"Extortionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the house was pretty and passably clean, but it was very grimly that she had led me through an immense gaudy drawing-room disconsolate in dust wrappings, to a little room where we could wash. She gave us an exiguous meal at an extortionate charge, and refused to put more than two of us up; so, on the advice of two gallivanting lancers who had escaped from the Curragh for some supper, we called in the aid of the police, and were billeted magnificently on ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... this trade; and between the government of Mexico and the traders on the coast California has been literally skinned, annually, for the last thirty years. Of natural wealth the population of California possess a superabundance, and are immensely rich; still, such have been the extortionate prices that they have been compelled to pay for their commonest artificial luxuries and wearing-apparel, that generally they are but indifferently provided with the ordinary necessaries of civilized life. For a suit of clothes, which in New York or Boston ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... unfortunate individuals whom her and her husband's intrigues have caused to suffer capitally during 1800 and 1801 was forty-six; and that nearly three hundred persons besides, who could not or would not pay their extortionate demands, were exiled to Siberia during the same period ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... amount of abuse from the Press and politicians, neither of whom ever paused to consider what Ireland owed to her railways, which, perhaps, all things considered, was the best conducted business in the country. It, however, became the vogue to decry Irish lines as inefficient and extortionate, and a fashion once started, however ridiculous, never lacks supporters. The public, like sheep, are easily led. In England the average return on capital expended was 4 pounds 0s. 5d., and in Scotland ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper, Katie Leary, one night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand Central Station to the house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract had been made as to price, and when she arrived there the cabman's extortionate charge was refused. He persisted in it, and she sent into the house for her employer. Of all men, Mark Twain was the last one to countenance an extortion. He reasoned with the man kindly enough at first; when the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... speaking against those who rule. And what nobler than to be self-chosen executors of Heaven's vengeance. Green-eyed envy in imperial pavilion and courtrooms has often stood sponsor to the wildest lawlessness. A base and extortionate government has often driven men in sheer self-defence to tearing down yamens and hunting ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... had prevailed. The ranches had been seized in the tentacles of the octopus; the iniquitous burden of extortionate freight rates had been imposed like a yoke of iron. The monster had killed Harran, had killed Osterman, had killed Broderson, had killed Hooven. It had beggared Magnus and had driven him to a state of semi-insanity after he had wrecked his honour in the vain attempt to do ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... abominanter inolitas.' Fornerius thinks this means 'all extortionate taxes.' Compare the English use ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... in many cases been, not sternly forbidden on pain of eviction, but made the occasion of inflicting a fine. This shabby and extortionate kind of protest against subdivision has long obtained on certain estates. If one may believe evidence given on oath in a court of justice, as reported in a local newspaper, there was within the last twenty years on ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... old quest, seeking in all directions for some less extortionate purveyor. But none was to be found. The selfishness and secretiveness of the drug slave made it difficult for her to learn on what terms others obtained Kazmah's precious goods; but although his prices undoubtedly varied, she was convinced that no ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... inflexible, obdurate, austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron- handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c. 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c. (ruthless) 914a; cruel &c. (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c. 885; precisian[obs3]. Adv. severely &c. adj.; with a high hand, with a strong hand, with a tight hand, with a heavy hand. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... it. I paid him an extortionate sum, and came away with a duplicate poodle, a canine counterfeit, which I hoped to pass off at Shuturgarden as ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... entertained them at a picnic party upon the site of his proposed new works. He set before them plans and details of pleasant cottages he meant to build for them, with good gardens, and scores of conveniences which they could never know in the dingy, grimy tenements for which they paid extortionate rents in London. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the joke was becoming a little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were victims of this plot—to die by the assassin's knife or waiting for the ransom that never came—is not a part of this record. It was becoming a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the {284} islanders, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... between these two races of Jews in discussing the question of Jewish emancipation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashkenazim by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain their rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on the subject of the Jewish question related ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... protection of her wild life. It is no longer right nor just for Indians, miners and prospectors to be permitted by law to kill all the big game they please, whenever they please. The indolent and often extortionate Indians of Alaska,—who now demand "big money" for every service they perform,—are not so valuable as citizens that they should be permitted to feed riotously upon moose, and cow moose at that, until that species is exterminated. Miners and prospectors are valuable citizens, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... figures. He craved an interview with Madame in her parlour to discuss her arithmetic, and although he appeared eventually to arrive at a satisfactory understanding with the good lady (so much so, that she shed tears at his departure), he did not complain that her charges were extortionate, as ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... him his money very wisely handed it to trustees, with instructions to pay him only an allowance until he's twenty-four. It's a somewhat similar case to the one I've instanced—he's drawing on a capital he can't get possession of for two or three years, and no doubt paying an extortionate interest. So far as I know, no respectable bank or finance broker would handle that kind ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... retort, contort, distortion, extortionate, torch, (apple) tart, truss, nasturtium; (2) tort, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor |
