"Rapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... most extortionate usurers of his time, and several citizens of Salamis died of starvation, imprisoned because they could not pay the sum he demanded. No one eulogised more eloquently the austere simplicity of life which stoicism advocated than Sallust, who in a corrupt age was notorious for his rapacity. Seneca himself was constitutionally a nervous and timid man, endeavouring, not always with success, to support himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under circumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... won't suppose so.' And I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. 'Then,' said Traddles, 'you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. In ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"—bands of organized marauders—ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... they hoped that once German unity was realized, Germany would assimilate and absorb the Prussian State. Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State which was to annex and subject the German Empire. Little did the Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little did they know the rapacity of the Black Eagle. Still less did they know the black ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... shocking sort of drama has an obviously autobiographical basis. His own road ran into strange places in the days of his youth. He moved among men who were menaced by all the terrestrial cruelties, and by the almost unchecked rivalry and rapacity of their fellow men, without any appreciable barriers, whether of law, of convention or of sentimentality, to shield them. The struggle for existence, as he saw it, was well nigh as purely physical among human beings as among the carnivora of the jungle. Some of his stories, and among them ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... to Mecca, was exceedingly fatal at Cairo and Alexandria, and made approaches to the seat of the mission as near as Aleppo, Damascus, Tiberias, and Acre; but from this terrible judgment the inhabitants of Beirut were providentially shielded. They suffered much, however, from the rapacity of the Pasha of Acre, until his power was broken by the invading army of the Viceroy of Egypt, under Ibrahim Pasha. With the aid of ten or fifteen thousand men from Mount Lebanon, under the Emir Beshir, Ibrahim Pasha took Acre; then pushing his conquests to Damascus, established the dominion of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... enjoyments; to over-rate his own merits and importance, and of course to magnify his claims on others, and in return to under-rate their's on him; a disposition to undervalue the advantages, and over-state the disadvantages, of his condition in life. Thence spring rapacity and venality, and sensuality. Thence imperious nobles, and factious leaders; and an unruly commonalty, bearing with difficulty the inconveniences of a lower station, and imputing to the nature or administration of their government the evils which necessarily ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... hand, the business went on and passed off in a most regular and satisfactory manner. After I had moved and Mr. Cobbett had seconded the resolutions, and a petition to the House of Lords, praying that they would protect us from the rapacity of the Commons, and not pass the Corn Bill, and after an amendment had been proposed by the Reverend Mr. Hill, supported by Mr. Gourley, our resolutions and petition, which also prayed for a Reform ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... disturbed at Mabel's insistence upon the financial possibilities of literature, but in this she was only a child of her time. The point worthy of note is not her rapacity but the dexterity with which she utilized literature to further her ambition. She was identifying herself with literature and so fortifying her position. She was really far better fitted to be the wife of a ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... Lateran Council issued a very strong declaration against usurers. 'We condemn that disgraceful and detestable rapacity, condemned alike by human and divine law, by the Old and the New Testaments, that insatiable rapacity of usurers, whom we hereby cut off from all ecclesiastical consolation; and we order that no archbishop, bishop, abbot, or cleric shall receive back usurers except with the very ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... that this revolution should not cease, nor pause, until the last vestige of the system by which men usurped power over the lives and liberties of their fellows through economic means was destroyed. Therefore not one outrage, not one act of oppression, not one exhibition of conscienceless rapacity, not one prostitution of power on the part of Executive, Legislature, or judiciary, not one tear of patriotic shame over the degradation of the national name, not one blow of the policeman's bludgeon, not a single bullet or bayonet thrust of the soldiery, could have been ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front, and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp, was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... systems which are a benefit to no one but the wealthy epicure who can afford to pay a heavy price for luxuries. These systems tend to the destruction of the game, which would bear most severely upon the very men whose rapacity has been appealed to in order to secure its extermination. . ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... He then added that these rare merits had doubtless been very far from being estimated at their proper value by a Divan in which men were only classed in accordance with the sums they laid out in gratifying the rapacity of the ministers. Otherwise, how came it about that Kursheed pacha, Viceroy of Egypt—after the departure of the French, the conqueror of the Mamelukes, was only rewarded for these services by being recalled without a reason? Having ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... navigation, and of expeditions, they have felt, in the most painful manner, the effects of the hostile and unexpected attack of Great Britain, and that they feel them still every day." That, in the mean time, this stagnation of commerce, absolutely abandoned to the rapacity of an enemy greedy of pillage, and destitute of all protection whatever, hath appeared to the petitioners, as well as to all the other commercial inhabitants; yes! even to all true Citizens, so much the more hard ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... Colonel thundered. "A country that buys peace at the price of dishonor is no better than a frump who sells her soul for gewgaws and furbalows! When posterity shall read of how the diseased mind of a single lunatic has stabbed history's richest pages with a sword of murder, rapacity and lust, it will turn a lip of contempt toward every nation that stood upon a vacuous neutrality. To hell with neutrality, when ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... eloquent picture of the court of the then King Otho, a German colony in the midst of the Greek people, living upon its blood, and wantoning with its treasure; and of this same Greek people, driven at length into fury by the rapacity of the hated Tudesca, who filled every position of authority and grasped at every office of emolument, and hunting them like a routed army out of the land. Still there was a depth of paternal affection in the words upon the monument, which impressed us with respect, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... malameco. Random, at hazarde. Range (put in order) arangxi. Rank (a row) vico. Rank (dignity) rango. Ransom reacxeto. Ransom reacxeti. Rant paroli sensence. Ranunculus ranunkolo. Rap frapeti. Rap frapo, frapeto. Rapacious rabema. Rapacity rabemeco. Rape forrabo. Rapid rapida. Rapidity rapideco. Rapidly rapide. Rapier rapiro. Rapine rabo. Rapt rava, entuziasma. Rapture ravo, entuziasmo. Rare (seldom) malofta. Rare (curious) kurioza. Rare antikva. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... small garden, but it was of very little importance. Since the Russian occupation the natives have changed their allegiance from China to the 'White Czar,' as they call the Muscovite emperor. Formerly they were much oppressed by the Manjour officials, who displayed great rapacity in collecting tribute. It was no unusual occurrence for a native to be tied up and whipped to compel him to bring out all his treasures. The Goldees call the Manjours 'rats,' in consequence of their greediness and ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... the earth, the destroyers of religion, freedom, civilisation, and national life, may have been unfaithful to what they believed their divine mission, and fancied that they might use their wisdom and valour that God gave them for their selfish ends, till they committed (as some say) acts of rapacity and cruelty worthy of the merest buccaneer. But THAT was not what made them conquer— that was not what made the wealth and the might of Spain melt away before their little bands of heroes; but the same old faith, shining out in all ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... cautious King was satisfied to press on the siege of St. Quentin. The defence which Coligny made was such as might have been expected from his firmness and bravery. The place was taken by storm, amid horrors which belong to such scenes at all times, but which were doubled by the rapacity of troops who fought even with each other for the greatest share of the pillage. After a few trifling successes, the army of Philip was broken up. The German mercenaries; the lanzknechts and reiters, the pikemen and cavalry, who, at the command of the best ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... special growth in humanity for myself, though I do hope I grow tenderer in my feelings as I grow older. At any rate, this was not a time in which professional habits could keep down certain instincts of older date than these. This poor little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed rapacity of Science, which he feared would have her "specimen," if his ghost should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting for his bones to be laid in the dust, touched my heart. But I felt bound to speak cheerily.—We won't die yet awhile, if we can ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone: rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... of short duration. For the dark spirit of Napoleon, glutted, but not satiated with the glory banquet afforded at the expense of Europe and Africa, seized upon this, the most beautiful and happy of the Hesperides, as the next victim of its remorseless rapacity. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... in the direction of a policeman who had niched a banana from a bunch providentially exposed to his rapacity on a truck, and ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... England for three years after King Henry's death. He was a glaring and unblushing church-robber, setting an example which others were only too ready to follow. Canon Overton[28] tells how Somerset House remains as a standing memorial of his rapacity. In order to provide materials for building it he pulled down the church of St. Mary-le-Strand and three bishops' houses, and was proceeding also to pull down the historical church of St. Margaret, Westminster; ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a shilling from his ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... well-affected towards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne was undeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, by far the greater part of the English people would have preferred, to the having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty, rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand stories were current. It wounded our English pride to think that a shabby High-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those of many of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... wealth for the sake of possessing it; others, to procure pleasures or to satisfy different passions. Avarice it continues to be, whatever the motive. Not even prodigality, the lavish spending of riches, is a token of the absence of cupidity. Rapacity may stand behind extravagance to keep the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... were removed, and the card-tables placed, the ladies all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him, when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side of the room, as ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... towns and villages, so at the first we engaged a guide who knew enough of coast Spanish to understand our wants and be our interpreter to his friends. We found that the Indians hated the Spaniards and dreaded their rapacity and cruelty. As Englishmen and foes of Spain, we always got a welcome; and Oxenham had wit enough to be kind, courteous, and generous, and so win a welcome for us for our own sakes. Our voyage down the river was a sort of triumphal progress, and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... sua impudenti obstinatione perstiterit: Noverit ille se anathema factum a Domino, sancta ac beata fidelium omnium communione privatum Divino judicio, perpetualiter esse plectendum."—But no consideration, human or divine, could restrain their rapacity: they pillaged the lands; seized the corn and cattle belonging to the monastery; imprisoned some of the tenants and vassals, and put others to the sword. These, and many other facts, most curiously illustrative of the manners ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... moral principle whatever. His whole life was a tissue of treachery. He was false to his benefactor Matthias, false to Matthias's son Janos Corvinus (q.v.), whom he chicaned out of the throne, and false to his accomplice in that transaction, Queen Beatrice. His rapacity disgusted even an age in which every one could be bought and sold. His attempt to incorporate the wealthy diocese of Transylvania with his own primatial province was one of the principal causes of the spread of the Reformation in Hungary. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... future provision, and as affording you the means of passing the remainder of your days in ease and tranquillity. What would become of you in case of the worst? Your numerous creditors would besiege you with a rapacity, still further excited by the support they would receive from court. You look at me with surprise because I speak the language of truth; be a reasonable creature I implore of you once in your life, and do not thus sacrifice the interests of your life to a romantic ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Sir Munko cannot abide pork, no more than the King's most Sacred Majesty,[Footnote: The Scots, till within the last generation, disliked swine's flesh as an article of food as much as the Highlanders do at present. It was remarked as extraordinary rapacity, when the Border depredators condescended to make prey of the accursed race, whom the fiend made his habitation. Ben Jonson, in drawing James's character, says, he loved "no part of a swine."] nor my Lord Duke of Lennox, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... confiscated estates. Thence he was transferred to Cilicia, where again he proved a traitor to his superior officer, and stole from cities, private persons, temples, and public places, every thing that his rapacity coveted. One city offered him a vessel as a loan, and he refused to return it; another had a statue of Diana covered with gold, and he scraped off the precious metal to put it in his pocket. Using the money thus ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... distress the poor inhabitants. My intention is only to demand your contribution toward the reimbursement which Britain owes to the much injured citizens of America. Savages would blush at the unmanly violation and rapacity that have marked the tracks of British tyranny in America, from which neither virgin innocence nor helpless age has been a ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... New—on one side the dreary conception of outlying countries as fields to be exploited for the benefit of "investors," successful revolutionists to be recognized in so far as they promoted such ends, and no consideration to be shown to the victims of their rapacity; and the new American idea, the idea which had been made reality in Cuba and the Philippines, that the enlightened and successful nations stood something in the position of trustees to such unfortunate lands and that it was their duty to lead them along the slow ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... English, writers who are not committed to an unfavourable opinion by the ultra-Protestantism of their doctrines, seem to have agreed of late years that the accusations, if not false, were enormously exaggerated. The dissolution, we are told, was a predetermined act of violence and rapacity; and when the reports and the letters of the visitors are quoted in justification of the Government, the discussion is closed with the dismissal of every unfavourable witness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious—in fact, as a suborned liar. Upon these ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... removing a prejudice on your Lordship's own mind, I had no intention of making any appeal by or through you to the public, since my own habits of life have rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... convinced of the worth of the medicine by the Pole's rapacity. Surely nothing less than the greatest of medicines could enable a man in the shadow of death to stand up and drive an ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... way among the various tribes he had to pass through, but carried with him in safety a large trunk, containing Clapperton's clothes and other property, three watches, which he had secured about his person to preserve them from the rapacity of Bello, and all his master's papers and journals, with which, after a journey of nine months, accompanied by three blacks, he arrived ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... from you through those who pretend to be very influential with you. Not, however, that the object of this discourse is to make you over-harsh or suspicious towards your staff. For if any of them in the course of the last two years has never fallen under suspicion of rapacity, as I am told about Caesius and Chaerippus and Labeo—and think it true, because I know them—there is no authority, I think, which may not be intrusted to them, and no confidence which may not be placed in them with the utmost propriety, and in anyone else ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... that the King was disposed to respect the neutrality, provided Holland was excluded. This has come to the knowledge of the plenipotentiaries, and it is supposed on being known to the States, will hasten the conclusion of the affair, which must put an end to the piratical rapacity of Great Britain, or involve her in new ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... that they were, as a class, both arrogant and luxurious, and would, indeed, have long ago become insupportable, only that the fabric which their rapacity was for ever striving to erect, their extravagance as perpetually undermined. I further commented upon the insecurity of any institution dependent solely upon prescription. Finding these suggestions unpalatable, I next addressed myself ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... that licked the outer bricks and stones, with their long forked tongues, and ran up to meet the glowing mass within; the shining of the flames upon the villains who looked on and fed them; the roaring of the angry blaze, so bright and high that it seemed in its rapacity to have swallowed up the very smoke; the living flakes the wind bore rapidly away and hurried on with, like a storm of fiery snow; the noiseless breaking of great beams of wood, which fell like feathers on the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... offered: every State, and every Territory that aspires to become a State, will strive to keep the Indians as far as possible from its own borders; while powerful combinations of speculators will make their fight for the last acre of Indian lands with just as much rapacity as if they had not already, in Western phrase, "gobbled" a hundred thousand ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... not be eaten. Jesus wittily describes the Pharisee filtering out drowned gnats from the drinking water, but bolting some camel of a sin without blinking. The outside of the cup was kept scrupulously scoured, but the inside was filled with the products of rapacity and the material for luxurious excess. When religion had become of such a sort, even missionary activity became an actual damage, for the converts were turned into fanatical sticklers on trifles. In all this we can see him striking out for a kind of religion that would ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... alive with the bacteria of animalism, under increasing control as it rises, still with the ferocity, rapacity and selfish passions of the gloomy mass at the bottom and forever in revolt. Is this not proved by history, written and unwritten? Is it not proved by the ghastly secrets of individual introspection that men never reveal or admit to others; secrets guarded by a system of conventions ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison
... popular with the Italians; nor was it of little moment that they in fact regarded him more as their own countryman than a Frenchman; that their beautiful language was his mother tongue; that he knew their manners and their literature, and even in his conquering rapacity displayed his esteem for their arts. He was wise enough too, on farther familiarity with the state of the country, to drop that tone of hostility which he had at first adopted towards the priesthood; and to cultivate the most influential members of that powerful order ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the Caliph, "I will take no further coin from you, for the rapacity of the Governor is like a bottomless pit that would swallow all that ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... fair traveller, had lately entered into the one-and- twentieth year of her age. Her ancestors had been rich farmers in the county of Suffolk, though her father, in whom a spirit of elegance had supplanted the rapacity of wealth, had spent his time as a private country gentleman, satisfied, without increasing his store, to live upon what he inherited from the labours of his predecessors. She had lost him in her early youth, and her ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... land. The busy skiffs are hurried to and fro incessantly till the cargo is entirely ashore, when the secured gang, led by the captain, and escorted by armed sailors, is rapidly marched to the nearest plantation. There it is safe from the rapacity of local magistrates, who, if they have a chance, imitate ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Georgia to New England, and frequently excite great interest in the spectators. Sympathy, however, on this as on most other occasions, generally sides with the honest and laborious sufferer, in opposition to the attacks of power, injustice, and rapacity, qualities for which our hero is so generally notorious, and which, in his superior man, are certainly detestable. As for the feelings of the poor fish, they seem ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various
... describe the rapacity with which the American rushes forward to secure the immense booty which fortune proffers to him. In the pursuit he fearlessly braves the arrow of the Indian and the distempers of the forest; he is unimpressed by the silence of the woods; the approach of beasts of prey ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. The first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions; the unthinking negligence of youth, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. It brings into one point of view what Mr. Pope so exquisitely describes in his ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... infairiority of de tyrant saix——." Lady George, with considerable trouble, was able to follow the first sentence or two, which went to assert that the inferiority of man to woman in all work was quite as conspicuous as his rapacity and tyranny in taking to himself all the wages. The Baroness, though addressing a mixed audience, seemed to have no hesitation in speaking of man generally as a foul worm who ought to be put down and kept under, and merely ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone escaped the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by three Brahmins, the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its forehead, was removed by night, and was transported to the second of the sacred cities of India—the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... destruction that has befallen all around you; the convent that once housed S. Bernardino of Siena, now noisy with conscripts, the library housed in another convent, Dominican once, that like this has become a museum and public monument of vandalism and rapacity. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Socrates, which always seemed to have a strange attraction for its owner. He had once described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him by that plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending the whole of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his violence and rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... its young even at the cost of its life. Yet so far as the colony was concerned that protection had been dearly bought at a cost of patronage and favouritism that had checked all healthy exertion amongst the colonists. With some bright exceptions, oppression, rapacity, and bigotry had ever characterised the ruling powers in the colony, and now that the hour of trial had come there could be little hope that the colonists of New France, however loyally disposed, could do much to help King Louis to retain this much-prized dependency of the French crown. But ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... her son, who was becoming weary of the rapacity of his loyal subjects and faithful friends. "Gentlemen, your services shall not be forgotten on the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... workmanship: the shrine, which was placed upon the mausoleum, glittered with gold and silver and precious stones. To complete the whole, the effigy of the king had been added to the tomb, at some period subsequent to its original erection.—A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship.—The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by the information of what had taken place at Rouen, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... swarm—and now the water is bubbling and lathering with the workings and plungings of these mad fish; and so large are they, so strong, so numerous, that, all angler as we are, we really felt unpleasantly, nor would we, after what we saw, have trusted hand or foot in the domain of such shark-like rapacity. They consume five basketsful of frogs and minnows a-day. Except that of the Caserta beggars, we never saw any thing like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... appeared; as imperious to friends as to foes, mistrusted and feared by both, yet supremely indifferent to praise or censure; resting on the power of brute force and his ability to enrich his soldiers. Possessing a fine military genius, unbounded means, and unscrupulous rapacity, and assisted by such generals as Tilly, Pappenheim, and Piccolomini, seconded by Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, he soon reduced his enemies to despair. The King of Denmark was unequal to the contest, and sued for peace. The Elector Frederic again became ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... the imagination to appreciate the rage Frontenac must have felt when, on returning to Canada, he saw before his eyes the effects of La Barre's rapacity and Denonville's perfidy, of which the massacres of Lachine and La Chesnaye furnished the most ghastly proofs. But in these two cases the element of tragedy was so strong as to efface the mood of exasperation. There remained a third incident ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... struggle had been going on, even after the radicals had gained the mastery. As a counterpoise to John of Giscala the citizens had received the guerilla captain Simon bar Giora into the city; the two were now at feud with each other, but were alike in their rapacity towards the citizens. John occupied the temple, Simon the upper city Iying over against it on the west. For a short time a third entered into competition with the two rivals, a certain Eleazar who had ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... opportunity for declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality, English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... Confederate soldiers—won their confidence, and offered to hide their horses and take care of them for them, to prevent the Yankees from taking them, who, they said, were coming on. They thus succeeded in making many of our people an easy prey to their rapacity and cunning. In this foray, they abducted about 1000 negroes, captured from 500 to 700 horses and mules, a large number of oxen, carriages, buggies and wagons—stole meat, destroyed grain, and robbed gentlemen, in the public road, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... West; Kirke Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit Trial of Alice Lisle The Bloody Assizes Abraham Holmes Christopher Battiseombe; The Hewlings Punishment of Tutchin Rebels Transported Confiscation and Extortion Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies Grey; Cochrane; Storey Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor Trial and Execution of Cornish Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt Trial and Execution of Bateman Persecution of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Complete Contents of the Five Volumes • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... his order, is nowhere so beautifully or so powerfully developed as in his hand. The intelligence and teachableness of the simiadae rise to a climax in his pre-eminent mental nature. His sub-analogy to the ferae is marked by his canine teeth, and the universality of his rapacity, for where is the department of animated nature which he does not without scruple sacrifice to his convenience? With sanguinary, he has also gentle and domesticable dispositions, thus reflecting the characters ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... without horror, the establishment of a foreign dominion he retired to Aversa; and when, with the assistance of the Greeks and that of the citizens faithful to their country, he had collected money enough to satisfy the rapacity of the Norman adventurers, he advanced at their head to attack the garrison of the prince of Capua, defeated it, and reentered Naples. It was then that he confirmed the Normans in the possession of Aversa and its territory, which he raised into ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... fifteen purses from this district. The Emir Djahdjah resides at Baalbec, and keeps there about 200 Metaweli horsemen, whom he equips and feeds out of his own purse. He is well remembered by several Europeans, especially English travellers, for his rapacity, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... exultation after it, must have produced demonstrations toward Miltiades such as were never paid to any other man in the whole history of the commonwealth. Such unmeasured admiration unseated his rational judgment, so that his mind became abandoned to the reckless impulses of insolence, antipathy, and rapacity— that distempered state for which (according to Grecian morality) the retributive Nemesis was ever on the watch, and which, in his case, she visited with a judgment startling in its rapidity, as well as terrible in its amount." ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... on the other hand, under the prospect of an arrangement with France, rapidly recovered from the blow inflicted upon them by the violence and mercenary rapacity lately charged upon their French friends, but which they now insisted, was a charge without foundation. Taking advantage of the dissatisfaction at the heavy taxes necessarily imposed to meet the expenses of warlike preparations, and especially of the unpopularity ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... death hastened by their blows. The "Beagle" was at the Falklands only during the summer, but the officers of the "Adventure," who were there in the winter, mention many extraordinary instances of the boldness and rapacity of these birds. They actually pounced on a dog that was lying fast asleep close by one of the party; and the sportsmen had difficulty in preventing the wounded geese from being seized before their ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... little satisfaction or encouragement from his victory. It might be, that the difficulty of controlling the predatory habits of the German and Burgundian troops wearied his patience; for scarce a day passed but there issued some new proclamation, reproving the atrocious rapacity and lawless desperation of the army. But neither Gonzaga nor Nignio had much opportunity of judging of the real cause of his cheerlessness; for, independent of the engrossing duties of their several commands, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... the cruelty and rapacity of the old Scandinavian race Still visible in their descendants? And the spirit of organization displayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, and distribution of land—in the building of cities and castles—in the wise speculations of an extensive commerce—may ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... III. of the militia law, which prohibits the noble militiaman from wearing gold or silver ornamentation on his uniform. This inhibition, you must know, is intended to prevent emulation in splendor of decoration among our own people, and also to restrain the rapacity ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... at the second custom-house, though the officers eyed our ornaments with a confiscating rapacity. For my part I took my revenge, by showing off the only ornament I had to the utmost. A—— had made me a present of a sapphire-ring, and this I flourished in all sorts of ways, as it might be in open defiance. One fellow ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... less corrupt and venal than that under consideration, such a career could not have long continued without check. But in the time of James the First, from the neediness of the monarch himself, and the rapacity of his minions and courtiers and their satellites,—each striving to enrich himself, no matter how—a thousand abuses, both of right and justice, were tolerated or connived at, crime stalking abroad unpunished. The Star-Chamber ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... is justly proud of England's greatness in art and learning, in statesmanship and martial prowess, yet her commercial history does not always reflect credit upon her foreign trade. Rapacity so characterized her merchants who composed the old East India Company that the British Government felt compelled to revoke the charter of that famous monopoly. Influenced by some of her merchants the guns of her invincible navy opened ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... undisguised rapacity—is indecent and revolting," Beaumaroy remarked. He seemed to be in the highest spirits. "I wonder if they've opened ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... Magazine—he has not stopped here, he has descended much lower—& defrauded the old Veteran Soldiers who have bled for their Country in many a well fought field—for more than five Campaigns among others an old Sergeant of mine has felt his rapacity by the Industry of this man's wife they had accumulated something handsome to support them in their advanced age—which coming to the knowledge of this cruel Spoiler—he borrowed 4500 dollars from the poor Credulous Woman & left her in ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... remain standing, Sir Stadtholder, so long as God and the Elector please," said Burgsdorf slowly. "Many an one falls, and under the table, too, although he may not be drunk with wine, but with pride and ambition, avarice and rapacity." ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... woman in Europe, and through her magnanimity will the wicked Empress of Russia receive her check. Oh, your majesty, that woman, in the height of her arrogance, believes to-day that you are only too willing to further her rapacity and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hast lived after the flesh and not after the spirit, and hast put on the likeness of the carnal man, the likeness of the brute. Thou hast copied the vanity of the peacock, the silliness of the ape, the cunning of the fox, the rapacity of the tiger, the sensuality of the swine; but thou hast not copied God, thy God, who died that thou mightest live, and be a man. Then, thou hast destroyed God's likeness, for thou hast destroyed it in thyself. Thou hast slain a man, for thou hast slain thy own manhood, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... sugar, thus clarified with blood, the glittering frosted-work of colonial splendor rose. A few great planters debauched the housekeeping of the whole island. Beneath were debts, distrust, shiftlessness, the rapacity of imported officials, the discontent of resident planters with the customs of the mother-country, the indifference of absentees, the cruel rage for making the most and the best sugar in the world, regardless of the costly lives which the mills caught and crushed out with the canes. Truly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... private means public property of the city, and keep your hands off public money as you would off your neighbors' goods. Keep careful watch over what belongs to you but be not eager for that upon which you can have no claim. Treat the allies and subject nations with neither insolence nor rapacity, and neither wrong nor fear the enemy. Have your arms always in hand, but do not use them against one another nor against a peaceful population. Give the soldiers a sufficient support, so that they may not on ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... affairs couldn't last forever. The Spanish administration wasn't so bad as is generally supposed, yet of course there was too much rapacity and not enough industry. Central America, broadly speaking, was known as the treasure-chest of the world, and there were constant wars and disturbances. The colonies as a whole did not progress like those in the North, and ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... instigated by a sincere, though misguided religious zeal. For Philip II. and Louis XIV. had, at least, a fanatical belief that they were doing God service by those holocausts of his children; while no motive inspired these massacres, tortures, and banishments, but the most sordid rapacity and avarice, the lowest and basest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and who, moreover, have shown that their rapacity is equal to their lack of integrity, and whose leading doctrine is the repudiation of lawful contracts," a point on which commercial Ulster is excessively severe. One thing is certain—Ulster will never pay taxes levied by an Irish Legislature in which Ulster would be ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger. The principal part of the inquisitors' cruelties is owing to their rapacity: they destroy the life to possess the property; and, under the pretence of zeal, plunder ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... saw that his rapacity for pleasure encreased with his uneasiness, once more ventured to speak with his lady upon the subject of reformation; counselling her to take advantage of his present apparent discontent, which showed at least some sensibility of his situation, ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... WRETCH WITHOUT IT.—The wretch without it is under eternal quarantine; no friend to greet; no home to harbor him, the voyage of his life becomes a joyless peril, and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge, a buoyant pestilence. But let me not degrade into selfishness of individual safety or individual exposure this individual principle; it testifies a higher, ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... which we must still regret that Sir Philip was not allowed to enter. The New World was then no less the region for romantic enterprise than profitable exertion, although the explorers of these distant climes had too often sunk the generosity of the soldier in the rapacity of the spoiler. In Sir Philip Sydney the world of Columbus would have had a visitor of a different order. To the courage of Smith and the accomplishments of Raleigh he would have added a spirit of honor and moderation peculiarly his own, and we should still have delighted to trace the impressions ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of his looks, the rapacity of his hands, the frivolousness of his bearing, the foulness of his manners (which the whole neighborhood spews out), the obscenity of his lust, the ugliness of his body, the baseness of his life, his spotted reputation, ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... disgrace of tyrannical and corrupt ministers, and a press on the very verge of inviting Napoleon to enter London in triumph and deliver a groaning land from the intolerable burden of its native rulers' incapacity and rapacity and obsolescence, and the departments will work as well as the enemy's departments (perhaps better), and the government will have to keep its wits at full pressure. But once let England try what she is trying now: that is, to combine the devoted silence and obedience ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... concealed his letter, it was Burnet, Archbishop of Glasgow. Dalziel now sent Ballantyne to supersede Turner and to exceed him in ferocity; and Bellenden and Tweeddale wrote to Lauderdale deprecating the cruelties and rapacity of the reaction, and avowing contempt of Sharp. He was "snibbed," confined to his diocese, and "cast down, yea, lower than the dust," wrote Rothes to Lauderdale. He was held to have exaggerated in his reports ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... that he would alight beside the prisoner, and threatened Horner with that old, cold stare of challenge, and frequently Horner had to drive him off in order to save his share of the feast from the rapacity of the eaglet. But as for the female, she remained incurably suspicious and protesting. From the upper ledge, where she devoted her care to the other nestling, she would yelp down her threats and execrations, but she never ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... just a quiver of Madeline's eyelid; it said nothing of the natural rapacity behind. This man's testimony was coming out in throes, and yet—it ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... gives to the name "Castilian," its proud significance. But when degenerate Hidalgos and Grandees, debauched by wealth and luxury, gloried in the name; when by rapacity and cruelty they destroyed the lands their valor had won; and when the Inquisition became their pastime and the rack and the wheel their toys—then the name Castilian began to take on a sinister meaning. ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... most frequent and most formidable work done by the wizard was that of "smelling out" persons who were bewitching others so as to cause sickness or misfortune. In this branch of his profession the wizard often became the engine of the jealousy or rapacity of the chief, who would secretly prompt him to denounce a prominent or a wealthy man. Suspicion being once roused, the victim had little chance: he was despatched, and his property seized by the chief. Witchcraft, and the murders it gave rise to, have been the darkest side of ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... not a trust-river," and consequently the consul and the gunboat had little to do there. Many of them have received advances of dollars by thousands, but the European merchant has generally suffered from his credulity or rapacity. In low cunning the native is more than a match for the stranger; moreover, he has "the pull" in the all-important matter of time; he can spend a fortnight haggling over the price of a tooth when the unhappy capitalist is eating his heart. Like all the African aristocracy, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... splendour of the scales in the one answering to the brilliant plates in the other,—the luminous reservoirs of the fire-flies,—the phosphorescence and electricity of many fishes,—the same analogs of moral qualities, in their rapacity, boldness, modes of seizing their prey by surprise,—their gills, as presenting the intermediate state between the spiracula of the grade next below, and the lungs of the step next above, both extremes of which seem combined ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... astounded. "I treat you! Planner, I intrusted you years ago with a secret. I paid you well for keeping it. Could I dream that nothing would satisfy your rapacity but my destruction? Could I suppose it? I have fed your ravenous desires. I have submitted to your encroachments. Do you ask my soul as well as body? Let me know what it is you ask—what I have to pay—let me hear the worst, and—prepare ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... addressed with such intelligence and tact. The few who have not approached them with sordid rapacity, but from love to them, as men, and souls to be redeemed, have most frequently been persons intellectually too narrow, too straightly bound in sects or opinions, to throw themselves into the character ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... would have sustained during the past century if the sensible Savoyards of that place had not cunningly protected the magnificent statue-tombs of Marguerite d'Autriche, Marguerite de Bourbon and Philibert le Beau in their grand old church of Notre-Dame de Brou, against the rapacity of the revolutionary 'operators,' by cramming the whole church full of ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in safety, and almost in idleness, were, however, sufficient to make Max and Dale, and especially the former, restless and dissatisfied with their inactivity. The onward march of the Germans, their terrible unscrupulousness and rapacity, and the tales of the terrific fighting with the English and French vanguards reached their ears and made them long to be doing something, however small, to aid the great cause. Max, in addition, had a constant sense of irritation at the ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... maligned himself in asserting that he had overcome by slyness the audacity, rapacity and faithlessness of the Celtae, against which arms were of no avail. The same man commended Fabricius Luscinus because he had refused to let Pyrrhus be treacherously murdered by his friend.—He took pride in having put enmity between the Vandili and Marcomani, who ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... would be: Penned in their narrow day no change they see Save one which strikes the blow to brutes and pride. Our faith is ours and comes not on a tide: And whether Earth's great offspring, by decree, Must rot if they abjure rapacity, Not argument but effort shall decide. They number many heads in that hard flock: Trim swordsmen they push forth: yet try thy steel. Thou, fighting for poor humankind, wilt feel The strength of Roland in thy wrist to hew A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, And bring the army ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Panama, with letters from Gonzalo to some of the principal inhabitants of that city urging them to favour his designs. In these letters, he pretended that he was exceedingly displeased on hearing of the violence and rapacity with which Bachicao had conducted himself towards the inhabitants of Panama, in direct contradiction to his orders, which were to land the Doctor Texada without doing injury to any one. He informed them that Hinojosa was now on his way to their city, for the express ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... civilization, progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious—and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... somehow constitutes him a party to the attack upon the abuse, and its effectiveness redounds to the credit of all the newspaper's subscribers. After a week's stay in Boston, Bartley was able to assume the feelings of a native who sees his city falling into decay through the rapacity of its landladies. In the heading of ten or fifteen lines which he gave his sketch, the greater number were devoted to this feature of it; though the space actually allotted to it in the text was comparatively small. He called his report "Boston's Boarding-Houses," and he spent a paragraph upon ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Spanish cardinal after all these campaigns, which gave half Italy to the Papacy, was as rich as any king, and he founded the celebrated Spanish college in Bologna. The Pope, well aware of his robberies and rapacity, asked him to give some sort of accounts. The proud Don Gil presented him with a cart ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to be free. Your chains are merited. You deserve your insecurities, and may embrace, even as ye please, the fates which lie before you. Acquiesce in the tyranny which offends no longer, but be sure that acquiescence never yet has disarmed the despot when his rapacity needs a victim. Your lives and possessions—which ye dare not peril in the cause of freedom—lie equally at his mercy. He will not pause, as you do, to use them at his pleasure. To save them from him there was but one way—to employ them against him. There is no security against power but ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... service as he would his shirt, fight, like the doughty Captain Dalgetty, in one cause after another, without regard to the justice of the quarrel, and might plunder the peasantry subjected to him by the fate of war with the most unrelenting rapacity; but he must beware how he sustained the slightest reproach, even from a clergyman, if it had regard to neglect on the score of duty. The following occurrence will prove the truth of what ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say, that that state which lays its foundations in rare and heroic virtues, will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honourable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess. For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other: and when men are left no way of ascertaining ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to a British sloop-of-war anchored below West Point. He was made a colonel in the English army, and is said to have received the sum of L6,315 as the price of his treachery. The command of a body of troops in Connecticut was afterward given him, and he then showed a rapacity and intolerance that well consorted with the new position he had so basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... had a genuine regard for good government, and a decent faith in reform; but when we chide the selfishness of machine politicians hunting office in modern democracy, let us console ourselves by recalling the rapacity of our oligarchies. 'It is melancholy,' muses Sir James Graham this Christmas in his journal, 'to see how little fitness for office is regarded on all sides, and how much the public employments are treated as booty to ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not Lord Adrian, the brother of the King, but an outcast and landless representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to satisfy the boundless rapacity of Caesar Borgia, the infamous favorite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various |
