"Avaricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... easy for Shung whilst he was in prison, his mother had to spend large sums in bribing every one connected with the yamen. Never before had such an opportunity for reaping a golden harvest been presented to the avaricious minions entrusted by the Emperor with the administration of justice amongst his subjects. In her anxiety for her son the poor woman sold field after field to find funds wherewith to meet the demands of ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... persistently than Hawthorne, and in none of his romances is the principle so conspicuous as in "The House of the Seven Gables." It is a sister's love which, like a cord stronger than steel, binds together the various incidents of the story, while the avaricious Judge Pyncheon, "with his landed estate, public honors, offices of trust and other solid unrealities," has after all only succeeded in building a card castle for himself, which may be dissipated by a single breath. Holgrave, the daguerreotypist, who serves as a ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... his ancient shrine. About the year 1880 came hither a Bairagi, naked and wild, who walled off a corner of the cave and raised a clay altar to his puny god. Sacrilege intolerable! And the Buddha through the hand of an avaricious Koli smote him unto death and hurled his naked corpse down hill. The titanic figure is still worshipped by the Hindus: flowers and lighted lamps are daily offered up to him by the ignorant Hindu priest; but he sits immutable, inarticulate, content in the knowledge that to them that ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... have. All he believes in is "an humbler heaven," where he shall be free from the evils of this life. Line 108 has special reference to the tortures inflicted upon the natives of Mexico and Peru by the avaricious Spanish conquerors. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... The sucking-fish of these men is their hindering corruption. The shell-fishes that bite them are their avaricious hearts. The torpedo that benumbs them is lying guile. With perverted ingenuity they manufacture delays, that they may seem to have met with a run ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... not retaliate upon the wrong-doer as having been ill-treated by him, nor is he angry with the robber as having been plundered by him, nor does he hate the adulterer as having himself suffered from his licentiousness, but it is to cure him that he often punishes the adulterous or avaricious or unjust man in embryo, before he has had time to work out all his villainy, as we try to stop epileptic fits before ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... California, Senator Warwick was killed by the hand of a man who, when he had rid the earth of the most avaricious man who ever worked a mine, completed the chapter ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... with so simple an explanation. He scents a swindler. The trade of Wonersh, he writes, "chiefly consisted in making blue cloth for the Canary Islands; the decay and indeed ruin of their trade was their avaricious method of stretching their cloth from 18 yards to 22 or 23, which being discovered abroad, they returned their commodity on their hands and it would sell at no market. The same fraudulent practice caused the decay of the Blews at Guildford." ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... passage, Luther himself declared that the last state of things was worse than the first; that vice of every kind had increased since the Reformation; that the nobles were more greedy, the burghers more avaricious, the peasants more brutal; that Christian charity and liberality had almost ceased to flow; and that the authorised preachers of religion were neither heeded, respected nor supported by the people: all of which he characteristically ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... was extremely suspicious and avaricious. Eight weeks after my arrival, she submitted to an operation. The operating surgeon found me so good an assistant, that he intrusted me often with the succeeding dressing of the wound. For six weeks, I was the sole nurse of the two; going from one room to the other both night and day, ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... From one of these, who in life had been the famous statesman Peter de Vineis, Dante learns that at the judgement they will recover their bodies, like others, but will not be allowed to reassume them. The body will be hung on the tree to which it belongs. Here, as in the case of the avaricious and the wrathful, the spirits of other sinners take a part in the infliction of the punishment. The wood is inhabited by the souls of those who had wasted their substance in life, and these are constantly chased through it by hounds, with much destruction of leaves ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... then. And I'll lose by it, too," said the butcher, but with an avaricious sparkle ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... hopelessness of their cause, emigrated in crowds and attempted to form another France on the borders of their country in the German Rhenish provinces. Worms and Coblentz were their chief places of resort. In the latter city, they continued their Parisian mode of life at the expense of the avaricious elector of Treves, Clement Wenzel, a Saxon prince, by whose powerful minister, Dominique, they were supported, and acted with unparalleled impudence. They were headed by the two brothers of the French king, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... these men, all of whom she knew. Caius Nepos, selfish and callous; Ancyrus, the elder, avaricious and self-seeking; young Escanes whom she knew to be unscrupulous; Philippus Decius whose ostentation and lavishness she despised. She vaguely wondered why my lord ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... The avaricious old woman did not deny the fact, but she fell to cursing and swearing in an awful manner, and wished so much evil to the lad, that, with the superstitious fear so common to the natives of his country, he left her under the impression that she was gifted with the evil eye, and was an ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... harmonize his talk on any subject moving the minds of men! Where strong self-interest acts, we can explain changes and inconsistencies in the great organs set up to operate on public sentiment. Such a paper as the London "Times," having nothing higher than avaricious commerce and national pride to consult, in a conspicuous centre of affairs has thus become the great weathercock of the world, splendidly gilded, lifted very high in the air, but, like some other stupid chanticleers, crowing at false signals ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sewn her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up her irons to smooth the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year's apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins, by the constant movement of the iron over the linen, one might have said that she had a kind of monstrous and cynical affection for a death struggle. She never ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... I've nothing for him," said Mrs. Hamilton, whose avaricious hand, larger far than her heart, grasped at and ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... have acted like foolish children in thus banishing heirs of Pandu from covetousness alone. Alas, separated from the son of Pandu we all shall become masterless. What love can we bear to the wicked and avaricious Kurus?" Thus O king, have the sons of Kunti, endued with great energy of mind, gone away,—indicating, by manner and signs, the resolutions that are in their hearts. And as those foremost of men had gone away from Hastinapore, flashes of lightning appeared in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... Duc de Brissac married Mlle. Pecoil, a very rich heiress, whose father was a 'maitre des requetes', and whose mother was daughter of Le Gendre, a very wealthy merchant of Rouen. The father of Mlle. Pecoil was a citizen of Lyons, a wholesale dealer, and extremely avaricious. He had a large iron safe, or strong- box, filled with money, in a cellar, shut in by an iron door, with a secret lock, and to arrive at which other doors had to be passed through. He disappeared so long one day, that his wife and two or three ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... the only doubtful point in the memorial being that, after the organization of a competent army and navy, the problem of peace or war might be decided. "If peaceful relations be maintained by ratifying the treaty," they wrote, "the avaricious aliens will definitely see that there is not much wealth in the country, and thus, abandoning the idea of gain, they will approach us with friendly feelings only and ultimately will pass under our Emperor's grace. They may then ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... have been the first English Sovereign who regarded art, not merely as an aid to the splendour of the throne, but for its own sake. As Walpole says, 'Queen Elizabeth was avaricious with pomp, James the First lavish with meanness.' To neither had the position of the painter been a matter of the slightest concern. But from Charles the First dates truly the dawn of a love of art in England, the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... whole state; militarism, which in the days of war cries, Give me your best youth to slay, leave the crippled and defective to propagate the race, give me your best to slay; militarism, which lays its avaricious hand on every new invention to make gregarious death more swift and terrible, and when war is over makes the starved bodies of innumerable children walk in its train for pageantry,—we are not resigned to that. We count it our Christian ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... came. Its purpose was not to render men happy on earth, and we do not find that it made rulers less avaricious or less sanguinary, peoples more patient or quiet, crimes rarer, punishments less cruel, treaties more faithfully observed, or wars waged more humanely. The conclusion is that it is only those who are profoundly ignorant of the past who can regret ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... already pointed out, that temperance, sobriety, and chastity indicate rather a power than a passivity of the mind. It may, nevertheless, happen, that an avaricious, an ambitious, or a timid man may abstain from excess in eating, drinking, or sexual indulgence, yet avarice, ambition, and fear are not contraries to luxury, drunkenness, and debauchery. For an avaricious man often is glad to gorge himself with food and drink at another man's expense. An ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... define every word 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 of the Iliad, I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... were planted in Paris, it would open new fields to Parisian labor? Moreover, gentlemen, is it not very likely, as Mr. Lestiboudois said, that we buy these Poitevin salted meats, not with our income, but our capital? Where will this land us? Let us not allow greedy, avaricious and perfidious rivals to come here and sell things cheaply, thus making it impossible for us to produce them ourselves. Aldermen, Paris has given us its confidence, and we must show ourselves worthy of it. The people are without labor, and we must create it, and if salted meat costs them a little ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... went to Rome, in order to pay a visit to the Pope in person; and, on receiving his benediction, he not only gratified the vanity of the papal see by his devotion, but satisfied likewise its most avaricious expectations by ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... to see that you are a stranger to these waters, or you would not need to ask for information respecting that fiend Morillo," answered the Spaniard. "He is a cruel, avaricious, and bloodthirsty pirate, sparing neither man nor woman, friend nor foe. But little is really known about him, senor, for those who meet him rarely survive to tell the tale; but there have been one or two who, by ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... austero austere. austriaco Austrian. automata m. automaton. autor-a author. autoridad f. authority. auxiliar to aid, assist, attend a dying person. auxilio aid. avanzar to advance. avaro avaricious. ave f. bird. avecindar to make a neighbor or fellow-citizen. avergonzar to shame, abash; vr. to be ashamed. averiguar to investigate, find out. avio preparation, provision, apparatus. avisado ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... my duty to help grannie to make all the money we can to pay the debt, and get grandfather out of the hands of those avaricious Holts. What noise was ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... familiar intercourse. Their labourers even slept in the same bedrooms as the family. But these men, though they mingled so freely with the labourer, were his worst enemy. The little profit they made was entirely accumulated by careful economy. They were avaricious and penurious to the last degree, and grudged every halfpenny to the labouring man. They were, and the remnant of them still are, the determined opponent of all progress. The interior of some of ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... been guarded by a noble, loving husband, and her powers of resource had never been called out. Of all the women I have ever known, she was least fitted to match her sense of honor, her faith in mankind, and her inexperience and lack of business knowledge against such an unprincipled, avaricious man as the one who domineered ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the ladies of Florence she that he regarded with especial favour was the very beautiful niece of a brother of the said bishop. And having learned that her husband, though of good family, was but a caitiff, and avaricious in the last degree, he struck a bargain with him that he should lie one night with the lady for five hundred florins of gold: whereupon he had the same number of popolins(1) of silver, which were then current, gilded, and having lain with the lady, albeit against her will, gave ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... oration to deliver to the boys in one of our little country colleges nine days hence.... My whole philosophy—which is very real—teaches acquiescence and optimism. Only when I see how much work is to be done, what room for a poet—for any spiritualist—in this great, intelligent, sensual, and avaricious America, I lament my fumbling fingers and stammering tongue." It may be remembered that Mr. Matthew Arnold quoted the expression about America, which sounded more harshly as pronounced in a public lecture than as read in ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Sir Alexander. I did love that woman, though she was old enough then to have been my mother. It was a boy's rash, blind love; but I was too proud to make her my wife, and she was too cunning and avaricious to be mine on any other terms. Your suspicions, on that head at ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... left me alone in the world, laden with years, filled with infirmities, a stranger and without friends.' All those whom he loved had preceded him to their tombs, and the only relative at his death-bed was an avaricious nephew, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?' said the man, seating himself deliberately. 'I wonder they don't murder you! I would if I was them. If I'd been your 'prentice, I'd have done it long ago, and—no, I couldn't have sold you afterwards, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... neighbouring States. The successes of the army made Assyria powerful. Conquering kings accumulated rich booty by pillaging alien cities, and grew more and more wealthy as they were able to impose annual tribute on those States which came under their sway. They even regarded Babylonia with avaricious eyes. It was to achieve the conquest of the fertile and prosperous mother State that the early Assyrian emperors conducted military operations in the north-west and laid hands on Mesopotamia. There was no surer way of strangling it than by ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... future navigators, especially if they should ever be sent out upon the liberal plan of making discoveries in all the various branches of science. I will not pretend to say that they would find great riches of silver and pearls, which Quiros was forced to speak of, in order to engage an interested, avaricious court, to support his great and spirited undertakings. These incitements are not necessary now-a-days, when several monarchs in Europe have convinced the world that they can institute voyages of discovery, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... world's attention to the investigation of mental healing. Various estimates have been made of Mesmer's character and he frequently has been condemned. He was fond of display, but it is doubtful if he was more avaricious than most persons who lived before and have lived since. He was evidently honest in his scientific investigations and opinions, and this ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... life of Derues bears testimony to the truth of this observation. An avaricious poisoner, he attracted his victims by the pretence of fervent and devoted piety, and drew them into the snare ...
— Quotes and Images From "Celebrated Crimes" • Alexander Dumas, Pere
... Need we wonder, then, if religion, which prescribes an abstinence from the pleasures of sin, which enjoins continence to the sensual, sobriety to the drunkard, reflection to the unheeding, gentleness to the irascible, restraint to the voluptuous, probity to the avaricious, punishment to the profligate, meets in such an age with very few votaries? Some, doubtless, will always be found, who, disgusted with the profligacy with which they are surrounded, are led only the more rapidly to a life of rectitude and duty by such vice; but how many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the gigantic steal. Since then Russia has laid hands on an extensive slice of Chinese territory which lies on the Pacific coast far to the south of the Amur, and has forcibly taken possession of the Japanese island of Saghalien. Her avaricious eyes are fixed on the kingdom of Corea, and the whole of Manchuria may yet become ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... is but one of many such examples of ancient luxury. Unfortunately, however, most of these extravagant affairs have been melted up by avaricious monarchs who coveted the gems and gold. Such ornate mirrors are a relic of the Renaissance when each object made was considered an art work on which every means of enrichment was lavished. I do not know that I think it any handsomer than are the simpler mirrors with their Venetian frames of exquisitely ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... mention, as a familiar example of such errors, that an enlightened student of phrenology called upon me yesterday, to whom phrenologists had given the character of avaricious selfishness and an incapacity for friendship, which indeed was the correct application of the old system, but was the reverse of his true character. The old system did not explain friendship correctly, and entirely mislocated the organ of avarice by placing ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... they came back to the St Lawrence in the summer of 1663 with several hundred Indians and a flotilla of canoes swarming over the surface of the river below the heights of Quebec, and conveying a great cargo of beaver skins, the avaricious old governor affected furious rage because the two traders had broken the law by going to the woods without his permission. The explorers were heavily fined, and a large quantity of their beaver was seized to satisfy the revenue tax. Of the immense cargo brought down, Radisson and Groseilliers ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... whom Jimmy subsequently discovered to be the drama-loving Charteris, leaning back and taking advantage of a pause, "is the hobby of the sportsman and the life work of the avaricious." He took a little pencil from his waistcoat pocket, and made a rapid note on ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... pockets of his new waistcoat, 'is for you, to buy presents with for them at home, and to pay bills with, and to divide as you like, and spend exactly as you think proper. Last of all take notice, Pa, that it's not the fruit of any avaricious scheme. Perhaps if it was, your little mercenary wretch of a daughter wouldn't ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to intimacy with Madame de S—. I had a positive abhorrence for the painted, bedizened, dead-faced, glassy-eyed Egeria of Peter Ivanovitch. I do not know what was her attitude to the unseen, but I know that in the affairs of this world she was avaricious, greedy, and unscrupulous. It was within my knowledge that she had been worsted in a sordid and desperate quarrel about money matters with the family of her late husband, the diplomatist. Some very august personages indeed (whom in her fury she had insisted ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... emerges from the water, the ruling passion within his avaricious nature asserts itself with ridiculous promptness. With the water dripping from his dangling feet, he rides hastily to where I am dressing and whispers, "Pool neis; Afghani dasht-adam, pool neis." By this he desires me to understand ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... as he was, was a mere yeoman with nothing spiritual about him; the monks of Hyde were, the younger, gay comrades, only trying how loosely they could sit to their vows; the elder, churlish and avaricious; even the Warden of Elizabeth College was little more than a student. And in London, fresh phases had revealed themselves; the pomp, state, splendour and luxury of Archbishop Wolsey's house had been ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Colonel is not avaricious, but he saves money. He cannot help it. He has no tastes and he draws very large pay. His mind, therefore, broods over questions relating to the investment of money, the depreciation of silver, and the saving effected by purchasing ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... carrying away slaves. Although for some years the coast had been occasionally visited by our cruizers, their short stay and seldom appearance had made but slight impression on those traders, rendered hardy by repetition of crime, and avaricious by excessive gain. They were enabled by a regular system to gain intelligence of any cruizer ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... close, penurious, miserly, avaricious, close-fisted, sordid, niggardly. Antonyms: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the family, (b) servants' quarters, (c) kitchen-garden, (d) gooseberry-bushes. He lived parsimoniously, was frugal in food and drink, his clothes were beyond description; he looked like a beggar, but kept on saving and putting money in the bank. He grew fearfully avaricious. I did not like to look at him, and I used to give him something and send him presents for Christmas and Easter, but he used to save that too. Once a man is absorbed by an idea there is no doing ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... brandy, mingled in our stomachs we became like insane people. Life, which had lately been a great burden, now became precious to us. Foreheads, lowering and sulky, began to unwrinkle; enemies became most brotherly; the avaricious endeavoured to forget their selfishness and cupidity; the children smiled for the first time since our shipwreck; in a word, every one seemed to be born again from a condition melancholy and dejected. I even believe the sailors sung the praises of ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... elaborate musings, caught, not very clearly, at the meaning of it all. But he had not time to see more, for just then he was called by the governor, and passed into the room where Mammon, for the moment, perched like a leering, little dwarf upon the shoulders of adventurous gentlemen grown avaricious on a sudden. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and a sacrifice. Books and pictures he had cared for once, but as he now put it, he had 'no use for them.' It seemed that all his eighty thousand pounds was destined to be flung upon the great roulette table of stock and share speculations. It was not that he was avaricious; few men cared less for money in itself; but he could not live without the excitement of speculation. 'I prefer the air of Throgmorton Street to any air in the world,' he observed. 'I am unhappy if I leave it for a day.' ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... confiscate his furs and seize his seigniory at Fort Frontenac—being restrained by the strong hand of the Viceroy; but while La Salle lay ill at the Illinois fort, Frontenac was succeeded by La Barre as viceroy; and the new Governor was a weak, avaricious old man, ready to believe any evil tale carried to his ears. He at once sided with La Salle's enemies, and wrote the French King that the explorer's "head was turned"; that La Salle "accomplished ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... ever I became avaricious, I might swell my modest affluence into absolute wealth. I had revisited the spot in which I had discovered the nugget of gold, and had found the precious metal in rich abundance just under the first coverings of the alluvial soil. I concealed my discovery ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are personifications; they are passions, talents, opinions, virtues, vices, but not men. Inconsistency is a thing of which these writers have no notion. That a man may have been liberal in his youth and avaricious in his age, cruel to one enemy and merciful to another, is to them utterly inconceivable. If the facts be undeniable, they suppose some strange and deep design, in order to explain what, as every one who has observed his own ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sat in acknowledgment of so much generosity, and assumed a grateful expression suitable to the occasion. In reality, his salary was of very little importance to him, as compared with what he realised from his illicit traffic in manuscripts. But, like his employer, he was avaricious, and the prospect of three hundred and sixty scudi a year was pleasant to contemplate. ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... now there will be an end to this grasping, avaricious work, and our pleasant vales will return to the condition ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... to an episode in his life for which an extremely virtuous or an extremely censorious moralist might, were he so minded, find occasion to re-echo the popular epithet of rapacious. Claverhouse was in no sense of the word an avaricious man; but, like all sensible men, he had a strong belief in the truth of the maxim, the labourer is worthy of his hire. He had laboured long and successfully; and the time, he thought, had now ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... seventeenth year he lived with his father, an old "hard-shell" Baptist preacher, who, though very pious and remarkably austere, was very avaricious. The old man reared his boy—or endeavored to do so—according to the strictest requisitions of the moral law. But he lived, at the time to which we refer, in Middle Georgia, which was then newly settled; and Simon, whose wits were always too sharp for ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... loved him. He was laboring under a misapprehension, of course. Billy Louise had permitted him to misunderstand her interest in the matter. If he had known that she was pleading solely for Marthy—poor, avaricious, gray, old Marthy—perhaps his mercy would have been less tinged with that smoldering resentment which was directed not so much at the wrongdoer, as at fate which had ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... titter, and to whisper to each other in their own language, which sounded just like Lettish,[56] and which their guest could not understand. The boy began to reproach his avaricious friend in his thoughts for having thus sent him to Porgu without thinking of what might happen to him; but presently the younger demons seized upon him, and began to toss him from one to another like a ball, sometimes ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be attended with beneficial results; for, as experience has shown us, the system of concession is entirely useless, each addition to their territory only making the Montenegrins the more grasping and more avaricious. That a solution of the difficulty must in some way be arrived at is clear. Should Turkey fail in effecting this by the means she is now adopting, Europe will be called on to interfere; for while things exist as at present, the developement of those countries in agriculture or commerce is as ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... own language, which is a very curious one, is already falling into disuse. It would be easy to describe their character by negatives. They are not independent, self-reliant, or of a combative disposition like the northern Chukchis and Koraks; they are not avaricious or dishonest, except where those traits are the results of Russian education; they are not suspicious or distrustful, but rather the contrary; and for generosity, hospitality, simple good faith, and easy, equable good-nature under all circumstances, I have never met ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... some literary culture, who preferred poring over the 'Republic' of Plato to heading a charge of the Gothic cavalry. But his acquaintance with Latin and Greek literature had done nothing to ennoble his temper or expand his heart. A cold, hard, avaricious soul, he had been entirely bent on adding field to field and removing his neighbour's landmark, until the vast possessions which he had received from the generosity of Theodoric should embrace the whole of the great Tuscan plain. It will be seen ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... grasp; he because of a sudden degrading realization that he had attempted to practise on a faithful comrade in arms a cowardly and contemptible piece of treachery. My impulsive gratitude for the measure of justice granted me made his avaricious greed seem even to him despicable, and for an instant Henry H. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... wish to have; but he did not look upon them as very desirable travelling companions. Ateeko was a little spare man, with a full face, of monkey-like expression. He spoke in a slow and subdued tone of voice, and the Fellatas acknowledge him to be extremely brave, but at the same time avaricious and cruel. "Were he sultan," say they, "heads would fly about ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... heard old Mr. Sheridan maintain, with much ingenuity, that a complete miser is a happy man; a miser who gives himself wholly to the one passion of saving.' JOHNSON. 'That is flying in the face of all the world, who have called an avaricious man a miser, because he is miserable[948]. No, Sir; a man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... 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
... an inventory of the immense wealth amassed by the old Orientalist, Don Juan became avaricious. Had he not two human lives in which he should need money? His deep, searching gaze penetrated the principles of social life, and he understood the world all the better because he viewed it across a tomb. He ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the old couple were saving, if not avaricious. But when it was known, through the indiscreet volubility of Mammy Downey, that Daddy Downey sent the bulk of their savings, gratuities, and gifts to a dissipated and prodigal son in the East,—whose photograph ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... young Gentlemen of Naples, should be sacrific'd to a mercenary Wretch, a Wretch, that in the midst of plenty is poor and miserable, and who, tho' he has all Things to compleat his Happiness, his avaricious Temper will not permit him to enjoy the common Necessaries of Life: The Pleasures of living he's a Stranger to, he lives despis'd, and will die unpitied: But such is the inequality of Fortune's Favours, that Merit must stoop and Ideots be advanc'd to the highest Pomp and Magnificence. ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... LOVE my love with an A, because he's Agreeable. I hate him because he's Avaricious. He took me to the Sign of the Acorn, And treated me with Apples. His name's Andrew, And he lives ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown
... an abscess in 1727, and was succeeded by his youngest son Muley Hamed Dehebby, a most avaricious prince, whose treasure, collected in his government during the life of his father, amounted to ten millions; to which was now added his father's treasury, amounting to fifty millions, besides jewels and diamonds to a much ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a friendship with Aretino, or to despise ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... I'm getting avaricious and want to go home with my wallet full. Then I'm tired of my job. I suppose it's a foreman's privilege to insult his gang, but the brute we've got is about the limit. He's truculent but not very big, and some day, if I stop on, I'll pitch the hog into the river. Then I'll ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Satan. We hear this language daily, from money-loving professors, who are destitute of the power of faith. But in opposition to all this, the Holy Ghost testifies, "The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Tim. 6:10), and a covetous man is an idolater (Col. 3:5). Hear this, and tremble, ye avaricious professors. Remember, ye followers of the Lamb, ye are called to "let your conversation be without covetousness" (Heb, 13:5); your Lord testifies, "Ye cannot serve God ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... delicacy of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them. In reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with mine. Notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore request that your Excellency ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in gold, and very frequent and large, often a hundred pistoles, never less than fifty at a time; and I must do myself the justice that I seemed rather backward to receive than craving and encroaching. Not that I had not an avaricious temper, nor was it that I did not foresee that this was my harvest, in which I was to gather up, and that it would not last long; but it was that really his bounty always anticipated my expectations, and even my wishes; and he gave ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... as the distemper ceased.[12] During the public calamity, St. Gregory seemed to have forgot the danger he was in of being exalted to the pontifical throne; for he feared as much to lose the security of his poverty as the most avaricious can do to lose their treasures. He had been informed that his letters to Constantinople had been intercepted; wherefore, not being able to go out of the gates of Rome, where guards were placed, he prevailed with certain merchants to carry him off disguised, and shut up in a wicker basket. Three days ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... 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 ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... of men are blamed under this caption, i.e. dialecticians, who wrestle daily with the dialectic art; and physicists, who raise their eyes athwart the heavens; and versifiers; and the avaricious, who acquire wealth by fair means and foul, though at the time they know not to whom they are going to ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... of the avaricious principle of fathers. But observe that the avaricious principle is here mitigated very considerably. It is avarice by proxy; it is avarice not working by itself or for itself, but through the medium of parental affection, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the church government of Italy was conducted by proud and avaricious legates, who lived as dukes or provincial kings, and in the name of the church assumed to dictate the policy of government to many small potentates, maintaining a standing array of condottieri made up of English, ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... university, and eradicate 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 veil of holiness. The indifferent find in them a palliative ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... artifice—purely an Oriental dodge, as anybody who has lived in India will readily admit—at once perceiving an advantage to be gained by which he might profitably fill his own pocket at the same time that he would save ours, and give a job to his own Beluches to the prejudice of those avaricious Panganyites, offered us an inducement which was too good not to be at once accepted. The plan was simply this: He was to leave at once and return to Chogue, and make arrangements with his guard for our reception ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... degree generous. To chain down the genius of a writer to an annual panegyric showed in the queen too much desire of hearing her own praises, and a greater regard to herself than to him on whom her bounty was conferred. It was a kind of avaricious generosity, by which flattery was rather ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... "Oh, you avaricious! Mr. Marshman!" cried Margaret, as the old gentleman was just then passing through the room "here's Ellen Montgomery says she'd rather have money than anything else ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 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 Altar of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... project had been crowned with complete success, the old libertine was overjoyed beyond measure; but when Mike demanded the one hundred dollars, his face lengthened—for he was avaricious as well as villainous, and his recent loss of five thousand dollars, in favor of the Chevalier and the Duchess, made him exceedingly loth to part with a cool hundred so easily.—Not exactly knowing the sort of a ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... necklace of bits of amber, and a turquoise, from an old lady, whom I found at her cottage-door weaving goat's-hair cloth. She took two rupees for the family jewels, and, when the bargain was struck, seemed in a desperate fright at what she had done, looking about in every direction to see that no avaricious old Lama was near, nor any of her gossiping acquaintance, who would be likely to tell THE MINISTER of what ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... which they were to carry away with them, so did he to the women upon the calends of March [766]; 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?" And being answered "ten ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the maid, Helene Vauquier. Forty years old, a Normandy peasant woman—they are not bad people, the Normandy peasants, monsieur—avaricious, no doubt, but on the whole honest and most respectable. We know something of Helene Vauquier, monsieur. See!" and he took up a sheet of paper from the table. The paper was folded lengthwise, written upon only on the inside. "I have some details ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason |
