"Exorbitant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burdens of seemingly interminable wars and exorbitant taxes, her king revelled in excessive luxury; the aim of his favorite mistress seemed to be to acquire wealth and spend it lavishly for her own pleasure. Voluptuousness, cruelty, and extravagance were the keynotes of the time. All means were used to procure revenues, the king easing any pangs ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... a malady; be courteous. I'll undertake, before these honour'd fathers, He shall have yet as many left diseases, As she has known adulterers, or thou strumpets.— O, my most equal hearers, if these deeds, Acts of this bold and most exorbitant strain, May pass with sufferance; what one citizen But owes the forfeit of his life, yea, fame, To him that dares traduce him? which of you Are safe, my honour'd fathers? I would ask, With leave of your grave fatherhoods, if their plot Have any face or colour like to truth? Or if, unto ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... Englishman born, but he had been forty years in America. He will be remembered by those who have read "Paul the Peddler." Though nearly as poverty-stricken in appearance as his poorest customers, the old man was rich, if reports were true. His business was a very profitable one, allowing the most exorbitant rates of interest, and, being a miser, he spent almost nothing on himself, so that his hoards had ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... will not patronize the bear; consider that peremptory. What, Mr. Bookworm, again! I hope you have succeeded better this time: the old songs had an autumn fit upon them, and had lost the best part of their leaves; and Plato had mortgaged one half his 'Republic,' to pay, I suppose, the exorbitant sum you thought proper to set upon the other. As for Diogenes Laertius, and ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Austria against the rising for freedom and national right in Hungary; that urged intolerable demands upon the Sultan for the surrender of the Hungarian refugees. Others again counted the power of Russia already exorbitant, and saw in its extension peril to Europe, and mischief to the interests of England. Russia on the Danube, they said, means Russia on the Indus. Russia at Constantinople would mean a complete revolution in the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and to an alarmed vision, a Russia that had ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... his heart full of hope and courage, John selected a dingy room in a back street, where the terms were less exorbitant than elsewhere, and conveyed thither the two boxes which contained his worldly goods. After taking up his quarters there he had half a mind to change again, for the landlady and the fellow-lodgers were by no means to his taste; but the Montreal coach ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... smile, 'I ever give a thought to another, you may well spare it, for those fancies are here and gone like a flash of lightning, while my love for you burns on steadily, and for ever, like the sun. You little exorbitant tyrant, will not that—?' ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... he visited a rare book dealer in York City, and for an exorbitant fifty credits purchased a fifth-edition copy of An Investigation into the Possibility of Faster-than-Light Space Travel, by James H. Cavour. He had left his copy of the work aboard the Valhalla, along with the few personal possessions ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... of Santo Domingo for one hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars, and began to build the edifice, employing foreign workmen at exorbitant prices. In this he spent so much of his capital, that he was obliged to have recourse to the Bank of Avio for assistance. The bank (avio meaning pecuniary assistance, or advance of funds) was established by Don Lucas Alaman, and intended as an encouragement to industry. But industry ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... endowed with military genius, Theodore was a bad administrator. To attach his soldiery to his cause, he lavished upon them immense sums of money; he was therefore forced to exact exorbitant tributes, almost to drain the land of its last dollar, in order to satisfy his rapacious followers. Finding himself at the head of a powerful host, and feeling either reluctant or afraid to dismiss them to their homes, he longed ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... thenceforth on there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail; not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there was also wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, turnips, and the like. Sugar was made by tapping the maple trees; but salt was bought at a very exorbitant price at the Falls, being carried down in boats from the old Redstone Fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the young men and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending their labor by an hour or two's search for ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... not like in them was that they were leading a dissipated and depraved life, without their fathers' knowledge, and that the money they were spending was either stolen from their parents or borrowed on long-termed promissory notes, to be paid with exorbitant interest. They in turn did not like him for this very reserve and aversion, which contained the pride so offensive to them. He was timid about speaking to people older than himself, fearing lest he should appear in their eyes ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... the Royal authority, and held sederunts at Aberdeen and Dundee as well as at Edinburgh, gratified their malignity, after Montrose gave up the fight in 1646, by fining the loyalists in enormous amounts of money, and decerning them to "lend" to the committee such sums - in many cases exorbitant - as they thought proper. Sir Robert Farquhar, formerly a Bailie of Aberdeen, was treasurer, and in the sederunt held in that city, the committee threw a comprehensive net over the clan Mackenzie. Sixteen of the name were decerned to lend the large sum of L28,666 ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... went to Kazmah's and returned with the little flasks of perfume. When an accredited representative was sent upon such a mission, Kazmah dispatched the drugs disguised in a scent flask; but on each successive occasion that Nina went to him the prices increased, and finally became so exorbitant that even Rita grew ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... general notice, and offered it for sale to the French Government at the price of 60,000 francs; this they declined, and its proprietor struck of nearly 20,000 francs from the amount; still the sum was deemed exorbitant, and with all their bibliomanical enthusiasm, the conservers of the Royal Library allowed the treasure to escape. M. Passavant subsequently brought it to England, where it was submitted to the Duke of Sussex, still ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... become intimately lie. They wrote in the same journal, and he willingly accepted a distraction from his self-conflict which Edgar offered him in a dinner at the cafe Riche, which still offered its hospitalities at no exorbitant price. At this repast, as the drink circulated, Gustave waxed confidential. He longed, poor youth, for an adviser. Could he marry a girl who had been a ballet-dancer, and who had come into an unexpected heritage? "Es-tu fou d'en douter?" cried Edgar. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... accordingly they did. Without leave-taking, or any ceremony, they quitted Florence; nor did they rest until they had arrived in England and established themselves in a small house in London, where, by living with extreme parsimony and lending at exorbitant usances, they prospered so well that in the course of a few years they amassed a fortune; and so, one by one, they returned to Florence, purchased not a few of their former estates besides many others, and married. The management of their affairs in England, where they continued ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... not—there are persons who are willing to get you out of prison at no great cost; and as for the informers they are far from being exorbitant in their demands—a little money will satisfy them. My means, which are certainly ample, are at your service, and if you have a scruple about spending all mine, here are strangers who will give you the use of theirs; ...
— Crito • Plato
... supplies for reducing the exorbitant power of France be such, as may soon turn your wreaths of laurel into branches of olive: that, after the toils of a just and honourable war, carried on by a confederacy of which your majesty is most truly, as of the faith, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... inestimable jewel. After satisfying the demands of war and superstition he might appropriate the rest of his revenue to use and pleasure. But the Italians of the eleventh century were imperfectly skilled in the liberal and mechanical arts; the objects of foreign luxury were furnished at an exorbitant price by the merchants of Pisa and Venice; and the superfluous wealth which could not purchase the real comforts of life, were idly wasted on some rare occasions of vanity and pomp. Such were the nuptials of Boniface, Duke or Marquis of Tuscany, ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... pushed her advantage. The Apothecaries' Hall prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified before the degree could be granted. These she attended in private, paying the most exorbitant fees to her teachers. In one instance, in which a man's fee would have been five guineas she paid fifty! I am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps must have been L2,000. All honor to Miss Garrett. Should her genius as a physician equal her energy ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... made such a drain on the female population of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great part of the time, impossible to keep any servants at all; and what we can hire are of the poorest quality, and want exorbitant wages. My wife was a well-trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that pertains to the care of a family; but she has three little children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks old; and can any one woman do all that is needed for such a household? Something must be trusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... oriental splendour about all his work, albeit an earthly splendour. He became, accordingly, an audacious epicurean who "failed to find any world but this," and set himself to make the best of what he found. His was not an exorbitant ambition nor a fiery passion of any kind. The bitterness and cynicism of it all remind us of the inscription upon Sardanapalus' tomb—"Eat, drink, play, the rest is not worth the snap of a finger." Drinking-cups have been discovered with such inscriptions on them—"The future is utterly useless, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... centralization of power over this important portion to the trade is, we are told,[2] defended in the columns of the "Times," as "tending to bring down the price of school-books; for booksellers who possess copyrights, now sell their books at exorbitant prices, and, by underselling them, the commissioners will be able to beat them." Judging from this, it would seem almost necessary, if this treaty is to be ratified, that there should be added some provision authorizing our government ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... ink, the indiction, or tax levy of each diocese, which was set up in its principal city, and when this proved insufficient, an additional tax, or superindiction, was imposed. Lands, cattle, and slaves were all heavily taxed, and the declining agriculture of the empire was finally ruined by the exorbitant demands of the state. In Campania alone, once the most fertile part of Italy, one eighth of the whole province lay uncultivated, and the condition of Gaul seems to have been no better. Besides this, merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, and citizens were taxed beyond ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... sleepless in the agency lodging house, on a dirty bed occupied by two women besides herself. In all her life she had never been inside such a filthy room, or heard such frightful conversation. Therefore next morning she gladly paid her exorbitant bill of one dollar and seventy-five cents, besides a fee of two dollars and a half for obtaining employment, and accepted ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... are now almost unobtainable. Taxicabs are to be secured only after much delay and at exorbitant prices. It has become more and more a waste of time for me to cross Paris on foot each morning and evening and to do much of my Embassy work at the same disadvantage. I have attempted to solve the difficulty by engaging by the week one of those ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... 1692 indicated a more sympathetic attitude on the part of the legislators toward the physicians and surgeons. While in the earlier acts preventing exorbitant fees the court had been ordered to decide upon just compensation, the later act allowed the physician or surgeon to charge whatever he declared under oath in court to be just for medicines. Nor did the act of 1692 make reference to "rigorous though ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... freight, traveling in the vessel's hold under Colonel Snow's name, was a long box shaped like an old-fashioned piano case, which had nothing to do with Colonel Snow's enterprises. Despite the fact that it weighed more than half a ton, the boys had clubbed together to pay the rather exorbitant freight charges upon it. Superfluous as it appeared at one time to the Colonel, it was destined to play an important part in the Scouts' adventures in the ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... recovery—God grant that he be not deceived. There is my explanation; it is sad enough, Poole, ay, and appalling to consider; but it is plain and natural, hangs well together, and delivers us from all exorbitant alarms." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scores of loan companies that charged exorbitant rates of interest and had their contracts so arranged that a failure to pay put them in possession of the household goods of the party in debt. It was also held to be a criminal offense punishable by a term in the penitentiary for a person to borrow money from more than ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... AND JULIET, HENRY IV., KING JOHN, the MERCHANT OF VENICE, and AS YOU LIKE IT, all of which exhibit a great advance on the methods of LOVE'S LABOUR LOST, with its rhymes and sonnets and "concetti." The leap suggested by M. Chasles is exorbitant; such a headlong development would be unintelligible. Shakspere had first to come practically into touch with the realities of life and character before he could receive from Montaigne the full stimulus he actually did undergo. Plastic as he was, he none ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... committee's task was the examination of the affairs of life insurance companies doing business in the state of New York; its attorney was Charles E. Hughes. The results of the investigation amazed the country. The exorbitant salaries paid to officers, the unreasonable expenses incurred and the disregard of the rights of the policy holders were of concern chiefly to persons doing business with the companies. But it also appeared ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... is the ability of the negro to bear these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... down his cigar and looked at him. "Isn't it a little exorbitant? You get the land at cost value, and a heavy charge on that, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... so heinous that nobody had courage to stand up in his favour. It was finally resolved, without a dissentient voice, that Mr. Aislabie had encouraged and promoted the destructive execution of the South Sea scheme with a view to his own exorbitant profit, and had combined with the directors in their pernicious practices to the ruin of the public trade and credit of the kingdom: that he should for his offences be ignominiously expelled from the House of Commons, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... armies for bread, by reason of their poverty, which is the reason that Marius, to whom the care of the government ought not to have been committed, was the first that led them into the field;" and his success was accordingly. There is a mean in things; as exorbitant riches overthrow the balance of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty cannot hold it, nor is by any means to be trusted with it. The clause in the order concerning the prodigal is Athenian, and a very laudable one; for he that could ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... above, a favorable climate and an extraordinarily fertile soil, but he has a laboring population, perhaps the best, the most easily managed, the kindliest, and—so far as habits affect the steadiness and usefulness of the laborer—the least vicious in the world. He does not have to pay exorbitant wages; he is not embarrassed to feed or house them, for food is so abundant and cheap that economy in its distribution is of no moment; and the Hawaiian is ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... only draws two feet, she can pass over the rocks with great ease. In the afternoon we stop at a village and ask for wood, for as there was no regular steamer service, there were no organised Wood Posts. The natives at first brought down a log or two and demanded payment at an exorbitant rate, which the captain refused to give, and it became necessary for our crew to go ashore and cut wood themselves. The Chief seemed willing to deal fairly, but evidently had little authority over his ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... changed for better or worse, and looked to that first reading as the creation of my world; for when we are young the less circumstantial, the further from common life a book is, the more does it touch our hearts and make us dream. We are idle, unhappy and exorbitant, and like the young Blake admit no city beautiful that is not ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... unjust, as Victor could feel, though he did not know how coldly unjust. For among the exorbitant requisitions upon their fellow-creatures made by the young, is the demand, that they be definite: no mercy is in them for the transitional. And Dudley—and it was under her influence, and painfully, not ignobly—was in process of development: interesting to philosophers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that there was still living in his old country a Mrs. Emilius when he married Lady Eustace; and, though it had been supposed by those who were most nearly concerned with Lady Eustace that this report had been unfounded and malicious, nevertheless, when the man's claims became so exorbitant, reference was again made to the charge of bigamy. If it could be proved that Mr. Emilius had a wife living in Bohemia, a cheaper mode of escape would be found for the persecuted lady than that which he himself ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... empty. But in London they seem to be ready to put up with any excuse. Why the men who ought to deliver the coals are not made to, I can't imagine. Anyhow, as I was freezing, I moved into lodgings, where there is coal, although an exorbitant price is ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... surface with much distinctness any such object as the Capitol at Washington. It is complained that in America wealth is selfish and self-centred; that the millionaire cares only for himself and the increase of his already exorbitant estate. The ambition of such men as Lick of San Jose and Yerkes of Chicago, seems to ameliorate the severe judgment of mankind respecting the holders of the wealth of the world, and even to transform ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... evidence of fraud, and has no option but to decree it in terms of the deed. This evil is likely to be remedied very shortly, as the Government of India have announced a proposal to introduce the recent English Act and allow the courts the discretion to go behind contracts, and to refuse to decree exorbitant interest or other hard bargains. This urgently needed reform will, it may be hoped, greatly improve the character of the civil administration by encouraging the courts to realise that it is their business ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... I had no desire to purchase this place of entertainment, the exorbitant value set on it by its proprietors did not ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... attention of the legislature, who were determined to prune the exorbitant shoot. For in 1465 we find an order of council, prohibiting the growth of the shoe toe, to more than two inches, under the penalty of a dreadful curse from the priest, and, which was worse, the payment of twenty shillings ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... to climb if they could only gain a clear passage by this river from the interior plateau to the sea, made friends with the native chiefs of Uzegura, and succeeded in establishing it as a thoroughfare. Avarice, however, that fatal enemy to the negro chiefs, made them overreach themselves by exorbitant demands of taxes. Then followed contests for the right of appropriating the taxes, and the whole ended in the closing of the road, which both parties were equally anxious to keep open for their mutual gain. This foolish disruption ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Emperor Romanus Argyrus (1028-1034) confined Prussianus, a relative of the Bulgarian royal family, on a charge of treason;[446] and there Michael VII., nicknamed Parapinakes (the peck-filcher), because he sold wheat at one-fourth of its proper weight, and then at an exorbitant price, ultimately retired after his deposition.[447] The connection of so many prominent persons with the monastery implies ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... give you your life, does he not give, think you, a valuable consideration for the money you engage your honour to send him? If not, the sum must be exorbitant, or your life is a very paltry one, even in ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... frauds. To confirm all these observations, it is sufficient to refer to France, where State influence has been supreme for the last seventy years in university education, and where the Government has exercised an exorbitant control over every branch of public instruction. What has been the result? Literature has fallen away, the number of schools has decreased, the French language has decayed, whilst moral corruption has penetrated the heart of the country, and infidelity of the worst kind has been patronized and ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... of its claims. To this proposition we can not subscribe. It is equally unjust between nations and individuals. Whether a party in controversy is satisfied or not with the justice of his claims is what is only known to himself, and consequently the one whose claims are most exorbitant, however unjust, will always get the best end of the bargain. But such a rule would in this case apply most unfortunately to Maine. We are limited at farthest to the St. Lawrence, and to a very narrow point there, while the British may extend ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson
... more immediate and serious difficulties, than any theoretical views of the hereafter, and even Friends may be pardoned for feeling some interest in their own pecuniary independence. To see their furniture, cattle, houses, lands, all swept away for exorbitant taxes, seemed worse than paying a moderate one to start with. From these quotations from the great reformer and religious leader, we see how fully Mrs. Mott accepted his principles; not because they were his principles, for she called no man master, but because she felt them to be true. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... allowance, when there is occasion, for the man who is too poor to give; and then to judge entirely on the merits of the case; that is the way of upright judges in an Eastern country. The gifts we make are usually small, whereas the fees which lawyers charge in Western countries are exorbitant, as you yourself have told me more than once and I have heard from others. And even after paying those enormous fees, the inoffensive, righteous person is as like to suffer as the guilty. Here, for altogether harmless men to suffer punishment in place of rogues ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... inadequate pittance in distant lands, where the better part of a year's pay is consumed in reaching the post of duty, and where the comforts of ordinary civilized existence can only be obtained with difficulty and at exorbitant cost. I trust that in considering the submitted schedules no mistaken theory of economy will perpetuate a system which in the past has virtually closed to deserving talent many offices where capacity and attainments ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... account of their familiarity with the objects it describes, must have a higher relish of it. This poem likewise shews his gratitude to lord Hallifax, who had been that year impeached by the Commons in Parliament, for procuring exorbitant grants from the crown to his own use; and further charged with cutting down, and wasting the timber in his Majesty's forests, and with holding several offices in his Majesty's Exchequer, that were inconsistent, and designed as checks upon each other: ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... their pillow, wearing himself to death to spare them the slightest loss of beauty in any part; he succeeds, he keeps their secret like the dead; they send to ask for his bill, and think it horribly exorbitant. Who saved them? Nature. Far from recommending him, they speak ill of him, fearing lest he should become the physician of their ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... States of the kingdom, and afterwards in those of the Parliament. The registering of treaties with other Crowns and the ratifications of edicts for raising money are almost obliterated images of that wise medium between the exorbitant power of the Kings and the licentiousness of the people instituted by our ancestors. Wise and good Princes found that this medium was such a seasoning to their power as made it delightful to their people. On the other hand, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... desperate. It had taken practically all John's income to live respectably. Living expenses were high and rents exorbitant. What made matters worse, there was practically no life insurance. John had intended taking out more, but it had been neglected. After the funeral and other expenses what would be left of the paltry $2,000? They would have to find ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... of adding a note to the analysis of each of the illustrious observer's memoirs, containing a detailed indication of the improvements or corrections that the progressive march of science has brought on. But in order to avoid an exorbitant length in this biography, I have been obliged to give up my project. In general I shall content myself with pointing out what belongs to Herschel, referring to my Treatise on Popular Astronomy for the historical details. The life of Herschel had the rare advantage of forming an epoch in an extensive ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the colour left by too copious port and viands; to which the profuse cravat with exorbitant breastpin, and the fixed, forward, and as it were menacing glance of the eyes correspond. That is a 'Man of Business;' prosperous manufacturer, house-contractor, engineer, law-manager; his eye, nose, cravat have, in such work and fortune, got such a character: deny him not thy praise, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... the guise of religious devotees, who feed on the people. Lending and borrowing go on at a most hurtful rate. If a person finds himself possessed of some twenty or thirty rupees, he either puts it into jewels for the female members of his family, or lends it at an exorbitant rate of interest. It has sometimes seemed as if creditors and debtors included the entire population. Debt, not by law but by custom, is hereditary, and a man is expected to pay the debts of his grand-parents. Marriage ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... little building, he opened his original stock. The land he subsequently purchased of Levi Johnson, through the medium of Leonard Case, the purchase money being one thousand dollars for twenty-eight feet, with three years' time in which to make the payments. The exorbitant price horrified some of the old settlers, and one of them gravely shook his head, announcing his firm belief that such a sum of money for such a bit of land would turn Levi Johnson's head with unlooked for prosperity. The price would scarcely be called ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... by Spain on the vessels and commerce of the United States have demanded from time to time during the last twenty years earnest remonstrance on the part of our Government. In the immediate past exorbitant penalties have been imposed upon our vessels and goods by customs authorities of Cuba and Puerto Rico for clerical errors of the most trivial character in the manifests or bills of lading. In some cases fines amounting to thousands of dollars have been levied upon ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... the preceding evening; but, by good luck, we met a travelling Moorman, who had just arrived at the village with a little rice to exchange with the Veddahs for dried venison. As the villagers did not happen to have any meat to barter, we purchased all the rice at an exorbitant price; but it was only sufficient for half a meal for each servant and coolie, when ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... it up! I've fed on dried and desiccated and other disastrous and dissatisfactory diets till I'm all shrivelled up inside like a dead puff-ball; now it's me for the big feed and the long drink. I'm goin' to 'Frisco and get full of wasteful and exorbitant grub, of one kind and another, like tomatters and French ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... to his face," lamented Mr. Sheridan, "is bribery as gross as it is efficacious. I must unwillingly consent to your exorbitant demands, for you are, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... being then present the kings of France and Arragon, the dukes of Savoy, Florence, Orleans, Bourbon, Brunswick, the Landgrave, Count Palatine; all which had severally feasted me; besides infinite more of inferior persons, as counts and others: it was my chance (the emperor detained by some exorbitant affair) to wait him the fifth part of an hour, or much near it. In which time, retiring myself into a bay-window, the beauteous lady Annabel, niece to the empress, and sister to the king of Arragon, who having never before eyed me, but only heard the common report of my virtue, learning, ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... especially in one who is just beginning the world. It would be so, if by a single unfair act he could get a fortune; leaving the loss of the soul out of the question. For if a trader, for example, is once generally known to be guilty of fraud, or even of taking exorbitant profits, there is an end to his reputation. Bad as the world is, there is some respect paid to integrity, and wo be ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... gentleman is, above all else, courteous and considerate. He is master of himself, and that at all points,—in his carriage, his temper, his aims, and his desires. Calm, quiet, and temperate, he will not allow himself to be hasty in judgment, or exorbitant in ambition; nor will he suffer himself to be overbearing ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... boast it was to represent part of the common inheritance of civilization were not spared. Their monuments, which have been respected during the centuries in all of the constant wars of which Belgium has been the theatre, were deliberately destroyed. Open cities were bombarded. Exorbitant taxation was imposed upon conquered towns, and when the inhabitants were unable to pay the taxes, a large number of their houses were set on fire. That is what happened to Wavre, among other cities, whose 8,500 inhabitants were unable to pay a tax of $600,000. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... appraisers, all farmers, who carefully examined the line of the railroad, and much to my mortification, assessed in the aggregate for twenty miles of railway track, damages to the amount of $2,000. I honestly thought this an exorbitant award, but the same distance could not be traversed now at a cost for right-of-way of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the legal fare, the London cabman seldom asks more than fifty per cent. above what the law allows him; and this (by Americans, at least) is considered quite reasonable and cheerfully paid. If our New-York Jehus could only be made to realize that they keep their carriages empty by their exorbitant charges, and really double-lock their pockets against the quarters that citizens would gladly pour into them, I think a ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... who always follow in the wake of an army in the field, if permitted to do so, from trading with the citizens and getting the money of the soldiers for articles of but little use to them, and for which they are made to pay most exorbitant prices. He limited the number of these traders to one for each of his ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... "rack" or amble pace, and the American, which goes the regular pace; the broad foreheads, short heads, and open nostrils show plenty of good breeding. The charges both for horses and Volante, if you wish to go out of the town, are, like everything else in Cuba, ridiculously exorbitant. An American here is doing a tolerably good business in letting horses and carriages. For a short evening drive, we had the pleasure of paying him thirty-five shillings. He says his best customers are a gang of healthy ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... weight of anxiety from my mind. It appears that he had come down to the beach at Caistor just as the ships were passing by and had applied to some boatmen to convey him on board, which might have been soon accomplished but they, discovering the emergency of his case, demanded an exorbitant reward which he was not at the instant prepared to satisfy; and in consequence they positively refused to assist him. Though he had travelled nine successive days, almost without rest, he could not be prevailed upon to withdraw ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... felt the baleful effects of the world's sentimental, impotent sympathy), there is something pathetic in the patient content with which Italians work. They have naturally so large a capacity for enjoyment, that the degree of self- denial involved in labor seems exorbitant, and one feels that these children, so loved of Nature, and so gifted by her, are harshly dealt with by their stepmother Circumstance. No doubt there ought to be truth in the silly old picture, if there is none, and I would willingly make-believe to credit it, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... As these men were exempt from military duty because their labor was held to be a public service, feeling against them ran high. Governor Vance proposed a state convention to regulate prices for North Carolina and by proclamation forbade the export of provisions in order to prevent the seeking of exorbitant prices in other markets. Davis wrote to various Governors urging them to obtain state legislation to reduce extortion in the food business. In the provisioning of the army the Confederate Government had recourse to impressment and the arbitrary fixing of prices. Though ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... prohibited upon the severest Penalties, and the Consequences of those Laws are very Obvious to all Persons of Discernment here; they serve to secure the Subject in the utmost Obscurity, and as it were Effect an entire Ignorance, whereby an exorbitant Power is chearfully submitted to, and a perfect Obedience paid to Tyranny; and the Ignorance and Superstition of these People so powerfully prevail, that the greatest Oppressor is commonly the most entirely Belov'd, which I take to be sufficiently ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe
... another building where she might send them food daily, and pillows and mats to sleep on. She obtained an order for an interview with her husband, whose looks were so wretched and ghastly that she lost no time in fulfilling these exorbitant demands. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... stones came along, and saw in this pile a block of jade of great value. In order to get possession of this stone at a small cost, he undertook to buy the whole heap, pretending that he wished to use it in building. The little head of the family asked an exorbitant price for them, and, as he could not induce her to take less, he promised to pay her the sum she asked, and to come two days later to bring the money and to remove the stones. That night the girl thought ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... notwithstanding that exorbitant demand, that on your return you will find it selling, or, what is better, sold, in consequence of which you will be able to face the public with your new volume, if ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... labour. Servants, who are prisoners, are not to be beaten by their masters; who are to complain to a magistrate when necessary, on pain of forfeiting such future accommodation. Those prisoners off the stores who charge exorbitant prices for their labour, or misbehave in any other respect, will be recalled, and such other punishment inflicted according to the nature of the offence. Masters of convicts to clothe and maintain them with a ration equal to that issued by ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... occasion to go to the convent, having been long in treaty with the friars for a steed which he had been commissioned by a nobleman to buy at any reasonable price. The friars, however, were exorbitant in their demands. On arriving at the gate, he sang to the friar who opened it a couplet which he had composed in the Gypsy tongue, in which he stated the highest price which he was authorised to give for the animal in question; whereupon the friar instantly answered in the ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the longshoreman were notorious offenders in this respect. Whenever they saw a vessel bound in, they were in the habit of putting off to her and of first inciting the crew to escape and then hiring themselves at exorbitant rates to work the vessel into port. On such mischievous interlopers the gangsman had no mercy. He took them whenever he could, confident that when their respective cases were stated to the Board, that body would "tumble" to ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... honest bullock-contractor, (God forbid that many of them in this country should not be very honest!) but I find his terms were nearly four times as high as those which the House of Commons had condemned as exorbitant. They were not only unusually high, but the bullocks were badly supplied, and the contract had not been fairly advertised. It was therefore agreed to declare the same void at the expiration of twelve months, on the 1st December, 1763. I say again, that I do not condemn him ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... Lord Upperton continued, "who goes in rather strong. He makes grand speeches in the Commons; but almost always gets fleeced at Almack's. The Jews, who are usually on hand in one of the outside rooms with their shekels, waiting to lend money, charge exorbitant interest. Charley calls it the Jerusalem Chamber. Sometimes he gets completely cleaned out, and has to borrow a guinea to pay the waiter who brings him his brandy. One night at the beginning he won eight thousand pounds, but before morning ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... end of February, 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had three different commissions executed by the errand-men of the establishment, not under his own name, but in the name of three of his comrades; and they had cost him in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... great deal more bread than cheese, as everybody knew. If the corporation were working for the best interests of the men, why had they not sold off stock when every one knew prices were going permanently down, instead of waiting to sell it below cost? Why had they paid exorbitant prices for wool when the market was flooded with it? Why had they not done this or that? until one wondered why, understanding the woollen-business so well, and being able to see just where enormous profits could be made, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... Kate for every facial massage and every manicure she gave her. When Kate looked ahead to the long winter they must spend together in that cabin, she was tempted to feel as though she, for one, would be paying an exorbitant price for her ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... this region, have we had so much difficulty with regard to animals. The demands were so exorbitant that we insisted upon the jefe making the arrangements. He received us in anything but a pleasant mood, but acceded, and finally we secured four horses and four mules, for which we were to pay for two ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... Ireland were given over as a prey to rapacious jobbers. Charles Lucas, M.P. for Dublin, wrote in 1761 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, "Your excellency will often find the most infamous of men, the very outcasts of Britain, put into the highest employments or loaded with exorbitant pensions; while all that ministered and gave sanction to the most shameful and destructive measures of such viceroys never failed of an ample share in the ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... about an increased duty. What can be said of the Iron Monopoly? This, as one fact; that in Pennsylvania, it employs miners at fourteen dollars a month, charges them five dollars a month each for a tenement in which to live, and charges them exorbitant prices for the food and provisions which, in spite of a law prohibiting the system, must be purchased at the Monopoly's stores. At the end of the month, many of these miners have not only consumed every dollar of their wages but are actually ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... shall I forget my feelings of horror while trying to contract with a man for a boat. I said in my heart, O that I might be permitted to try the fleece once more in turning our faces towards Athens. The man was exorbitant in his demands, and it was too late to reach Patras without risking the night on the sea. To stay where we were was next to impossible without serious injury, especially to my dear Martha. Strong indeed was our united prayer for direction and help ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... at this time sorely pressed for ready money. He was buying one piece of land after another, usually at exorbitant prices, and having already increased the estate of Abbotsford from 150 to nearly 1,000 acres, he was in communication with Mr. Edward Blore as to the erection of a dwelling adjacent to the cottage, at a point facing the Tweed. This house grew and expanded, until it became ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... received such recent and accurate information, Napoleon contrived to impress his audience with a notion that the master's eye was every where. For instance, when the Tuileries were furnished, the upholsterer's charges though not very exorbitant, were suspected by the Emperor to be higher than the usual profit of that trade would have warranted. He suddenly asked some minister who was with him how much the egg at the end of the bell-rope should cost? 'J'ignore,' was the answer.—'Eh bien! nous ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it. The moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted traveller should slip in and forestall ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Jane Austen might have done), and feels 'what she supposes a farthing candle would experience when the sun rises in all its glory.' Then comes the Publisher's bill for 59 pounds; she is quite shocked at the bill, which is really exorbitant! In her next letter Miss Mitford reminds her father that the taxes are still unpaid, and a correspondence follows with somebody asking for a choice of the Doctor's pictures in payment for the taxes. The Doctor is in London all the time, dining out ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... withdrawn. He wished, then, to conceal his interest? As Jim had said, there was some blamed thing going on. And for certain here were these two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided, both sharp-set to keep the wreck from us, and that at an exorbitant figure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gratitude the rare opportunities that had come in her way of receiving any, had suddenly realised that it might not be sinful to buy them. The joy that she had in the handful bought from a street vendor was cheap, after all, at the price that might have seemed exorbitant if it had been spent on the ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... Yermolai, on engaging Filofey, had stated that he could be sure that, fool as he was, he'd be paid... and nothing more! Filofey, fool as he was—in Yermolai's words—was not satisfied with this statement alone. He demanded, of me fifty roubles—an exorbitant price; I offered him ten—a low price. We fell to haggling; Filofey at first was stubborn; then he began to come down, but slowly. Yermolai entering for an instant began assuring me, 'that fool—('He's ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... The silent monk insinuated himself into the privacy of families for the purpose of making proselytes by stealth. Soon there was not an unfrequented island in the Mediterranean, no desert shore, no gloomy valley, no forest, no glen, no volcanic crater, that did not witness exorbitant selfishness made the rule of life. There were multitudes of hermits on the desolate coasts of the Black Sea. They abounded from the freezing Tanais to the sultry Tabenne. In rigorous personal life and in supernatural power the West acknowledged no inferiority to ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... be emperor, ill-natured, and one that had arrived at the utmost pitch of wickedness; a slave to his pleasures, and a lover of calumny; greatly affected by every terrible accident, and on that account of a very murderous disposition where he durst show it. He enjoyed his exorbitant power to this only purpose, to injure those who least deserved it, with unreasonable insolence and got his wealth by murder and injustice. He labored to appear above regarding either what was divine or agreeable to the laws, but was a slave to the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... abuse it in the most deleterious way imaginable. They buy the tea at exorbitant rates, often at five shillings a pound, and usually on credit, paying a part of one bill on running up another, put it into a saucepan or an iron pot, and boil, or rather stew, it over the fire, till they brew a kind of hell-broth, which they imbibe at ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... co-operation of the higher clergy. The Frank duke was supreme, and his underlings had arbitrary power. Public property was confiscated for the benefit of the duke and his supporters, and all kinds of arbitrary and exorbitant imposts and restraints were imposed upon the people, even to the prohibition of fishing! The result was great discontent, and at last, in 804, by the intervention of Fortunatus, Patriarch of Grado, an ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... tireurs; for often, instead of doing all in their power for the men who had taken up arms in the cause of France, the villagers looked upon them only as strangers, out of whom the richest possible harvest was to be obtained; and charged the most exorbitant prices for all articles of necessity supplied to them. In fact, they sometimes did not hesitate to say that they would not provide them, at any price, with the provisions required; as these would be wanted ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... more he sat staring into the street in a bewildered kind of way, wondering what would be the result of his brother's return, and if he should be required to give up the investments he had made from the exorbitant sum he had charged for looking after the place. Once he thought he would ask Colvin's opinion; but he was a little afraid of the old man, who had sometimes hinted that his salary was far greater than the services rendered, but as Mr. Arthur, to whom he made reports of ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... the Faubourg du Temple increased enormously in value. The canal would cut through the property which du Tillet had bought of Cesar Birotteau. The company who obtained the right of building it agreed to pay the banker an exorbitant sum, provided they could take possession within a given time. The lease Cesar had granted to Popinot, which went with the sale to du Tillet, now hindered the transfer to the canal company. The banker came to the Rue des Cinq-Diamants ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... price of slaves is so enormous, it requires an immense outlay to stock a plantation. A good plantation would take two hundred, or three hundred hands. Now, say for every hand employed on this plantation, the man must pay on an average two hundred pounds, which is not exorbitant at the present time. If he has to pay at this rate, what an immense outlay of capital to begin with, and how great the interest on that sum continually accumulating! And then there is the constant exposure to loss. These plantation negroes are very careless of life, and often cholera ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it, and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away. As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the first place, was directed to the markets, and persons were sent, some to the country of the Volscians, others to Cumae, to buy up corn. The privilege of selling salt also was withdrawn from private individuals because it was sold at an exorbitant price, while all the expense fell upon the state:[10] and the people were freed from duties and taxes, inasmuch as the rich, since they were in a position to bear the burden, should contribute them; the poor, they said, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... certain Aim specified. These halfpence and farthings were to be received by those persons, who would voluntarily accept them. But the patent was thought to be of such dangerous consequence to the public, and of such exorbitant advantage to the patentee, that the dean, under the character of M. B. Drapier, wrote a Letter to the People, warning them not to accept Wood's halfpence and farthings, as current coin. This first letter was succeeded by several others to the same purpose, all which ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... for she remembered her father telling her how old Peter had tried to sell him some candlesticks at an exorbitant price. ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... glad look, that quite settled the matter so far as he was concerned; he would, if necessary, give even an exorbitant price for the place, to ...
— Elsie's Kith and Kin • Martha Finley
... fixing on the notary a penetrating look, "For a woman loving a handsome youth would know," resumed the Creole, "that she would have an exorbitant caprice to satisfy; that the boys would look at their money if they had any, or, if they had none, to a mean trick, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... from the French alliance. But it was in vain. On the contrary at this very time (July 16) the treaty between Louis and Charles was renewed; and the demands made on behalf of England were scarcely less exorbitant than those put forward by Louis himself—the cession of Sluis, Walcheren, Cadsand, Voorne and Goerce, an indemnity of 25,000,000 francs, the payment of an annual subsidy for the herring fishery, and the striking of the flag. ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... late. He reentered his cab, and ordered the driver to take him to Morley's Hotel; paid the exorbitant price which the man, knowing he had to deal with a stranger, demanded, and took refuge in his chamber, without remembering that he had not broken his fast since morning, until a waiter knocked at the door to know if he ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... be a Fault in those reverend Divines, mention'd in the foregoing Article, to use Irony, Drollery, Ridicule, and Satire, in any Case; or if the Fault lies in an exorbitant Use thereof, or in any particular Species of Drollery; as, for example, such Drollery as is to be found in the polemical Writings and Sermons of Dr. South; it is fit some Remedy should be employ'd for the Cure of this Evil. And the Remedy I ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... out of their wages that the wages rise and gradually reach a justly proportioned rate to that of the products of their labor. When thus, by depreciation in consequence of the quantity of paper in circulation, wages as well as prices become exorbitant, it is soon found that the whole effect of the adulteration is a tariff on our home industry for the benefit of the countries where gold and silver circulate and maintain uniformity and moderation in prices. It is then perceived that the enhancement of the price of land and labor produces ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... and vexatious manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right of petition was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the Revolution was treason; if they do, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was almost caused by the exorbitant prices that were charged for food. One storekeeper in Millville borough was charging $5 a sack for flour and seventy-five cents for sandwiches on Sunday. This caused considerable complaint and the citizens grew desperate. They promptly took by ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... a monument of ingratitude," the other complained. "You conceive, Villaneuve was in price exorbitant. I snap my fingers. 'For a comrade so dear,' I remark, 'I gladly employ the most expensive of assassins.' Yet before the face of such magnanimity you grumble." The Duc de Puysange spread out his shapely hands. "I murder you! My adored Jean, I had as lief make ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... soapy, psalm-singing hypocrite, who combines with Cheatly to supply young heirs with cash at most exorbitant usury. (See ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Calcutta Sept. 22d, 1821. Finding when she reached there that the American captains of vessels declined taking passengers, without an exorbitant price, she decided not to take passage to America. On mentioning her circumstances to a lady in Calcutta, the latter strongly recommended the advantages of a voyage to England, on account of the superior accommodations, medical advice, ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... a fair way for adjustment; the principal difficulty remaining to be settled being the annual sum to be paid as an equivalent for the port-dues of Aden. The Sultan's commissioner at first rated this source of revenue at the exorbitant sum of 50,000 dollars!—but it was at last agreed that it should be commuted for a yearly stipend of 8708, a mode of payment preferred by the Sultan to the receipt of a gross sum, lest the rapacity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... brown-bouted beggar!' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn, returning his horn to its case, and eyeing Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters sailing away with the again breast-high-scent pack. 'Oh, you exorbitant usurer!' continued he, gathering his horse to skate after them. 'Well now, that's the most disgraceful proceedin' I ever saw in the whole course of my life. Hang me, if I'll stand such work! Dash me, but I'll 'quaint the Queen!—I'll tell Sir George Grey! I'll write to Mr. Walpole! Fo-orrard! ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... a clerk in the office, was making a transcript of the Ring's fraudulent disbursements. Copeland was a protege of ex-sheriff James O'Brien, who had quarrelled with Connolly because the latter refused to allow his exorbitant bills, and with the Copeland transcript he tried to extort the money from Tweed. Failing in this he offered the evidence to the Times. A little later the same journal obtained a transcript of fraudulent armoury accounts through Matthew J. O'Rourke, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... turn all my energies to the raising of the money wherewith to publish my two operas, to which in all probability Tannhauser would shortly have to be added. I first applied to my friends, and in some cases had to pay exorbitant rates of interest, even for short terms. For the present these details are sufficient to prepare the reader for the catastrophe towards which I was now ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... picnic had been held in Silas Berry's orchard. Parties had come in great rattling wagons from all the towns about, and picked cherries and ate their fill at a most overreaching and exorbitant price. ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tactics of experienced dog thieves, only that in this case the demand was certainly exorbitant. Five thousand francs! But even so . . . I cast a rapid and comprehensive glance on the brilliant apparition before me—the jewelled rings, the diamonds in the shell-like ears, the priceless fur coat—and with an expressive shrug of the shoulders I handed the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... mother, as you imagine," replied Aladdin; "the sultan is mistaken, if he thinks by this exorbitant demand to prevent my entertaining thoughts of the princess. I expected greater difficulties, and that he would have set a higher price upon her incomparable charms. I am very well pleased; his demand is but a trifle to what I could have done for her. But while I think ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes |
