"Rapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... subject. But Lord Fawn had been aware that his sister had of late shifted the ground of her inveterate enmity to Lizzie Eustace, making use of the scene which Mr. Gowran had witnessed, in lieu of the lady's rapacity in regard to the necklace. It might therefore be assumed, Lord Fawn thought and feared, that his strong ground in regard to the necklace had been cut from under his feet. But still, it did not behove him to confess ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... himself. The Austrian Minister said nobody would suspect Austria— no one could be suspected but Russia. But our experience for many years will tell us that there has been just as much menace from the West as from the East—the rapacity of the West is not less perceptible than that of the East. ['Hear.'] Some one expresses a sentiment in opposition —it is a gentleman who has never read the Blue Books—he does not know that almost the whole of this ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... a question since the world began. Were not the children of Israel commanded to drive the Canaanites out of their own land? Did not the Romans carry conquests all over Europe? And the Spaniard here, who has been driven out for his cruelty and rapacity. The world question is a great tree at which many nations have a hack, and some of them get only the unripe fruit as the branches fall. But the fruit matures slowly, and some one will gather it in the end, that ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed rapacity of Science, which he feared would have her "specimen," if his ghost should walk restlessly a thousand years, waiting for his bones to be laid in the dust, touched my heart. But I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... yourself. You drink wine without asking your neighbour to join you; and if he should be so silly as to ask you to hand him some specified dish, you blandly comply; but in the passage to him, you transfer the whole of its contents to your own plate. There is no halving in these matters. Rapacity, roaring, and rapidity are the three requisites for dining during a journey. When you have resumed your seat in the coach, you are as bland as a ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... made approaches to the seat of the mission as near as Aleppo, Damascus, Tiberias, and Acre; but from this terrible judgment the inhabitants of Beirut were providentially shielded. They suffered much, however, from the rapacity of the Pasha of Acre, until his power was broken by the invading army of the Viceroy of Egypt, under Ibrahim Pasha. With the aid of ten or fifteen thousand men from Mount Lebanon, under the Emir Beshir, Ibrahim Pasha ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... benevolence and of peace, and have brought in their hands the precious treasure of the Gospel of Christ. But their number is so small as to be almost lost among the multitude. For one who has taught righteousness, purity, truth and mercy, thousands have taught, by their example, rapacity, drunkenness, lewdness and cruelty. For one who has led us in the path of life, thousands have led us in the paths of destruction. For one who has brought the Bible, thousands have brought rum. For one whose ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... non-intercourse with England enjoined. While the Queen and the Viceroy were thus exchanging blows, the real sufferers were, of course, the unfortunate Netherlanders. Between the upper and nether millstones of Elizabeth's rapacity and Alva's arrogance, the poor remains of Flemish prosperity were well nigh crushed out of existence. Proclamations and commissions followed hard upon each other, but it was not till April 1573, that the matter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... disposed to offer you as a future provision, and as affording you the means of passing the remainder of your days in ease and tranquillity. What would become of you in case of the worst? Your numerous creditors would besiege you with a rapacity, still further excited by the support they would receive from court. You look at me with surprise because I speak the language of truth; be a reasonable creature I implore of you once in your life, and do ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... establishment, to which in the sequel his diligence and acuteness were of the highest service. From his Papers, still extant (says Lord Braybrooke), we gather that he never lost sight of the public good; that he spared no pains to check the rapacity of contractors, by whom the naval stores were then supplied; that he studied order and economy in the dockyards, advocated the promotion of old-established officers in the Navy; and resisted to the utmost the infamous system of selling places, then most unblushingly ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... prayed and struggled for its practical amendment. To emancipate the Church from the clutches of the autocracy of Rome; to remove the abuses that, in the course of centuries, had grown round and sullied its primitive purity; to lighten the fiscal oppression of the Papacy and to check the rapacity of the Cardinals; to reform and discipline the priesthood; even to modify certain doctrines and dogmas: such were the aspirations of some of the most devout, eminent and cultured sons of the Church. Outside its communion there were many forms of heresy, which, though ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... to the slaughter; and yet felt my bosom tranquil in the view of these aggressions on defenceless humanity. But when I see the same enormities practised upon beings whose complexions and blood claim kindred with my own, I curse the perpetrators, and weep over the wretched victims of their rapacity. Indeed, truth and justice demand from me the confession, that the Christian slaves among the barbarians of Africa are treated with more humanity than the African slaves among professing Christians of civilized America; and yet here [in Tunis] ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... prevented from breaking their treaties and joining with the rebel Crees, Salteaux and Assiniboines of the North and East. For fifteen years the Chiefs of these tribes had lived under the firm and just rule of the Police, had been protected from the rapacity of unscrupulous traders and saved from the ravages of whisky-runners. It was the proud boast of a Blood Chief that the Police never broke a promise to the Indian and never failed to exact justice either for his ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... this spot. It had occurred to Edward as likely that old Ralph would be better acquainted with the habits of the robbers than any other person could be. He was too poor to be made a mark for their rapacity, yet from his solitary life in the forest he might likely enough come across their tracks, and be able to point out their hiding places. Therefore the Prince's plan was that he and the picked companions ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... His rapacity was beyond credence. There was an immense treasure in the hold, yet he could not leave the pockets of the two poor wretches on deck alone. I did not envy him his task. The frozen figures would bear a deal of hammering; and besides he had to work in the cold. Ah, thought I with ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... margin of the rapids. With these precautions they all passed unmolested. The only accident that happened was the upsetting of one of the canoes, by which some of the goods sunk, and others floated down the stream. The alertness and rapacity of the hordes which infest these rapids, were immediately apparent. They pounced upon the floating merchandise with the keenness of regular wreckers. A bale of goods which landed upon one of the islands was immediately ripped open, one half of its contents divided ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... horror, the establishment of a foreign dominion he retired to Aversa; and when, with the assistance of the Greeks and that of the citizens faithful to their country, he had collected money enough to satisfy the rapacity of the Norman adventurers, he advanced at their head to attack the garrison of the prince of Capua, defeated it, and reentered Naples. It was then that he confirmed the Normans in the possession of Aversa and its territory, which he raised into a count's fief, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... cruelty. "And men's worst enemies were those of their own household." The person suspicioned of witchcraft was speedily found guilty, and adjudged to slavery. The guilty and the innocent often shared the same fate. The thief, the adulterer, and the aged were seized by the rapacity that pervaded the people, and were hurled into the hell ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... baron, with her children, from whom they learn that her unhappy father, ruined and broken-hearted, had returned to France, the victim of persecutors, who, under the name of saints, exhibited a cruelty and rapacity that would have disgraced the reputation of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security—even to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of its neighbors across the Rhine for two ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... pirates. These atrocious and ruinous pursuits soon reduced them to a state of miserable poverty, and the baneful influence of a series of profligate governors completed the mischief. One of these, named Sette Sothel,[363] was especially conspicuous for rapacity and injustice. (1683.) His misrule at length goaded the people into insurrection; they seized him, and were about to send him as a prisoner to England, but released him on a promise of renouncing the government, and leaving the colony for a time. After these and some other commotions, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... element. Add to these the glittering covering in both, the splendour of the scales in the one answering to the brilliant plates in the other,—the luminous reservoirs of the fire-flies,—the phosphorescence and electricity of many fishes,—the same analogs of moral qualities, in their rapacity, boldness, modes of seizing their prey by surprise,—their gills, as presenting the intermediate state between the spiracula of the grade next below, and the lungs of the step next above, both extremes ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in their guns— were everywhere victorious, and the riches of the temples were seized; gloriously wrought vessels were hastily molten down into ingots, along with plate, shield, and wonderfully-worked flowers; rapacity was triumphant, and upon one occasion the value of the treasure collected and melted down into bars was computed at three millions and a half pounds sterling ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... been compelled to open his bundles, and take an oath that the different articles they contained were his own exclusive property. There was, however, no remedy; and having been under some obligation to Demba Sego for his attention towards me in the journey from Joag, I did not reproach him for his rapacity, but determined to quit Teesee at all events the next morning. In the meanwhile, in order to raise the drooping spirits of my attendants, I purchased a fat sheep, and had it dressed for ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... levied a heavy war contribution. During the early months of 1808 he was employed in reorganising his own forces, and the resources of Lisbon, where an auxiliary Russian fleet of nine ships was lying practically blockaded. In a military sense, he was successful, but the rapacity of the French, the contagion of the Spanish uprising, the memory of the old alliance with England, and the proximity of English fleets, stirred the blood of the Portuguese nation into ill-concealed hostility. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... mischief, rapacity and ambition, and whatever else is called evil, belong to the marvellous economy of the conservation of the race.—FR. NIETZSCHE, J.W., ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... business or strengthening the position of the company appears to some directors a necessity hardly less unpleasant than an increased wages bill, or an Excess Profits Duty. Concessions must indeed be made to the shareholders' rapacity: but when something has been done in this direction, dust can easily be thrown in their not very observant eyes. Reserves, which within limits are a necessity of sound finance, can be accumulated beyond those limits, and, when the further limits of an extreme ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... Mrs. Leicester laid the whole statement before Alfred, declaring that for his sake, as well as for her niece's, she was resolute to defend herself against injustice. Alfred could scarcely bring himself to believe that Buckhurst Falconer had acted in the manner represented, with a rapacity, harshness, and cruelty, so opposite to his natural disposition. Faults, Alfred well knew that Buckhurst had; but they were all, he thought, of quite a different sort from those of which he now stood accused. What was to be done? Alfred was extremely ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... and materialism of the British race. The bee is held up to the young as a model of industry and domestic virtue—and why? Simply because she manufactures food which we happen to like. The spider is held up to the young as the type of rapacity, malice and cruelty, on the sole ground that he catches flies, though we do not pretend that we are fond of flies, and conveniently ignore the fact that, if the spider did not swat that fly, we should probably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... "chaw-bacons!" "clod-poles!" "hair-bucks!" "deluded slaves!" "brute drudges!"[28] Now, however, they and their labourers were addressed in terms of respectful sympathy and flattery, as the victims of the rapacity of their landlords—on whom were poured the full phials of Anti-corn-law wrath. The following are some of the scalding drops let fall upon their devoted heads—"Monster of impiety!" "inhuman fiend!" "heartless brutes!" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the latter—the first time the latter has ever had to call on an outsider for help. Then, Cappy, it will be a front-page story—and how those boys will hop to it! Why, we'll get a column about Australian wheat invading the land of the free whose rapacity threatens the very food that goes into the mouths of little children! Little children and their mouths is good stuff! I'll use that line when slipping the story to the boys. They might overlook it if I didn't. I'll remind them of the six-cent loaf ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... inhabited by savages. 'I am quite certain,' said I, 'there will be none there more cruel than G—— M—— and my father. They will, at least, allow us to live in peace. If the accounts we read of savages be true, they obey the laws of nature: they neither know the mean rapacity of avarice, nor the false and fantastic notions of dignity, which have raised me up an enemy in my own father. They will not harass and persecute two lovers, when they see us adopt their own simple habits.' I was therefore at ease ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... recovery. The male eagle grew so accustomed to his presence that he would alight beside the prisoner, and threatened Horner with that old, cold stare of challenge, and frequently Horner had to drive him off in order to save his share of the feast from the rapacity of the eaglet. But as for the female, she remained incurably suspicious and protesting. From the upper ledge, where she devoted her care to the other nestling, she would yelp down her threats and execrations, but she never ventured ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... of the worth of the medicine by the Pole's rapacity. Surely nothing less than the greatest of medicines could enable a man in the shadow of death to stand up and drive ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... extended notice. The English expedition against Havana was occasioned by the King of Spain, Charles III, having entered into what was known as the "family compact" with Louis XV of France, by which the Bourbons were to support each other against British rapacity and aggrandizement, ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... fair traveller, had lately entered into the one-and- twentieth year of her age. Her ancestors had been rich farmers in the county of Suffolk, though her father, in whom a spirit of elegance had supplanted the rapacity of wealth, had spent his time as a private country gentleman, satisfied, without increasing his store, to live upon what he inherited from the labours of his predecessors. She had lost him in her early ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... younger days, my father had served extensively under many princes, and had found in every other military service a spirit of honor governing the conduct of the officers. Here only, and for the first time, he found ruffian manners and universal rapacity. He could not draw his sword in company with such men, nor in such a cause. But at length, under the pressure of necessity, he accepted (or rather bought with an immense bribe) the place of a commissary to the French ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... opportunities for economy, and methods by which it can be secured. Can we be equally confident that much has been done by the Government to carry out the advice that has been given by this Committee? The Treasury is frequently blamed for its inability to check the rapacity and extravagance of the spending Departments. It is very likely that the Treasury might have done more if it had not been led by its own desire for a short-sighted economy into economising on its own staff, the activity and efficiency of which was so absolutely essential to the proper spending ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... imploring charity. These people, scattered throughout Europe—these people, whose manner of life is so mysterious and whose origin is more mysterious still—seem to be closely allied both to the Moors and to the Hindoos, not only in appearance but in their phlegm, fanaticism and rapacity. Such of our readers as have travelled in Southern Europe must have frequently encountered these Bohemians, who come from no one knows where only to disappear again like the swallows at the ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... gentle romantic Jew who cares for nothing but string quartets and stalls at fashionable theatres. He will get the credit of your rapacity in money matters, as he has hitherto had the credit of mine. You are a shark of the first order, Euripides. So much the better ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Execution His Memory cherished by the Common People Cruelties of the Soldiers in the West; Kirke Jeffreys sets out on the Western Circuit Trial of Alice Lisle The Bloody Assizes Abraham Holmes Christopher Battiseombe; The Hewlings Punishment of Tutchin Rebels Transported Confiscation and Extortion Rapacity of the Queen and her Ladies Grey; Cochrane; Storey Wade, Goodenough, and Ferguson Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor Trial and Execution of Cornish Trials and Executions of Fernley and Elizabeth Gaunt Trial and Execution of Bateman ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... chiefly from Mr Samuel Pepys, who was clerk of the Acts, through the interest of his relative the Earl of Sandwich, and was ultimately clerk of the treasurer to the commissioners of the affairs of Tangier, and surveyor-general of the victualling department. He spared no pains to check the rapacity of contractors by whom the naval stores were then supplied; he studied order and economy in the dockyards, advocated the promotion of old-established officers in the navy, and resisted to the utmost the ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... which had an appearance of reason. In fact, he found here neither the banter, nor the orgies, nor the reckless expenditure, nor the depravity, nor the scorn of social decencies, nor the insolent independence which had brought him to grief alike with the actress and the singer. He was spared, too, the rapacity of the courtesan, like unto the thirst ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... significant tone, that some few strangers, it was true, had been taken to the city by its guards in the course of many generations, but that none of them had been allowed an opportunity of betraying its existence and locality to the cruel rapacity of the foreign race. He concluded by earnestly entreating them, since he could not compel them as prisoners, to enter the city as friends, with the view of residing there for life; promising them wives, and dwellings, and honors; for even now, if ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... practised by his predecessors. In this case it may be converted into a fruitful source of peculation and plunder, and be at last in a great measure diverted from the public objects for which it was instituted to the satiation of private rapacity, and the colonists become gradually burdened with an overbearing load of taxation, merely for the purpose of enriching their governors. Be this, however, as it may, the illegality of levying money by the authority of any individual, is, ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... upon which we must still regret that Sir Philip was not allowed to enter. The New World was then no less the region for romantic enterprise than profitable exertion, although the explorers of these distant climes had too often sunk the generosity of the soldier in the rapacity of the spoiler. In Sir Philip Sydney the world of Columbus would have had a visitor of a different order. To the courage of Smith and the accomplishments of Raleigh he would have added a spirit of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... greatly multiplied and abused during the Middle Ages. They were the principal weapons with which the clergy sought to protect themselves and their property from the cruelty and rapacity of the banditti in the service of the barons. They were feared by the most powerful and unprincipled, because, at the same time that they excluded the culprit from the offices of religion, they also cut him off from the intercourse ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... popes to Avignon, so far from diminishing their rapacity, increased it, if possible, and Green shows that the immense outlay on their grand palace there caused the passing of the Statute of Provisors in 1350, for the purpose of stopping the incessant draining away of English wealth to the papacy. During that ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... afflicted her heart. Waking from those distressing spectacles, she would fall into a fitful doze, which presented her with remembrances still more alarming: bands of fierce deserters, that eyed her travelling party with a savage rapacity which did not confess any powerful sense of inferiority; and in the very fields which they had once cultivated, now silent and tranquil from utter desolation, the mouldering bodies of the unoffending ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... open fields, meadows, or cattle to be seen. The ground is overloaded; and the produce of it crowded to such a degree, as to have a bad effect upon the eye, impressing the traveller with the ideas of indigence and rapacity. The heat in summer is so excessive, that cattle would find no green forage, every blade of grass being parched up and destroyed. The weather was extremely hot when we entered Montpellier, and put up at the Cheval Blanc, counted the best auberge in the place, tho' in fact it ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... to a pirate as it is to every human being who has been engaged in a conflict, but none of the joys of triumph could equal the sordid rapacity of Morgan and his men. They spent days in trying to recover the money and plate which were on board the sunken Spanish ships. The sterns of these projected above water, and a great deal of valuable treasure was recovered from them. The pirates worked ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... exceedingly easy thing to do. All he wanted, it seemed to him, was a pretext, and to such a mind a pretext was readily forthcoming. Had not the English dogs fortified their settlement without his permission? Had they not afforded shelter to some victim flying from his omnivorous rapacity? These were pretexts good enough to serve the insane brain of Surajah Dowlah. He attacked Fort William with an overwhelming force; the English traders, unwarlike, timorous, and deserted by their leaders, made little or no resistance; the madman had Fort William in his power, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... having occupied forts and havens and the like, this is a mistake. True, when a confederacy subsists by good-will, and all parties to the war have a common interest, men are willing to co-operate and bear hardships and persevere. But when one has grown strong, like Philip, by rapacity and artifice, on the first pretext, the slightest reverse, all is overturned and broken up. [Footnote: The original [Greek: anechaitise] is "shakes off," or "throws off," as a horse does his rider, when he rears and tosses up his neck. It will be ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... which surrounds the outermost entrance of the Yamen. Here crowds of men were reading the latest proclamation pasted to the walls, whilst others, talking earnestly, discussed the case tried that very day, of the poor man who in vain sought redress from the rapacity of his wealthy neighbour. He had knelt, and laying his forehead to the ground at the feet of the Mandarin pleaded for justice, but only to find that his condemnation was a foregone conclusion. All these groups were scattered by the yells of our outrider and the cracks of our carter's whip, and ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... an opinion was entertained that much cruelty and rapacity were exercised by the keepers of the great prisons in London. It was known that they had almost unlimited power in their hands, that they were not subject to regular inspection, and that it was scarcely possible to bring them to justice for their treatment of those committed to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... of able and ambitious statesmen in contact with an alien government drawn on the coercive plan. The clay vessel failed to make good among the iron pots, and so proved its unfitness to survive in the world of Christian nations,—very much as the Chinese are today at the mercy of the defensive rapacity of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... shamelessness of his looks, the rapacity of his hands, the frivolousness of his bearing, the foulness of his manners (which the whole neighborhood spews out), the obscenity of his lust, the ugliness of his body, the baseness of his life, his spotted reputation, I would lay bare and thrust into the face of the public, did not my respect ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... little longer; it is not right that, having made a sum of money in my country, you should spend it in your own." Since then, he added, he had been ill-treated and robbed several times to satisfy the rapacity of this wicked monster; and then, as if frightened at his own expressions, he peered cautiously round the tent, apparently fancying the Meer himself would start from behind the screen to punish him for his audacity. I returned him his 250 rupees, but told ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation; and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in criminality with any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported from age to age with the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... prestige. Even the whites themselves they have not only embittered, but corrupted. We were pained the other day when our municipal councillors refused, by a majority, to make the production of invoices obligatory at the Custom-house. Yet who shall blame them, when the Chief Justice, with a smallness of rapacity at which all men wondered, refused to pay, and I believe, still withholds the duties on his imports? He was above the law, being the head of it; and this was how he preached by example. He refused to pay his customs; the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... was torn by civil dissensions; the "free companies"—bands of organized marauders—ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in Italy to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... employed Theodore in an official commission, appointed him Administrator of Sweden in his absence. On the news of the Swedish rebellion, that prelate, fearful of losing the ample opportunities he now possessed of indulging his voluptuousness and rapacity, sent an immediate express to his master, who ordered him to assemble his army, and attack the insurgents. In conformity to these orders, he occupied an advantageous post on the banks of the river Brunebec: Gustavus was on the opposite side, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... of this description came to Cumberland House in the winter of 1819. Notwithstanding the then miserable state of the Indians the rapacity of this wretch had been preying upon their necessities, and a poor hunter was actually at the moment pining away under the influence of his threats. The mighty conjurer, immediately on his arrival at the ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... thought that my disclosure must have rooted up that idol? I think there is the devil in women: all these years passed, never a sight of the man, little enough kindness to remember (by all accounts) even while she had him, the notion of his death intervening, his heartless rapacity laid bare to her; that all should not do, and she must still keep the best place in her heart for this accursed fellow, is a thing to make a plain man rage. I had never much natural sympathy for the passion of love; but this unreason in my patron's wife disgusted me outright with the whole ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Higginbottom, and of the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh to the perpetual Presidency. They will not choose to proceed in a journey which would expose them to the insults of that brutal soldiery, whose cruelty and rapacity will have devastated Mexico and Colombia, and now, at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... schieks being the very worst of the brutes—who have these monuments in their hands. Their numbers, the filthiness of their dress—or one might almost say no dress—their stench, their obscene indecency, their clattering noise, their rapacity, exercised without a moment's intercession; their abuse, as in this wise: "Very bad English-man; dam bad; dam, dam, dam! Him want to take all him money to the grave; but no, no, no! Devil hab him, and money too!" This, be it remembered, from a ferocious, almost ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... demanded that this revolution should not cease, nor pause, until the last vestige of the system by which men usurped power over the lives and liberties of their fellows through economic means was destroyed. Therefore not one outrage, not one act of oppression, not one exhibition of conscienceless rapacity, not one prostitution of power on the part of Executive, Legislature, or judiciary, not one tear of patriotic shame over the degradation of the national name, not one blow of the policeman's bludgeon, not a single bullet or bayonet thrust of the soldiery, could have been spared. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... piety of private individuals, stimulated by fear, would be enough to repair the loss, and frequent legacies would soon make up for the detriment caused to the temple possessions by the enemy's sword or the rapacity of an unscrupulous lord. The residue, after the vicissitudes of revolutions, was increased and diminished from time to time, to form at length in the city an indestructible fief whose administration was a function of the chief priest for life, and whose revenue ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... informed that the violence and rapacity of a tyrannic ministry have forced the citizens of America, your brother colonist, into arms. We equally detest and lament the prevalence of those counsels, which have led to the effusion of so much human blood, and left us no alternative but a civil ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... other side of the House know as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Bit-Imbi filled the two competitors with fear: they abandoned their homes and fled, the one to the mountains, the other to the lowlands on the shores of the Nar-Marratum. Tammaritu entered Susa in triumph and was enthroned afresh; but the insolence and rapacity of his auxiliaries was so ruthlessly manifested, that at the end of some days he resolved to rid himself of them by the sword. A traitor having revealed the design, Tammaritu was seized, stripped of his royal apparel, and cast into prison. The generals ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rapacity of the old Scandinavian race Still visible in their descendants? And the spirit of organization displayed by them from the beginning in the seizure, survey, and distribution of land—in the building of cities and castles—in the wise speculations of an extensive commerce—may not all these ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... there was, as might have been expected, a series of sharp debates on the misfortunes of the autumn. The negligence or corruption of the Navy Board, the frauds of the contractors, the rapacity of the captains of the King's ships, the losses of the London merchants, were themes for many keen speeches. There was indeed reason for anger. A severe inquiry, conducted by William in person at the Treasury, had just elicited the fact that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to the Caliph, "I will take no further coin from you, for the rapacity of the Governor is like a bottomless pit that would swallow all that ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... likenesses, and now all mankind run after this money, thinking: 'If I gain that, then shall I have recovered my part of human happiness which once belonged to all in common!' It has come to this, Lorenzo, through the rapacity of princes, and yet they still tremble upon their thrones, and fear that the people may one day awake from their stupid slumber, all rising as one man, and cry in the paling faces of their robbers: 'Give back what you have taken from us—we will have ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... armed with choppers and kitchen knives, wild eyed and angry hearted as lionesses robbed of their cubs. From the deep glens and deeper woods of the country of Retz they poured. They disgorged from the caves of the earth whither the greed and rapacity of their terrible lord had ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... second capture of the city by force of arms, and without capitulation, the troops were clamorous to be permitted to plunder. Amru again checked their rapacity, and commanded that all persons and property in the place should remain inviolate, until the will of the Caliph could be known. So perfect was his command over his troops that not the most trivial article was taken. His letter to the Caliph shows what must have been the population ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... but here the trees are all covered with them. Amongst the various smaller ones, we came upon a huge vulture's nest on a very small tholukh, which seemed to bend and look unhappy beneath the weight of this den of rapacity and violence. There are hereabouts no rocks for the eagles to build upon. We halted amidst abundance of herbage and small trees, which afforded a little ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... keeping a secret of any kind when he got drunk, or in a passion, which was every day. His rapacity reached to the very altar. He would rob a church, and was one who would rather take by force than favor. He would strike a Montagnais who would ask for a blanket more than he had cheated him with. He would not ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... all, the story is preeminently the story of Morgan. I have striven to make it a character sketch of that remarkable personality. I wished to portray his ferocity and cruelty, his brutality and wantonness, his treachery and rapacity; to exhibit, without lightening, the dark shadows of his character, and to depict his inevitable and utter breakdown finally; yet at the same time to bring out his dauntless courage, his military ability, his fertility and resourcefulness, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... most base and abominable despotism over millions of their fellow-creatures; that innocence should be the victim of oppression; that industry should toil for rapine; that the harmless laborer should sweat, not for his own benefit, but for the luxury and rapacity of tyrannic depredation;—in a word, that thirty millions of men, gifted by Providence with the ordinary endowments of humanity, should groan under a system of despotism unmatched in all the histories of the world? What is the end of all government? Certainly, the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... army captive, by way of hostage. The British aim was a sound one, and it was attained. That it did not bring about the results anticipated was due to no fault in our Government, nor even to any lack of foresight upon their part; but solely to the cynical rapacity of a ruler whose ambition had made him fey, or of a Court so far out of touch with the country which supported it as to have lost its ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... cloth-manufacturing towns of Europe—Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, etc., all wealthy and independent, and much inclined to close alliance with England, whence they obtained their wool, while their counts were equally devoted to France. Just as Count Louis II. had, for his lawless rapacity, been driven out of Ghent by Jacob van Arteveldt, so his son, Louis III., was expelled by Philip van Arteveldt, son to Jacob. Charles had been disgusted by Louis's coarse violence, and would not help him; but after the old king's death, Philip of Burgundy ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... different pleadings? you well ask. Well, Caecilius Classicus—a low rascal who carries his villainy in his face— had during his proconsulship in Baetica, in the same year that Marius Priscus was Governor of Africa, behaved both with violence and rapacity. Now, Priscus came from Baetica and Classicus from Africa, and so there was a rather good saying among the people of Baetica, for even resentment often inspires wit: "It is give and take between us." But in the case of Marius ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... motives to ordinary integrity. I do not hesitate to say that that state which lays its foundation in rare and heroic virtues will be sure to have its superstructure in the basest profligacy and corruption. An honorable and fair profit is the best security against avarice and rapacity; as in all things else, a lawful and regulated enjoyment is the best security against debauchery and excess. For as wealth is power, so all power will infallibly draw wealth to itself by some means or other; and when men are left no way of ascertaining their profits but by their means ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... breathing. He thought of all the occupied bedrooms, of the health of children, the incalculable quality in wives, the touchy stupidity of nurses and servants. The mere human weight of the household oppressed him terribly. And he thought of the adamant of landlords, the shifty rapacity of tradesmen, the incompetence of clerks, the mere pompous foolishness of Government departments, the arrogance of Jew patrons, and the terrifying complexity of problems of architecture on a large scale. He was the Atlas ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... his freedom,—"Tell your master, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, that we know no reason he can have for withholding our liberty, excepting his unlawful desire to enrich himself at our expense. Tell him that we yield to his rapacity, as in similar circumstances we should do to that of a literal robber. Let him name the ransom at which he rates our liberty, and it shall be paid, providing the exaction is suited to our means." The sewer made no answer, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... his despair, join the nightly meetings, be lured to associate himself with the incendiary, or seduced to grasp, in the stupid apathy of wretchedness, the weapon of the murderer? By neglecting the people; by draining them, with merciless rapacity, of the means of life; by goading them on under a cruel system of rack rents, ye become not their natural benefactors, but curses and scourges, nearly as much in reality as ye are ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... been so lately triumphant, were now, in many instances, asking the protection of their own prisoners. In all probability, not a man would have escaped death, or captivity, but for the characteristic rapacity of Buccleuch's marauders, who, having seized and carried off all the horses in the town, left the victors no means of following the chace. The regent was slain by an officer, named Caulder, in order to prevent his being rescued. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... except with contempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they became objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the chiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to draw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and the indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of law, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it. It is felt as a piece of humbug, that a man should be very punctilious in calling himself a miserable sinner, and also very punctilious in calling himself King of France. But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... to-night is dark and sad From proofs of hate displayed, From envy and rapacity, And kindness ill-repaid; The baseness of humanity Hath spoiled a cherished dream; Dear Heart, how different is the lake When Evil ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... its width, depth, its extension, and depression, with an involuntary smile, which had scarce contorted his hanging under-lip, and the wiry and greasy moustache which thatched the upper, when it was checked by the recollection that there were regulations which set bounds to his rapacity, and prevented him from pouncing on his prey like a kite, and swooping it ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... wisdom. He dwelt mainly on the truth of Christianity, the folly of idolatry, the unity and providence of God, the coming of Christ, and the judgment. At times he would severely rebuke the avarice and rapacity of his courtiers, who would loudly applaud him with their mouths and belie his exhortations by their works. One of these productions is still extant, in which he recommends Christianity in a characteristic strain, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... days when might made right and plunder was the recognized prerogative of royalty; the annals of every potentate who has reigned by the grace of Allah and kneeled to kiss the robe of the prophet, may be searched in vain for a parallel in unbounded rapacity and calculating atrocity. England's despoilment of India constitutes the supreme crime of all the ages, the acknowledged acme of infamy- Europe never dreaded Alaric the Visigoth, nor hated Attila the Scourge of God, as India dreads and detests ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... really believed that some terrible monster inhabited the desert island besides themselves; and thought that this unknown animal might possibly sally forth as soon as the sun set and darkness reigned, in search of its prey, when he and Fritz would fall victims to its rapacity. "I did not understand you ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... foe!" said Raeburn, quoting his favorite motto. "And, after all, it were no bad end to die protesting against wicked rapacity, needless bloodshed." ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... both. If he wishes to form a low idea of his species, let him spend a week or two at Washington; let him go amongst the little leaders of party in that preposterous capital, watch their little tricks, the rapacity with which they clutch the meanest spoils and wonder how political profligacy grows fat upon diet so meagre and uninviting. He will come away with a conviction, already indorsed by the more respectable portion of the American community, that their government is the most ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... appears to the Queen so important as a means of protection against the temptation of our own representatives to seize upon the possessions of these Chiefs at any convenient opportunity—and as a means of giving confidence to those Chiefs that the Queen's Government is not actuated by rapacity—that she must hope Lord Canning will indicate some mode, appearing less objectionable to him, for attaining the same object. The Queen would be glad to have a ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... at the second custom-house, though the officers eyed our ornaments with a confiscating rapacity. For my part I took my revenge, by showing off the only ornament I had to the utmost. A—— had made me a present of a sapphire-ring, and this I flourished in all sorts of ways, as it might be in open defiance. One fellow had an extreme longing ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... incurred mulcts, or other grievous penalties, by some of those numerous laws which had so fallen into disuse by their frivolous and vexatious nature as to strike before they warned. It was often more prudent to compound by money, even in false accusations, than to brave the rapacity and resentment of the king and his tools. Of his chief instruments, "Dudley was a man of good family, eloquent, and one that could put hateful business into good language; Empson, the son of a sieve-maker, of Towcester, triumphed in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... tradesmen; I believe the workmen are instructed to do their work so badly that it is never really done. I soon found it wise to learn how to do repairs for myself; and it was by doing them myself that I discovered how I had been victimised by the rapacity, dishonesty, and inefficiency of the British workman and ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... pestilential fever, which prevails in that country six months of the year, and which will forever baffle the attempts of the European nations to form establishments on that fatal soil. His effects were seized upon by the rapacity of strangers; and his wife, who was pregnant, found herself a widow in a country where she had neither credit nor recommendation, and no earthly possession, or rather support, save one negro woman. Too delicate to solicit ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... that the sea-men might have ye more bear [beer] and one in his sickness desiring but a small can of beare it was answered that if he were their own father he should have none." Bradford also shows (op. cit. p. 153) the rapacity of Jones, when in command of the DISCOVERY, in his extortionate demands upon the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... that this was the first occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. 'Then,' said Traddles, 'you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Prescription has given its sanction to this change, and the people have submitted to it without murmuring, as it was introduced not suddenly but with the natural course of events, and bettered the condition of the whole while it tended to curb the rapacity of the few. Then let not short-sighted or designing persons, upon false principles of justice, or ill-digested notions of liberty, rashly endeavour to overturn a scheme of government, doubtless not perfect, but which seems best adapted to the circumstances it has respect to, and attended with the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... pernicious termination, all became robbers and plunderers; some set their affections on houses, others on lands; his victorious troops knew neither restraint nor moderation, but inflicted on the citizens disgraceful and inhuman outrages. Their rapacity was increased by the circumstance that Sulla, in order to secure the attachment of the forces which he had commanded in Asia, had treated them, contrary to the practise of our ancestors, with extraordinary indulgence and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... in response to an enthusiastic chorus. "The cargo I was obliged to take over was a very large one. You must not protest. I shall never miss these things." And he knew that he had sown the seeds of a rapacity similar to that implanted in the worthy bosoms of the priests when they had paid him their promised visit. If the Governor were insensible to diplomacy he would have pressure brought to bear upon his official integrity from more ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... that the little he had saved was almost expended; but that as soon as assistance should arrive from his countrymen, every article should be paid for. All his arguments and promises were thrown away upon the natives, whose rapacity knew no bounds; they would give nothing without payment, and ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone: rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... which James Wilkinson, for the honour of the house, was about to add the brandy bottle, which remained on the sideboard, but, at a wink from my father, supplied its place with small beer. Peter charged the provisions with the rapacity of a famished lion; and so well did the diversion engage him, that though, while my father stated the case, he looked at him repeatedly, as if he meant to interrupt his statement, yet he always found more agreeable employment for his mouth, and returned to the cold beef with an avidity ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... their superiors and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration, independent of the military and financial authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... sort of truth can be found—if only the truth of a childish theatrical ardour in the game of life, as in the novels of Dumas the father. But the fair truth of human delicacy can be found in Mr. Henry James's novels; and the comical, appalling truth of human rapacity let loose amongst the spoils of existence lives in the monstrous world created by Balzac. The pursuit of happiness by means lawful and unlawful, through resignation or revolt, by the clever manipulation of conventions or by solemn hanging on to the skirts of ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... word which is suitable for what has passed here to-night, and the word is persecution. Perhaps I have lived too long I have lived to see honourable, upright men deprived of what was rightfully theirs, driven from their livelihood by the rapacity of those who strive to concentrate the wealth and power of the nation into their hands. I have seen this power gathering strength, stretching its arm little by little over the institutions I fought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... world was accusing Mr. Quiverful of rapacity for promotion and of disregard to his honour, the inner world of his own household was falling foul of him, with equal vehemence, for his willingness to sacrifice their interests to a false feeling of sentimental pride. It is astonishing how much difference the point of ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the truth about this war and its horrors. Let's tell of murdered women and children, of ravished homes, of pillaged cities, of country-sides scourged clear down to their very milestones! Let's tell how German rapacity for land began the war, and kept it up to ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... accursed city is burning, den of presumptuous nothingness and impious exploitation of the ignorant and the distressed, when the tumults break out in the suburbs and there rush into the terrorized streets my avenging hordes, engendered by rapacity and wrongs, then will I burst the walls of your prison, I will tear you from the clutches of fanaticism, and my white dove, you will be the Phoenix that will rise from the glowing embers! A revolution plotted by men in darkness ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that, M. Joyeuse. But, to leave it with honour, money is needed, much money, a fresh sacrifice of two or three millions, and we have not got them. That is exactly the reason why I am going to Tunis to try to wrest from the rapacity of the Bey a slice of that great fortune which he is retaining in his possession so unjustly. At present I have still some chance of succeeding, while later ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... England enjoined. While the Queen and the Viceroy were thus exchanging blows, the real sufferers were, of course, the unfortunate Netherlanders. Between the upper and nether millstones of Elizabeth's rapacity and Alva's arrogance, the poor remains of Flemish prosperity were well nigh crushed out of existence. Proclamations and commissions followed hard upon each other, but it was not till April 1573, that the matter was definitely arranged. Before that day arrived, the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Like man, too, the robber-crab knows the value of the outer husk as well as of the eatable nut itself, for he collects the fibre in surprising quantities to line his burrow, and lies upon it, the clumsy sybarite, for a luxurious couch. Alas, however, for the helplessness of crabs, and the rapacity and cunning of all-appropriating man! The spoil-sport Malay digs up the nest for the sake of the fibre it contains, which spares him the trouble of picking junk on his own account, and then he eats the industrious crab who has laid it all up, while he melts ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... She offered to have the house improved at her own expense, but was told that Mr. Pettilove would raise the rent if anything were laid out on it. She went about talking indignantly of Mr. Pettilove's cruelty and rapacity, and when Mr. Dusautoy hinted that Pettilove was only agent, she exclaimed that the owner was worse, since ignorance alone could be excused. Who was the wretch? Some one, no doubt, who never came near the place, and only ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a stranger led to hopes, and reports were whispered about the town that I was the bearer of the news of the disgrace of the tyrant. But his vengeance speedily fell on the principal inhabitants, for such as had hitherto escaped his rapacity were seized and stripped of their property, on the plea that they had spread reports detrimental ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... sloop-of-war anchored below West Point. He was made a colonel in the English army, and is said to have received the sum of L6,315 as the price of his treachery. The command of a body of troops in Connecticut was afterward given him, and he then showed a rapacity and intolerance that well consorted with the new position he had so basely purchased. The odium of his injured countrymen spoke loudly throughout the land he had betrayed. He was burned in effigy countless times, and a growing generation was told with wrath and scorn the abhorrent tale of his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder. There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, caprice, and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men. My ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... "Amongst the common people," one of their latest apologists admits, "vague rumours circulated. They talked of the covetousness and want of scruple of the Knights, of their passion for aggrandizement and their rapacity. Their haughty insolence was proverbial. Drinking habits were attributed to them; the saying was already in use 'to drink like a Templar.' The old German word Tempelhaus indicated ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... the highest modern civilization, progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious—and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... plungings of these mad fish; and so large are they, so strong, so numerous, that, all angler as we are, we really felt unpleasantly, nor would we, after what we saw, have trusted hand or foot in the domain of such shark-like rapacity. They consume five basketsful of frogs and minnows a-day. Except that of the Caserta beggars, we never saw any thing like the hunger of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... to the German nobility, speaking of the pope, "He is a shepherd: yes, so far as you have money, and no farther." The above passage from Bunyan is altogether in the manner of Luther when describing the rapacity and avarice of Rome. hath removed them. And these seeds has antichrist sown where the kingdom of Christ should stand.] as the pedlar cries, "broken or whole," is the sinews of their religion; and it is for that they set kingdoms, crowns, principalities, places, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... man's coffee-brown, hatchet face, his restless, black eyes, the high, narrow shoulders, the slope of nose and chin, combined somehow to give him the look of a wily and predacious wolf. The boy had never met any one who so impressed him with a sense of ruthless rapacity. He was audacious and deadly in attack, but always he covered his tracks cunningly. Suspected of many crimes, he had been proved guilty of none. It was a safe bet that now he had a line of retreat worked out in case his ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... nothing," replied Tutmosis, joyfully. "They trust too much in their power, they pay their spies badly, and have disgusted all Egypt with their pride and rapacity. Moreover, the aristocracy, the army, the scribes, the laborers, even the minor priests are only waiting for the signal to attack the temples, take out the treasures, and lay them at the feet of the pharaoh. When their treasures ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... have to open your hand, O First amongst the generous!" continued Babalatchi. "You will have to satisfy the rapacity of a white man, and also of one who is not a man, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... worn itself out for practical good; or at least, that it was unfitted for those coming ages which were to be so different from the ages that were past. But slaughter, desecration and wanton destruction, were no remedies for its sins, or its failings; nor was covetous rapacity the spirit of reformation." ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... and the card-tables placed, the ladies all rose, and Elizabeth was then hoping to be soon joined by him, when all her views were overthrown by seeing him fall a victim to her mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side of the room, as to make ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... that the owners of slave property must be possessed of all the powers of government, however small their own numbers may be, to secure that property from the rapacity of an overgrown majority of white men. This principle admits of no relaxation, because the weaker the minority becomes, the greater will their need for power be according ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... contested is whether the loggers have the right to organize themselves into a union, or whether they must remain chattels—mere hewers of wood and helpless in the face of the rapacity of their industrial overlords—or whether they have the right to keep open their halls and peacefully to conduct the affairs of their union. The lumber workers contend that they are entitled by law to do these things and the ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... they supply the place of oysters, which come in about the time lobsters go out of season. Lobsters are held in great esteem by gastrologers for the firmness, purity, and flavour of their flesh. When they find refuge in the rocky fastnesses of the deep from the rapacity of sharks and fishermen, they sometimes attain an immense size, and have been found from eighteen inches to upwards of two feet in length. Apicius, who ought to be the patron saint of epicures, made a voyage to the coast of Africa on hearing that lobsters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... Celebes trader. Rajah Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of the organised power of the Celebes men, only—till Jim came—he was not afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and thought himself pathetically in the right. The ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... project, and apparently unable to talk on any other subject, Mr. Dwerrihouse then went on to tell of the opposition he had encountered and the obstacles he had overcome in the cause of the Stockbridge branch. I was entertained with a multitude of local details and local grievances. The rapacity of one squire, the impracticability of another, the indignation of the rector whose glebe was threatened, the culpable indifference of the Stockbridge townspeople, who could not be brought to see that their most vital interests hinged upon a junction with the Great East Anglian line; the spite ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... tribunal, conducted the executions. The national convention at Paris nominated as his colleague Monet, a man twenty-four years of age, totally ignorant of the German language, and who merely made himself remarkable for his open rapacity.[3] This was, however, a mere prelude to far greater horrors. Two members of the convention, St. Just and Lebas, unexpectedly appeared at Strasburg, declared that nothing had as yet been done, ordered the executions to take place on a larger scale, and, A.D. 1793, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... therefore, has no excuse except in the selfish rapacity which prompts it. It cannot plead the example of any country bordering on the Pacific, where life and property are more secure than they have been here, under the reign of the late King; where foreigners enjoy greater privileges, and where, like this Kingdom, foreign commerce (excepting ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV
... organ's vast satisfaction and credit; and the possibilities of tragedy in none. This latter fact was greatly to the credit of a maligned class of men. It is common belief that no cause is too sacred or no consequence too grave to give pause to the editorial rapacity for news. The present instance disproved that supposition. No journal, yellow or otherwise, contained a line of suggestion that anything beyond annoyance was to be feared from these ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... sort of drama has an obviously autobiographical basis. His own road ran into strange places in the days of his youth. He moved among men who were menaced by all the terrestrial cruelties, and by the almost unchecked rivalry and rapacity of their fellow men, without any appreciable barriers, whether of law, of convention or of sentimentality, to shield them. The struggle for existence, as he saw it, was well nigh as purely physical among human beings as among the carnivora of the jungle. Some of his stories, and among them ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of outlying countries as fields to be exploited for the benefit of "investors," successful revolutionists to be recognized in so far as they promoted such ends, and no consideration to be shown to the victims of their rapacity; and the new American idea, the idea which had been made reality in Cuba and the Philippines, that the enlightened and successful nations stood something in the position of trustees to such unfortunate lands and that it ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... ascertained that within a few years after the conquest of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America were overrun by military adventurers whose rapacity and violence drove the harmless and timid Village Indians from their pueblos into the forests; thus destroying in a few years a higher culture than the Spaniards were able to substitute in its place. Nothing can be plainer, I think, than this additional ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... repeated it with, perhaps, even a louder shout. "De manifest infairiority of de tyrant saix——." Lady George, with considerable trouble, was able to follow the first sentence or two, which went to assert that the inferiority of man to woman in all work was quite as conspicuous as his rapacity and tyranny in taking to himself all the wages. The Baroness, though addressing a mixed audience, seemed to have no hesitation in speaking of man generally as a foul worm who ought to be put down and kept under, and merely allowed to be the father of children. But after a minute or ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... attention to the Rosetta Stone, and his rapacity for knowledge led him to speculate as to the possible aid this trilingual inscription might offer in the solution of Egyptian problems. Having an amazing faculty for the acquisition of languages, he, in one short year, had mastered Coptic, after having assured himself ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... I already knew, and I wasted no time in reading the leaders on the subject. I was, however, extremely interested to find from one paper that Winter and I had not been the only victims of the scoundrel's rapacity on the previous evening, for a brief telegram reported a similar occurrence a few miles from Oxford on the London road. I at once sent my man to purchase any of the early editions of the evening papers which might ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... helped Octavius Augustus in the naval battle of Actium; and, when he became emperor, he did much for Dalmatia, in return for the assistance rendered. Yet the rebellions continued, mainly owing to the rapacity of the governors sent from Rome, as is proved by the answer of Batone to Tiberius, reported by Dion Cassius. He asked the reason for the frequent rebellions in town and country, and the implacable hatred which appeared to be nourished against the very name of Roman. Batone replied: "Because ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... all more clearly since this bit of Colonial experience," she said. "Our work in the world is marked out for us; we have no choice, unless we turn cowards. Of course we shall be hated by other countries, more and more. We shall be accused of rapacity, and arrogance, and everything else that's disagreeable in a large way; we can't help that. If we enrich ourselves, that is a legitimate reward for the task we perform. England means liberty and enlightenment; let England spread to the ends of the earth! ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... dismantled to avoid detection from sea or land. The busy skiffs are hurried to and fro incessantly till the cargo is entirely ashore, when the secured gang, led by the captain, and escorted by armed sailors, is rapidly marched to the nearest plantation. There it is safe from the rapacity of local magistrates, who, if they have a chance, imitate their ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... this celebrated judgment, and skillfully reminded by Frau Rueckenau of the bear's and the wolf's rapacity, consented at last to give Reynard a second hearing. The fox now minutely described the treasures he sent to court,—a magic ring for the king, and a comb and mirror for the queen. Not only was the fable of the judgment of Paris ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to find a parallel in history for the rapacity combined with unscrupulousness and ingenuity displayed during that fateful period by dishonest individuals, and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless France was not the only country in which greed was insatiable and its ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... it than girls usually have to do with their own training. In a few months' time those in authority in the French school found that it was not necessary to supervise and expurgate her. She learned with an interested rapacity which was at once unusual and amazing. And she evidently did not learn from books alone. Her voice, as an organ, had been musical and full from babyhood. It began to modulate itself and to express things most voices are incapable of expressing. She had been so built by nature that the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... paused, pursed his lips, and fumbled his hands a moment, the nostrils of his eagle-beaked nose breathing rapacity, sensuality throbbing in his massive jaws, and despotism frowning ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... old days had returned," said Toussaint; "the days of Columbus and his crows. We are as the unhappy Indians to the rapacity of Europe. No wonder, if mulattoes and blacks speak of the colony as if it were the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Hispana nobilitas—he confessed, admitting also that de populo nil mihi curae, yet he sided with the comuneros against the Crown. While deploring their excesses, he sympathised with the cause they defended, and he lashed the insolence and the rapacity of the Flemish favourites with all the resources of invective and sarcasm of which he was master. In one of his letters (Ep. 709), he describes the disorders everywhere prevalent throughout the country. "The safest roads are no longer secure from brigands ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt |
