth by lies. Behold him inflaming all his passions with the maddening drink of the white man, and then follow him through many degrees of degradation ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... empty box and watched her. The woman's lot seemed to have touched the depths of human wretchedness, and yet there burned within her soul a something that the oppression of human avarice could ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... him. The Chinese Government had just passed a law prohibiting the introduction of furs into the ports of the empire under most severe penalties. Was this the result of some unknown clause in a secret treaty with Russia, or was it due to the cupidity and avarice of a few mandarins? In either case it was impossible to infringe ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... him that to get out of it well he abandons his business and perhaps with his business his freedom. The worst of it is that the punishment is always more than the offense, for the just pay as if they were sinners. Their avarice or tyranny not satisfied with the vengeance taken on the criminal makes the offense related to the very blood, in order to extend their cupidity farther. Hence it is that on account of the crime committed by a single one, they make all the relations slaves. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... see Vultures, Harpyes, Ravens, Cormorants, and among many other feather'd Creatures several little winged Boys, that perch in great Numbers upon the middle Arches. These, said the Genius, are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like Cares and Passions that infest ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the preceding reign now gave place to sobriety and economy; though the usual ceremonies of the court were strictly observed, they were conducted in the least expensive manner; and the ruling passion of the monarch soon appeared to be avarice. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... who, to use Asie's word, like to cut a dash. But for these little details, a decent citizen would be puzzled to conceive how a fortune melts in the hands of these women, whose social function, in Fourier's scheme, is perhaps to rectify the disasters caused by avarice and cupidity. Such squandering is, no doubt, to the social body what a prick of the lancet is to a plethoric subject. In two months Nucingen had shed broadcast on trade more than two hundred ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... our minds, when there is no reason for avoiding it; and this kind of opinion is a deliberate belief that one understands things of which one is wholly ignorant. Now, sickness of the mind has all these subordinate divisions: avarice, ambition, fondness for women, obstinacy, gluttony, drunkenness, covetousness, and other similar vices. But avarice is a violent opinion about money, as if it were vehemently to be desired and sought after, which opinion ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... present for good Mrs. Hartley at the farm. As for Miss Wealthy, she, as usual, was knitting gray stockings of fine soft wool. They all fell to talking about old Galusha Pennypacker, now pitying his misery, now wondering at the tales of his avarice. Hildegarde took out the little scissors-case, and examined it anew. "Do you suppose this belonged to his mother?" she asked. "You say he never married. Or had he ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... leave him in a world that was so hard for boys, where temptations and danger stood all round her boy's pathway. Not only hidden perils, concealed from sight, so he might possibly escape them, but open temptations, open dangers, made as alluring as private avarice could make them, and made as respectable as dignified legal enactments could make them,—all to draw her boy down the pathway his poor father descended." For one of the curius things about Cicely wuz, she didn't seem to blame Paul hardly a mite, nor not so very much the one that enticed him to ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... be in a manner out of their wits, on being brought on board as prisoners among a people so strange and fierce as our men seemed to them; but so prevalent is avarice in man, that we ought not to wonder that it should so prevail over the apprehensions of these Indians, as to make them so anxious about their cacao-nut money, even in their present situation[8]. The modesty of their demeanour was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... the west, forming the point of departure for those military expeditions which, though small in number, were yet so formidable in the energy of the leaders, and in the arms, discipline, courage, fanaticism, and avarice of their followers, that they were fully adequate to carry out the vast scheme of conquest for which they ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... (as reproduced by his English translator) how in a dream he seemed to himself to wake up on a May morning. Sauntering forth, he came to a garden surrounded by a wall, on which were depicted many unkindly figures, such as Hate and Villainy, and Avarice and Old Age, and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Superstition, sorceress blind, In dimly-figured robe, with scowling mien, Half hid in jealous hood; And Tyranny, beneath whose helm was seen His eye suffused with blood; And giant Pride, That the great sun with haughty smile defied; And Avarice, that grasped his guilty gold; 50 These, as the sorceress her loud sistrum rung, Their dismal paean sung; And still, far off, pale Pity hung her head, Whilst o'er the dying and the dead The victor's brazen wheels with gory axle rolled. Now ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... may ravage them; you furnish and fill your houses that he may have something to steal; you bring up your daughters that he may slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure your forms by labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty and ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... to rot The body of Francis Chartres: Who, with an inflexible constancy, and Inimitable uniformity of life, Persisted, In spite of age and infirmities, In the practice of every human vice, Excepting prodigality and hypocrisy: His insatiable avarice exempted him from the first, His matchless impudence from the second. Nor was he more singular In the undeviating pravity of his manners, Than successful In accumulating wealth: For without trade or profession, Without trust of public money, And without bribeworthy service, He acquired, or ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... their separation was the cause of mutual regret. At the close of the war they met again, both being appointed to the Leeward island station. Nelson soon had an opportunity of witnessing the prince's resolute obedience to orders, amidst great personal danger, and strong temptations to avarice, the circumstances of which are briefly as follow:—The law excluded all foreign vessels from trade and intercourse with our West India islands; and America, being now independent, and as much a foreign nation as any other, Nelson, the senior captain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 291 - Supplement to Vol 10 • Various
... my ambition is not sordid; is unstained with the dross of avarice. It is a stern god, and I shall not deny that 'Ephraim is joined to his idols! Let ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... torch-bearers of freedom in the vanguard of Spanish colonial expansion in America, but such was the fact. History has made but scant and infrequent mention of these first obscure heroes, who faced obloquy and even risked starvation in the midst of irate colonists, whose avarice and brutality they fearlessly rebuked in the name of religion and humanity: they sank, after lives of self-immolation, into nameless graves, sometimes falling victims to the blind violence of the very Indians ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... use of the prejudices and superstitions of the Hindoo soldiery, and the avarice and worst passions of the Mohammedans; and a story that the new cartridges issued to the troops were made with pig's or bullock's fat—the one being an abomination to the Mohammedans, the other ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... annexed to the imperial crown; that those idolaters had better inclinations towards Christianity than was generally thought; and that they would come over to the faith of their own accord, when they should see amongst them disinterested preachers, free from avarice and ambition. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... remarkable, and may in part have given origin to the prevalent idea that they are less cruel and stern than the majority of mankind; but that the "mild" Hindoo, however gentle on occasion, is cruel and vindictive to his brother man and to animals, when his indolent temper is roused or his avarice stimulated, no one can doubt who reads the accounts of Thuggee, Dacoitee, and poisoning, and witnesses the cruelty with which beasts of burthen are treated. A child carrying a bird, kid, or lamb, is not an uncommon sight, and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... out. But what a world had opened before him! It was something to be a benefactor of humanity, but why not tap the wealth of the Incas! If the mere invention of a folding toothbrush could open the sacred precincts of Fifth Avenue, what realms beyond the dreams of avarice were waiting for him who should ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... other way than by marriage, and that they were almost incapable of retaining it; he himself had the one talent of his race, but was an exception to their incapacity. In justice to our family I may add that we are said to make indulgent husbands and fathers,—two characters incompatible with avarice, and sometimes even with prudence when the ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... in some degree destitute of those moral qualities that make the house a home for all who dwell beneath its roof. But, whether this fear be the voice of truth or the suggestion of prejudice, that woman shall not be held blameless, who, under the influence of indolence, pride, fashion, or avarice, shall neglect, abuse, or oppress, the humblest of her sex who goes forth from these walls into the broad and dangerous path of life. But this day shall not leave the impression that they who are most interested in the elevation and refinement of female character are ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... fortunatus nimium, etc. Horat. Epodon. Beatus ille qui procul, etc. The Country Mouse Horace To Fuscus Aristius. The Country Life The Garden Happy art thou whom God does bless Of Greatness. Horace. Lib. 3. Ode 1. Odi profanum vulgus, etc. Of Avarice. I admire, Maecenas, how it comes to pass, "Inclusam Danaen turris ahenea." The Dangers of an Honest Man in much Company. Claudian's Old Man of Verona. The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches. Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit, The Danger Of Procrastination. Mart. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... factions will fall into line with that which at a somewhat later date went on in Germany between the traders of the cities and the "robber-barons" of the country. In this aspect we may see the full meaning of Dante's continual allusion to the sin of avarice, under the image of the "wolf;" an allusion, again, which the original name whence the Guelf party took its ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... applauded his anecdotes—all of which I had heard before—admired his jokes, and fooled his egotistical soul till he had no shred of self-respect remaining. He laid his nature bare before me—and I knew what it was at last—a mixture of selfishness, avarice, sensuality, and heartlessness, tempered now and then by a flash of good-nature and sympathetic attraction which were the mere outcomes of youth and physical health—no more. This was the man I had loved—this ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... crusade, that remained in Palestine, were divided by sordid ambition and avarice, and in 1187 Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, the most valiant chief of the Mohammedan warriors, recaptured Jerusalem and subsequent crusaders were ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... Ignorance are absent, Passion rules; And Ignorance in hearts not good nor quick. When at all gateways of the Body shines The Lamp of Knowledge, then may one see well Soothfastness settled in that city reigns; Where longing is, and ardour, and unrest, Impulse to strive and gain, and avarice, Those spring from Passion—Prince!—engrained; and where Darkness and dulness, sloth and stupor are, 'Tis Ignorance hath caused them, ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold |
