"Usurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hastened the ruin of the interdicted. The grand skinflint, the master usurer of the time, Jean V, duke of Brittany, refused to publish the edict in his states, but, underhandedly, notified all those of his subjects who dealt with Gilles. No one now dared to buy the Marshal's domains ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... December, when the second notes fell due, du Tillet demanded payment. The rich banker, who said he was embarrassed, advised Raoul to borrow the money for a short time from a usurer, from Gigonnet, the providence of all young men who were pressed for money. In January, he remarked, the renewal of subscriptions to the paper would be coming in, there would be plenty of money in hand, and they could then see what had best be done. Besides, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... to questions of economy and expense. Their relationship had become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. The strategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded out the memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidences to-night, when common ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... was a tomb bearing the effigy of John O'Combe, who we thought might have hailed from the neighbourhood of the old abbey of that name which we passed the night before. In spite of his benefactions recorded in the church, he was looked upon as a usurer, because he charged 10 per cent, for his money. He was at one time a friend of Shakespeare, and often asked the poet, who was no doubt acquainted with his rate of interest, to write him an epitaph. When at length he acceded to his request he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... object, puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of Harpagon. Several scenes of a good comic description are merely subordinate, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... florins besides. Debts contracted at play cannot remain unpaid for more than a couple of days. It was absolutely indispensable that I should procure these thousand florins somehow. I would not ask my husband for them and that was very foolish of me. I got the amount at last from a wretched usurer at an enormous rate of interest. When the amount plus interest became due again, I was still more afraid to tell my husband, and so kept on giving fresh bills, with the result that the amount of my indebtedness grew and grew as the ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... Then Cato aunswered in fewe woordes. Quid hominem occidere. What saie you to be a murderer? Soche a thyng saieth he, is [Fol. xxxvij.v] Usurie. A brief sentence againste Usurers, but wittely pro- nounced from the mouth of a godlie, sage, noble, and descrite persone, whiche sentence let the Usurer, ioigne to his Usury retourned, and repeate at the retourne thereof, this sentence [Sidenote: The sentence of Cato a dis- comfort to v- surers.] of Cato, I haue murthered. This one sentence will discou- rage any Usurer, knowyng hymself a murtherer. Though ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... to a number of different journals. Emile de Girardin had welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829, under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman (signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Porportuk was content to plod and accumulate. Klakee-Nah went back to his large house and proceeded to spend. Porportuk was known as the richest Indian in Alaska. Klakee-Nah was known as the whitest. Porportuk was a money-lender and a usurer. Klakee-Nah was an anachronism—a mediaeval ruin, a fighter and a feaster, happy with wine ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... accounts presented by Pierre, disallowed them, and condemned the dishonest guardian to pay his nephew four hundred livres for each year of his administration. The day on which this sum had to be disbursed from his strong box the old usurer vowed vengeance, but until he could gratify his hatred he was forced to conceal it, and to receive attempts at reconciliation with a friendly smile. It was not until six months later, on the occasion of a joyous festivity, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dictates of your duty, your discretion, and your glory, and think upon the honours and elevated enjoyment for which you are certainly ordained. To-night let us over a cheerful bottle anticipate your success; and to-morrow I will accompany you to the house of an usurer, who, I am informed, fears no risk, provided twenty per cent be given, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... You shall have a hundred thousand, this very day. Ptitsin, get the money, you gay usurer! Take what you like for it, but get it by the evening! I'll show that I'm in earnest!" cried Rogojin, working himself up into ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... retro; a legal term for a particular kind of conveyance, often used in Spain as a usurer's device, and best explained by an example. A house-owner wishes to raise money by giving a mortgage on his house. But if he is in straits, the lender may refuse to accept the mortgage as security, and demand a bill of sale of it, which contains a clause providing ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... him for his pithy analysis of character, I enlarged upon my theme. "He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he'll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, and gets a fresh sample every time. Even against the Bonnie Lassie, whose sculptures you ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the noblest Romans of the day, only second, if second, to Cato ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... odd thing about which I cannot make up my mind; I do not know whether it is unconscious observation or fiendish irony. But it is this. In Our Mutual Friend is an old patriarch named Aaron, who is a saintly Jew made to do the dirty work of an abominable Christian usurer. In an artistic sense I think the patriarch Aaron as much of a humbug as the patriarch Casby. In a moral sense there is no doubt at all that Dickens introduced the Jew with a philanthropic idea of doing justice to Judaism, which he was told he had affronted by the great gargoyle of Fagin. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... learner treads In his instructor's step, so that your art Deserves the name of second in descent From God. These two, if thou recall to mind Creation's holy book, from the beginning Were the right source of life and excellence To human kind. But in another path The usurer walks; and Nature in herself And in her follower thus he sets at nought, Placing elsewhere his hope. But follow now My steps on forward journey bent; for now The Pisces play with undulating glance Along the' horizon, and the Wain lies all O'er the north-west; and onward there a space Is our ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... thought for the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bargained for three months' residence and a month's payment in advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by depositing in his room such property as he had brought with him for the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched Leopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to carry out the excursion ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... lands my patron had left me, built me a house, bought cattle to sell them again, and whatever I went about gathered like a snow-ball: But when I grew richer than all the country besides, I took up; and from a merchant turn'd usurer, and ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... His love! Talk not of love. Love has no thought of self! Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold The loathsome prostitution of a hand Without a heart? Love sacrifices all things To bless the thing it loves! He knows not love. Father, his love is hate—his hope revenge! My tears, my anguish, my remorse for falsehood— These are the joys that ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... drunken usurer, stumpy and fat, choleric, a coward, and a bully. He fancies money will buy everything and every one.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to prefer you to Monsieur de Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and, ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to be as angry as perhaps I should be with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole game of business is beggar my neighbour; and though perhaps that game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... over Europe would be disastrously torn by any considerable war; and that in consequence it is to the interest of the usurers to preserve peace. But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear differentiation. It may easily be to the interest of a particular usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr. Angell anticipates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... statesman. His wife was the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy, and, to a reputation that was none of the most savoury, added the manners of a kitchen-maid and a slut, and the avarice of a usurer. Her brother, who was an apothecary, became employed through the influence of Monk. He carried over to Charles the flattering message from Parliament in May, 1660, and was then knighted. As Sir John Clarges, he had a long and active Parliamentary career, and did not die till 1695.] was now supreme ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... apparently in my own house, with servants, such as they are, around me. It's all in appearance. In reality, I'm not the owner. I once was, as my father before me; but can't claim to be any longer. Even while we're sitting here, drinking this Catalan, the mortgagee—that old usurer Martinez—may step in ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... by one Squeers. But the young fellow's gorge rises at the sickening cruelty exercised in the school, and he leaves it, having first beaten Mr. Squeers,—leaves it followed by a poor shattered creature called Smike. Meanwhile Ralph, the usurer, befriends his sister-in-law and niece after his own fashion, and tries to use the latter's beauty in furtherance of his trade as a money-lender. Nicholas discovers his plots, frustrates all his schemes, rescues, and ultimately marries, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... crushes John Bull under its weight. "The bread," he cries, "is out of my reach, and those cursed taxes will break my back. That large one ['duty on manufactories,' which the chancellor is just putting into the scale] will do for me." Beyond, a usurer and four large landowners are seen rejoicing at the flight of the "Property Tax," an alleviation which is calculated to do no good to any ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... been compelled, my dear friend, to resort to a measure which till now we had so happily avoided. Our remittances have failed to arrive—failed, for the first time, in this pressing emergency, and we have been obliged to have recourse to a usurer, as the prince is willing to pay handsomely to keep the affair secret. The worst of this disagreeable occurrence is, that it retards our departure. On this affair the prince and I have had an explanation. The whole transaction had been arranged by Biondello, and the son of Israel was there before ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the world, great and grievous, and yet few on this score; rather shall men fight as they have been fighting in France at the bidding of some lord of the manor, or some king, or at last at the bidding of some usurer and forestaller of the market. Valiant men, forsooth, shall arise in the beginning of these evil times, but though they shall die as ye shall, yet shall not their deaths be fruitful as yours shall be; because ye, forsooth, ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... outcry of the civilized world gave full vent to their hatred in their conversations with Baron Hirsch's deputy. White reported afterwards that the functionaries of St. Petersburg had painted to him the Russian Jew as "a compound of thief and usurer." Pobyedonostzev delivered himself of the following malicious observation: "The Jew is a parasite. Remove him from the living organism in which and and on which he exists and put this parasite on a rock—and he will die." While thus justifying before the distinguished ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... an infected darkness. In this place Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts Of never-dying deaths; there damned souls Roar without pity, there are gluttons fed With toads and adders; there is burning oil Pour'd down the drunkard's throat, 'the usurer Is forced to sup whole draughts of molten gold'; There is the murderer for ever stabb'd, Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton On racks of burning steel, whilst in his soul He feels the torment ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... decided to appeal to Glady he had hesitated between him and a usurer named Caffie, whom he did not know personally, but whom he had heard spoken of as a rascal who was interested in all sorts of affairs, preferring the bad to the good—of successions, marriages, interdictions, extortions; and if he had not been to him it was for fear ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... he added, with a conscious blush, "you may accuse me of deception in this instance. He has not asked me the sum I owe—and Heaven knows I could not go and thrust my bills in his face. I thought perhaps there was some usurer, whom you had heard of, who could let me have the money. They are debts of honor, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... seventeenth century than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in Charles II.'s London. But the Hon. Francis North was placed comfortably beneath the prejudices of his order and time of life. He was of noble birth, but quite ready to marry into a plebeian family; he was young, but loved money more than aught else. So his hearing was quickened and ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... unforeseen accidents, or expenses incurred in afforestation, roads, etc.—but who to-day are compelled to live very poorly, from hand to mouth, the remainder having been taken from them by the State, the landlord, the priest, and the usurer. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... stand against it. But when one man stands single-handed against our march, we do not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not see Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen." Again she paused a moment, and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle desired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys are always aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he struck boys bigger than himself,—fought ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and then it will provoke laughter; but, before that, it had already alienated our sympathy: how can we put ourselves in tune with a soul which is not in tune with itself? In Moliere's L'Avare we have a scene bordering upon drama. It is the one in which the borrower and the usurer, who have never seen each other, meet face to face and find that they are son and father. Here we should be in the thick of a drama, if only greed and fatherly affection, conflicting with each other in the soul of Harpagon, had effected a more or less original ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... several thousands of that country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made a profit of L80,000 on a capital of L90,000: a profit large enough to make the mouth of the deceased usurer Kirkwood dry with envy. But, while our legislature passed laws to restrain the usurer in his exactions, the "war profiteer" has no restriction placed on him. His workmen can, in certain cases, be fined or sent to prison if they absent themselves ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... it before him. His first thought was that he had wared L89 on his enemy's fine clothes, and James loved gold and hated foppish, extravagant dress; his next that he had saved Andrew Starkie L89, and he knew the old usurer was quietly laughing at his folly. But worse than all was the alternative he saw as the result of his sinful purchase: if he used it to gratify his personal hatred, he deeply wounded, perhaps killed, his dearest ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... whole of it? Of course she can't. You know that as well as I do. She can have four hundred pounds, if she wants it. But seeing all she gets out of the concern, she has no right to press for it in that way. She is the —— old usurer I ever ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... abundance lies; he tells him that he beguiles the world, unblesses some mother; that he is his mother's glass and calls back the April of her prime; asks him why he abuses the bounteous largess given him to give; calls him a profitless usurer; tells him that the hours that have made him fair will unfair him; that he should not let winter's rugged hand deface ere he has begotten a child, though it were a greater happiness should he beget ten. He asks if his failure to marry is because he might ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... things needful for life or comfort. If money could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor; and as the enterprise would not then have to support a double burden—to wit, the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his back—but would have to maintain only the former usurer—that is, the present employer—its success would be more certain; the general prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and there would be therefore more enterprises, more demand for labor, ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... to fill the audience with horror than pleasure and mirth; and if in the conclusion their plots should be baffled, even this would come too late to prevent that ill impression. But in the Lawsuit this is admirably avoided: for the character chosen is a rich, avaricious usurer: the pecuniary distresses of such a person can never be looked upon with horror; and if he should be even handled unjustly, we always wait his delivery ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The usurer walked back to the counter, determined, however, not to prolong the argument. Mr. Bennington took a well-filled pocket-book from the iron safe, from which he counted out the ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... backwoods usurer, "I'll charge you twelve per cent. I do love a good interest. There is no Antonio about me. I'll lend no money gratis and bring down the rate of usance. ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... apply the words "little Dicky" to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was a keeper of accounts in the service of a rich zemindar, whose estate lay in the Country of the Five Rivers. He was a usurer as well as a landowner, as had been his fathers before him for many generations. So in his castle was an accumulation of great stores of wealth—gold and silver and precious stones, cloth of gold, silks, brocades, and muslins, ivory and amber, camphor, spices, ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... true when one considers nowadays the delicate and important functions of the world of banking and finance. The old-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods were regarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantile life, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and the desire to be useful members of the community. But in these days the banks are not merely private money-making ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... th' outlandish way, So fine too, that they their own shadows woo, While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe; I'm mad at Fate, and angry ev'n to sin, To see deserts and learning clad so thin; To think how th' earthly usurer can brood Upon his bags, and weigh the precious food With palsied hands, as if his soul did fear The scales could rob him of what he laid there. Like devils that on hid treasures sit, or those Whose jealous eyes trust not beyond their nose, They guard the dirt and the bright idol hold Close, and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... parley together. The belted lords of Britain, her ancient peers, must decide, if it is their will that a house, not the least noble of their members, shall be stripped of their possessions, the reward of the patriotism of generations, as the pawn of a wretched mechanic becomes forfeit to the usurer the instant the hour of redemption has passed away. If they yield to the grasping severity of the creditor, and to the gnawing usury that eats into our lands as moths into a raiment, it will be of more evil consequence to them and their posterity than to Edgar Ravenswood. ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... benefits is simple: so much is expenditure; if there is any return, that is clear gain; if there is no return, that is not a loss. I gave it for the sake of giving. No one registers his benefits in a ledger, or, like an exacting usurer, presses to the day and hour for repayment. An honourable man never thinks of such matters, unless reminded by someone returning a favour; otherwise they assume ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... worldly things. Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly as to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart. Tell a usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution—you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world choke the good seed; that ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse; but he, as Jortin says, was a great wit, but ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... well as his own; feels indeed that wrongs are offered to them in him, and to him in them. Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains, insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer; hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian, one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his precious, precious jewels? Thus his religion, his patriotism, his avarice, his affection, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... II.i.195 (251,4) [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg, though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the day before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable. Janet knew what was in his mind. She drew the lamb a little closer and tucked her skirt in around it. Again she fell to contemplating the prairie—and the sky. The birds above seemed connected with the machinery of Time. At unexpected ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... lances, spears, darts, arrows, and I know not what besides. Don't be ashamed of it, Baron!—these holes are honourable to you. Many a shirt of fine linen, ruffled and embroidered, according to the latest fashion, disguises the graceless person of some rascally parvenu—and usurer as well perhaps—who usurps the place of his betters. Several of the great heroes, of immortal fame, had not a shirt to their backs—Ulysses, for example, that wise and valiant man, who presented himself before the beautiful Princess ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... beggar!' exclaimed Mr. Watchorn, returning his horn to its case, and eyeing Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters sailing away with the again breast-high-scent pack. 'Oh, you exorbitant usurer!' continued he, gathering his horse to skate after them. 'Well now, that's the most disgraceful proceedin' I ever saw in the whole course of my life. Hang me, if I'll stand such work! Dash me, but I'll 'quaint the Queen!—I'll tell Sir George Grey! ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper who knew little about literature; but in the underground establishment he was spoken of, by those who came to pawn, as a usurer of the worst. In an underhand way he did a ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... his eyes, he watched M. Langis through his eye-lashes. A change passed over his features; his nose became more crooked, and his chin more pointed; he no longer resembled a lion, he was a fox. His lips wore the sugared smile of a usurer, one who lays snares for the sons of wealthy families, and who scents out every favourable case. If at this moment Jeremiah Brohl had seen him from the other world, he would have recognised his own flesh ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... gallant and bold; O was an oyster girl, and went about town; P was a parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a queen, who wore a silk slip; R was a robber, and wanted a whip; S was a sailor, and spent all he got; T was a tinker, and mended a pot; U was an usurer, a miserable elf; V was a vintner, who drank all himself; W was a watchman, and guarded the door; X was expensive, and so became poor; Y was a youth, that did not love school; Z was a ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... us a similar tale: A merchant of Venice, having been informed by private letter that Drake had taken and plundered St. Domingo, sent word to Sampson Ceneda, a Jewish usurer. Ceneda would not believe it, and bet a pound of flesh it was not true. When the report was confirmed the pope told Secchi he might lawfully claim his bet if he chose, only he must draw no blood, nor take either more or less than an exact pound, on the penalty of being hanged.—Gregorio ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... project. The ladies present also shared in the bacchanal conspiracy, and the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again and again with its silvery foam. The surgeon was easily managed; but at the second glass which I offered to my neighbor the lawyer, he told me with the frigid politeness of a usurer that he ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... To find yourself a usurer in your dreams, foretells that you will be treated with coldness by your associates, and your business will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... government. It is their innate want of order that throws business, money, and, at length, the land itself, into the hands of Jews and Protestants. This fact is also here worthy of notice, that the Jewish usurer is disappearing or withdrawing wherever the Protestant element is taking firmer ground. The Jew remains in the country, but becomes a citizen, and sometimes even a peasant-proprietor. This phenomenon is manifesting itself also in other places where there is a concurrence of the German and Slavonic ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... region of which this village is the commercial center are falling victims to their inherited indolence and dullness in the materialistic latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of the usurer—getting hopelessly in debt—and are losing their high place and retiring to second and lower. The Boer's farm does not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to a foreigner. Some have fallen so low that they sell their daughters ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was the real work of the brotherhood!" Evan went on. "Blackmail. This was why you couldn't fire them when they threatened you. A new way to raise money for philanthropic purposes, I swear! To hold up a usurer with one hand, and feed poor ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... nor a distinction from the state, nor found an influence, nor leave behind them an operative model, in Germany, as now constituted. Other walks of emolument are still more despised. Alfieri, a continental "noble," that is, a born gentleman, speaks of bankers as we in England should of a Jewish usurer, or tricking money-changer. The liberal trades, such as those which minister to literature or the fine arts, which, with us, confer the station of gentleman upon those who exercise them, are, in the estimate of a continental "noble," fitted to assign a certain ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced to work. [653]"For I see no reason" (as [654]he said) "why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, when as in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual labour, as an ass to carry burdens, to do ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... show you that I am not a usurer, I will decline to ask of you a single kopeck for the serfs. All that you need do is to buy that colt of mine, and then I will throw in the ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... crafty and circumventing, one that winks on another with his eyes not to be false and deceitful, a sailor and hangman to be pitiful, a poor man to build churches, a quack doctor to have a good conscience, a bailiff not to be a merciless villain, an hostess not to over-reckon you, and an usurer to be charitable—— ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... the death of his two victims, he died sadly in a few days. And a certain holy hermit, name not given, nor date of the vision, saw the ghosts of Boethius and Symmachus lead the Amal's soul up the cone of Stromboli, and hurl him in, as the English sailors saw old Boots, the Wapping usurer, hurled into the same place, for offences far more capable ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Diagoras, the Usurer, in Love with his Cook-Maid; he peeped several times over the Precipice, but his Heart misgiving him, he went back, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... cooked by a Kshatriya, it diminishes his energy; if he takes the food provided by a Sudra, it dims his Brahmanic lustre; and if he takes the food provided by a goldsmith or a woman who has neither husband nor children it lessens the period of his life. The food provided by a usurer is equivalent to dirt, while that provided by a woman living by prostitution is equivalent to semen. The food also provided by persons that tolerate the unchastity of their wives, and by persons that are ruled by their spouses, is forbidden. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... obverse and reverse of the coin. Beaumont and Fletcher, in the 'Scornful Lady,' show the difference between the penny and three-farthing piece, and inform us of a knavish trick then practised, to impose upon ignorant people the lesser as the greater coin. Lovelass, speaking of Morecraft, the usurer, says: 'He had a bastard, his own toward issue, whipt and thin cropt, for washing out the rose in three ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of sadness took place in the lone churchyard, unholy watch was kept over the second coffin by the myrmidons of the law. The usurer who made the seizure had brought down from Dublin three of the most determined bailiffs from amongst the tribe, and to their care was committed the keeping of the supposed body in the old barn. Associated with these worthies were a couple of ill-conditioned country blackguards, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... sadly your list of the honest and worthy poor; for the money lies by me, and brings me no interest. You see I am become a mere usurer; and want to make use upon use: and yet, when I have done all, I cannot do so much as I ought. God forgive ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... her of whom I speak. The other was not my wife. When I met her I was already married in Ireland—years before. A horrible forced marriage. My dear, when I was twenty-five I was confronted with this alternative: a debtor's prison or Miss Strang, an ugly and gouty old maid, sister of the usurer who had lent me five hundred pounds to pay for my medical studies. I preferred the prison; but after weeks and months I came to the end of my courage, and I married Miss Strang, who brought me for dowry—my note of hand. You can guess what my life was between these two monsters who adored each other. ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... run short of seed, he has a very hard battle to fight with the soil before he is able to get that debt cleared off, should his neighbours be too poor to assist him, as he must then have recourse to the usurer. For although, through his greater efforts and improved cultivation, he may produce much more paddy than his land had done before, yet he is seldom able to save enough for seed from the moiety of the produce which his appetite restricted to live upon, as the other half must go to ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Venetian people, and how they are all perfect in the faith of Jesu Christ and obedient to holy Church, and how they never disobey the commandment of holy Church. Within this noble Venice there dares to dwell neither heretic, nor usurer, murderer, thief nor robber. And I will tell you the names of all the Doges that have been in Venice, one after the other, and what they did to the honour of holy Church and of their noble City. And ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... course taken by a train of incidents of which the issue is life or death, happiness or misery, to men and women perfectly unknown to them, and to whom they are unknown. Attorneys of all possible grades, law clerks of every conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very certainly, to the issues that await ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... add to his afflictions. In appearance you do him a pleasure, but in reality ruin him, like one who, overeome by a sick man's importunities, gives him wine, a present satisfaction, but a real poison. Usury gives no relief, but makes your neighbor's want greater than it was. The usurer is no way profitable to the republic, neither by tilling the ground, by trade, &c.; yet idle at home, would have all to produce to him; hates all he gains not by. But though you were to give alms of these unjust exactions, they ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Let the usurer watch o'er his bags and his house, To keep that from robbers he rak'd from his debtors, Which at midnight cries thieves at the noise of a mouse, And he looks if his trunks are fast bound to their fetters; When once he's grown rich enough for a State's ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... what the old thief has told you. She told you Papa Ravinet was a dangerous, ill-reputed man, who carried on in the dark all kind of suspicious trades. She told you the old scamp was a usurer, who knew no law, and kept no promise; whose only principle was profit; who dealt in every thing with everybody, selling to-day old iron in junk-shops, and to-morrow cashmere shawls to fashionable ladies; and who lent money on imaginary ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... railers at supposed paradox. In his Miscellanies (1742, 8vo) he wrote a satire on the Chrysippus or Guinea, an animal which multiplies itself by division, like the polypus. This he supposes to have been drawn up by Petrus Gualterus, meaning the famous usurer, Peter Walter. He calls it a paper "proper to be read before the R——l Society": and next year, 1743, a quarto reprint was made to resemble a paper in the Philosophical Transactions. So far as I can make out, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... past, vague and dim, arising in the deserted chapel, the memory of those two ladies, the one all piety, the other all idealism, aristocratic and dreamy, drove Febrer to distraction. To think that soon the rude hands of the usurer would profane so much that was old and venerable! He could not stay ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... IOhan the usurer 28 A tant preste Hath lente so moche Quil ne scet le nombre That he knoweth not the nombre Del auoir quil a Of the good that he hath tout maisement assemble. Alle euyll gadred to gedyr. 32 Il preste la liure He leneth the pounde Pour quatre ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... one of the guests; "thanks to him, creditors take care of the health of their debtors. This morning a usurer, who feels a particular interest in my existence, brought me all sorts of anti-choleraic drugs, and begged me to make ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "moderate" Udall, after publishing a dialogue (in which an Anglican bishop called Diotrephes is represented, among other things, as planning measures against the Puritans in consort with a papist and an usurer), further composed a Demonstration of Discipline in which, writing, according to Mr. Arber, "without any satire or invective," he calls the bishops merely qua bishops, "the wretched fathers of a filthy mother," with abundant epithets to match, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... enamored of the beautiful Jewess. What would have appeared inexplicable to the public, was the hundred thousand piasters, the price of her hand; but this bargain was secret. And besides, Samuel trafficked in sentiments as in native productions. A banker, usurer, merchant, ship-owner, he had the talent to do business with everybody. The schooner Annonciation, which was hovering about the mouth of the Rimac, belonged to the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... attorney should speak of a romance in his life? But once I was five-and-twenty, like everybody else, and even then I had seen some queer things. I ought to begin at the beginning by telling you about some one whom it is impossible that you should have known. The man in question was a usurer. ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... radiant eyes?— Or that cheek in roses dyed? All their beauty (thought of sorrow!) From the brittle mould they borrow. Heavy interest in the tomb For the brief loan of the bloom, For the beauty of the day, Death the usurer, thou must pay, In ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... you can, the evil which a country usurer exercises, armed against them with such burdensome rights; it is the feudal seigniory in the hands of Harpagon, or rather of old Grandet. When, indeed, a tax becomes insupportable we see, by the local complaints, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... said her mistress; "but the honour of a Norman is not satisfied with an observance so limited. What! wouldst thou have my honour, my affections, my duty, all that is most valuable to a woman, depend on the same progress of the kalendar which an usurer watches for the purpose of seizing on a forfeited pledge?—Am I such a mere commodity, that I must belong to one man if he claims me before Michaelmas, to another if he comes afterwards?—No, Rose; I did not thus interpret my engagement, sanctioned as it was by ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Jew, lived at Venice: he was an usurer, who had amassed an immense fortune by lending money at great interest to Christian merchants. Shylock, being a hard-hearted man, exacted the payment of the money he lent with such severity that he was much disliked by all good men, and particularly by Antonio, a young ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... to be my comfort still. But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind. He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me; He pays the whole, and ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... a moral obligation she endeavors to prove him insane. The legal complications which ensue bring forward one of Balzac's great figures, the judge of instruction, Popinot; but to appreciate him the reader must go to the marvelous book itself. 'Gobseck' is a study of a Parisian usurer, almost worthy of a place beside the description of old Grandet; while 'Les Employes' is a realistic study of bureaucratic life, which, besides showing a wonderful familiarity with the details of a world of which Balzac had little personal experience, contains several admirably drawn characters ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... traitor," continued he who acted the part of leader of the motley crowd; "you have sold your birthright—you have betrayed our interests. What punishment is fit for such a usurer?" ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... in keeping with what the father and the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four men were seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to break. He began in his measured tones, in a voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer weighs ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... all evils, to borrow money is perhaps the worst. If of a friend, he ceases to be one the moment you feel that you are bound to him by the heavy clog of obligation. If of a usurer, the interest, in this country, soon doubles the original sum, and you owe an increasing debt, which in time swallows up ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... things," says Locke. "so that experience may convince them that the most generous giver gets the biggest share." That is to make the child superficially generous but really greedy. He adds that "children will thus form the habit of liberality." Yes, a usurer's liberality, which expects cent. per cent. But when it is a question of real giving, good-bye to the habit; when they do not get things back, they will not give. It is the habit of the mind, not of the hands, that needs watching. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... have endured shame and agony unspeakable, that my darling's secret might be safe. I have been his tool and his scapegoat. I, an old man, on my way to the grave, have earned—and rightly earned—the names of usurer and thief. All this I have done and suffered that he should never blight my child's happiness by his presence. He has broken the contract. He came down here that night you went to Richmond, and, with his fiendish ways and threats, nearly killed ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... which he depicted in the most frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M. Geborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... baseness; and the four jesters whom the contemptuous neglect of history permitted me to invent; and Cromwell's family, each member of which is as a thorn in his flesh; and Thurloe, the Protector's Achates; and the Jewish rabbi, Israel Ben-Manasseh, spy, usurer, and astrologer, vile on two sides, sublime on the third; and Rochester, the unique Rochester, absurd and clever, refined and crapulous, always cursing, always in love, and always tipsy, as he himself boasted to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... your profession find themselves, in very straitened circumstances. You were bound to keep up appearances, and, in order to do so, got into the hands of Eli Moser, the moneylender. You married Lady Orlebar, and had entered London society when, of a sudden, the scoundrelly usurer began to put the screw upon you. At that moment you—luckily, I think, for yourself—met me, and—well, I was your salvation, for I pointed out to you an easy way by which to pay your creditors and rearrange your affairs upon a sound financial basis. Indeed, I did ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its boundary-posts constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie against every stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the nineteenth century, the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, the Mortgage substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, bourgeois Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property. The former allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist class to ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... which, as Mr. Sidney Lee, in his "Life of William Shakespeare," p. 159, 1898 ed., confesses, refers to Shakespeare. Ratsei advises the young actor to copy Shakespeare, "and to feed upon all men, to let none feede upon thee" (meaning Shakespeare was a cruel usurer). As we shew, page 53, Grant White says: "The pursuit of an impoverished man for the sake of imprisoning him and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting himself and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's life which it ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... the roads; had been a kind of toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer. His reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine, at ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... is life, and how little do the fates of men resemble! To-morrow, at the hour when you will be so unspeakably happy, I shall be walking in a thorny, a cursed path; I shall be on my way to the usurer." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... was in the hands of a money shark, for even little villages boast their loan offices, where some usurer expects to get ten per cent. on his money, and will not hesitate to foreclose ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the Fortunes of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... have all that he needs—unless he needs the esteem of snobs. Habit may, and habit usually does, make it just as difficult to keep a family on two thousand a year as on two hundred. I suppose that for the majority of men the suspension of income for a single month would mean either bankruptcy, the usurer, or acute inconvenience. Impossible, under such circumstances, to be in full and independent possession of one's immortal soul! Hence I should be inclined to say that the first preliminary to a proper control of the machine is the habit of spending ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... book-lender, something of a usurer, a millionaire living in 1821-1822 on quai Saint-Michel, where he discussed a business deal with Lucien de Rubembre, who had been piloted there by Lousteau. [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.] He was a friend of Gobseck and of Gigonnet and with them he frequented, in ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... caution. I say to every man, 'Don't come to me—I can get you money on much easier terms than any one else;' and what's the result? You come so often that you ruin yourself; whereas a regular usurer without conscience frightens you. 'Cent per cent,' you say; 'oh, I must pull in.' If you have influence over your friend, tell him to stick to his bill-brokers, and have nothing to do ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Mr. Burgon assures us that it continued in existence as late as 1795, being removed or stolen on the erection of the present building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker—a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon). After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, where he built ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... than his luxury? Or can it be charged upon him that he enjoys more than his share of the felicities of life? Is he to be burdened with new expenses lest he should hoard up the publick money, stop the circulation of coin, and turn broker or usurer with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... eagerly, her heart warming to the little man for a promptitude in money matters which reminded her of her own beloved Poppar. "Of course it's all right!" She cast a casual glance over the cheque, and broke into a surprised laugh. "It isn't, though! You've paid me too much! I guess I'm not a usurer, to want interest for a single night. It was only two hundred ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... well imagine the subject of your conversation,' she said at last. 'The Marquis of Blair was endeavouring to impose usurer's terms upon you, while you, nobly scorning such mercenary considerations, had perhaps resolved to leave us ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... "graft," and was willing to pay over a share of it: the green-goods man and the highwayman, the pickpocket and the sneak thief, and the receiver of stolen goods, the seller of adulterated milk, of stale fruit and diseased meat, the proprietor of unsanitary tenements, the fake doctor and the usurer, the beggar and the "pushcart man," the prize fighter and the professional slugger, the race-track "tout," the procurer, the white-slave agent, and the expert seducer of young girls. All of these agencies of corruption ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... his little furniture of plate to pawn upon usury; and that he did so oft, till no more could be sent. After the same manner went his wives' jewels of gold, rings, bracelets, chains, and other their rarities, under the thraldom of the usurer's gripes: 'till non plus was written upon the boxes at home." In the 11th chapter, he anticipates the dreadful lot of being brought "to the stepping out of doors (his house being sold). He, and his, with bottles and wallets furnished, to become wanderers as homish vagabonds; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... devoutly clasped. It is a sturdy English figure, with coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque material of poets and heroes; but the prayerful attitude encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, after all, have had that grim reception in the other world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with Warwickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the point of those ill-natured lines ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distinguished practitioners in the law, Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap. They, in common with Huckaback, had an intense desire to share in his anticipated good fortune, and determined to do so according to their opportunities. The excellent Huckaback (a model of an usurer on a small scale) had promptly and adroitly seized hold of the very first opportunity that presented itself, for securing a little return hereafter for the ten shillings, with which he had so generously parted when he could so ill afford it; while Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of Gillingham, Dorsetshire," which would make him a neighbour of the novelist. [Footnote: Lord Thurlow was accustomed to find a later likeness to Fielding's hero in his protege, the poet Crabbe.] Another tradition connects Mr. Peter Pounce with the scrivener and usurer Peter Walter, whom Pope had satirised, and whom Hogarth is thought to have introduced into Plate i. of Marriage a-la-Mode. His sister lived at Salisbury; and he himself had an estate at Stalbridge Park, which was close to East Stour. From references to Walter in the Champion for May 31, ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... an Irish usurer or money-lender? Your correspondent at page 332. requests information respecting Roger Outlaw. Sir William Betham, in a note to the "Proceedings against Dame Alice Ugteler," the famous pseudo-Kilkenny witch, remarks that "the family of Utlagh were seated in Dublin, and filled several ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... the people of God, upon this particular point. Dr. Walsingham had made a love-match, was the most imprudent and open-handed of men, and always preaching to others against his own besetting sin. To hear him talk, indeed, you would have supposed he was a usurer. Then Mr. Mervyn, who looked a little pale and excited, turned the doctor about, and they made another little circuit, while he entered somewhat into his affairs and prospects, and told him something ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... prefectures to increase or at least conserve their fortunes. Others having business capacity gave themselves up to gathering riches; to usurious speculations which at this time held chief place among the Romans. Even Cato was a usurer and recommended usury as a means of acquiring wealth. Or they engaged in vast speculations in land, commerce, and slaves, as Crassus did a little later. The first mentioned class was the least numerous. To those ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... the years flit by And after them at headlong pace The evanescent fashions fly In motley and amusing chase. The world is ever altering! Farthingales, patches, were the thing, And courtier, fop, and usurer Would once in powdered wig appear; Time was, the poet's tender quill In hopes of everlasting fame A finished madrigal would frame Or couplets more ingenious still; Time was, a valiant general might Serve who could neither read ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... King can be but a weak Enemy, and as they will manage matters, he shall be kept so bare of Money, that Twelve Holland Ships shall block up the River, or he shall be forced to cast himself upon a House of Commons, and to take Money upon their Terms, which will sure be as easie, as those of an Usurer to an Heir in want. These are part of the projects now afoot: and how Loyal and conscionable they are, let ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden |
