"Acquisitive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 1883 Mr. Stone, who had been watching with appreciative newspaper sense the popularity of the Tribune Primer skits, cast an acquisitive net in the direction of Denver. He had known Field in St. Louis, and describes their first meeting thus: "I entered the office of the Dispatch to see Stillson Hutchins, the then proprietor of that paper. It was in the forenoon, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... artist. When a smile was traced in the clay it softened the face out of character, destroyed that intensity which the central massing of the brow denoted; and when the smile was deleted the face lost all its brilliance, became merely intense, concentrated, racial, acquisitive perhaps, clearly not Mr. Baruch's face. Ultimately the sculptor succeeded in wedding a smile to that brow, and the bust went on exhibition with those of Wilson, Foch, House, Clemenceau, and the others; but the union was never more than a compromise, a marriage of convenience ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... members of the Sagamore Club continued harmonious in as far as their social intercourse and the general acquisitive policy of ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Parliament is most literally a Rump Parliament—everything depending on the hind legs, and nothing on the brains; which makes it wonderfully like some other Parliaments we know of nowadays, with Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe for their aesthetic and acquisitive eyes, and a ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... of the Bight of Tyee, a quarter of a century passed. A man may prosper much in twenty-five years, and Hector McKaye, albeit American born, was bred of an acquisitive race. When his Gethsemane came upon him, he was rated the richest lumberman in the state of Washington; his twenty-thousand board-feet capacity per day sawmill had grown to five hundred thousand, his ten thousand acres to a hundred thousand. Two thousand persons looked to him ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... of the term.[3] Arithmetically it is a fallacious kind of a total, for the sum of the individual capitals contains some items that should be canceled to find the sum of wealth. Moreover, capital is an acquisitive concept. It is an expression of the value of a man's possessions, and not of the utility[4] of them. It measures intensity of desire for goods and not necessarily the degree of welfare. Such a total, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... fertile districts where the Teutonic element has intermingled with the native population. Because wealth happens to be concentrated in the fertile areas of Teutonic occupation, it is again assumed that this coincidence demonstrates either a peculiar acquisitive aptitude in this race or else a superior ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... said. "I allow that Combers have had for many generations a sort of acquisitive cunning, for all we possess has come to us by exceedingly prudent marriages. They have also—I am an exception here—the gift of not saying very much, which certainly has an impressive effect, even when ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... their own lives. Self-renunciation guards the way to the 'tree of life.' That lesson was specially needed by 'Greeks,' for ignorance of it was the worm that gnawed the blossoms of their trees, whether of art or of literature. It is no less needed by our sensuously luxurious and eagerly acquisitive generation. The world's war-cries to-day are two—'Get!' 'Enjoy!' Christ's command is, 'Renounce!' And in renouncing we shall realise both of these other aims, which they who ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... as well as penetration. From his father he had inherited instincts of a conquering race—therefore akin to English instincts; from his mother, who had sprung from the lower classes, that extraordinary acquisitive faculty, that almost limitless energy, regardless of hardship, in the pursuit of gain which is characteristic of the modern Greek ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... forgotten her. She had meantime married another man, and was now a widow. In 1730 he married her. Meantime, entering into the printing business on his own account, he often trundled his paper along the streets in a wheelbarrow, and was intensely occupied with his affairs. His acquisitive mind was never idle, and in 1732 he began the publication of the celebrated "Poor Richard's Almanac." This was among the most successful of all American publications, was continued for twenty-five years, and in the last issue, in 1757, ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... individual's environment. Hunger and thirst imperiously check the tendency to laziness, or heedlessness, and stimulate to industriousness and prudence. To this day the mere need of food and clothing and shelter is the main bulwark of these virtues. The acquisitive impulse, which is also rather early in appearance, has an increasing share in this sort of moralization. The craving for action, which is the natural result of abundant nervous and muscular energy, the combative instinct, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... not, as a rule, by means of useful inventions, or of any other action which increases the general wealth of the community, that men amass fortunes; it is much more often by skill in exploiting or circumventing others. Nor is it only among the rich that our present regime promotes a narrowly acquisitive spirit. The constant risk of destitution compels most men to fill a great part of their time and thought with the economic struggle. There is a theory that this increases the total output of wealth by the community. But for reasons to which I ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... Wild Man appeared to be the chief favourites for the prize, and knowing the acquisitive propensities of The Chaperon, all were surprised to note his passiveness during the competition; however, he explained his inertia by saying that his sleep had been disturbed by visions for which no microscope was needed. He offered to sketch what he had seen, but could give no more definite description ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... when through lack of further ambition, or rather of the sting of that spur of necessity which drives most men on, he rested upon his oars, and in practice abandoned his labours, drifting down the tide. No man of high intelligence and acquisitive brain can toil arduously for a period of years and suddenly cease from troubling to find himself, as he expects, at rest. For then into the swept and garnished chambers of that empty mind enter seven or more blue devils. Depression marks him for ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded, I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no, And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... palm-dealer ran out of bounds and made a little grove before the stall of the man who sold pith helmets. The warm air held the smell of all sorts of commodities; there was a great hum of small transactions, clink of small profits. "It makes one feel immensely practical and acquisitive," Duff said, looking at the loaded baskets on the coolies' heads; and he insisted on getting out. "I am dying to buy an enormous number of desirable things very cheap. But not combs or shirt-buttons, thank you, nor any ribbons or lace—is that ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... man's aim and outlook to redeem his acquisitiveness. The man was a sublimated chipmunk, gloating over bushels of pignuts. If wealth is saved to raise and educate children, or achieve some social good, it deserves moral respect or admiration. But if the acquisitive instinct is without social feeling or vision, and centered on self, it gets no ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch |
