"Unearned" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hardship and bereavement to the members of that caste. But the capitalist who has shares in explosives and cannons and soldiers' boots runs no risk and suffers no hardship; whilst as to the investor pure and simple, all that happens to him is that he finds the unearned income obtainable on Government security larger than ever. Victory to the capitalists of Europe means that they can not only impose on the enemy a huge indemnity, but lend him the money to pay it with whilst the working classes ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... subalterns, utter superficiality will have become their rule in life; from which, despite responsibility, they are unable to break loose, and according to which, therefore, they act. Then, when they are found to be good for nothing, they are either retired, and eat the unearned bread of pensioners (unearned, of course, only in such cases as theirs), or, if they have a cousin or great-uncle anywhere, who can put in a good word for them, or if they belong to the best families, or if they are very religious—why, then God Almighty ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... a bloody rag." The police were never quite sure whether to arrest him for treason or let him blow off steam and exhaust. They wisely chose the latter course. Prosperity came to the town. The man sold his small bit of real estate for something under a hundred thousand. He didn't stay to divide his unearned increment among his fellow agitators. He hied him to retire to the land where "the flag was a bloody rag." This, of course, proves nothing for or against Socialism as a system. There was a Judas among the apostles; ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... set the trap again in the same way. But the mother, with her lesson well laid out before her, remembered yesterday's unearned success and came over to investigate, leaving her young ones circling along the farther shore. There were the fish again, in shallow water; and there—too easy altogether!—were two dead ones floating among the whitecaps. She wheeled away in a sharp turn, as if she had not seen anything, ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... profiteering in particular, but guilty simply as an inheritor. It might have been different if he had come into the money in reasonable instalments, say of five thousand pounds every six months. But a hundred thousand unearned increment at one coup...!) Fortunately the cronies were still in the smoking-room. He swept Bishop from the club, stealthily, swiftly. Bishop had a big ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... there are ten thousand students. Many of them come from the country and from factory towns. A large number come from the farms of the West. Many of these students are paying for their education by money earned by their own hands. It is said that unearned money does not enrich. The money that a student earns for his own education does enrich his life. It is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, either as slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the excessive labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation of unearned wealth in the hands of the dominant class or race. It has invariably been by feeding on this wealth, the result of forced or ill-paid labour, that the female of the dominant race or class has in the past lost her activity ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... so malign an effect, for it comes to a great extent from the individual and not from business. The present method of income tax, however, has some weaknesses. The same levy is made upon earned incomes as upon those that are unearned. The tax on earned incomes tends in certain cases to be passed on to the consumer or deducted from the farmer, and, besides, it is not just that a family living by giving productive service to the community should pay ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... nothing else than this against such proposals—be logically possible, after ousting the peers who are large tax-payers from all control over the finances of the State, to create a new class of voters out of the female representatives of unearned wealth. ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... the land began to take on what the economists call "unearned increment," or community value, and the Gowdy lands began the work which finally made him a millionaire; but it was not his work. It was mine, and Magnus Thorkelson's, and the work of the neighbors generally, on ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... on the minimum standard of life, and without hampering production. Indirect taxation must therefore be concentrated on those luxuries of which it is desirable that the consumption be discouraged. The steadily rising unearned increment of urban and mineral land ought, by appropriate direct taxation, to be brought into the public exchequer; "the definite teachings of economic science are no longer to be disregarded." Hence ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hundred years the American people have been living on the unearned increment of the unoccupied land. But now that all our land has been staked out in homesteads and we cannot turn to new soil when we have used up the old, we must learn, as the older races have learned, how to keep up the supply of plant food. Only in this way ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... pass his lifetime, the one in luxury and idleness, the other in want and toil, is still looked upon by thinking men, by feeling men, as something that must be, as something that should be, since Providence evidently meant men to be thus divided. The idle thus go on enjoying their unearned idleness; the toiling thus go on enduring their unearned hardship, and all ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... new factory processes, that prices fell, even when stated in terms of gold. In a period of falling prices and appreciating currency, the gap between the poor and the rich was widened. The debtor carried a growing burden while the creditor harvested an unearned increase. Persons who lived on fixed salary or income profited by the fluctuations, but commercial transactions were made ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... stick it on now—you have got an eye for the rise in values. But I grant you your unearned increment, and you ought to be mighty glad that, to such a time, I'll pay ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... derives its origin from force;' so the legislature is entitled to interpose for the reclamation of rights unjustly usurped from the community; while, as economical science shows that the value of land rises from natural causes, the conclusion is that the State may confiscate the unearned increment. But it was not so easy to convince the hungry mechanic, by rather fine-drawn distinctions, that the capitalist had a better right to monopolise profits than the landlord; for the rise of value in manufactured ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... to the fading beauty, "goddess who determineth all aright,—bless thou this land, though it wakes to call me traitor. Teach it to know I am innocent. Comfort Hermione, my wife. And restore me to Athens, after doing deeds which wipe out all my unearned shame!" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... offended, Think but this,—and all is mended,— That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend; If you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck, If we have unearned luck Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue, We will make amends ere long; Else the Puck a liar call: So, good night unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... a quarter-past nine this evening she that was the life of my life passed to the relief and the peace of death, after twenty-two months of unjust and unearned suffering. I first saw her thirty-seven years ago, and now I have looked upon her face for the last time.... I was full of remorse for things done and said in these thirty- four years of married life that have hurt ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... announced includes (1) a universal eight-hour day, (2) the abolition of over-time, piece-work, and the employment of children under fourteen, (3) state provision for the ill, the invalid, and the aged, (4) free, non-sectarian education of all grades, (5) the extinction by taxation of unearned incomes, and (6) universal disarmament. To this programme has been added woman's suffrage, a second ballot in parliamentary elections, municipal control of the liquor traffic and of hospitals, and ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... just punishment that Buddhism in its original form is properly denoted more ethical than a religion which teaches that sacrifice of any kind will exempt the sinner from deserved penalties and bring about the bestowal of unearned rewards. ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... labor, leaving to the laborer just enough to maintain existence and reproduce. Henry George in the same spirit, in his Progress and Poverty, attributed all poverty to one cause,—the landlord's appropriation of the unearned increment in land values. There is, of course, some truth in all of these sweeping generalizations, but it must be said that there is not sufficient in any of them to stand the test of concrete investigation; rather these men have made the mistake of attempting to explain a ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... placed in strict subordination to the University by their founders; but, in many cases, their endowment, consisting of land, has undergone an "unearned increment," which has given these societies a continually increasing weight and importance as against the unendowed, or fixedly endowed, University. In Pharaoh's dream, the seven lean kine eat up the seven fat ones. In the reality of historical fact, the fat Colleges have ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... sculptor. I don't mean that he lives by sculping. No. As he puts it himself: "My lower self, the self that wants bread and meat and warmth and shelter, lives on unearned increment. My higher self, the only self ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... left. He wore the same shirt the year 'round, slept with his dogs and invested his groschens in such Manhattan dirt as he could conveniently transport upon his person. Thus he enabled his aristocratic descendants to wax so fat on "unearned increment" that some of them must forswear their fealty to Uncle Sam and seek in Yewrup a society whose rough edges will not scratch the varnish off their culchah. Mrs. Bradley-Martin does not exactly "look every inch a queen," her horizontal having ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you—you'd go up in spontaneous ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... continent, but we know that although everybody may have been born equal, yet that equality suddenly and mysteriously disappears as soon as the schoolboy goes upon the school bench, or the rifleman goes upon the rifle ground. The militiamen of Canada show that a democratic people do not tolerate unearned superiority, but recognise the superiority given by training. I cannot let this opportunity pass without saying a last word as to the point of view from which I regard the importance of militia training ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... unfortunately cannot quote, from authors, generally young authors, with thanks for words of encouragement, particularly in relation to unsuccessful work that seemed to have been unlucky; and there are letters from actors and actresses, speaking with gratitude—gratitude unearned, since only duty has been done—for words of praise which have helped to get an engagement or at least to give courage where hope had grown faint. They must be difficult letters to write, since it is clear that the writers generally feel doubtful whether they ought to be ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... sincerely, and the gift of fit and beautiful expression in verse-form—if these may be taken as the equipment of a poet, nearly all of this volume is poetry. And if to the sum of these be added the indescribable increment of charm which comes occasionally to the work of some poet, quite unearned by any of these catalogued qualities of his, you have a fair measure of Mr. Noyes at his best.... Two considerations render Mr. Noyes interesting above most poets: the wonderful degree in which the personal charm illumines what he has already written, and the surprises ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... this part of his teaching, in which Fitzjames took little interest, I shall only notice that, whatever his concessions, he was still in principle an 'individualist.' He maintained against the Socialists the advantages of competition; and though his theory of the 'unearned increment' looks towards the socialist view of nationalisation of the land, he seems to have been always in favour of peasant proprietorship, and of co-operation as distinguished from State socialism. Individualism, in fact, in one of its senses, for like ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... answered, "I mean, child, that wealth which comes unearned from the industries of life—that wealth for which no service is rendered—for which no equivalent in human strength, mental or physical, is returned. Are not the children of such conditions being educated in lawlessness when ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... with it Field's endorsement. Among many pleasant utterances on this subject Field has said that but for the writer the Horatian verses would not have been given to the world—and this has been taken to mean more than was intended, and much unearned praise has been bestowed. But, in allusion to the original issue of the Odes, Field added, "in this charming guise," which places quite another ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... to the golden-haired girl and apprised of her kinship to his friend Paul, who had already entered into conversation with Her Grace of Schallberg. Carter found a temporary distraction from his unearned wounds in listening to her cheery prattle and answering her light queries about the wilderness she imagined his country to be, just beyond the environs of the municipalities. Their group was constantly augmented by fresh arrivals, so the conversation grew general, ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... before all of you for what he has done for me personally. When I landed in Panama I was a rotter. I'd never worked, and never intended to; I rather despised people who did. I represented the unearned increment. I was broke and friendless, and what ideas I had were all wrong. This is something you don't know, perhaps, but no sooner had I landed than I got into trouble of the worst sort, and Mr. Cortlandt got me out. He was my bail- bond; he put me up at his hotel; gave me clothes, and paid ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... have been punished. My men would have stripped him of the wages which he wore on his person, but thought that, as we had always acted on the mildest principles, they would let him move off with his unearned gains. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I was far enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from the thought that I might ever venture to ask any good and innocent young woman to step down with me into the abyss of unearned infamy into which I had been flung, largely through the efforts of another woman who was neither good nor innocent. None the less, the delight which was half intoxication remained and the night ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... that this is an entire mistake. In truth, there is no portion of the economic field in which Mill's originality is less conspicuous than in that which deals with the land. His assertion of the peculiar nature of landed property, and again his doctrine as to the "unearned increment" of value arising from land with the growth of society, are simply direct deductions from Ricardo's theory of rent, and cannot be consistently denied by any one who accepts that theory. All that Mill has done here has been ...
— John Stuart Mill; His Life and Works • Herbert Spencer, Henry Fawcett, Frederic Harrison and Other
... disallowed, unallowed^, unsanctioned, unjustified; unentitled^, disentitled, unqualified, disqualified; unprivileged, unchartered. illegitimate, bastard, spurious, supposititious, false; usurped. tortious [Law]. undeserved, unmerited, unearned; unfulfilled. forfeited, disfranchised. improper; unmeet, unfit, unbefitting, unseemly; unbecoming, misbecoming^; seemless^; contra bonos mores [Lat.]; not the thing, out of the question, not to be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... place—not in a club after a dinner unearned by exercise—a man is likely, if ever, to utter great criticism as well as to conceive great poems. It is from such a mood and place that we may consider the following ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... you friend, I wish you this— No gentle destiny throughout the years; No soft content, or ease, or unearned bliss Bereft of heart-ache where no sorrow nears, But rather rugged trouble for a mate To mold your soul against the coming blight, To train you for the ruthless whip of fate And build your heart up for the ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... I used to see him there about 10 A.M., wrinkling his forehead in the perplexity of artistic temperament, batting a speculative eye at me meanwhile, but not in any spirit of resentment. In fact, he had nothing to resent. He had absorbed the unearned increment and I had my original capital, the bean poles, intact—and that's more than most of us realize on small investments, nowadays. So I dare say he thought I had nothing to feel grieved about. Later he would sally forth and carry out his ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... business and enterprise, is not only essential in securing the successes which you seek, but it is essential to that preparation of your mind, requisite for the enjoyment of your successes, and for retaining them when gained. It is the general rule of Providence, the world over, and in all time, that unearned success is a curse. It is the rule of Providence, that the process of earning success, shall be the preparation for its ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... cheap charlatan fattening himself at the expense of weakness and disease. The man had been inclined to make trouble at first about his unceremonious discharge. He had no mind to lose without a protest such a convenient source of unearned increment as those checks represented. He had intended to get in many another good carouse before the sick man died or got well as nature willed. But a single interview with Alan Massey sufficed to lay his objections to leaving the case. In concise and forcible language couched in perfect Spanish ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... loyally between its trader and the prison bars; but the old order had changed in the Northland. Young Lapierre's action was condemned and he was dismissed from the Company's service with a payment of three years' unearned salary whereupon, he promptly turned free-trader, and his knowledge of the methods of the H.B.C., the Indians, and the ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... doubt, the sureness has been a good servant in his business," returned the Judge. "Confidence in a weak world gets unearned profit often. But tell me about his wife—the Spanische. Tell me the how and why, and everything. I'd like to trace our little money-man wise ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
