"Avaricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will use any other puffed and advertised stuff. Chemists are even lukewarm. A grain of mustard seed of faith among them would save me thousands of pounds a year. Not that I want to roll in money, Mrs. Middlemist. I'm not an avaricious man. But a great business requires capital—and to spend money merely in flogging ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... seemed to them that they could not live a righteous life therein; and therefore went they into the wilderness, where they trowed to serve GOD in peace. Therefore says Seneca, "I have become more avaricious, and more cruel, and more inhuman ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... happy land, the natural man would have been finally put down by the ethical man. There would have been no competition, but the industry of each would have been serviceable to all; nobody being vain and nobody avaricious, there would have been no rivalries; the struggle for existence would have been abolished, and the millennium would have finally set in. But it is obvious that this state of things could have been permanent only with a stationary population. Add ten fresh mouths; and as, by the supposition, there ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Payne in mock dismay. "This grasping greed for gain is blighting the most promising young men of our avaricious country. Why, it's positively shameful, Bobby, when your father must have left ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... Valley, just referred to, that a deal of the most lucrative of the early gold mining was done, and you may still see, in places, its grassy slopes and levels torn and guttered and disfigured by the avaricious spoilers of fifteen and twenty years ago. You may see such disfigurements far and wide over California—and in some such places, where only meadows and forests are visible—not a living creature, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... may be applied to the avaricious, and to those, who, born to a humble lot, affect to be ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... ancient inhabitants now remain, though the traces of their former existence are everywhere to be seen, showing that at one time they must have been very numerous. They have been destroyed in vast numbers by the severity of their relentless and avaricious taskmasters. Thousands and tens of thousands of poor Indians have perished from famine, the sword, and the pestilence, or have died with hearts broken by the loss of liberty, or from being compelled to labour in the gold-mines with constitutions unequal to the performance ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself wealthy, or at least comfortable, beyond the hopes of his most avaricious days, and famous beyond the wildest dreams that had flamed up in him when he had read his first journalese ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... many of the villagers have known since she was born, and who, to the knowledge of every one here, lived in poverty with her mother, until her marriage to the decrepid and avaricious Don Gumersindo, has caused all this to be forgotten, and is now looked upon as a wondrous being, a visitant, pure and radiant, from some distant land, from some higher sphere, and is regarded by her ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... collecting the materials for his work on the superstitions of the Highlanders, published in 1823. In like manner the Mohel, to whose adventure I have already referred, and who was originally an avaricious man, received the grace of benevolence to the poor, which caused him to live a long and happy life with his family, a pattern unto the whole world. The gift was symbolized by the restoration to him of his ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... naturally prone to discontent, and avaricious after imaginary causes of lamentation. Like lubberly monks, we belabor our own shoulders, and take a vast satisfaction in the music of our own groans. Nor is this said by way of paradox; daily experience shows the truth of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... they will choose the ant. They do not care to abase themselves, they will always choose the principal part—this is the choice of self-love, a very natural choice. But what a dreadful lesson for children! There could be no monster more detestable than a harsh and avaricious child, who realised what he was asked to give and what he refused. The ant does more; she teaches him not merely to refuse ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... says the Abbe, "they (the Americans) crossed the Delaware, and fell accidentally upon Trenton, which was occupied by fifteen hundred of the twelve thousand Hessians, sold in so base a manner by their avaricious master, to the King of Great Britain. This corps was massacred, taken, or dispersed. Eight days after, three English regiments were in like manner driven from Princeton; but after having better supported their reputation than the foreign troops in ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... is told of another virtuoso, that he was waited upon one morning by a stranger, who announced that he had the opportunity of procuring an inestimable curiosity—a horned cock; but that its owner, an avaricious old woman, had her domicile in the highlands of Scotland, to which remote region it would be necessary to travel, amply provided with the pecuniary means of securing this wonderful bird; and that it would be expedient to set out ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Empire (or Turkey) is the most corrupt, cruel, and degrading in the world. We have seen that Spain is grasping, avaricious, and a hard mother to her distant Colonies, which she treats like slaves rather than children. But for all that Spain is brave and chivalric. She has a sense of honor and of justice, even if she ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... and advised my going to king Mtesa's—a ridiculous proposition, at once rejected; for I had yet to receive Kamrasi's answer to our Queen, about opening a trade with England. I must ascertain why he despised Englishmen without speaking with them, and I could not believe Kamrasi would prove less avaricious than either Rumanika or Mtesa, especially as Rumanika had made himself responsible for our actions. We slept that night near Kari, the Waganda eating two goats which had been drowned in the Luajerri; and the messenger-page, having been a third time to the palace and back ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... been punished where I had hoped to be rewarded," Michael said to me just now. "I had wished for a saving and industrious son, and God has given me an ambitious and avaricious one! I had always said to myself that when once he was grown up we should have him always with us, to recall our youth and to enliven our hearts. His mother was always thinking of getting him married, and having children again to care for. You know women always will busy themselves about ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... no mad pranks at first: but Phaedria Got him immediately a music-girl: Fond of her to distraction! she belong'd To a most avaricious, sordid pimp; Nor had we aught to give;—th' old gentleman Had taken care of that. Naught else remain'd, Except to feed his eyes, to follow her, To lead her out to school, and hand her home. We too, for lack of other business, gave Our time to Phaedria. Opposite the school, Whither ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... An insatiable, avaricious desire to accumulate riches, cooperating with a spirit of luxury and injustice, seems to be the leading cause of this peculiarly degrading and ignominious practice. Being once accustomed to subsist without labour, we become soft and voluptuous; and rather than afterwards forego the gratification ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... that a man possessed of sixty thousand pounds, or of as much as, at the present value of money, would purchase for ever the constant labour of from above sixty to eighty men, would have avoided the hazards of trade.—Yet in England it is not so—the avaricious spirit of commerce despises all mediocrity—care is preferred to enjoyment—and the ends of life are sacrificed to the means! It has always been the foible of man not to be contented with the good he possesses, but to look forward to happiness ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... income. He did not build any houses, except the one in which he lived, for he agreed with the proverb which says that fools build houses for wise men to live in, though "the greatest part of Rome sooner or later came into his hands," as Plutarch observes. He was of that sordid, avaricious character which covets wealth merely for the desire to be considered rich, for the vulgar popularity that accompanies that reputation, and not for ambition or enjoyment. He was said to be uninfluenced by the love ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... and might therefore be classed among the lucky diggers; but "the more people have, the more they want;" and although the many pounds weight of the precious metal that our party had "taken up" gave, when divided, a good round sum a-piece, the avaricious creatures bore the want of success that followed more unphilosophically than they had done before the rich "pocketful" of gold had made its appearance. They would dig none but shallow holes, and a sort of gambling manner of setting to work replaced the active ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... and after that she fell a slaying those no way related to her. So she calumniated the principal men among the Syrians to Antony, and persuaded him to have them slain, that so she might easily gain to be mistress of what they had; nay, she extended her avaricious humor to the Jews and Arabians, and secretly labored to have Herod and Malichus, the kings of both those nations, slain by ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... an effort to see the heroes who were conquering Europe in obedience to a word from the Emperor in the order of the day; the heroes of a modern time who outdid the mythical feats of paladins of old. The cities of France, however avaricious or refractory, must perforce do honor to the Imperial Guard, and mayors and prefects went out to meet them with set speeches as if the conquerors had been crowned kings. Mme. de Bargeton went to a ridotto given to the town by a regiment, and fell in love with an officer of a good ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... was; his cruelties had a purpose, the sufferings of the victims were a detail not an end. Yet something of that despot's character, refined into torturing the mind and not the flesh, chaste, cruel, avaricious of power, something of that Southern morbidness in crime, distinguishes Heathcliff from the villains of modern English tragedies. Placed in the Italian Renaissance, with Cyril Tourneur for a chronicler, Heathcliff would not have awakened the outburst of incredulous indignation which ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Virility, Anguish of the Empty Womb, thou dost not demand the bootless offering of chaste loins, thou dost not sing the praises of Lenten follies; thou alone receivest the carnal supplications and petitions of poor and avaricious families. Thou determinest the mother to sell her daughter, to give her son; thou aidest sterile and reprobate loves; Guardian of strident Neuroses, Leaden Tower of Hysteria, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... Wesson, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." ...
— The Gem Collector • P. G. Wodehouse
... neighbours to his mother's assistance. Two or three hastened to the call; and as soon as Philip saw them occupied in restoring his mother, he ran as fast as he could to the house of a medical man, who lived about a mile off—one Mynheer Poots, a little, miserable, avaricious wretch, but known to be very skilful in his profession. Philip found Poots at home, and insisted upon his ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... avaricious, so smooth was Lovat's address, so profound his knowledge of Scotland, and so strong his hold upon his own clansmen, that he always remained a man to be reckoned with. Since he served on the Hanoverian side in 1715 George I granted a pardon for his many ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... going on. He did not cry out, or frighten himself sillily; but, on the contrary, contented himself with watching the countenances of the robbers, so that he might recognize them on another occasion; and, though an avaricious man, he did not feel the slightest anxiety about his money-chest; for the fact is, he had removed all the cash and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is it not difficult to ascertain what we can pronounce "an elegant sufficiency"? Perhaps you will answer, as some others have done, we can attain it by circumscribing our wishes within the compass of our abilities. I am not very avaricious; yet I must own that I should like to enjoy it without so much trouble as ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... Nantbrook seemed unreal, a place of thin shadow, the future unsubstantial as well; only the past was actual in Lemuel Doret's mind—the gray cold prison, the city at night, locked rooms filled with smoke and lurid lights, avaricious voices in the mechanical sentences of gambling, agonized tones begging for a shot, just a shot, of an addicted ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... subjection or death of divinities like Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, and Osiris. Bres having exacted a tribute of the milk of all hornless dun cows, the cows of Ireland were passed through fire and smeared with ashes—a myth based perhaps on the Beltane fire ritual.[172] The avaricious Bres was satirised, and "nought but decay was on him from that hour,"[173] and when Nuada, having recovered, claimed the throne, he went to collect an army of the Fomorians, who assembled against the Tuatha De Danann. In the battle Indech wounded Ogma, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... that. So this witness is a liar too! Answer me. Is he a liar? [Silence] You don't answer. It's just as well. Come now, Etchepare, why do you persist in these denials—eh? Isn't it all plain enough? You are avaricious, interested, greedy for gain— ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... what had happened, and added, "I know that your majesty hates Lauderdale, tho' the necessity of your affairs obliges you to behave civilly to him; now if you would get rid of a man you hate, come to the council, for Lauderdale is a man so boundlessly avaricious, that rather than pay the hundred pounds lost in this wager, he will hang himself, and never plague you more." The king was pleased with the archness of this observation, and answered, 'then Killegrew I'll positively go,' which he did.—It is likewise related, that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... nature, young Henry had so warmly loved the gentle and fascinating Richard II., that his trust in the father, of whom he had seen little in his boyhood, had received a severe shock through Richard's fate. Under the influence of a new, suspicious, and avaricious wife, the King kept his son as much at a distance as possible, chiefly on the Welsh marches, learning the art of war under Hotspur and Oldcastle; and when the father and son were brought together ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... become, and does easily become, the basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the avaricious getter, like some obsolescent organ in the body, consumes strength and threatens health. And to-day he is far more mischievous than ever he was before, because of the weakened hold of the old religious organization upon his imagination. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Dalmatia. He took a leading part in the controversy between the Republic of Venice and the Pope, and after the reconciliation between the two parties was obliged by the Pope to pay an annual pension of five hundred crowns out of the revenues of his see to the Bishop of Segni. This highly incensed the avaricious prelate, who immediately began to look out for himself a more lucrative piece of preferment. He applied to Sir Dudley Carleton, the English Ambassador at Venice, to know whether he would be received into the Church of England, as the abuses ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... were unfortunate enough to fall under her harsh rule was a certain little girl whose name was Adele Rougeant. She was the daughter of an avaricious farmer who lived at "Les Marches," in the parish of ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... son, by glory fired, The empire of the world desired, He wept to find the course he ran— Despite of altars—was of man. So avaricious hopes are checked, And so proud man may lack respect; And so ambition may be foiled Of the reward for which it moiled. The wealthy surfeit of their wealth, Grudging the ploughman's strength and health. ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... would another say, "for sending me to a cloister to learn chastity; they would not have done worse in sending me to a roundhead to learn generosity, or to a quaker to learn manners, than to a papist to learn honor." "Destruction," said another, "seize my mother for her avaricious pride in preventing my obtaining a husband when I wanted one, and thus obliging me to purloin the thing I might have honorably come by." "Hell, and double Hell to the lustful wretch of a gentleman, who first ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... springs. For when we raise a son to riches and dignities, and leave an heir to much wealth, we become either ready to grasp at the property of the state, if in any case fear should be removed from the power which belongs to riches and rank; or avaricious, crafty, and hypocritical, if any one is of slender purse, little strength, and mean ancestry. But when we have taken away self-love, there remains ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... ill consequences of leaving such a paper in her hands, and desired to have it restored to him. But she rather chose to endure all the most violent effects of his anger, than give it up; and though she is one of the richest and most avaricious ladies of her country, she has refused the offer of the continuation of a large pension, and the security of a vast sum of money she has amassed; and has, at last, provoked the king to confine her person to a castle, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... Cruchot de), only daughter of M. and Mme. Felix Grandet; born at Saumur in 1796. Strictly reared by a mother gentle and devout, and by a father hard and avaricious. The single bright ray across her life was an absolutely platonic love for her cousin Charles Grandet. But, once away from her, this young man was forgetful of her; and, on his return from the Indies in 1827, a rich man, he married the young daughter of a nobleman. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... magistrates who proceeded to enforce the laws for the base purpose of extorting money from the parties obnoxious to their severity. Sometimes individuals, and sometimes whole congregations purchased immunity from suffering by entering into pecuniary contracts with corrupt and avaricious rulers; and by the payment of a certain sum obtained certificates [297:3] which protected them from all farther inquisition. [297:4] The purport of these documents has been the subject of much discussion. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... substitutes rational ethics and simple justice for old traditions and debasing customs, the destruction of wealth will be recognized as a crime, no matter how it was obtained; and such profligates as the Prince of Wales, who spends half a million yearly, and then calls upon his avaricious mother for one or two millions to silence the clamor of creditors whom he has defrauded, will be no longer feasted, admired, and imitated, for justice will be embodied in law and the race of profligates ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... said he, smiling, "for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book, who was so lazy that he fell into a pond, or so fat that he couldn't see out of his eyes, or so avaricious that he locked up his cake till the mice ate it, or so determined to go a bird's-nesting that he got himself eaten by bears who lived handy in the neighborhood. I tell you what I should like. We are so harmonious, and you have been a ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... except I would double the quantity of beads; the next day with a great deal of importunity on his part I received the skin in exchange for a few strans of the same beads he had refused the day before. I therefore believe this trait in their character proceeds from an avaricious all grasping disposition. in this rispect they differ from all Indians I ever became acquainted with, for their dispositions invariably lead them to give whatever they are possessed off no matter how usefull or valuable, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... thus did a great and wild fury spread itself over the nation, because they had no king to keep the multitude in good order, and because those foreigners who came to reduce the seditious to sobriety did, on the contrary, set them more in a flame, because of the injuries they offered them, and the avaricious management ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... sound letters. Yet why do I speak of healthy literature? I ought to have said good and wholesome doctrine, the which is verily mortal to that Company' (ibid. p. 162). 'Every species of vice finds its patronage in them. The avaricious trust their maxims, for trafficking in spiritual commodities; the superstitious, for substituting kisses upon images for the exercise of Christian virtues; the base fry of ambitious upstarts, for cloaking every act of scoundreldom with a ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... I was destined to appear in the flesh was that of an avaricious Jew. I was born in Alexandria in Egypt. My name was Balthazar. Nothing very remarkable happened to me till the year of the memorable tumult in which the Jews of that city are reported in history to have massacred ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... know the possessions he is master of, the old wardrobes, where things have been rotting time out of mind, are instantly wrenched open; the strong chests are unlocked; the parchments, those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... says, 'that even marriages of inclination do not always succeed. So from the fact that sometimes people make mistakes in their choice, it is concluded that we ought never to choose.' Condorcet, we may remember, many years after, insisted on the banishment by public opinion of avaricious and mercenary considerations from marriage, as one of the most important means of diminishing the great inequalities in the accumulation ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... reminded of my blighted, hopeless love in all kinds of unexpected ways, by unforeseen trifles. Oh, would I might, indeed, die! May obliteration be my deliverer!" "Poor fellows," he continued, glancing at the Italians, for he perceived that neither of the players was happy; the pianist was avaricious, while the violinist's natural and habitual jealousy destroyed his peace of mind. "Unhappiness seems the common lot," thought Ayrault. "Earth cannot give that joy for which we sigh. Poor fellows! though you ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... A short thick-set man stood there with his hand on the knob. He wore large horn glasses, which may have been because of defective sight or possibly as a disguise. The eyes behind the glasses were furtive and shifty, and the mouth was mean and avaricious. ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... sallied forth while it was yet early in the morning. Shunning the public roads; we could not rest until we believed ourselves safe from pursuit. Ascyltos, when he had caught his breath, gloatingly exulted of the pleasure which the looting of a villa belonging to Lycurgus, a superlatively avaricious man, afforded him: he complained, with justice of his parsimony, affirming that he himself had received no reward for his k-nightly services, that he had been kept at a dry table and on a skimpy ration of food. This Lycurgus was so stingy that ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... not to call your soul your own? Oh, I protest against this vile abjection of youth to age! look at fashionable society as you know it. What does it pretend to be? An exquisite dance of nymphs. What is it? A horrible procession of wretched girls, each in the claws of a cynical, cunning, avaricious, disillusioned, ignorantly experienced, foul-minded old woman whom she calls mother, and whose duty it is to corrupt her mind and sell her to the highest bidder. Why do these unhappy slaves marry anybody, however old and vile, sooner than not marry at all? Because marriage is their only ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... soul deformed, to be one intemperate and unjust, filled with a multitude of desires, a prey to foolish hopes and vexed with idle fears; through its diminutive and avaricious nature the subject of envy; employed solely in thought of what is immoral and low, bound in the fetters of impure delights, living the life, whatever it may be, peculiar to the passion of body; and so totally merged in sensuality as to esteem ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... need not know very much anatomy, but should have been trained in dietetics, materia medica, and minor surgical manipulations, such as version. She should be free from all corrupt and criminal practices, temperate, and not superstitious or avaricious. ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... arrived, the secretary of the Admiral, who was one of them, took the chief by the hand. The Admiral had sent him, to prevent the others from imposing upon the Indians. As the Indians are so simple, and the Spaniards so avaricious and grasping, it does not suffice that the Indians should give them all they want in exchange for a bead or a bit of glass, but the Spaniards would take everything without any return at all. The Admiral always prohibits this, although, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... struggled and rolled to protect his revolver. A dozen times the man snatched, plunged and parried to secure it, and as many times Jack rolled on top of it, keeping it securely in his hip pocket. Not a word was spoken, not a sound uttered. Only those two, the evil, avaricious, brutal man, and the fair, weak-eyed, brave boy, battling, rolling, lunging, each for the mastery. Then something caused the rope to give, the knot slipped, and with a mighty effort Jack wrenched one arm ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... ejaculated Borland, with a peculiar avaricious twinkle in the corners of his eyes. "His body is scarcely cold and yet you come around proposing to buy out his invention and—and, of all persons, you come ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... (frequently copied in his works), and settled there for life. His paintings were soon in extraordinary demand, and his fame spread far and wide; pupils flocked to his studio, and he received for the instruction of each a hundred florins a year. He was so excessively avaricious that he soon abandoned his former careful and finished style, for a rapid execution; also frequently retouched the pictures of his best pupils, and sold them as his own. His deceits in dating several of his etchings at Venice, to make them more saleable, led some of his ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... reflected sorrow for his fellow-victim. The latter had been one of Zane's apprentices, raised to a place in the establishment by his usefulness and sincere love of his patron. Just, forbearing, soft-spoken, and not avaricious, Sayler Rainey deserved no injury from any living being. He was unmarried, and, having met with a disappointment in love, had avowed his intention never to marry, but to bequeath all the property he should acquire to his partner's only son, ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... which sullied the reminiscences of Ghent, characterised the procedure of the minister towards England in 1846. There were various subjects of difference between the two countries; but that which most occupied the attention of Europe was the Spanish marriages. Louis Philippe had a numerous family, was avaricious to the last degree, and allowed avarice and nepotism to govern his policy, rather than the honour and interests of the great kingdom over which he presided. He was desirous that one of his sons should marry the Queen of Spain, and that another should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and stiffness in the jaw. Went to Chiefswood at one, and marked with regret forty trees indispensably necessary for paling—much like drawing a tooth; they are wanted and will never be better, but I am avaricious of grown trees, having ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that I should ever make my own fortune, JOHNSON! Happily for me, an opulent and ancient avuncular relative has lately departed to reside with the morning stars, and left me wealth outside the dream of an avaricious! ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... and give it its principal parts and its grammatical position in the sentence in order to understand and appreciate a fine poem. I know my learned professors have found greater riches in the Iliad than I shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I am content that others should be wiser than I. But with all their wide and comprehensive knowledge, they cannot measure their enjoyment of that splendid epic, nor can I. When I read the finest passages ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... was a very handsome, fascinating girl about nineteen. I fell madly in love with her, and she professed to return my feelings, and I, poor young fool, believed in her. Her mother, who was a cunning old harridan, and greedy and avaricious to a degree, gave us every opportunity of being together. As I spent my money most lavishly on the girl, and they both knew my father was well-off, and I was the only son, they had merely to spread their net for me to fall ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... over the shelves, picking out volumes here and there with an unwonted glow and interest all the while. He sent for a case, and made a youth who sometimes acted as his secretary pack them. And still as he went back to his own work new names would occur to him, and full of the scholar's avaricious sense of the shortness of time, he would shake his head and frown over the three months which young Elsmere had already passed, grappling with problems like Teutonic Arianism, the spread of Monasticism in Gaul, and Heaven knows what besides, half a mile from the man and the library which could ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... our future dealings with him, and sorrow for all the fearful ills we have wrought upon him must awaken larger sympathy, and elicit tender mercy. The race are dying out among us: let us at least soothe their parting hours. And let the Government look well to its avaricious agents. Our people are generous, and mean to be just; that is not enough: they must take the proper means, and see that their beneficent intentions are carried out with regard to this wretched remnant. It is not possible that a race so full of wild natural eloquence, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... will be an end to this grasping, avaricious work, and our pleasant vales will return to the ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... the King, while a regular courtier like myself rushes off to this lonely spot to spend his fortune on books and papers, all in disorder and half eaten by the book-worms. You will be able to judge if I am an avaricious man. No trouble or expense is anything to me where books are concerned. Would to God that I were free, and had time to read them. I should not feel any envy then of M. de Rosny's wealth or the Persian's mountain of gold.' While residing at Strasburg ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... is so avaricious that she expends for herself and household only ten thousand francs a year," continued ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... other cases of drugs and medicines amongst which it stood, he drew out a little secret drawer, having a glass lid, and containing a small portion of a black powder. This he offered to Wayland, his manner conveying the deepest devotion towards him, though an avaricious and jealous expression, which seemed to grudge every grain of what his customer was about to possess himself, disputed ground in his countenance with the obsequious deference which he desired it ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... resumed Montoni, 'I cannot believe you will oppose, where you know you cannot conquer, or, indeed, that you would wish to conquer, or be avaricious of any property, when you have not justice on your side. I think it proper, however, to acquaint you with the alternative. If you have a just opinion of the subject in question, you shall be allowed a safe conveyance to France, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... awakened spirit the monks presented obstacles and discouragements. They had no sympathy with progress; they belonged to the Dark Ages; they were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures; they were pedlers of indulgences and relics; impostors, frauds, vagabonds, gluttons, worldly, sensual, and avaricious. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... might be educated under the eyes of the Cardinal and the Bishop, who were his uncles. These two prelates joined with their father in entreating Petrarch to undertake the superintendence of Agapito's studies. Our poet, avaricious of his time, and jealous of his independence, was at first reluctant to undertake the charge; but, from his attachment to the family, at last accepted it. De Sade tells us that Petrarch was not successful in the young man's education; and, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... have solemnly promised to renounce their resentments, to conquer their aversions, to suffer with patience certain crosses, and to repress their eagerness for wealth; but nature prevails, and they are vindictive, violent, impatient, and avaricious. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... and with half suppressed grief and indignation, "I thank you, at least, for having suspended your judgment. No, I am not a coward; for heaven is my witness, that I knew of no danger to which the Society was exposed. Nor am I base and avaricious; for heaven is also my witness, that only at this moment I learn from you, father, that I may be destined ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... notwithstanding which, he could not wipe off the disrepute of his former stinginess. The Alexandrians called him constantly Cybiosactes; a name which had been given to one of their kings who was sordidly avaricious. Nay, at his funeral, Favo, the principal mimic, personating him, and imitating, as actors do, both his manner of speaking and his gestures, asked aloud of the procurators, "how much his funeral and the procession would cost?" ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the triumvir with Pompey and Caesar; was avaricious, and amassed great wealth; appointed to the province of Syria, provoked out of cupidity war with the Parthians, in which he was treacherously slain; Orodes, the king, cut off his head, and poured melted gold into his mouth, saying as he ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "My client had a son and daughter, both married. They were good children and loved their father on the American plan. The son had married an avaricious woman, while the daughter was married to a man who was not so avaricious as his sister-in-law. The old gentleman was very wealthy and like all good children they were thinking of the time when the property ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... in their hands. One woman in the house of the Faun was loaded with jewels, and had died in the vain effort to hold up with her outstretched arms the ceiling that was crushing down upon her. But women were not the only ones who showed an avaricious disposition in the midst of the thunders and flames of Vesuvius. Men had tried to carry off their money, and the delay had cost them their lives, and they were buried in the ashes with the coins they so highly valued. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the island, and killed him on the spot; he had quitted his house in the storm, under an apprehension of its falling upon him, and was returning through his own garden when this fortunate accident happened. The word fortunate here requires some explanation. This chief was a man of a very avaricious and oppressive disposition, and though he had no family, the natives of the island were half starved by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... that he was avaricious—far from that; but he had numberless schemes in view, and he knew full well that without the gold they could ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... tired; and the bridegroom was not suffered to enter the chamber till his lordship had retired. Such indecent privileges must have originated in the worst of intentions; and when afterwards they advanced a step in more humane manners, the ceremonial was preserved from avaricious motives. Others have compelled their subjects to pass the first night at the top of a tree, and there to consummate their marriage; to pass the bridal hours in a river; or to be bound naked to a cart, and to trace some furrows as they were dragged; or to leap ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... sermon, seeing that he meant to inform his princely Grace the Duke of Pomerania of the blasphemous lies which I had vomited against him, and which must sorely offend every Christian heart. Item, what an avaricious wretch I must be to be always wanting something of him, and to be daily, so to say, pestering him in these hard times with my filthy letters, when he had not enough to eat himself. This, he said, should break the parson his neck, since his princely ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... so small that the father's willmade provision for his being brought up by his uncle, whom I mention'd but now as of the British army. He was a strange man, this uncle; disliked by all who knew him; passionate, vindictive, and, it was said, very avaricious, even from ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... poverty. On mentioning a certain house that was strongly built and almost impregnable, one of the company said, "This house indeed is strong, for if it should contain food it could never be got at," thus alluding both to the food and to the house. In like manner, a person, wishing to hint at the avaricious disposition of the mistress of a house, said, "I only find fault with our hostess for putting too little butter to her salt," whereas the accessory should be put to the principal; thus, by a subtle transposition ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... done, but for this fatal sickness;— More fatal than a mortal malady, Because it takes not life, but life's sole solace: Even now I feel my spirit girt about By the snares of this avaricious fiend:— How do I know he hath ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Squire carrying a Halberd, Fifteenth Century View of Alexandria, Sixteenth Century Village Feast, Sixteenth Century Village pillaged by Soldiers Villain, the Covetous and Avaricious Villain, the Egotistical and Envious Villain or Peasant, Fifteenth Century Villain receiving his Lord's Orders Vine, Culture of the Vintagers, The, Thirteenth Century Votive ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... we'll be gettin' to Hunker's ordinary at the four corners right smart off now, and I was calculatin' if you had enough of the rags with you to set us up a drink all round? 'T won't cost more 'n ten thousand dollars if Hunkers ain't in an avaricious mood." ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... superior to Gibraltar or Minorca. One paper signed 'P. J.' has the undoubted Boswellian touch in dealing with the sailors thrown idle by the cessation of the along-shore Mediterranean trade. 'None are less avaricious than our honest tars, nor have they, in reality, any reason to be discontented. Every common sailor has at least five and thirty shillings a month, over and above which he has his victuals and drink, and that in great abundance. There is no such thing as stinting aboard a ship, unless when reduced ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Mull of Galloway and entered the Irish Sea. Here there was an occurrence of an impressive nature. A woman, belonging to the steerage, who had been ill the whole passage, died the morning before. She appeared to be of a very avaricious disposition, though this might indeed have been the result of self-denial, practised through filial affection. In the morning she was speechless, and while they were endeavoring to persuade her to give up her keys to the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... most avaricious old fellows I had ever met with in the South Seas—shook his head and said I was trying to wrong myself. The people would be glad to get such a fine boat for two hundred dollars, and that if he and the other head men announced that I had parted with her for a hundred dollars, the entire population ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... their return to their native country, they spread abroad tidings that the new people of America had gained a treasure richer a thousand-fold than those which had gilded the triumphs of Cortes or Pizarro—the inestimable prize of liberty. Then the down-trampled millions of France arose, and with avaricious haste strove for a like treasure. They won a specious imitation, so soiled and stained, however, that many of the wisest among them could not at once detect its nature. They played with the coarse bawble for a time, then lost it in a sea ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... seized Laudonniere, and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malcontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper, to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint of the design from a friend; upon which he warned La Caille, who escaped ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... overlook his display of importance when he neglected gentlemen in order to parade his tuppenny mayor's business. I paid no attention to his vaporings on the water question. I've heard plenty of franchise-owners talk that way for effect! He's an especially avaricious Scot, isn't he? Confound him! How much more shall I ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... need As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (That I should be So avaricious of ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... you mean?" she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers? "What are ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... him, was an outstanding personality, clever, scheming, and as unscrupulous as he was avaricious. His mujik ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... queen treated him with honour, testified great affection to him, and discoursed with him the better part of the night. They could not but be astonished, that he and his companions were come from another world, and had passed through so many stormy seas, not out of an avaricious design of enriching themselves with the gold of Japan, but only to teach the Japonese the true way of eternal life. From the very first meeting, the king cautioned Xavier to keep safely all the books and writings which ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... name of the Kailouee green cap, I know here means the "lion's mouth." This is the phrase with which I always salute Zangheema, En-Noor's chief slave; but the terms are much more appropriate for his master, as intimating his avaricious, nay voracious, disposition. Zangheema, however, might be called "Karen Zakee," the jackal of the lion, or "the lion's provider," so anxious is he to minister to the voracious appetite ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... as there are in the Southern; and another circumstance that diminished them there, and increased them greatly here, was while the Northern States were legislating on the subject of gradual emancipation, avaricious masters sent them by thousands to the Southern markets, before the emancipating laws were actually passed, which left a small proportion in those States, in comparison to the whites; not many more, perhaps, than ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... time he was bowed down under the weight of his sins, and at length he found peace through the blood of Christ. He was renewed. The avaricious man became liberal, the implacable enemy became the forgiving friend, and the man of cursing a man of prayer. But it was impossible for him to cease to grieve; so he thought he would sell the farm and seek another home. The farm was sold, the horses and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... except from the Vatican, where the Pope, like Dame Partington with her mop, thought to stay its progress. The grandsons of the old routiers cried fie on this quiet life, and snuffed the air for rapine. The nobility were out of pocket and out at elbows, and looked with avaricious eyes on the fair and broad lands of the Church, and their fingers itched to be groping in her treasury, and they hoped to patch their jerkins with her costly vestments. Court favourites were abbots in commendam, ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... name, as trustee, to you individually. Now it is up to you to prove that you are a careful little business woman. With more than a thousand dollars in the bank you may feel quite like an heiress, but I warn you that a big city is a glutton and its avaricious maw is always open for money. Be warned by one who knows. If you need any advice of any nature that a man can give better than Miss Merriman, I want you to promise to call on Phil ... Dr. Bentley, that is, for I mean to put you in ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... express his sentiments with sufficient clearness. He was exceedingly remiss in keeping his secrets to himself, by which weakness he often suffered much prejudice in his affairs and military transactions. He was rather avaricious, and disliked much to give away money; owing to which want of liberality his affairs frequently suffered material injury. He was exceedingly amorous, not confining himself like his brother the marquis to the native women, but gave much offence by his intrigues among ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... of the four letters—the last there could be, for he had no more stamps. The others he had thrown over the wall, one each morning, beginning with the day after he had made the first attempt to bribe old Michel. As he had expected, twenty-four hours of avaricious reflection had proved too much for that ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... along very well with his employer, who was a snug and avaricious person. He would go to Boston once a week to make his purchases, leaving Derby in charge of the store. Derby would lie down at full length on the counter, get a novel, and was then very unwilling to be disturbed to wait on customers. If a little girl came in with a tin kettle to get some ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... merely for his property, and the position he held in society, misfortune might deprive him of these, and a disagreeable companion for life would remain to remind me constantly of my choice. But a generous, talented man like Lyndsay, by industry and prudence may become rich, and then the most avaricious worlding would applaud the step ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie |
