"Cupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... received good advice from Sir John MacNeill, the British representative at the court of the Shah: "You must either travel as important personages, with a retinue of servants and an adequate escort, or alone, as poor men, with nothing to excite the cupidity of the people amongst whom you will have to mix. If you cannot afford to adopt the first course, you must take the latter." The latter they ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... his most intimate friend the English ambassador would move heaven and earth to revenge his fall, he directed my attention to a portmanteau passably well filled, which he hoped would satisfy the cupidity of my troops. I said, though with much regret, that I must subject his person to a search; and hence arose the circumstance which has called for what I fear you will consider a somewhat tedious explanation. I found upon ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wealth and commerce, were known far and wide. Caravans returning to the coast proclaimed its splendours in their camel-loads of gold, ivory, hides, musk, and the spoils of the ostrich. So many attractions did not fail to rouse the cupidity of neighbouring territories, chief among them being Morocco. El Mansour, sultan of Morocco, invaded the Sudan in 1590, and in a few years the fall of the Songhois Empire was complete. Two elements of confusion established themselves, and augmented the general anarchy—viz., the Touaregs and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... collection at Windsor. Two figures in the Flemish costume of the time, are seated at a table; before them are a heap of money and a book, in which one is writing with his right hand, while he tells down the money with his left. The faces express craft and cupidity. The details of the ink-horn on the table, and the bird on its perch behind, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... appearance uniquely attested her youth. When the money finally came, rolling out in pennies, five-cent pieces, and rare dimes, the look of good-natured wonder in the old black eyes peering wolfishly over the hedge changed quickly to one of keen cupidity, but the children saw nothing of this. Helen Adeline divided the money as evenly as she could into four ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... Gothic trumpets rang unanswered in the streets. The old heroic virtues were gone. No resistance was made. Nobody fought from temples and palaces. The queen of the world, for five days and nights, was exposed to the lust and cupidity of despised barbarians. Yet a general slaughter was not made; and as much wealth as could be collected into the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul was spared. The superstitious barbarians in some degree respected churches. But ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... here referred to) for a traveller to go upon, not only because the hospitality of the people has been damped by frequent communication with travellers, but, by intercourse with the semi-civilised merchant, their natural honour and honesty are corrupted, their cupidity is increased, and the show of firearms ceases ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... not to be had for the asking. And since the water was denied, his tongue ached with dryness, and Yan-a-ate lost its savor. Also was his heart moved by the prayers of men and the cries of women. But his tongue troubled him more than did his heart, his tongue and his cupidity, so that he was moved to try his cunning where the strength and ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... weaker children. Those who survive are merely those who have been strong enough to survive the most unfavorable living conditions. No; it is a situation not unique, nor even unusual in human history, of greed and stupidity and cupidity encouraging the procreative instinct toward the manufacture of slaves. We hear these days of the selfishness and the degradation of healthy and well-educated women who refuse motherhood; but we hear little of the more sinister selfishness of men and women who ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... aid, but this effort at rescue did not succeed, because a volley of fire from the houses prevented the troopers from getting into the village. Since that day nothing has been heard of M. de Noailles. It is likely that his superb furs and his uniform covered in gold braid having roused the cupidity of the Cossacks, he was murdered by these barbarians. M. de Noailles' family, knowing that I was the last person to speak to him, asked me for news about his disappearance, but I could tell them no more than what I have described. Alfred de Noailles was an excellent ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... such was the fact, Mr. Storms hoped that it would be accepted as an explanation of the strange utterances in which he had indulged, for he believed that the cupidity of the young man had already been excited, and a most unfortunate ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... he smarted were all stabs given to his self-love and cupidity. He had learned how honest men looked upon him; and he had failed in the cherished expectation of laying his hands upon a great fortune, which he had fondly hoped to have the opportunity ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... Oriental spices. He was thus led to believe that the shipwreck was providential, as, had he sailed away, he should not have heard of its vast wealth. What in some spirits would have awakened a grasping and sordid cupidity to accumulate, immediately filled his vivid imagination with ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the town. In 1850 was published his exquisite poem of "Egeria," probably the most refined and artistic of all his productions; and in 1856 he gave to the world "The Lump of Gold," and "Under Green Leaves," two volumes of charming poetry; the first tracing the evils that flow from unrestrained cupidity; the second the delights of the country, under every circumstance that can or does occur. Latterly he has composed some popular airs, set to his own lyrics; thus giving to the melody he has conceived the immortality ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... its mechanics' hall sacred to farming implements, its long sheds full of sheep and cattle, its dining-hall, its temporary booths of rough lumber, its half-mile track and grandstand. Here voices of beast and vendor mingled in a chorus of cupidity and distress. In Floral Hall Sol Rollin was on exhibition. He gave me a cold nod, his lips set for a tune as yet inaudible. He was surveying sundry examples of rustic art that hung on the circular railing of the gallery and trying to preserve a calm breast. He was looking ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... some places, chiefly in Germany, like a visitation of pestilence or war. Those who tried to stop it fell victims to their own courage, and, unless they recanted, languished for years in prison, or were executed as possessed by devils themselves. At Treves the persecution was encouraged by the cupidity of the magistrates who profited by confiscation of the property of those sentenced. At Bonn schoolboys of nine or ten, fair young maidens, many priests and scores of good women were ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... lawless adventure. With little population of its own, the Spanish authority almost extinct, and the colonial governments in a state of revolution, having no pretension to it, and sufficiently employed in their own concerns, it was in a great measure derelict, and the object of cupidity to every adventurer. A system of buccaneering was rapidly organizing over it which menaced in its consequences the lawful commerce of every nation, and particularly of the United States, while it presented a temptation to every people, on whose seduction its success principally depended. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... the errors of the Papist and those of the Anabaptist. Nor was this defence by any means without weight; for though there is abundant proof that his integrity was not of strength to withstand the temptations by which his cupidity and vanity were sometimes assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving and compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him, preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his time. If both parties accused him of deserting them, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... considerably over a hundred thousand square miles was before us, and the destiny of a new State was in embryo. It would not be prudent to expose the lives of the men and valuable property we had hauled so far to the cupidity of the natives; and therefore a safe place for storage and for defense was the first necessity in selecting a headquarters. We had some hundred and fifty horses and mules, wagons, ambulances, arms, provisions, merchandise, mining, material,—and moreover, what ...
— Building a State in Apache Land • Charles D. Poston
... me that you will take the rooms for six months more?" she asked as I approached her, startling me by something coarse in her cupidity almost as much as if she had not already given me a specimen of it. Juliana's desire to make our acquaintance lucrative had been, as I have sufficiently indicated, a false note in my image of the woman ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... piece of black rock that had been carried home in the Gabriel was pronounced by a metallurgist, one Baptista Agnello, to contain gold; true, Agnello admitted in confidence that he had 'coaxed nature' to find the precious metal. But the rumour of the thing was enough. The cupidity of the London merchants was added to the ambitions of the court. There was no trouble about finding {15} ships and immediate funds for ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... the advocate continued. "The form of the answer given by the jury contained an evident contradiction. Maslova is accused of wilfully poisoning Smelkoff, her one object being that of cupidity, the only motive to commit murder she could have had. The jury in their verdict acquit her of the intent to rob, or participation in the stealing of valuables, from which it follows that they intended also to acquit her of ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... decision of the lower court. The teachers, on the other hand, defended their long effort in the courts, the State Board of Equalization, and the Legislature against the charge of "dragging the schools into politics," and declared that the exposure of the indifference and cupidity of the politicians was a well-deserved rebuke, and that it was the politicians who had brought the schools to the verge of financial ruin; they further insisted that the levy and collection of taxes, tenure of office, and pensions to civil servants in Chicago were ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... little affinity with virtue or with wisdom, persisted in his determination to put down the American rebels by force of arms; and his ministers submitted their judgment to his. Some of them were probably actuated merely by selfish cupidity; but their chief, Lord North, a man of high honour, amiable temper, winning manners, lively wit, and excellent talents both for business and for debate, must be acquitted of all sordid motives. He remained at a post ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cecil Rhodes. We are not only willing to take people at their own valuation, but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude romance—rich, stirring romance—into the lives of commonplace people, and they instantly lose their heads. Romance, more than cupidity, is what attracts ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... hurtful to our farmers, clerks and country milliners, than to those to whose tastes it was originally addressed,—as the small-pox is most fatal among the wild men of the woods,—and this, from the unprincipled cupidity of publishers, is broad-cast recklessly over all the land we had hoped would become a healthy asylum for those before crippled and tainted by hereditary abuses. This cannot be prevented; we can only make head against it, and show that there is ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of the bank was due to the fact that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and lust of gain. This is made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all classes of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... but unfold her page, and the truth of what I have just said will appear in lines written with human blood. It is from this, and this alone, that human laws have been instituted. It is self-preservation. This is the one single origin and basis of all human law. What protects me from the wrath or cupidity of those who would destroy or devour me, protects you; and inasmuch as all desire such protection, human governments, and laws with fearful penalties annexed, have been instituted. Right here, in a civil and social sense, the words of my text apply ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... The cupidity of those who were engaged in commerce with the natives, too frequently prompted them to take every advantage, for self aggrandizement, which they could obtain over the Indians. In the lucrative traffic carried on with them, the influence of honesty was not predominant—the real value ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and two pillars are preserved. It was in the latter temple that the statue of the god by Myron stood; it had probably been carried off to Carthage, was given to the temple by P. Scipio Africanus from the spoils of that city and aroused the cupidity of Verres. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... murdered, when the Soui dynasty came to an end, and with it the magnificent and costly palace erected at Loyang, which was denounced as only calculated "to soften the heart of a prince and to foment his cupidity." ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... on the 2d of January Hamilton sent in his Report on Public Credit. By this time excitement and anxiety, to say nothing of cupidity, were risen to fever pitch. All realized that they were well in the midst of a national crisis, for the country was bankrupt, and her foreign and domestic debts footed up to quite eighty millions of dollars—a stupendous sum in the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... State in other matters tries by numerous laws to protect such from their folly. A man may not sell a load of wood without the certificate from a licensed weighbridge or a loaf of bread without, if required, having to prove its weight; and we send those to gaol who practise on the credulity and cupidity of fools by means of the "confidence trick." Why not, therefore, where interests which may be said to be national are involved, endeavour ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... California be true, quantities of the most precious of all metals are found—not buried in mines, but scattered on the surface of the earth, and the fortunate adventurer may enrich himself beyond the dreams of avarice, almost without labour, without capital, and with no care but that which cupidity generates. The principle that the value of the precious metals, like other products of industry, is determined primarily by the cost of production, and then by scarcity, ideas of utility, and convenience, seems to be neutralized by this new discovery; and it becomes a curious ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... asked Captain Nelson to go with you, taking the treasure, to the barracks and see that the money is taken out of the cases and repacked in ammunition-boxes. It would be unwise in the extreme to tempt the cupidity of any wandering parties that you might fall in with by the sight of treasure-cases. Your suggestion quite justifies the opinion that I had formed of you from the brief narrative that you gave me of the battle of Corunna. For the present, gentlemen, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... her, her heart was in the grave. He spoke in such a broken voice that the girl's good-nature fought against her little pique at finding how little he was smitten with HER, and Falcon soon found means to array her cupidity on the side of her good-nature. He gave her a five-pound note to buy gloves, and promised her a fortune, and she undertook to be secret as the grave, and say certain things adroitly to ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... is no water there. Now there are certain given facts in slavery. Slavery is Barbarism. It consists in holding men to compulsory servitude. The human heart is avaricious; it gets all it can, and keeps all it gets. Give it complete power over a human being, and there are no limits to its cupidity and wrong-doing, but the finite nature of the thing itself. Hence, does it not follow that there can be no disinterestedness, no tender mercies in slavery? Yes, dear Aunt, as we are perfectly sure that there can be no water in the moon, so are we sure, by ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... This is the vocation of the boss and the briber and the political machinist; and a deadlier way of destroying manhood it would be hard to find. It is not only the interest of other individuals, but the interest of the whole community that the corrupt politician sacrifices upon the altar of cupidity or ambition; and when a man has learned to turn the one great privilege of service and sacrifice which citizenship offers into an opportunity of private gain, he has sunk about as low as man can go. What more urgent task has the church upon her hands than that of making men see the treachery ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... carvings and weird symbols showing the personification of those natural phenomena deified by primeval tribes. Sumatra, with her wealth of mines and forests and her important geographical position, remains as yet an almost undiscovered country, and though her undeveloped resources excite the cupidity and arouse the envy of European nations, political greed and private enterprise have proved powerless to open up the hidden treasures of the vast island, apparently intended by Nature to become the key of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... and was kept alive and lively by means of poles made to revolve in these floating fish-ponds, as I was informed by an alderman prior to the reform of that ancient borough. But lamprey has now either migrated, or been exterminated by clearing the Ouse of stones[5], or by the excessive cupidity of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... with those who care for trees, not alone with those who ought to care. To talk about the greatness and beauty of a fine oak or maple or tulip, to call attention to its shade value, and to appeal to the cupidity of the ground owner by estimating how much less his property will be worth when the trees are gone or have been mishandled, will aid to create the necessary public sentiment. And to provide wise laws, as may be often done with proper attention, is the plain ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... ecclesiastically, in the Banat, the Bulgars had been painfully keeping alive, until 1767, their lonely Patriarchate at Ochrida. Time and again the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople had tried to suppress it, at first on account of cupidity and afterwards, say the Bulgars, for fear lest it should help to arouse the Bulgarian national spirit; but that spirit had fallen to such a depth that the second edition of a comparative lexicon of the Slav languages, which was issued, at the behest of the Empress Catharine in 1791, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... or twelve distinct languages, must not be neglected. But all these allegations of superiority of race and destiny neither require nor deserve any answer. They are but pretences under which to disguise ambition, cupidity, or ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... possession of the English rendered the conquest of Canada inevitable and sure. The possession of that vast country of Canada, after so much blood, and such immense expenses it had cost the English in these different expeditions, excited too much the cupidity of the English to consent to a peace upon reasonable conditions, and induced them to extend their conquest ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... Spaniards call El Dorado, and the natives call Manoa.' Now he would go back to find the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious Manoa among those southern Mountains of Bright Stones which lay behind the Spanish Main. The king's cupidity was roused; and so, in 1617, Raleigh was commissioned as the admiral of fourteen sail. In November he arrived off the coast that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in the far recesses of ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... They got the money; and bade Gerard observe they were doing him a favour. He saw they wanted a little gratitude as well as much silver. He tried to satisfy this cupidity, but it stuck in his throat. Feigning was not ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... during its journeys, it was required that they should be delivered to it at low prices: the servants exacted more supplies than were wanted, and then sold the surplus for their own profit. In grotesque contrast with the disgraceful cupidity of his attendants is the exaggerated conception which James had formed for himself of the ideal importance of the royal authority, which at that time some persons attempted with metaphysical acuteness to lay down almost in the same terms as the attributes of the Deity. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... occurred from these premises, though some of the slaves were occasionally trusted out in the fields. He showed us the substantial clothing, shoes, &c., with which the slaves were supplied when sent to the South; a practice, I fear, enforced more by the cupidity of the buyers, than the humanity of the seller. Our informant stated, in answer to inquiries, that by the general testimony of the slaves purchased, they were treated better by the planters than was the case ten years ago. He also admitted the evils of the system, and said, with apparent sincerity, ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... managed the repeal of the decrees, and evaded a correction of other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory tendency of the repeal as much of irritation and disgust as possible." "In fact," he adds, "without a systematic change from an appearance of crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an open, manly, and upright dealing with a nation whose example demands it, it is impossible that good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which her policy aims at directing against her enemy should not, by her folly and ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... who had been picked up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Chistmas night, more than a year before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, "right into her hand." Not caring to disturb the doctor's examination of his patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing that it would be of service at the inquest. Her ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... both Holtzmann and Woodward arrested at once. They are thorough rascals, and your father is the innocent victim of their cupidity." ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... contemporary testimony, it is not easy to determine the exact line which should mark the measure of our skepticism. Certain it is, that the glowing picture I have given is warranted by those who saw these buildings in their pride, or shortly after they had been despoiled by the cupidity of their countrymen. Many of the costly articles were buried by the natives, or thrown into the waters of the rivers and the lakes; but enough remained to attest the unprecedented opulence of these religious establishments. Such things as were in their nature portable were ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... ought to be taught how to live. But those Minards are no better in their way. What cupidity! they've come here solely after Celeste. Your daughter will be lost to you if you let them have her. These parvenus have all the vices of the great lords of other days without their elegance. Minard's son, who has twelve thousand francs a year of his own, ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... remain powerful as long as private property continues to have a public economic function. But they would at least diminish the number of cases in which the influence of the mercenary motive made against rather than for excellence of work. The system which most encourages mere cupidity is one which affords too many opportunities for making "easy money," and our American system has, of course, been peculiarly prolific of such opportunities. As long as individuals are allowed to accumulate money from mines, urban real estate, municipal franchises, or semi-monopolies ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... voice. He has become a horror to me, and I resort to the most cowardly expedients to avoid meeting him. He, on the other hand, wanting another franc, dodges me round those trees at the corner, and at the back door; and I have a presentiment upon me that I shall fall a sacrifice to his cupidity at last. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... of antiquity, from the morning of man's cupidity and avarice, two sinister figures have crawled with crooked talons through history, leaving a trail of blood and fear most horrible which has not halted yet. These are the monarch and the priest. The one is symbolical of despotic or oligarchic power, the other typifies ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... a brief while, and we cheerfully go with him. The Biblical Delilah is a vague figure, except in two respects: She is a woman of such charms that she wins the love of Samson, and such guile and cupidity that she plays upon his passion and betrays him to the lords of the Philistines for pay. The Bible knows nothing of her patriotism, nor does the sacred historian give her the title of Samson's wife, though it has long been the custom of Biblical commentators to speak of ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... good-natured magnate provided for them. It is quite otherwise with the mob of stay-at-home gamblers; they do not care a rush for the horses; they long, with all the crazy greed of true dupes, to gain money without working for it, and that is where the mischief comes in. Cupidity, mean anxieties, unwholesome excitements, gradually sap the morality of really sturdy fellows—the last shred of manliness is torn away, and the ordinary human intelligence is replaced by repulsive vulpine cunning. If you can look at a little group of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... made no answer; there was nothing to be said. He was shaken by a burning anger at the cupidity, the ugly commercial grasping, to which his father had been sacrificed. A gulf opened between him and his brother and James Saltonstone; he was as different from them as the sea was from the land, as the wind-swept deck of the Nautilus was from this dry building with its stifling papers ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Equality, Fraternity, a true manifestation of hope and faith at the beginning of the Revolution, soon merely served to cover a legal justification of the sentiments of jealousy, cupidity, and hatred of superiors, the true motives of crowds unrestrained by discipline. This is why the Revolution so soon ended in disorder, ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... Bohemians, too, who passed the Pont du Gard each spring and autumn, inspired the inmates of the chateau with no slight dread, as it seemed more than likely they would take advantage of the general disorder that prevailed to commit depredations upon any isolated dwellings that tempted their cupidity. Moreover, north of Nimes there were several villages whose fanatical and intensely excited inhabitants were strongly urged by their leaders to make an attack upon the Catholics, who were accused of opposition to the reform movement. It was rumored that these people ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... holding back the child, or so I now believed, in order to wring a larger, possibly a double, amount from the wretched mother. Fifty thousand was a goodly sum, but one hundred thousand was better; and this man had gigantic ideas where his cupidity was concerned. I remember how firmly he had once stood out for ten thousand dollars when he had been offered five; and I began to see, though in an obscure way as yet, how it might very easily be a part of his plan to work Mrs. Ocumpaugh up to a positive belief in the child's ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... strength. We must be cool, far- sighted, and impartial in such times as these. And yet, how has this campaign been hitherto conducted? Practically, by raising a party cry; by exciting every species of evil passion of which man is capable; by tickling the cupidity of one man and flattering the ambitions of another; by intimidating the weak, and groveling before the strong; by every species of fawning sycophancy on the one hand, and brutal ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... between terror and cupidity. Above waited the Castle folk. It was an amusing game for those who stood safely along the parapet and watched, one that convulsed them with merriment. Also, it improved the quality of those horses that grazed ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hour and a half of display he pointed out to King all of the great personages, giving a Baedeker-like account of their doings from childhood up, quite satisfying that gentleman's curiosity and involving his cupidity at ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... theory concerning the object for which the Templars were suppressed falls to the ground—a theory which on examination is seen to be built up entirely on the plan of imputing motives without any justification in facts. The King acted from cupidity, the Pope from servility, and the Templars confessed from fear of torture—on these pure hypotheses defenders of the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... is you are mistaken," continued Mrs. Wiley." As the times go, Cupid has grown to cupidity, and seeks his match in money ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... deep principle, but rather of high adventure and of the alluring mystery of discovery. Religion, however, very soon became its prevailing impulse. The expedition of Verrazzano had its raison d'etre in nothing higher than the cupidity of Francis I., who was dazzled by legends of Mexican gold and Peruvian silver; but religion inspired Cartier to his ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... caravan may excite his cupidity, and he may be induced to delay us to obtain possession of its contents. However, we had better put this question to the Griquas, who probably can answer ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that under no circumstances would we give back the Philippine people to Spain. That was true. I believed then, and believe now, that it was our duty to deliver them from Spain, to protect them against her, or against the cupidity of any other nation until her people could have tried fully the experiment of self- government, in which I have little ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the subject of publication, I must add one thing more, which appeals to me to be of vital importance to the respectability and efficiency of such a Society. It must not build its hopes, and stake its existence, on the cupidity of subscribers—it must not live on appeals to their covetousness—it must not be, nor act as if it were, a joint-stock company formed to undersell the trade. It must not rest on the chance of getting subscribers who will shut their eyes, and open their mouths, and take what is given them, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... pickpockets ply their trade in this as in every other gaping crowd—what has all this to do with the impression produced on the mind of every man and woman throughout the kingdom, by the knowledge that if he, through sudden passion, or the instigations of cupidity, take the life of a fellow-creature, he shall be—not a spectator at such an exhibition—but that solitary crawling wretch who, after having spent his days and nights in agony and fear, is thrust forward, bound and pinioned, to be hanged up there like a dog before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... a king or a corpse. So long as he remained in exile the Republicans would never attempt to confiscate the private fortune of the banished monarch; while, on the other hand, the royal exile would not venture to appeal to the courts against his banker, thereby exposing his enormous wealth to the cupidity ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... principal chief fixed his covetous eye upon an axe, and expressed a most eager desire to become possessed of it. Captain Owen, however, notwithstanding his wish to conciliate the natives as much as possible, did not think proper to gratify his cupidity; but he promised, that it should be presented to the King at the next interview with him. In the afternoon, a tornado arose and drove most of the canoes away; the chiefs, however, remained on board until it was over, and then left us under an arrangement that the Captain should pay a visit ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... surprised him very much, for he shrugged his shoulders, and raised his thick eyebrows with a doubtful and incredulous look. At this moment the gilt buttons upon Max's jacket seemed to strike the fancy of one of our new friends, and excited his cupidity to such a degree, that after fixing upon them a long and admiring gaze, he suddenly reached over and made a snatch at them. He got hold of one, and in trying to pull it off came very near jerking Max overboard. Morton, who was sitting next to Max, interfered, and caught ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... of men marched about, their faces lighted up as for holy war, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle the passion for equality from the passion of cupidity, when begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the God was the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of the great productive machine. Every man equally was part of this Godhead. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... and employed his wealth solely for the consolidation of his political influence. By these arts Cosimo became formidable to the oligarchs and beloved by the people. His supporters were numerous, and held together by the bonds of immediate necessity or personal cupidity. The plebeians and the merchants were all on his side. The Grandi and the Ammoniti, excluded from the State by the practices of the Albizzi, had more to hope from the Medicean party than from the few families who still contrived to hold the reins of government. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... left the house of their father, either from a latent superstition, or from a family cupidity, Rachel stole the household gods of Laban and secreted them; and with an art worthy of the daughter of Laban, she prevented her father from reclaiming them; thus paving the way for the introduction of idolatry into the household of Jacob. He had already introduced polygamy by his marriage ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... have passed away. At the time when I first stepped upon these grounds the red man still grasped the sceptre which has since been wrenched from his hand. They saw the throne of their father beginning to totter. Their realm had attracted the cupidity of a race of strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... His cupidity was excited, and he felt sure of winning the dollar, as he had the twenty-five cents. But James had no idea of playing off now, and he played a better game, as he was well able to do. The result was that Mark was beaten by ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... brought to France from Peru. He considered it from every possible point of view, and when at last he heard of the final disposition which it had been determined to make of the gold, he considered it from the point of his own cupidity and innate rascality. ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... Mr. and Mrs. Camilla turned up. Camilla was Mr. Pocket's sister. Georgiana, whom I had seen at Miss Havisham's on the same occasion, also turned up. She was a cousin,—an indigestive single woman, who called her rigidity religion, and her liver love. These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment. As a matter of course, they fawned upon me in my prosperity with the basest meanness. Towards Mr. Pocket, as a grown-up infant with no notion of his own interests, they showed the complacent forbearance I had heard them ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... which he had contributed to the fund. Closing the pocket-book, he carelessly placed it in an outside pocket. James Martin stood in such a position that the contents of the pocket-book were revealed to him, and the demon of cupidity entered his heart. How much good this money would do him! There were probably several hundred dollars in all, perhaps more. He saw the banker put the money in his pocket,—the one nearest to him. He might easily take it without ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... was aware that in his own territory he was exposed to constant danger of detection, yet he plainly saw that escape to the United States was impossible in his present apparel. The hue-and-cry would describe him accurately; the law would put a price upon his head; and what the cupidity of ordinary mankind is he well knew. He had a half dozen sovereigns and a bank-note in his pocket-book; but were he to attempt to purchase rougher clothes attention would at once be attracted to him. As the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... neighbours to Wildschloss. He had delayed his distasteful marriage as long as possible, and it had caused him nothing but trouble and strife; his children would not live, and Thekla, the only survivor, was, as his sole heiress, a mark for the cupidity of her uncle, the Count of Trautbach, and his almost savage son Lassla; while the right to the Wildschloss barony would become so doubtful between her and Ebbo, as heir of the male line, that strife and bloodshed would be well-nigh ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dazzled eyes of the French ambassadors. Unfortunately the presents which he gave them on their departure seemed to them poor and insignificant, after the marvels which they had seen in the Castello, and their cupidity was but ill-satisfied. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... novels, contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson England can learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England has been over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever baying at Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is useful to have these well-meaning animals on the political premises, giving noisy tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and opens his drowsy eyes, ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... servility, knowing full well that at each turn of its wheel new pains or fresh diseases will be inflicted. And what power controls and gives life to this mistress of modern civilization? At whose behest is this crime against reason, life, and posterity perpetrated? The cupidity of the shrewd and unscrupulous and the caprice of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... it is sufficiently serious to call for careful study and an attempt at solution. The negro race in America numbers approximately ten millions, twice as many as at the close of the Civil War. The negro was thrust upon America by the cupidity of the foreign slave-trader, and perpetuated by the difficulty of getting along without him. His presence has been in some ways beneficial to himself and to the whites among whom he settled, but it has been impossible for two races so diverse to live on a plane of equality, and the burden of education ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... very, very deep down his self-confidence was underlaid with quicksand. But Herron was adroit and convincing to the degree attainable only by those who deceive themselves before trying to deceive others; and James' cupidity and conceit were enormous. He ended by persuading himself that his house, directed and protected by his invincible self, could carry with ease the burden of both loads. Indeed, the Great Lakes gamble ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... pearls and jewels, were wickedly converted to the service of mankind; as if any thing whose value is merely fictitious, could render more service to mankind than when dedicated to an use which is equally the solace of the rich and the poor—which gratifies the eye without exciting cupidity, soothes the bed of sickness, and heals the wounds of conscience. Yet I am no advocate for the profuse decorations of Catholic churches; and if I seem to plead in their behalf, it is that I recollect no instance where the depredators ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... and both hated Spaniards. Wakening from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced when he learned their purpose to abandon Florida; for although, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid from him the secret of their Appalachian gold mine, he coveted for his royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head, however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and offered them all a free passage to ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... his uncouth gestures, which were almost spasms, and the changes in his face—from cupidity to terror, and from terror again to a kind of wistful hope—fairly frightened me, and I stammered stupidly that death was the common lot, and there couldn't be a doubt of it; that or something of the sort. But what I said does not matter. ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Washington in 1910. Following close upon it comes the signal victory of California, where as never before were the friends and foes of woman's freedom so equally lined up. Wherever vice, corruption and cupidity held sway, there the vote for woman suffrage was weak. Wherever refinement, education, industry and self-respecting manhood and womanhood dwelt, there the vote in favor of women was strong. These are the battles in this war for justice which have ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... had remained on the beach to watch the movements of the supposed pirates. The boxes of collections were at once carried to a place of concealment which had been arranged, and a few other articles which were likely to excite the cupidity of the pirates. All things were now ready for commencing our march, but we were unwilling to begin it till we ascertained that we were really likely to be attacked. We were still in hopes that the pirates might pass by, or land on some other part of the coast where they were ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the vicissitudes of Jerusalem, being, both from its situation and the nature of the relics which it contains, exposed to the rage or cupidity of barbarian conquerors. It fell under the power of the Saracens when led by their victorious calif; but for seven centuries it has been guarded by a succession of religious persons who, it has been said, suffer a perpetual ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... oppressor of an enslaved people, robbed of their honor, independence, and nationality. Now, I commenced this war for the sake of my own honor and that of my people. I commenced it to set bounds to French cupidity and thirst for conquest; to preserve to Germany her German and to Prussia her Prussian character, and to drive back the Confederation of the Rhine beyond the frontier of the Rhine. The fortune of war has not sustained me in these efforts, and ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... navigation laws of the monopolists. The little vessels, trading between North Carolinia and New England, brought many articles to the southern colonies, which they were incapable of producing. English cupidity envied them their small prosperity, and the navigation laws of 1672 were put in force. An agent of the government appeared, who demanded a penny for every pound of tobacco sent to New England. The colonists resisted the levy and the tax-gatherer became rude and had ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... horses, required very large fleets and thousands of mariners, which probably belonged chiefly to great maritime cities. These cities with their dependencies required even more vessels for communication with one another than for Rome herself,—the great central object of enterprise and cupidity. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... the suspicion that the cupidity of the Farnese was the cause of the criminal relations, for Giulia's sins were rewarded by nothing less than the bestowal of the cardinal's purple on her brother Alessandro. The Pope had already designated him, among others, for the honor, but the nomination was delayed by the opposition ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... when he found that the unscrupulous governor had been trying to stir up the Maoris of the Bay of Islands to claim the restitution of their lands. Nothing but their strong affection and loyalty towards "Te Wiremu" could have enabled them to resist this appeal to their cupidity. But underhand dealing was the one thing that Williams could not bear, and he would hold no more communication with Governor Grey on the subject. His sons were of age: let them carry ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... that without it no communication could have been carried on with the people inhabiting the sea-coasts and islands of the eastern parts of India. But even this knowledge, it is probable, extended no farther than to the names of substances imperatively alluring to the cupidity of Dutch merchants. What, alas! could be expected of intellectual energy or enterprize, from men who had surrendered their souls to mammon, and whose only remaining care it was, to guzzle gin and devour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... laughter that glares on the stage. When men are heroically dying for their country, it is not the time to show their lovers and wives and fathers and mothers how they are being sacrificed to the blunders of boobies, the cupidity of capitalists, the ambition of conquerors, the electioneering of demagogues, the Pharisaism of patriots, the lusts and lies and rancors and bloodthirsts that love war because it opens their prison ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... all over the kingdom. Now the Duroban General felt eager to test his discovery in a campaign, and, happening to have a quarrel with a politician in the neighbouring state, did his utmost to excite hostile feeling against Kalaya. On the other hand, the Kalayan official, his cupidity excited by the profits already arising from his invention, desired nothing better than some stirring event which would lead to still greater demand for the news-sheets he distributed, and so he also was led to the idea of stirring ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... no duties in the way of repairing a roof or making a house comfortable. Such a thing is utterly unknown here. To fix the rent, to collect the rent, to make office rules as whim or cupidity dictates, to enforce them, in many instances with great brutality, is the sole business of the landlord; and the whole power of the Executive of England is at his back. This is not a good school in which to learn loyalty. Submission to absolute decrees or eviction are ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... Mexican valley of the Chaco, one degree or more north of Zuni, are ruins of what some suppose to have been the famous "Seven Cities of Cevola." In 1540, Spanish cupidity having been strongly incited by tales of the greatness and vast wealth of Cevola, Coronado, then governor of New Galicia, set out with an army to conquer and rob its cities. The report in which he tells ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... not recur to memory even in dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his inordinate cupidity, have caused him to ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... the attack on Hatteras Inlet was sure to end in failure,—they nevertheless thought it the part of wisdom to prepare for the worst; and they at once began the work of concealing everything that was likely to excite the cupidity of the lawless Union soldiers. Remembering what their Mobile papers had said about the ragged, half-starved appearance of the Massachusetts troops who marched through the streets of Baltimore, they even hid their clothing ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... slab of wood, to the north of Fort Andrews, may be seen a zinc plate, erected by me to the memory of my friend, with his name, the date of his death, and an epitome of the circumstances attending it. This memento of regard has, in all probability, escaped the cupidity of the Indians, for I took the precaution to have it placed as much out of sight as possible, and the place of burial was off the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... him his house on the condition of his giving an inventory of his furniture and paying a yearly rent, and coming during eight days to live in a shed adjoining the domain, thus performing an act of service. The silversmith, to whom everyone spoke of the cupidity of the monks, saw clearly that the abbot would incommutably maintain this order, and his soul was filled with despair. At one time he determined to burn down the monastery; at another, he proposed ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... the war. A general lack of confidence in the stability of the Government prevented men from taking up readily the loans which the Government was forced to call for. Various expedients were adopted to attract the cupidity of capitalists. Among these the most successful was the custom of receiving loans upon tontines. This was a species of annuity. Twenty or thirty persons united in the purchase from Government of an annuity upon the joint ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... The doctrine is an open invitation to transgression and usurpation. The judicious disposition of a few troops in the capitals of disputed States, on the day of the electoral vote, will perpetuate an Administration just so long as the audacity of a President, or the cupidity of his office-holders, may find it desirable; unless, indeed, it be found, as is most likely, that the ways of fraud are cheaper, easier, and less palpable than the ways ...
— The Vote That Made the President • David Dudley Field
... measure authorizing this loan was rather a peculiar one. Five millions were to be borrowed indiscriminately, of any man or body of men willing to advance the money on the securities offered. First come, first served, was not written, but it was implied. It was this which roused my curiosity, or cupidity, if you will." ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... able to dive into the unconscious thoughts buried in the depths of his brain. And by a singular counter-effect all the things that he had never owned to himself he now found in his child's eyes—he beheld them, read them there, against his will. The story of his cupidity lay unfolded before him, his anger at having such a sorry son, his anguish at the idea that Madame Chaise's fortune depended upon such a fragile existence, his eager desire that she might make haste and die ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... seems to bring the dead man to life again. He's one of the worst type of young bounders I ever came into contact with. A creature without sentiment or feeling of any sort—nothing but an almost ravenous cupidity. He's wearing his brother's clothes now—thinks nothing of it! He hasn't a single regret. I haven't heard a single decent word pass his lips. But he wants the money. Nothing ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... theory which would explain the mystery: it was that Motoza, yielding to his implacable enmity of the youth, had placed him beyond all reach of his friends. The spirit of revenge with an American Indian is tenfold stronger than cupidity. It was not improbable that the miscreant, having committed the unspeakable crime, was concealing it from Tozer, his ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... refutation of the implied dishonesty of the boy he had trusted. He found himself gazing straight into the small shifty eyes of Lucretia's midget rider, and such a hungry, wolfish look of mingled cunning and cupidity was there that Porter almost shuddered. The insinuations of Mike Gaynor, and the other things that pointed at a job being on, hadn't half the force of the dishonesty that was so apparent in the tell-tale look of the morally, irresponsible boy in whose hands he was so completely ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... been too much under the rule of professional ditchers. Having no well defined ideas of good drainage work, they have left the matter largely to the judgment, or rather the cupidity of the ditcher and the layer. There are many first-class, conscientious workmen, but it is to be regretted that the average ditcher does work far below the standard of excellence. If by some magic means the conditions of many of the drains in our State ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... with anger, his brows lowered. Something of his indignation was reflected in the faces of all of them—momentarily a queer sort of cupidity seemed to have stolen into their expressions. Maraton shrugged his ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sympathizing friends, all trying in every way possible, to recover from the merciless grasp of the man-stealer, the two frightened and screaming children. Guns were fired and horns sounded, but all to no purpose—they held tightly the innocent victims of their cupidity, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... S. P. Stickney, one of the most respectable and talented of old time circus men; Sam and Robert Stickney, sons; Emma Stickney, his daughter; Tom King and wife, Millie Turnour, Jimmy Reynolds, the clown whose salary of one hundred dollars a week had so excited the cupidity of Alfred; Woody Cook, who came from Cookstown, Fayette County, only a few miles from Brownsville, and who, like Alfred had left home to seek his fortune; James Kelly, champion leaper of the world; James Cook and wife, of the Cook ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... that wildest region of the then little-settled state of Georgia—doubly wild as forming the debatable land between the savage and the civilized—partaking of the ferocity of the one and the skill, cunning, and cupidity of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... governmental superiority over the neighboring peoples, yet sooner or later there accompanied it a certain softness or enervating quality which left the cultured folk at the mercy of the stark and greedy neighboring tribes, in whose savage souls cupidity gradually overcame terror and awe. Then the people that had been struggling upward would be engulfed, and the levelling waves of barbarism wash over them. But we are not yet in position to speak definitely on ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... he would now, he was a tempting bait offered to treason and cupidity. In what human creature could he confide? Under what roof could ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... to their cupidity,—reminding them that the merchant, "for God's sake bias," would pay a far higher price for himself and ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... persons, who, to use the words of a well known Scottish adage, "can never see green cheese but their een reels." He was extremely covetous and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart. The following story is in corroboration of this assertion:—Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor lonely widow, living in a moorland part of the parish, he became fascinated by the charms of a little cast-iron pot, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... His inherited cupidity was aroused. Eager to get Halsey and Jack Bailey out of the house, he went up to the east entry, and in the billiard-room gave the cashier what he had refused earlier in the evening—the address of Paul Armstrong ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... may be a justification of violence, did not exist—it was only the high price of provisions, growing out of scarcity, that caused it, but which scarcity, they were told, was created solely by the cupidity of the rich. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... curious strain of cupidity in Maggie. I have never been able to understand it. With her own money she is as free as air. But let her see a chance for illegitimate gain, of finding a penny on the street, of not paying her fare on the cars, of passing a bad quarter, and she is filled with an unholy ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
