"Avarice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Spain), and had spread throughout the peninsula. In all the ports, but more especially in those of Portugal, there was much talk of the continent of Africa, and the rich and wonderful countries beyond the sea. "A thousand anecdotes," says Michelet, "stimulated curiosity, valour and avarice, every one wishing to see these mysterious countries where monsters abounded and gold was scattered over the surface of the land." A young prince, Don Henry, duke of Viseu, third son of John I., who was very ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... will excuse my intruding such a request on you, but Y.R.H. knows that I am not usually importunate. Should, however, the slightest obstacle arise to render my request disagreeable to you, I shall not be the less convinced of your generosity and kindness. Neither avarice, nor the love of speculation, which I have always avoided, prompted this scheme; but necessity compels me to use every effort to rescue my self from my present condition. Candor is best, for it will prevent my being too hardly judged. Owing ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... and make no tiny error if thou wouldst see to-morrow's sun and go to Paradise anon. Feed that carrion well and pretend to be filled with the pity that is the child of avarice. Ask what he will give thee to help him to escape. Affect to haggle long, and speak much of the difficulties and dangers of the deed. At length agree to put him on my fast camel this night at moon-rise, if ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... thousand pounds! Unlike Joan, to whom the sum conveyed no significance, Mrs. Tregenza could estimate it. Her mind reached that far, and the bank-notes, for her, lay just within the estimation of avarice. Every snowy fragment meant a hundred pounds—a hundred sovereigns—two hundred ten-shilling pieces. The first shock overpast, and long before she grew sufficiently calm to associate the treasure with its ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... he likes; if you could shelter him as in an inaccessible castle from the retributions of eternity; with what a delirium of pleasure would he plunge into the sin that he loves. Tell the avaricious man, that his avarice shall never have any evil consequences here or hereafter; and with what an energy would he apply himself to the acquisition of wealth. Tell the luxurious man, full of passion and full of blood, that his pleasures shall never bring down any evil upon ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... within this house; may peace triumph here over discord; free-hearted giving over avarice, truthful speech over deceit, reverence over contempt. That our minds be delighted, and our souls uplifted, let our bodies be glorified as well; and O Light Divine, may we see Thee, and may we, approaching, come round about Thee, and attain ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... head in assent as he stood at the foot of the bed, and the priest departed. There had always been a strong feeling against Mynheer Poots in the village;—his neglect of all religious duties—the doubt whether he was even a member of the church—his avarice and extortion—had created for him a host of enemies; but, at the same time, his great medical skill, which was fully acknowledged, rendered him of importance. Had it been known that his creed (if he had any) was Mahometan, and that he had died in attempting to poison his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... When avarice enslaves the mind, And selfish views alone bear sway Man turns a savage to his kind, And blood and rapine mark his way. Alas! for this poor simple toy, I ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... 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
... passions seem to arise out of the exertions of these two faculties of the animal sensorium. Pride, hope, joy, are the names of particular pleasures: shame, despair, sorrow, are the names of peculiar pains: and love, ambition, avarice, of particular desires: hatred, disgust, fear, anxiety, of particular aversions. Whilst the passion of anger includes the pain from a recent injury, and the aversion to the adversary that occasioned it. And compassion is the pain we experience at the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... every possible and most contradictory accusation—of skepticism and pantheism, of deism and atheism, of superstition and enthusiasm, of irony and passion, of sensuality and ideality, of generosity and avarice. These went to form his portrait, presenting every contrast and every antagonism, which God Himself, the Father and Creator of all things, but also the Author of all harmony, could not have assembled in one and the same being ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... filled with sacks of gold. The bright metal gleamed through the meshes of the coarse bags, dazzling the eye of the beholder with its golden glory. Vauquelas seemed to enjoy Coursegol's surprise; but it was in vain that he tried to discover the slightest vestige of envy or avarice in the face of his visitor. Coursegol was astonished, and perhaps dazzled by the sight of so much wealth, but no evil thought entered his mind. Vauquelas breathed more freely. He had just subjected the man upon whom he had bestowed his ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... had the unsympathetic nature which is common in the meaner sort of devotees,—persons who mistake spiritual selfishness for sanctity, and grab at the infinite prize of the great Future and Elsewhere with the egotism they excommunicate in its hardly more odious forms of avarice and self-indulgence. How could he speak with the old physician and the old black woman about a sorrow and a terror which but to name was to strike ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... upright and well spoken, wise and sensible and well advised, and when they return they cannot hold themselves upright nor speak; they are all foolish and all mad, and they return swearing, beating and giving the lie to each other.'—Op. cit., I, pp. 47-8. The section on Avarice is particularly valuable for its picture of the sins of executors of wills, rack-renting lords, extortionate shopkeepers, false lawyers, usurers, and ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... success approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable sin. As Curran put it in his defence of Hamilton Rowan in 1797, "England is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is studious to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart; whether from any necessity of her policy or from her weakness, or from her pride, I ...
— The Crime Against Europe - A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 • Roger Casement
... little; you ought not to think of, much less do, anything but what is great and sublime. Which to attain to, this is your only way: as you have subdued your enemies in the field, so to make it appear that you of all mankind are best able to subdue Ambition, Avarice, the love of Riches, and can best avoid the corruptions that prosperity is apt to introduce. These are the only arguments by which you will be able to evince that you are not such persons as this fellow represents you, traitors, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... let her have her way, not dreaming that such a skinny spectre could move so enormous a weight. But Thamar bound the mouth of her sack with a cord, and to the great surprise of the Egyptian, lifted it on her back. Avarice lent to that broken-down frame unexpected strength of muscles; all the nerves and fibres of the arms, the neck, the shoulders, strained to breaking, bore up under a mass of metal which would have ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... 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 ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... wires." "Consciousness," says Bergson, "is essentially free." Man the savage or man the philosopher—he alone can decide. Let him purify patriotism with Christianity and he has brotherhood; adulterate it with avarice and he has war. The evolution of patriotism is not a physical thing. Listen to Huxley, "Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of the ethical process." The evolution of patriotism, then, is a moral thing, and morality ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... prohibited. Almost all the real luxuries of life may be enjoyed on half that sum; and even this is an excessive estimate. Such a regulation would be of vast advantage to the rich, simply because it would impose some limit at which economy commenced. They would then begin to enjoy their wealth. Avarice would decline, for obviously it would not be worth while to accumulate a larger fortune than the State permitted. We might also expect some improvement in manners, for there would be no room for that vulgar ostentation in which excessive ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... of ambition and of avarice and of self-preservation as the keys of character and action, but what force is there to move us like a woman? A little thing, a weak fragile thing—a toy from which the rain will wash the paint and of which the rust will stop the ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... earth, but had been sent back to be a Shoshone for another life. The Indians were overcome by an insatiate curiosity to see this being and urged the traders to bring him from the Shoshones—promising to protect and honor him. The traders dominated by avarice, hoping to better their business, humored the stories and enlarged upon them. They half understood that the mystery of life and death are inextricably mixed in savage minds—that they come and go, passing in every form from bears to inanimate things or living in ghosts which grow out of a lodge ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... a mile, while Riles turned the matter over in his mind. He was naturally a coward, but he was equally a money-grabber, and it was one instinct against the other. Avarice won it, and at length he extended his hand to Gardiner. "I'm in on anythin' you're ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... with avarice, he would tell of enormous sums which the Moors, the Romans, and other red mariners whom he called the Normans, had buried in caves along the coast. His ancestors knew much about all this. What a pity that they had died without saying a word! He related ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... get the fuel we can pump the water," said Roger. "You're right! There is an empire here. Mineral resources beyond the dreams of avarice, four or five crops a year of food-stuffs. Why, man, millions of people could come ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,— Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed, A barn full of the harvesting of storms; And at full tide, the little hampered ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... 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 always employ'd on Meditations of a future Happiness, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... was that she had just about received her pension, or that due to her deceased husband, and she would therefore be rich, rich to the point where avarice would lie in wait ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... cases then ought a friend to be vehement, and when ought he to use emphatic freedom of language? When circumstances call upon him to check some headlong pleasure or rage or insolence, or to curtail avarice, or to correct some foolish negligence. Thus Solon spoke out to Croesus, who was corrupted and enervated by insecure good fortune, bidding him look to the end.[463] Thus Socrates restrained Alcibiades, and wrung from him genuine tears by his reproof, and changed his ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... who will bring to it all the powers with which he fought against the Almighty before he was cast down from heaven. He has retained many a cunning advocate to recruit for him; he has bribed many a smooth-tongued preacher to be his chaplain; he has engaged the sordid by their avarice, the timid by their fears, the profligate by their love of adventure, and thousands of nobler natures by motives which we can all understand; whose delusion we pity as we ought always to pity the error of those who know not what they do. Against him ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... enough against the late governor. The reckless gratification of his avarice and his passions had seldom satisfied him, without the addition of some bitter insult to the sufferers. But there was even a more atrocious feature in the case, of which Cicero did not fail to make good use in his appeal to a Roman jury. Many of the ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... pleasant 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, Across ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... were to be my commission on the bargain, and the Duchess had intimated that I should receive so much; but I was firmly resolved not to touch a farthing, in order to secure my credit, and convince the Duke I was not prompted by avarice. Once more his Excellency began to address me with the greatest courtesy: "I know that you are consummate judge of these things; therefore, if you are the honest man I always thought you, tell me now the truth." Thereat I flushed up to my ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... his, and wrung and shook my arm till it ached; and being beside him self with rage, he admonished me with threatening words and gestures not to ruin his life's work, and him, and those dear to me, by my base avarice. When I had got over my first fear I snatched myself free from the miserable little man, and turned my back upon him; but he leaped in front of me, spread forth his arms to bar the doorway, and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... extraordinary visages, comprehending, Messieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, Avarice, Despair! Hi hi! Ho ho! Lu lu! Come in!' To this effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tambourine—bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people who won't come in—holds forth a man of lofty and severe demeanour; a man in stately uniform, gloomy ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... discoveries briefly noticed in the preceding chapter had produced a powerful effect upon the mind of Ferdinand. His ambition, his avarice, and his jealousy were equally inflamed. He beheld boundless regions, teeming with all kinds of riches, daily opening before the enterprises of his subjects; but he beheld at the same time other nations launching ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... man, by preference with the faults pertaining to the male nature, since she had observed that those who lacked these, possessed others, which to her robust womanhood seemed far worse, such as meanness and avarice and backbiting, and all the other qualities ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the right of any nation to prohibit the commerce of another into its own dominions, where there are no treaties to the contrary; but as this right belongs to one side as well as the other, there is always a way left to bring avarice ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... scandals of the world.' The lesser clergy, the monks, the nuns followed, with anxious fidelity, the footsteps of their shepherds. There was hardly a tonsure in Italy which covered more than thoughts and hopes of lust and avarice. Religion and morals which God had joined together, were set by man a thousand leagues asunder. Yet religion still sat upon the alabaster throne of Peter, and in the filthy straw of the meanest Calabrian confessional. And still deeper ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Kentucky, and Maryland, and her business men having important relations with the South, there was no city—not even Baltimore—that was more saturated with the spirit of Hunkerism,—that horrid blending of vanity and avarice which made the Northern people equal sharers in the guilt of slavery, while taking the lion's share of the profit. It was at Cincinnati, in 1836, that a mob of most respectable citizens, having first "resolved" in public meeting that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... America, was once very common in Britain, inhabiting every "ivy-mantled tower," church steeple, barn loft, hollow tree, or dovecot, in which it could get a lodging. But it was never welcome. Like the Jews in the days of King John it has been relentlessly persecuted by superstition, ignorance and avarice. Avarice, instigated by ladies and milliners, has looked with covetous eye on its downy and beautiful plumes; while ignorance and superstition have feared and hated the owl in all countries and all ages. In ancient Rome it was ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... it may do my dearest 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 we have got ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... arduous toils the breast inflame; Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame; Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease, And the sweet pleasures of the body please. With eager haste they rush the gulf within, And their whole souls are centred in their ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... bargain, if he did not exert himself and do what was required of him more zealously. This speech much incensed the slave against our people: but he concealed his anger and in a few days he went to the chief of Subuth, and told him that the avarice of the Spaniards was insatiable: that they had determined, as soon as they should have defeated the king of Mauthan, to turn round upon him, and take him away as a prisoner; and that the only course for him [the chief of Subuth] to adopt was to anticipate treachery by treachery. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... unsociable,' said I to this man. 'I have shown in life a complaisant and easy disposition, although the extreme simplicity of my habits caused me to be suspected of avarice. I kept nothing for myself alone. My library was open to all and I have conformed my conduct to that fine saying of Euripides, "all ought to be common among friends." Those praises that seemed obtrusive when I myself received them became ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... friend," I said, with accents as broken almost as his own, "should ask where this came from, name me, and say from the most obliged and most grateful man alive. Say, the gold of which it is composed was saved by grains at a time, and was hoarded with as much avarice as ever was a miser's. To bring it here I have come a thousand miles; and now, ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... they come but 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 ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... counseled slaughter if necessary in defense of negroes who were none of his. And in the end the magistrates and jurors, proving second Daniels come to judgment, endorsed the victory of benevolence over avarice and assured the so-called slaves their thinly veiled freedom. Curiously, however, the decision in this case was instanced by a contemporary traveller to prove that negroes freed by will in South ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... looked at the Colonel with that indescribably horrid smile, the owner's approval of the proud beast seemed to overcome his avarice. ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... purpose they made 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 to the Hindoos, who eating it would lose caste—was believed by the more ignorant ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... pleasures suitable to our species, and we need only to follow her impulse, refined by taste, and exalted by a lively and agreeable imagination, in order to attain the most perfect felicity of which human nature is susceptible. Ambition, avarice, vanity, when enjoyed in the most exquisite perfection, can yield but trifling and tasteless pleasures, which will be too inconsiderable to affect a ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... sleep, the poet finds himself in a strange forest at the foot of a sun-kissed mountain. On trying to climb it, he is turned aside by a spotted panther, an emblem of luxury or pleasure (Florence), a fierce lion, personifying ambition or anger (France), and a ravening wolf, the emblem of avarice (Rome). Fleeing in terror from these monsters, Dante beseeches aid from the only fellow-creature he sees, only to learn he is Virgil, the poet and master from whom he learned "that style which for its beauty ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... 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
... she resumes her account of Elmire's illness. And when Scapin informs old Geronte that his son has been taken prisoner on the famous galley, and that a ransom must be paid without delay, he is playing with the avarice of Geronte exactly as Dorine does with the infatuation of Orgon. The old man's avarice is no sooner repressed than up it springs again automatically, and it is this automatism that Moliere tries to indicate by the mechanical ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... devoted friend, and so is his brother, Abraham. This, too, in spite of the bad treatment of the Ganeagaono by the Dutch at Albany. O, I have nothing to say against the Dutch, a brave and tenacious people, but they have their faults, like other races, and sometimes they let avarice overcome them! I wish they could understand the nations of the Hodenosaunee better. Do what you can at Albany, Mr. Lennox, with that facile tongue of yours, to persuade the Dutch—and the others too—that the danger from the ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... next few years there was peace in the grasslands, and the settlers prospered as others joined. But it was not always so. For with more settlers came greed and avarice. Laws were made, regulations were had, rules announced and they were not always fair. Greed, sometimes sat in the councils, and the avaricious bent the rules. Then, there were other wars in which justice and fairness ran not parallel ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... give Unhappy souls at odds with life, not knowing how to live. He saw fair, pampered women turn from motherhood's sweet joy, Obsessed with methods to prevent or mania to destroy. He saw men sell their souls to vice and avarice and greed; He heard race quarrelling with race and creed decrying creed; And shameful wealth and waste He saw, and shameful want ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... which happiness and mental and bodily health are among the least of their considerations. All are spurred on by the real or imaginary necessities of their position, driven along their headlong course by avarice, ambition, or ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... troops, nor mob Exasperated by their wrongs, but on A jostling, hurrying throng—freeman each one, Unless in bondage to himself. O Man: Pass not all heedless by, nor imprecate This aged relic of the past because It lies across thy path! From avarice Redeemed; restored unto its former self,— We hail thee, noble Sentry of the years, And greet thee with a thousand ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... of any of them. If there is a man in Greece who is to be depended on he is the man. He maintains that one of the greatest steps towards the well-being of Greece is the putting down the ascendancy of the Priests, with that you will put down intolerant avarice and much crime. At first the Govt. would not give much ear to his demands, but he goes to them in person, stripped of his arms, telling them he is no longer a soldier, that he would turn barber for he could shave; he said he would get an honest livelihood ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... Exhibition," pleasingly recalls the glories and expenses of last year so inseparably connected with the Cairo street dancing and the Tour Eiffel. The second, "A Dream of Wealth," is interesting amongst other matters for proving conclusively that the Demon of Avarice (conscientiously impersonated by Signor LUIGI ALBERTIERI), is a singularly gentlemanly creature, and not nearly so black as he would conventionally be painted. The story of the divertissement by Madame KATTI LANNER, if rather obscure, is still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... I have committed nothing which might bring dishonour, or disgrace, or shame: no deed of avarice or treachery have I done in all my day's: nay, but much generosity, much kindness, much truth and faithfulness have I shown, often at the risk of my own life. I have lived in amity with my good brother, whom I rejoice ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... richest man in town, but rich in country fashion. Such property as he had, cattle, a farm or two, several buildings in Main Street, and stock in the Bank, he studied and nursed carefully, not from any feeling of avarice, but because he was temperate and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... sir, everything. As that babbling fool talked, I saw in your eye the gleam which betokens avarice for copy. Indeed, I think you mentioned the January number. You were therefore accessory before the fact. I simply had ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... of the sacred rights of hospitality; in short, the action was universally condemned by his best friends. They told him in plain terms that this was come as a judgment upon him for his loose life, his gluttony, drunkenness, and avarice; for laying aside his father's will in an old mouldy trunk, and turning stock-jobber, newsmonger, and busybody, meddling with other people's affairs, shaking off his old serious friends, and keeping company with buffoons and pickpockets, his father's ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... totally incapable of understanding the character of the great working classes of the loyal States. That industry, which is the foundation of independence, and so of equity, they stigmatized as stupid drudgery, or as mean avarice. That general intelligence and independence of thought which schools for the common people and newspapers breed, they reviled as the incitement of unsettled zeal, running easily into fanaticism. They more thoroughly misunderstood ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... behind him, and on the 20th of March, 1686, after a buffalo-hunt, he was murdered by Duhaut and L'Archeveque, two adventurers, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. They had long shown a spirit of mutiny, and the malignity of disappointed avarice so maddened them that ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... child-like people from the avarice of our own race they are not permitted to sell their lands, and the greater portion of the area of Fiji is still held by the natives. The Hawaiian Islands now under our own rule furnish a sad contrast, for here the natives are reduced by poverty to a degraded state but little above ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... on an ungrateful soil, on which subsistence is difficult, where, at the risk of death, he is obliged to save and to economize. Hence a constant preoccupation and the rooted idea of acquiring, accumulating, and possessing, rapacity and avarice, more particularly in the class which, tied to the globe, fasts for sixty generations in order to support other classes, and whose crooked fingers are always outstretched to clutch the soil whose fruits they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... But the legislature should give them the power to rescue our prisons, hospitals and asylums from the indescribable horror of filth, neglect and cruelty which hangs like a murky cloud over many of them. Men have tried it and failed. Stupidity or partisanship or brutality or avarice, has transformed many a noble foundation of benevolence into a hell of abomination. Some one must step in to inspect; to enforce order, cleanliness and virtue; to bring comfort and hope to the downcast and to the outcast of society. This purpose must be backed ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... central fountain in stately procession, McGee fell to thinking how little those lovely creatures knew of tragedy and sorrow. Theirs was a world secure in beauty, unmarred by the things which man brings upon himself, and this was true because they knew nothing of avarice or grasping greed. Could it be that man, in all his pride, was one of the least sensible ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... means made it capable of surrounding a large extent of ground; and, as a bargain is a bargain, she gained possession of the inclosure by agreeing to pay an annual tribute for it. But whether or not this rather improbable story be true, avarice and tyranny on the part of a brother seems to have roused the dormant power in Dido's nature; and the indomitable perseverance, fortitude, and faculty for government displayed by the outraged woman, were the forces which brought about the founding of a powerful nation. King Pygmalion ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... allowed the Faithful to have four wives. As one wife was a costly investment in those olden days when brides were bought directly from the parents, four wives became a positive luxury except to those who possessed camels and dromedaries and date orchards beyond the dreams of avarice. A religion which at first had been meant for the hardy hunters of the high skied desert was gradually transformed to suit the needs of the smug merchants who lived in the bazaars of the cities. It was a ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Ismail (December 21, 1790), Ribas concealed himself among the reeds on the bank of the Danube, and did not reappear until the danger was over and he could in safety share in the booty taken by his sailors. But this cowardice and avarice of their admiral very nearly caused a mutiny among the sailors. It was not suppressed without ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... 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 ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... has already observed,—Some of the finest qualities of human nature are intimately related to the right use of money; such as generosity, honesty, justice, and self-denial; as well as the practical virtues of economy and providence. On the other hand, there are their counterparts of avarice, fraud, injustice, and selfishness, as displayed by the inordinate lovers of gain; and the vices of thoughtlessness, extravagance, and improvidence, on the part of those who misuse and abuse the means entrusted ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... to the face of Clotilde, who was always amused by the jests about Martine's avarice; and the breakfast ended more cheerfully. The doctor desired to take the coffee under the plane trees, saying that he felt the need of air after being shut up all the morning. The coffee was served then on the stone table beside the fountain; and how pleasant it was there ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... moments when they are not exactly themselves, in which they act very differently from what it has been their practice to act. On this occasion, I was not alarmed for myself, but I thought the course I took was necessary to save that dross which lures so many to perdition. Avarice blinded me to the secrets of my ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... and not to know (which ought to be the scope of studie), what valour, what temperance, and what justice is: what difference there is betweene ambition and avarice, bondage and freedome, subjection and libertie, by which markes a man may distinguish true and perfect contentment, and how far-forth one ought to feare or apprehend death, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... is rather neglected in the talk about electricity and headlines. Needless to say, the modern vulgarity of avarice and advertisement sprawls all over Philadelphia or Boston; but so it does over Winchester or Canterbury. But most people know that there is something else to be found in Canterbury or Winchester; many people know that it is rather more ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... "but he is undeniably ambitious; and Avarice, I have heard, is Ambition's bastard brother, though Ambition be sometimes ashamed ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... superlative discovery be ever consummated in the general conviction of society, then will their characters undergo a thorough revolution—they will be loved more and admired less—they will be considered, not as the repositories of secrets to be dispensed with the cold hand of calculating avarice and hypocrisy, but as the liberally minded declarers of those generally beneficial truths which honest study has discovered, in their peculiar departments of science. Till then the world must submit to wonder and believe, and, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... appear improbable, and yet is frequently true. He should zealously discuss and examine every case, so as to be sure to make a just decision.... Let the love of truth and mercy, the special qualities of every good judge, shine in his countenance, and let his sentences never be prompted by avarice or cruelty."[1] ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... so small but that we may yet leave in it also unconquered spaces of beautiful solitude; where the chamois and red deer may wander fearless,—nor any fire of avarice scorch from the Highlands of Alp, or Grampian, the rapture of the heath, and ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... them the cities crumble, the woods shrivel and fall, the farms fade out of Picardy, even the hedgerows go; it is bare, bare desert. He had been sure of Paris, he had dreamed of Versailles and some monstrous coronation, he had thought his insatiable avarice would be sated. For he had plotted for conquest of the world, that boundless greed of his goading him on as a man in the grip of ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... in no uncertain manner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, maybe my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it seems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... "is as voracious as hell, and as ambitious as the devil. What he desires above every thing is to be made commander-in-chief for life, and it is to satisfy his ambition and his avarice that he has opposed so many intrigues to the efforts made for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... a couple of others to the neck of the honey-pots, climbed back again, and drew up his prey in safety. He then cunningly fixed the planks again in their old places, and retired to gorge himself upon his booty. And, now, see the punishment of avarice! Everybody knows that the brethren of the order of Jesus are bound by a vow to have no more than a certain small sum of money in their possession. The principal of the college of Clermont had amassed a larger sum, in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from the heat, here the statesman ploughs Furrow for ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... they had both been motionless ten seconds. "I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more, there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For there is this. She will not count her own soul ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... handywork 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, expence, 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 breathing ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... garden. Take likewise a vase of the same water, and sprinkle it over any object that you may desire to change back again from gold into its former substance. If you do this in earnestness and sincerity, it may possibly repair the mischief which your avarice has occasioned." ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... steel plate—of which I subjoin a drawing—instead of with wedges or insufficient plates. They might have an eye to life, as well as capital, in buying heavy grindstones. I have traced the death of one grinder to the master's avarice: he went to the quarry and bought a stone for thirty-five shillings the quarry-master had set aside as imperfect; its price would have been sixty shillings if it had been fit to trust a man's life to. This master goes to church twice ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... chin and beard of a goat, and crisply-curled hair of a pale yellow colour. With all this, there was something sordid in his looks as well as his attire, which showed that to his other vices he added that of avarice. A mock humility, belied by the changeless sneer upon his countenance, distinguished his deportment. It could be seen at once that, however cringing he might be, he despised the person he addressed. Moreover, in spite of all his efforts ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... gold stain their souls in a strife That enslaves them to Avarice grim, Though Tyranny's hand fills the wine cup of life With gall, surging over the brim; Though Might in dark hatefulness reigns for a time, And Right by Wrong's frownings be met; Love lives—a guest-angel from heaven's far clime, And walks ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... can any man of any sect purchase in Ireland, but forfeited property? In all other oppressed countries which I have ever heard of, the rapacity of the conqueror was bounded by the territorial limits in which the objects of his avarice were contained; but Ireland has been actually confiscated twice over, as a cat is twice killed by ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... much of what my Lord Byron the poet says; but when he wrote, "So for a good old gentlemanly vice, I think I shall put up with avarice," I think his lordship meant what he wrote, and if he practised what he preached, shall not quarrel with him. As an occupation in declining years, I declare I think saving is useful, amusing, and not unbecoming. It must ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the 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 ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... its loveliness, and its loveliness we must love, else we shall only treat them as flower-greedy children, who gather and gather, and fill hands and baskets, from a mere desire of acquisition, excusable enough in them, but the same in kind, however harmless in mode, and degree, and object, as the avarice of the miser. Therefore God, that we may always have them, and ever learn to love their beauty, and yet more their truth, sends the beneficent winter that we may think about what we have lost, and welcome them ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... Was it the hereditary avarice of the house of Conde which thus revealed itself in the odious sentiment of that unworthy son? Poor woman! Her only crime was that of being too liberal. She had, it is true, foolishly placed her diamonds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the war. But had she not, as ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... for boldness, are directed against those ecclesiastical abuses which touched the interests of the clerkly classes—against simony, avarice, venality in the Roman Curia, against the ambition of prelates and the effort to make princely benefices hereditary, rather than against the real sins of the Church—her wilful solidification of popular superstitions for the purposes of self-aggrandisement, ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... across lately, and of course then came the exclamation that scarce fails from native lips when a fox track is seen: "I wonder if it were a black fox!" A black fox means sudden wealth beyond the dreams of avarice to an Indian, and any fox track may be the track of a ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... all forms of voluntary slavery is the desire of gain. It is difficult to fight against this when modern civilisation is tainted with such a universal contamination of avarice. I have realised it myself in the little boys of my own school. For the first few years there is no trouble. But as soon as the upper class is reached, their worldly wisdom—the malady of the aged—begins to assert itself. They rebelliously insist that they ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... "The avarice of booksellers, and the stinginess of hard-hearted patrons, had driven him into a cursed company of door-keeping herds, to meet the irrational brutality of those uneducated mischievous animals called footmen, house-porters, poetasters, mumpers, apothecaries, attorneys, and such like beasts of prey," ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... but you must, please, throw yourself into what I say, and not criticize my instances or my terms. What I mean is, that there is a worldly air about everything, as unlike as possible the spirit of the Gospel. I don't impute to the dons ambition or avarice; but still, what Heads of houses, Fellows, and all of them evidently put before them as an end is, to enjoy the world in the first place, and to serve God in the second. Not that they don't make it their final ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Modeste showered on Desplein had annoyed the poet. Vanity acts like a woman,—they both think they are defrauded when love or praise is bestowed on others. Voltaire was jealous of the wit of a roue whom Paris admired for two days; and even a duchess takes offence at a look bestowed upon her maid. The avarice excited by these two sentiments is such that a fraction of them given to the ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... colored and wonderful light! Study and reason and with awe and delight take light from above. Dream of good news for one and all, of life given depth and brought into music, dream of giving the given, never holding it back, which would be avarice and betraying! Write, and give men and women to read what you have written, and believe—poor Deluded!—that they also feel inner ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... of indelicate or profane allusions, they wrapped up not only their most common temporal affairs, but even their very crimes and vices, in the language of their spiritual concerns. Luxury was using the creature; avarice was seeking experiences; insurrection was putting the hand to the plough; actual rebellion, fighting the good fight; and regicide, doing the great work of the Lord. This vocabulary became grievously unfashionable at the Reformation, and was at once swept away by ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... gentle Avarice And hoard the soft Allurements that entice; For One will come who holds the Golden Means To buy your ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... first time. Her sorrow on this occasion has in it something beautiful, in so bright and gay a woman: shows us the mother strong in her, to a touching degree. The rough cub, in whom she noticed rugged perverse elements, "tendencies to avarice," and a want of princely graces, and the more brilliant qualities in mind and manner, had given her many thoughts and some uneasy ones. But he was evidently all she had to love in the world; a rugged creature inexpressibly precious to her. For days after his departure, she had kept solitary; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... extraordinary beauty. She was afterwards married to her uncle Sicharbas, who is called Sichaeus by Virgil. Being priest of Hercules, an office next in rank to that of king, he was possessed of immense treasures, which the known avarice of Pygmalion caused him to conceal in the earth. Pygmalion having caused him to be assassinated, at which Dido first expressed great resentment, she afterwards pretended a reconciliation, the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... was an end even to Aztec patience. The avarice of the white men had drained the country of its wealth. Their arrogance had humiliated their pride. Their occupation of their holiest temple and the insults to their gods had aroused them to fury; and the massacre, in cold blood, of six hundred of their ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... for your sakes; for, bold and blind, To lust and avarice inclined, Each shadowy idol you obey, Disowning my ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... Avarice first. From the face his eyes turned to see what had been left by the two girls. An angry imprecation fell from his lips when he saw how little remained for him. But when he lifted Flora's head and unbound her hair, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur |
