"Greed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... symbol gazed the girl, Till earth behind her ceased, and sea was all, Possessing eyes and brain and shrinking soul— A universal mouth to swallow up, And close eternally in one blue smile! A still monotony of pauseless greed, Its only voice an endless, dreary song Of wailing, and of ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... suggested a plan which led to the formation of special committees and was the origin of the Federal judiciary of the United States. Besides the local jealousies and the personal jealousies, and the privateers and their prizes, he had to meet also the greed and selfishness as well of the money-making, stock-jobbing spirit which springs up rankly under the influence of army contracts and large expenditures among a people accustomed to trade and unused to war. Washington wrote savagely of these practices, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... executed in 1583, for plotting against her majesty, Queen Elizabeth. Those were lively days, when the followers of the Pope and King Henry the Eighth, banished, burned and hung presumptive heretics for opinion's sake! The lechery and greed of King Hal was the primary cause of his separation from papal authority, augmenting the Reformation ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the Jesuit narrator—were raised in plaintive chants at the rude command of their savage captors, who even forced them to dance in sight of the French, on whose protection they had relied. The governor, M. de Lauzon, a weak, incapable man, only noted for his greed, was perfectly paralysed at a scene without example, even in those days of terror, when the Iroquois were virtually masters of the St. Lawrence valley from ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... village of Cloon appear as old friends in other of Lady Gregory's plays, with, as usual, nothing to do but mind one another's business. In The Jackdaw another absurd rumor is fanned into full blaze by greed; upon Hyacinth Halvey works the potent and embarrassing influence of too good a reputation. Still other plays attain a notable height of beauty—notably The Rising of the Moon and The Traveling Man. The Gaol Gate tells a story similar to that of Campbell ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... put the lanthorn down on the step, and by its light she could see him distinctly: a mysterious, masked figure who, with wanton infamy, had placed the satisfaction of his dishonesty and of his greed athwart the destiny of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... surely does not apply to these marriages; for that very admission would be a condemnation of the wisdom of God. He surely never would give his sanction to many of the marriages contracted in a spirit of lust or of greed. ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... "Greed," said Dunstable unkindly, "seems to be the besetting sin of the Menzies'. Well, what are you going to do about it? I don't wish to threaten, but I'm a demon when I'm roused. Being done out of my tea is sure to rouse me. And owing to unfortunate accident of being stonily ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... was at the rate of one-twelfth of the loan, or 8-1/3 per cent, but another common rate was that of one per cent per month. Rates both higher and lower are known to us from particular cases. Naturally the question depended on the security, when it did not depend upon the greed of the one side and the ignorance of the other. Much, however, of what the books call money-lending was only what we should consider legitimate banking. Be this as it may, the knights made large fortunes from the practice. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... A. Fornander, chief of them, are severe with Captain Cook on account of his alleged greed, not paying enough for the red feathers woven into fanciful forms. Perhaps that is a common fault in the transactions of civilized men with barbarians. William Penn is the only man with a great reputation for dealing fairly with American Red Men, and he was ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... greed is upon her, The sign of her deed is her soil; As the earth's is her own dishonour, And corruption the crown of her toil: She hath spoiled and devoured, and her honour Is this, to be shamed by ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... horde who rested tired limbs at Chipewyan on their northward journeys, each on his own mission—fur-traders and hunters of big game, devoted nuns and silent priests, the infrequent scientist, and the hundreds of Klondikers, their hearts hot with the greed for gold. These all through the century have enjoyed as we now enjoy the spontaneous hospitality of this little bit of Britain which floats the Union Jack from its fort walls, and whose people, brown and white, when the belated news of the passing of Victoria the Great ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... that a force which is enduring enough to withstand the discouragements, the suffering and privation of daily living, strenuous enough to overcome and rectify the impulses which make for greed and self-indulgence, should be able, even under untoward conditions, to lift up and transfigure those who are really within its grasp and set them in marked contrast to those who are merely playing a game with it or using it for gain. But what has happened to these wretched ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... or "confederates." They collected into bands, overran the country in search of plunder, and fell upon the smaller towns and German villages, not only from religious zeal, but still more from the greed of booty. The Polish nobleman Roskowsky wore boots of different colors, a red one to indicate fire, and a black one for death. Thus he rode, levying blackmail, from one place to another, and in Jastrow he had the hands, the feet, and ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... other hand, when this attempt to manufacture a new middle-class takes the form of co-operation and the like, it is not dangerous, because it means nothing more than a slightly altered form of joint-stockery, and everybody almost is beginning to see this. The greed of men stimulated by the spectacle of profit-making all around them, and also by the burden of the interest on the money which they have been obliged to borrow, will not allow them even to approach a true system of co-operation. Those benefited by the transaction presently become ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... and greed for booty glittered in many a fiery, longing look, but their leaders kept them in check with the sword. So they rushed on without stopping, like a thunderstorm pregnant with destruction which the wind ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Curdie's age. His back was to the light of the sunset, which closed him all round in a beautiful setting, and Curdie thought what a grand-looking man his father was, even when he was tired. It is greed and laziness and selfishness, not hunger or weariness or cold, that take the dignity out of a man, and make ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... without them," she answered, "though I cannot but resent the Paul and Virginia attitude of the young Minthrops. One would think a year of married life would have satisfied their greed for tete-a-tetes. I wonder whether they would continue sufficient to each other if they really were stranded on a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Indians was the same world that surrounds us. In truth, it was a richer world in some ways, for since then many of its treasures have been lost through greed and waste. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... the white outweighs that of the black immeasurably. The South is slow to grasp the great fact that the enfranchisement of women would settle the race question in politics. The civilization of the North is threatened by the influx of foreigners with their imported customs; by the greed of monopolistic wealth and the unrest among the working classes; by the strength of the liquor traffic and encroachments upon religious belief. Some day the North will be compelled to look to the South for redemption from ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... record of the cruel deception that Jacob and his mother palmed off on Isaac and Esau. Both verbal and practical lying were necessary to defraud the elder son, and Rebekah was equal to the occasion. Neither she nor Jacob faltered in the hour of peril. Altogether it is a pitiful tale of greed and deception. Alas! where can a child look for lessons in truth, honor, and generosity, when the mother they naturally trust, sets at defiance every principle of justice and mercy to secure some worldly advantage. ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... them are the same which are always in operation about us. If many young men have taken as a model a Rastignac, for instance, it is because the passions by which this ambitious pauper was consumed are the same which our age of unbridled greed multiplies around disinherited youth. Add to this that Balzac was not content merely to display the fruitful sources of a modern intellect, but that he cast upon them the glare of the most ardent imagination the world has ever known. By a rare combination this philosopher was ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... did not satisfy the king; and a few days later he sent a letter to Brask's chapter, declaring that they had collected certain rents belonging to the crown which must be yielded up without delay. Brask appears to have been a special object of the monarch's greed. On one occasion Gustavus seized some tithes belonging to that prelate, and then had face enough to write him that he had done so, his only excuse being that the army was in need of food. This high-handed mode ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... he such grace to prize; And, with licentious babble, He blazed the secrets of the skies Through all the human rabble, And fed the greed of tattlers vain With high celestial scandal, And lent to every eager brain And wanton tongue a handle Against the gods. For which great sin, By righteous Jove's command, In hell's black pool up to the chin The thirsty king doth stand: With-parched throat he ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... descent), a notable politician of the nineteenth century, was especially singled out for reprobation in this respect. I need scarcely point out to you the absurdity of all this. But terrible tragedy lay hidden behind this grinning through a horse-collar of the reactionary party. 'The insatiable greed of the lower classes must be repressed'—'The people must be taught a lesson'—these were the sacramental phrases current amongst the reactionists, and ominous enough ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... doubt about the food supply of Rome, we judged it proper that Spain should send her cargoes of wheat hither, and the Vir Spectabilis Marcian collected supplies there for this purpose. His industry, however, was frustrated by the greed of the shipowners, who, disliking the necessary delay, slipped off and disposed of the grain for their own profit. Little as we like harshness, this offence must be punished. We have therefore directed Catellus and Servandus (Viri Strenui) ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... have known thee in a thousand moods And lived a thousand lives within thy bounds; Adventured with the throng that laughs or broods, Trod all thy cloisters and thy pleasure grounds, Seen thee, in travail from the fiery torch, Betrayed by Greed, smirched by thy sons' disgrace— Rise with a spirit that no flame can scorch To make thyself a ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... and clung to,—I came hither. Amidst mercenary schemes and selfish speculations, I found the same relief as in debauch and excess. The Phantom was invisible; but these pursuits soon became to me distasteful as the rest. Ever and ever I felt that I was born for something nobler than the greed of gain,—that life may be made equally worthless, and the soul equally degraded by the icy lust of avarice, as by the noisier passions. A higher ambition never ceased to torment me. But, but," continued Glyndon, with a whitening lip and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... kill and to be killed, they know not why; at the abominable wrongs and cruelties going on in Poland at this moment—the cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of Hosts, and surely not in vain; when one thinks of all the cries which have gone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty, tyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer the sneer, 'Believe, if you can, that this foolish, unjust, cruel being called man, is made in the likeness of God. Man was never ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... table, all the five of them, and some while their greed kept them wakeful, and they called the mains, but their drought kept them drinking. And, one by one, their heads fell heavy on the table, or they sprawled on their stools, and so sank on to the floor, so potent were the poppy and mandragora of the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... copyrighted etext on Usenet and elsewhere is going to > happen more and more, for the same reasons that everyday folks > make audio cassettes from vinyl LPs and audio CDs, and > videocassette copies of store-bought videotapes. Partly it's > greed; partly it's annoyance over retail prices; partly it's the > desire to Share Cool Stuff (a motivation usually underrated by > the victims of this kind of small-time hand-level piracy). > Instantly going to Defcon One over it and claiming it's morally > tantamount to mugging little ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... Gandharvas and the Rakshasas, all of whom are capable of going everywhere at will. The rest of the time hath been appointed for man to do his work. If therefore, men, wandering during those moments from greed of gain, come near us, both we and the Rakshasas slay those fools. Therefore, persons acquainted with the Vedas never applaud those men—not even kings at the head of their troops—who approach any pools of water at such a time. Stay ye at a distance, and approach ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... but a short distance, to go to Pictou without stopping at West River. For John Frazer's is a house of petty annoyances. From the moment you enter, you feel the insolence of the surly, snarling landlord, and his no less gifted lady; the same old greed which has no eye except for money; the miserly table, for which you are obliged to pay before hand; the lack of attendance; the abundance of impertinence. Just as you are getting into bed you are peremptorily called to the door to pay for ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... I perceive you, when take heed Of what is now so deep in heart and brain That tears shall not efface it, nor the greed Of time or fate ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and proved that at a given point he had found indications of a coal-bed or a gold-mine, he would have no difficulty in obtaining means enough to dig a shaft and excavate acres. Can not the greed for information do one tenth as much as ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... friend and foe, Germany is the equal of any nation in the world. But if you consider her history since 1864 Germany stands in shameless and solitary pre-eminence above any nation that has ever been for unscrupulous greed, for brutal, ruthless oppression of smaller peoples, and for cynical disregard of treaty covenants, as witness Poland, Austria, Denmark, Holland and France. As to the treachery of the Krupps, I believe the gentleman is quite right, but I would ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... thing! She'll be famished and chilled to the bone. It's a shame, our leaving her alone this way. But that's the way of the man in love with gold. Greed destroys all that is tender and loyal in a man. I am going right up and bring her down. Eugene, you start a fire and put ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... either the most calculating hypocrites or the most truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual might belong could not always be infallibly concluded from what he wrote. That comfort-loving and greed-indulging, yet picturesque, old sinner, Samuel Pepys, Esq., did not profess to keep a religious diary. But many such diaries have been kept by men who might have covered alternate pages with matter similar to his own, or with worse. We must interpret ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... complimentary character touching persons who have no honest standing in art. They are fawned on, truckled to, cajoled, subjected to the most seductive influences, sometimes bribed with woman's smiles or manager's money—and why? To win their influence in favor of good art, think you? No; to feed vanity and greed. When a critic is found of sufficient self-respect and character to resist all appeals and to be proof against all temptations, who is quicker than the musician to cite against his opinion the applause of the public ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... A gasp of greed shook the partition against which my ear was pressed. Some one must have drawn up against the wainscoting since my departure from the room. I found myself wondering which of them it was. Meantime old Smead was having his say, with the smoothness of a man who ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as a part of the historical significance of the Tower in the legend of that Fountain of Eternal Youth sought by Ponce de Leon. (p. 53.) The interpretation of these ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... settled in Basle, and, on the recommendation of OEcolampadius was appointed professor of physic, medicine, and surgery in 1527, but his revolutionary teaching and practice, his scorn for traditional methods, his attacks on the ignorance and greed of apothecaries raised a storm which he could not weather, and he secretly left the city in 1528. Again he became a wanderer, having extraordinary experiences of success and defeat, treating all manner of diseases, writing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... companions, Aflatun the cook and Faris the waiter, were in no such hurry. They were hungry from much riding on an empty stomach, and flatly refused to proceed another step until replenished. Cursing their greed, Elias was forced to resign himself. He indulged in eating, as he told himself, to pass the time; but afterwards, when it came to coffee and narghilehs, he squandered more than an hour in boasting with what speed he would catch up ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Which did but harden these; and when at noon They sought the shaded waters' freshening boon, And all unhidden once again they saw That peerless beauty, free from any flaw, Which now at last had won its precious meed, Her kindness then but fed the fire of greed Within their hearts—her gifts, the rich attire Wherewith she clad them, where like sparks of fire The many-coloured gems shone midst the pearls The soft silks' winding lines, the work of girls By the Five Rivers; their fair marvellous crowns, Their sandals' fastenings ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... portion—against another—the more ostentatious property-holding portion. It is the natural result, I may say the necessary as well as logical outcome, of a period of too rapid growth,—production apportioned by no rule or system other or higher than greed and individual aptitude for acquisition. I will put the resulting case in the most brutal, and consequently the clearest, shape of which I am capable. Working on the combined theories of individualism controlled ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... puzzle, and Jim admitted that he had, perhaps, not been just when he accounted for his antagonism. Lance, no doubt, felt that he ought to have got Langrigg, but he was not altogether moved by disappointed greed. Their antagonism went deeper than that. Lance was a conventionalist; he clung instinctively to traditions that were getting out of date. In fact, Jim thought he would have been a very fine country gentleman ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to them. It was new to Napoleon, who had so frequently been met halfway, who knew that men for greed will part smilingly with half in order to save the residue. He knew that many, rather than help a neighbour who is in danger by a robber, will join the robber and share the spoil, crying out that force majeure ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... that grew constantly stronger and more restrictive, until at length the iniquitous object was achieved. His first visit to Boston was in 1676; he stayed but a few weeks, and accomplished nothing, but his stories about the wealth and population of the colonies stimulated the greed of his employers. Envoys were ordered to come to London, and this time they were sent, but with powers so limited as to prevent any further result than the cession of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... whose incomes must be made to keep pace with these wants, and whose wealth must inevitably be dependent mainly on the produce of the soil. Yet we have no warrant for accusing the members of the Roman nobility of a deliberate plan of campaign stimulated by conscious greed and selfishness. For a time they may not have known what they were doing. Land was falling in and they bought it up; domains belonging to the State were so unworked as to be falling into the condition of rank jungle and pestilent morass. They cleared and improved this ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... shone with greed. "I commend you," said he; "for a stout lad there is nothing like risking his life to win a fortune. Give me the deeds belonging to Nebbegaard, and you shall have ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the monkish communities there are many precious stones, and the priceless manis. One of the kings (once) entered one of those treasuries, and when he looked all round and saw the priceless pearls, his covetous greed was excited, and he wished to take them to himself by force. In three days, however, he came to himself, and immediately went and bowed his head to the ground in the midst of the monks, to show his repentance of the evil thought. As a sequel to this, he informed the monks (of what had ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... to let the girl slip through her fingers—five pounds were not picked up every day. There were three five-pound notes in the cradles. If Esther would listen to reason there would be twenty pounds, and the money was wanted badly. Once more greed set Mrs. Spires' tongue flowing, and, representing herself as a sort of guardian angel, she spoke again about the mother of the dying child, pressing Esther to think what the girl's circumstances would have been if they had ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... it to be her duty as a mother to show no tendency to sympathize with her girl's sorrow. Such heart-breakings were occurring daily in the world around them. Who were the happy people that were driven neither by ambition, nor poverty, nor greed, nor the cross purposes of unhappy love, to stifle and trample upon their feelings? She had known no one so blessed. She had never been happy after that fashion. She herself had within the last few weeks refused to join her lot with that of a man she really liked, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... time he had dug up the money he had stolen and come West. He had started the first saloon at Manitou, and had grown with the place in more senses than one. He was heavy and thick-set, with huge shoulders, big hands, and beady eyes that looked out of a stolid face where long hours, greed and vices other than drink had left their mark. He never drank spirits, and was therefore ready to take advantage of those who did drink. More than one horse and canoe and cow and ox, and acre of land, in the days when land was cheap, had come to him across the bar-counter. He could be bought, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... burning overhead, and to know that the worst is over, for now there will be light whereby to set our feet. It is something, too, to the most Christian soul, to utterly and completely triumph over one who had done all in his power to crush and destroy you; whose grasping greed has indirectly been the cause of the death of the person you loved best in the whole world round. And she did triumph. As Mr. Meeson's conduct to her got about, the little society of the ship—which ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... tool? Shall I by thy hand fall? Stain not thy soul with guiltless blood. Take all I have, if money be thy greed. But know Without a struggle I'll ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... for Clement V. actually died on the 20th of April, 1314, and Philip the Handsome on the 29th of November, 1314, the pope, undoubtedly, uneasy at the servile acquiescence he had shown towards the king, and the king expressing some sorrow for his greed and for the imposts (maltote, maletolta, or black mail) with which he had ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Mosula village upon the bank of the tributary of the Ugambi. Here he was received with suspicion and unfriendliness by the native chief, who, like all those who came in contact with Rokoff or Paulvitch, had suffered in some manner from the greed, the cruelty, or the lust ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... watch the speckled trout glide by, And float through the inverted sky, Still round and round the baited hook— Now paced the room with rapid stride, And, pausing at the Poet's side, Looked forth, and saw the wretched steed, And said: "Alas for human greed, That with cold hand and stony eye Thus turns an old friend out to die, Or beg his food from gate to gate! This brings a tale into my mind, Which, if you are not disinclined To listen, I will ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Paramendr Maha Mongkut, ate Supreme King of Siam, it may safely be said (for all his capricious provocations of temper and his snappish greed of power) that he was, in the best sense of the epithet, the most remarkable of the Oriental princes of the present century,—unquestionably the most progressive of all the supreme rulers of Siam, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... already forgotten many, many things that might now have made her resentful or at least critical. She saw him as a figure most disastrously misunderstood. Without any sentimentality in her vision she saw him lonely, proud, reserved, longing for her sympathy which she denied him. His greed for money she saw suddenly as a determination that his daughter should not be left in want. All those years he had striven and his apparent harshness, sharpness, unkindness had been that he ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to do it," replied la Peyrade, in a voice of emotion; "but on conditions that I must now distinctly state. I will not, in marrying Celeste, be accused of greed and mercenary motives. If you lay remorse upon me, at least you must consent that I shall remain as I am for the present. Do not settle upon Celeste, my old Thuillier, the future possession of the property I am about to obtain ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... burdens on the shoulders of men, which they do not touch with a finger.... They render justice not so much for truth's sake as for a price.... The Roman pontiff himself becomes burdensome to all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226 acknowledged to the English bishops that this greed was a long-standing scandal and disgrace, but he ascribed it to the poverty of Rome, and proposed that in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be given to him for nomination in every cathedral and collegiate chapter. The magnates ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... social life in a way I even now shudder to recall. Vinous intoxication, it appeared, was a common habit of the first ladies of the city. Immoralities which he scarcely dared name were daily practised by the refined of both sexes. Niggardliness and greed were the common vices of the rich. "I have always asserted," he continued, "that corruption must exist where luxury and riches are rampant, and capital is not used to develop the natural resources of the country. Thank you—I will take mine ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... earth was common, and no base contriving Of money of coined gold was needed there or known, But all men wrought together without greed or striving, And all the store of all to each man ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... positions of trust, he showed Captain Clinton up as a bully and a grafter, a bribe-taker, working hand and glove with dishonest politicians, not hesitating even to divide loot with thieves and dive-keepers in his greed for wealth. He proved him to be a consummate liar, a man who would stop at nothing to gain his own ends. What jury would take the word of such a man as this? Yet this was the man who still insisted that Howard Jeffries was guilty of the ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... primitive old couple, he wondered from what source Undine's voracious ambitions had been drawn: all she cared for, and attached importance to, was as remote from her parents' conception of life as her impatient greed from ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... In England a new Parliament, which had been called by way of testing public opinion, was crowded with Tories who were resolute against war. The Tory Ministry pressed him to acknowledge the new king of Spain; and as even Holland did this, William was forced to submit. He could only count on the greed of Lewis to help him, and he did not count in vain. The general approval of the French king's action had sprung from a belief that he intended honestly to leave Spain to the Spaniards under their new boy-king. Bitter too as the strife of Whig and Tory might ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... in yonder chamber let us look, If nothing missing, or perhaps if greed With impudence itself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to be weary of all that. Leave all to egoism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause:—it is the Gospel of Despair! Man is a Patent-Digester, then: only give him Free Trade, Free digesting-room; and each of us digest what he can come at, leaving the rest to Fate! My unhappy brethren of the Working Mammonism, my unhappier brethren of the Idle Dilettantism, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... estimate how much man's thoughts have been colored by these golden kindred? It seems as though it were but required to show man space,—space, space, space,—there is that in him will fill and pass it. There is that in the celestial prodigies—in gulfs of Time and Space—that seems to mate the greed of the soul. There is that greed in the soul to pass through worlds and ages,—through growths, griefs, desires, processes, spheres,—to travel the endless highways,—to pass and resume again. O Heavens, you are but a splendid fable of the elder mind! Centripetal and centrifugal are in man, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... was right. The barbarous and inconsiderate greed of these fishermen will one day cause the disappearance of the last whale in the ocean. Ned Land whistled "Yankee-doodle" between his teeth, thrust his hands into his pockets, and turned his back upon us. But Captain Nemo watched ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... from heaven descend? Can the earth-worm soar and rise? Can the mortal comprehend Heaven's own hallow'd mysteries? Greed and glory, power and pelf— These are won by clowns and kings; Wherefore weariest thou ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... the smell of gold, mad for its possession, half hysteric with the fear of losing it, timid, yet dangerous, poisoned to the core by the sweet sting of money, terrible in intelligence, vile in heart, contemptible in body, irresistible in the unity of their greed—the Jews of Prague, two hundred ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... It was signed at Worms on the 8th of May, the day on which Luther was outlawed;[432] and a war broke out in Italy, the effects of which (p. 154) were little foreseen by its principal authors. A veritable Nemesis attended this policy conceived in perfidy and greed. The battle of Pavia made Charles more nearly dictator of Europe than any ruler has since been, except Napoleon Bonaparte. It led to the sack of Rome and the imprisonment of Clement VII. by Charles's troops. The dependence of the Pope on the Emperor made it impossible for Clement to grant ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not a few trodden ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Mit Doktor Winkeleck, Who proctice "renovation" Mit sauer-kraut und speck. Und dat no man shouldt pe shlightet, Or dreatet ash a tunce, Dey 'greed to dry deir systems Oopon Breitmann ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... "He was neither. He was an ambition incarnate; an ambition so vast there were few to understand it, for it had no personal side. You said the other night that but few motives rule men. La Salle has been misunderstood because the usual motives—greed, the love of woman, and the desire for fame—did not touch him. He was the slave of one great idea, and so he was lonely and men feared him." I finished with some defiance. I knew that the blood had risen in my cheeks as I spoke, for some subjects touch me as if I were a woman. The ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... too, I know, and all my heart goes out in sympathy to the bereaved and broken-hearted Englishwomen across the seas. Their only comfort is their firm belief that their heroes died a noble death for freedom and justice. Did they but know the truth! They died to satisfy the lust for gain and greed of gold of mining ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Europe found its highest expression in the Balkan League. The war against Turkey was in effect a rebellion against the political tutelage of the powers. But this emancipation was short-lived. By their greed the Balkan States again opened up a way to the intrusion of foreign diplomacy, and even, as we now see, of foreign troops. The first Balkan war marked the zenith of Balkan political emancipation; the second Balkan war was the first ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... loss by his death; but in Yarmouth that night there was one woman, who little thought that she was a widow, and several little ones who knew not that they were fatherless. The other man who perished was an unmarried youth, but he left an invalid mother to lifelong mourning over the insatiable greed ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... the service of God our Lord, each order separately. They shall not engage in quarrels or disputes, shall furnish a thoroughly good example, and shall avoid strictly all manner of trade, business, and commerce, and all else that shows or discloses a taint or appearance of greed for temporal goods. And since it will be necessary, in the further establishment and increase of the conversion in those provinces, to have therein three or four bishops, or more, from all the orders—in order that they may confirm, preach, ordain priests, meet whenever advisable, and discuss ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... without help to drive seven thousand head of cattle. But to Venters it seemed extraordinary that the power which had called in these riders had left so many cattle to be driven by rustlers and harried by wolves. For hand in glove with that power was an insatiate greed; they were ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... be cultivated and flourish, the "greed of gain" must not enter. The young man who came to him, whom he loved for his sweet disposition and excellent character, he turned away by the answer that his wealth was incompatible with his salvation. He must part from his riches. When the disciples were surprised, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... am glad to relate—that in the six months I should be here I should accumulate an agreeable sum might have pleased me. But what was that sum to me now, when I realized to what purpose I had expected to put it? Yet my greed received a check. I had a letter from friend Hicks. It was a most grievous letter: my money, all that he held in trust for me (and it was my all), had been stolen from his keeping. The theft had occurred more than a month ago, but as he had sedulously ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... their conversation about Olga Bracely. He felt sure that she was meaning to steal a march on him, and she was planning to draw first blood with the prima-donna, and, as likely as not, claim her for her own, with the same odious greed as she was already exhibiting with regard to the Guru. All these years Georgie had been her faithful servant and coadjutor; now for the first time the spirit of independence had begun to seethe within him. The scales ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... sometimes indiscreet; he was daring, but often careless of consequences; and when in positions of command he was apt to be impatient of cowardice and of greed. So he raised up enemies for himself, and twice these enemies sought and nearly accomplished his downfall. His last campaign was fought under the burden of an apparent official censure, galling to a man of Custer's impetuous ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... Ireland, and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common reason and the evidence of their senses. The instinct of patriotism is not en evidence. The dominant passion is cupidity, and nothing higher; sheer greed of gain, lust of possession, and nothing nobler. Selfishness and the hope of plunder are the actuating impulses at the poll; crass ignorance and bitter prejudice the mental disposition of the lower class of voters. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... in upon a reluctant spirit, but because the wind happens to be in the east, or the preacher's nerves are badly out of order. The Church is told of her coldness, her indolence and unfaithfulness, her narrowness, bigotry and greed, not because, after a struggle to win permission to tell a more flattering tale, the preacher comes forth under a divine compulsion to "cry aloud and spare not," but because his digestion is upset, or his temporal ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... must conquer it through ages, centuries—must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the decay of faith, the long postponement, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, new projections and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... received no payment for his services, which were of the nature of an honorable function or office. When the idea of payment and barter was introduced among us, and valuable presents or fees began to be demanded for treating the sick, the ensuing greed and rivalry led to many demoralizing practices, and in time to the rise of the modern "conjurer," who is generally a fraud and trickster of the grossest kind. It is fortunate that ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... observation in his account of the leading cow, the one who coming and going on all occasions is allowed precedence, who maintains her station, "won by many a broil," with just pride. A picture of the cool dairy and its work succeeds, and a lament on the effect of the greed and luxury of the over-populous capital which drains the whole country-side of all produce, which makes the Suffolk dairy-wives run mad for cream, leaving nothing but the "three-times skimmed sky-blue" to make cheese for local consumption. What a cheese it is, that ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... longer girt by foes, He darkly stood beside that sullen wave, Watching the sluggish waters, whose repose Imaged the gloomy shadows in his heart; Vultures, that, in the greed of appetite, Still sating blind their passionate delight, Lose all the wing for flight, And, brooding deafly o'er the prey they tear, Hear never the low voice that cries, "depart, Lest with your surfeit you partake the snare!" Thus fixed by brooding and rapacious thought, Stood the dark ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... up of men who have been disappointed, and who have nothing more to lose. When all these wolves will have devoured one another, then and then only can we hope for the restoration of the monarchy in France. And they will not turn on one another whilst prey for their greed lies ready to their jaws. Your friend the Scarlet Pimpernel should feed this bloody revolution of ours rather than starve it, if indeed he hates it ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... her aunt a question on that subject, but had been afraid. Whenever she attempted to discuss any point of theology with her aunt, such attempts always ended in renewed assurances of the devil's greediness, and in some harder, more crushing rule by which the devil's greed ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... significance. This it was that she would have to lay down when it came to her turn to die; this which gave to her that importance, that secret self-importance, without which none of us can bear to live; and to this she clung wistfully, with a greed that grew each day! If life were slipping away from her, this she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... us live happily then, free from greed among the greedy! among men who are greedy let us ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... a specimen of that noble type of scientific men to whom gold was merely the rare metal Au, and diamonds merely the element C in the scarcest of its manifold allotropic embodiments. The Professor did not seek to make money out of his discovery. He rose above the sordid greed of capitalists. Content with the glory of having traced the element C to its crystalline origin, he asked no more than the approval of science. However, out of deference to the wishes of those financial gentlemen who were oddly concerned in maintaining the present price of C in its ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... the church, to resist Turks, convert pagans, banish Moslems, and crush Protestants. Yet the very forces engaged in defending the church, the army and the Inquisition, were alien to the Christian life; they were fit embodiments rather of chivalry and greed, or of policy and jealous dominion. The ecclesiastical forces also, theology, ritual, and hierarchy, employed in spreading the gospel were themselves alien to the gospel. An anti-worldly religion finds itself in ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... continue to be of a healthy nature. If that country sets forth prominently the fact that while aspiring to be great, it possesses none of those attributes that we have previously associated with great nations, the attributes of greed, covetousness, aggressiveness, and overbearing—an arrogant attitude in regard to weaker Powers, it will have performed a notable service in the history of the world. For myself I have no doubt whatever ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... wedding-tunes! Priest, recite the sacred runes! Hast no ghostly help nor art Can enrich a selfish heart, Blessing bind 'twixt greed and gold, Joy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the central figure of the story, is essentially a self-made man, who has made himself a power to be reckoned with. He is a man of great natural force, immense egotism, insatiable greed for notoriety and unswerving adherence to his own standards of morality. He has two devouring ambitions: First to become one of the inner circle that controls high finance and second to become one of the elect ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... intrigue swayed all Europe, and poisons and poisoners stalked forth unblushingly from cottage and palace; when crowned and mitered heads, prelates, noblemen, beneficed clergymen, courtiers, and burghers became Borgias and De Medicis in hideous infamy in their greed for power and affluence; and when the civilized world feared to retire to rest, partake of the daily repast, inhale the odors of flower or perfume, light a wax taper, or even approach the waters of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... miser?" asked the teacher of her pupils, and the bright boy spoke up and answered: one who has a greed for gold. But he and all the class were embarrassed as to how this greed for gold should be qualified. The boy at the foot of the class came to the ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... it now that I have found it after all these years. Every day I shall look at the place in my collection which it would have occupied, and I shall say to myself: 'Maria Van Wagenen, take warning. See to what terrible straits a worldly passion may bring one; what unconscious greed may do!' I shall give the money to Mills for charity and I will never—never fill that place ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... more rights than beasts of burden. (This custom exists today in the interior of Africa, and was responsible for the infamous African slave trade. Black captives were sold to white traders through the greed of their captors, who forgot that their own relatives and friends might be carried off and sold across the seas by ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... inn there a man came in who said he was going to Carlisle to hire a shepherd. I did not like the man, but I was tired and had not plack nor bawbee, so I e'en asked him for the place. When he heard I was Cumberland born, and had been among sheep all my life, he was fain enough, and we soon 'greed about the fee. ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... thus spoken, Hrut said, "Thou hast undertaken this suit, which belongs to thy daughter, rather for the greed of gain and love of strife than in kindliness and manliness. But I shall have something to say against it; for the goods which belong to me are not yet in thy hands. Now, what I have to say is this, and I say it out, so that all who hear me on this hill ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... while a thousand skylarks rose from off the fen, and chanted their own chant aloft, as if appealing to Heaven against that which man's greed and man's rage and man's superstition had made of this fair ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... seeking to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded so moved his feelings, that he exclaimed, "Great God! I can't stand this any longer; Take this bread, and give it to that woman," (Mrs. Lee), and forgetting for the time the greed of gain which had brought him thither, he lent a helping hand most zealously to the care of the wounded. During the day, General McClellan's head-quarters were at Boonsboro', and his aids were constantly passing back and forth over the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... a delicatessen-proprietor; this merry-eyed Irish boy, whom you would have expected to be escorting a lady to a firemen's ball——they were captains of an army of sappers who were undermining the towers of Peter Harrigan's fortress of greed! ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... France crossed Rousseau's pastoral visions, and he admitted that there were some lands in which the publican devours the fruits of the earth; where the misery that covers the fields, the bitter greed of some grasping farmer, the inflexible rigour of an inhuman master, take something from the charm of his rural scenes. "Worn-out horses ready to expire under the blows they receive, wretched peasants attenuated by hunger, broken ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was to draw down the blind, for Mr. Rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of perplexity and thought. Then he emptied the broken bandbox on the table, and stood before the treasure, thus fully displayed, with an expression of rapturous greed, and rubbing his hand upon his thighs. For Harry, the sight of the man's face under the influence of this base emotion added another pang to those he was already suffering. It seemed incredible that, from his life of pure and delicate trifling, he should ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... and that he should beware of them; all this your Majesty may see, if you are so pleased, by the documents, which I send translated into Castilian. But the devil, who seeks his opportunity, furnished these evil men with a king so filled with greed and so overpowered by it that he is almost mad on the subject; and his actions indicate this, for he has had men made of gold and women of silver, and has them at his feasts and gives them drink. He sent to every ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... time of the autumnal equinox, the great bird ziz[7] flaps his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles and the vultures, blench, and they fear to swoop down upon the others and annihilate them in their greed. And, again, were it not for the goodness of God, the vast number of big fish had quickly put an end to the little ones. But at the time of the winter solstice, in the month of Tebet, the sea grows restless, for then leviathan spouts up water, and the big fish ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... she express these sentiments in letters to her friends, but in a public meeting, where only patriotic fervor and flag-waving were welcome, she dared criticize the unsanitary army camps and the greed and graft which deprived soldiers of wholesome food. "There isn't a mother in the land," she declared, "who wouldn't know that a shipload of typhoid stricken soldiers would need cots to lie on and fuel to cook with, and that a swamp was not a desirable place in which to pitch a camp.... What the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... of joy shone in his sister's eyes. "Yes," he continued, "these wretches have a code of honour of their own. It is a cruel prejudice, not a mean instinct of greed, that has forced them into ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... a more ghastly burden than the war. 56 Vitellius' soldiers scattered through all the boroughs and colonial towns, indulging in plunder, violence, and rape. Impelled by their greed or the promise of payment, they cared nothing for right and wrong: kept their hands off nothing sacred or profane. Even civilians put on uniform and seized the opportunity to murder their enemies. The soldiers ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... in his folly sinning through a Brahman's greed, For we wage no war with Brahmans ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... the great city are weaving their nets of selfishness and falsehood, and calling them industrial enterprises or political combinations. I can see how the wheels of society are moved by the hidden springs of avarice and greed and rivalry. I can see how children drink in the fables of religion, without understanding them, and how prudent men repeat them without believing them. I can see how the illusions of love appear and vanish, and how men and women swear ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... does not suffice, however, to assure the success of a candidate. The elector stickles in particular for the flattery of his greed and vanity. He must be overwhelmed with the most extravagant blandishments, and there must be no hesitation in making him the most fantastic promises. If he is a working man it is impossible to go too far in insulting and stigmatising employers of labour. As for the rival candidate, an ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... born had she been fathered, and daughterly love was absent; but she suffered when she thought of the fierce, self-willed old man, cutting himself off from all possible friendships, while his vigor was being sapped daily and hourly by his terrible greed of money. ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... an argument with the gentleman at her side she would have found that he was well posted with the old arguments about the canteen being an institution to keep the soldiers from the greed of evil saloons outside the different posts, but her companion respected her silence, and did not speak until they had passed the great iron gate, when it ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... Their greed thus excited, every hireling was anxious to earn the reward, and it would certainly be dangerous for any one to attempt again the cruel role of ghost, for ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... I cannot go to the root of the moral disease of Rehoboth. If it were drink, or profligacy, or greed, I might; but self-righteousness beat Jesus, and no wonder it ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... chapter on the "Spirit of the Hive." In the domestic and international policy of the Prussian State, in the Hohenzollern dynastic tradition, we discover such a collective spirit, the "Spirit of the Prussian Hive," the evil spirit of war mania and megalomania, the treachery, the brutality, the greed, and, above all, the predatory instinct dignified into the name of Real Politik. And Europe will only enjoy permanent peace and security if she succeeds in destroying that Hohenzollern tradition, that sinister spirit which lives ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... small gold chests. Instantly his whole expression changed. Here was the keynote to the man's disposition. Gold! It was the gold he coveted. At all costs that gold was to be his. His eyes shone with greed. He moved towards the boxes as though he were about to handle them; but he paused abruptly before he reached them. The barking of the dogs and the strident tones of the Indian's voice outside arrested ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... dare not escheat his estates yet," replied the prior stubbornly. "It is too early in the day; until noon the lands are still Sir Richard's, and no man shall take them ere the clock strikes. Shame on your conscience and your greed, to do a good knight such foul wrong! I would willingly pay a hundred ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... the power exercised through this system occurred within my personal knowledge a few years ago. A local dignitary in a distant province fell under the frown of the Prince Governor, who, actuated by greed, imposed on him a heavy fine for an imaginary offence. The fine was not paid, on which a charge of contumacy was made, and this was punished by the cruel bastinado and imprisonment. The Telegraph-master, notwithstanding the fact of the Governor being a near relative of the late Shah, reported ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... it seems, if greedy, was not dishonest. He was born a gentleman, but his son was born a trader. The son is a still cleverer man of business; the son is consulted and trusted. Aha! He too goes with the age; to greed he links ambition. The trader's son wishes to return—what? to the rank of gentleman?—gentleman! nonsense! everybody is a gentleman nowadays,—to the title of Lord. How ends it all! Could I sit but for twelve hours in the innermost heart of that Alfred Fletwode; could I see how, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be ended. They are to be "made straight." Society has become warped with the heat of lust, and the fierce fever of competition, and the hot, devouring fires of greed. When the Lord is enthroned the fires will be put out, the heat will pass, and the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... common that every one owns and nobody blames it. The gorgeous ostentation of the Court has perverted the habits of the people. The intelligence abstracted from other vents betakes itself to speculating for a fortune; and the greed of gain and the passion for show are sapping the noblest elements of the old French manhood. Public opinion stamps with no opprobrium a minister or favourite who profits by a job; and I fear you will find that jobbing pervades all ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... mother," Cuthbert said, "that when ambition and greed are in one scale, reverence for the holy church will not weigh much in the other. Had King Richard been killed upon his way home, or so long as nothing was heard of him, Sir Rudolph might have been content to ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... thought that the Albigenses richly deserved all the treatment they received. The age was not religious, but it had intense religiosity, and the whole religiosity was heated to a high pitch by the contest with the Albigenses. The pride, ambition, and arrogance of the hierarchy and the basest greed and love of plunder of the masses were enlisted against them. Lea's statement is therefore fully justified that "the Inquisition was not an organization arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of the church. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... man against man. We are split into parties and factions, by greed and jealousies, petty spites and self-seeking, by unintelligence, by education, and by our inability—a mental inability—'to see life steadily and see it whole,' and lastly, perhaps chiefly, by our intense ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... habitation. The praise-worthy qualities of courage, love, unselfishness, truth, industry, and humility are portrayed in the dealings of the field and forest folk and the consequential reward of these virtues is clearly shown; he also reveals the unhappy results of greed, jealousy, trickery and other character weaknesses. The effect is to impress indelibly upon the imagination of the child that certain deeds are their own desirable reward while certain others are much better ...
— The Tale of Tommy Fox • Arthur Scott Bailey
... levies of the imperious Mohawks. Thus the mint of wealth at their very doors became to its possessors the source of untold misery. Constant fear kept them toiling at the mines, while the scanty proceeds of their labor only quickened the greed of their savage masters. The number and extent of the sewan manufactories upon Long Island may be inferred from the frequent and immense shell heaps left by the Indians in all of which scarcely a whole shell is to be found. Occasionally the whole shells were carried over to ...
— Wampum - A Paper Presented to the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society - of Philadelphia • Ashbel Woodward
... moment's indignation at the greed of Judas, which was masquerading as benevolence. His scathing laying bare of Judas's mean and thievish motive is no mere suspicion, but he must have known instances of dishonesty. When a man has gone so far in selfish greed that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... said Mr Mariner. "That's Haydock's grocery store there by the post-office. He charges sixty cents a pound for bacon, and I can get the same bacon by walking into Patchogue for fifty-seven!" He brooded awhile on the greed of man, as exemplified by the pirates of Brookport. "The very same bacon!" ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... argument in favor of the bill was based on the scarcity of labor which all contemporary writers speak of, the inducement to intending settlers to come to Upper Canada where they would have the same privileges in respect of slavery as in New York and elsewhere; in other words the inevitable appeals to greed. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... "Europeans translated into Americans;" and it is very natural, that in this "translation" many peculiarities have been lost, while others have stood forth in greater relief. The strongest feature in the character of the European-American is the greed for gold; this often becomes a passion, and transforms the most faint-hearted white into a hero, for it certainly requires the courage of one to live alone, as planter, on a plantation with perhaps some hundred slaves, far removed from all assistance, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... Archbishop and Cassanate, and the result of his visit surely proved that their confidence was not ill-placed; his boasting may have been a trifle excessive, but it was based on hope rather than achievement; and if proof can be adduced that it was not prompted by any greed of illegitimate fame or profit, it may justly be ranked as a weakness rather than as a serious offence. To these two instances of falsehood Naude adds a third, to wit, Cardan's claim to the guidance of a familiar spirit. He refuses to let this rank as a delusion; and, urged ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... insistence of the dawn Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud The constant opportunity that lives Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget For this large prodigality of gold That larger generosity of thought, — These are the fleshly clogs of human greed, The fundamental blunders ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... story of evil folly and treachery: a splendid story of steadfastness to the end: of glorious martyrdom. The refusal to allow himself to be ransomed at his pillaged people's cost; the greed of the Danes; the death-stroke given him, we are told, in another chronicle, in mercy, to put an end to his sufferings, given him by a newly-made convert of his. And see how the Church has shown us, in her canonisation as a martyr saint, of this man, who died not directly to testify to the ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... wags on With lies and slang; With show and vanity, Pride and inanity, Greed and insanity, And ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... had been erected and houses built by Turkish residents, contrary to the stipulations of the Treaty of Nicopolis, with the connivance of the voivodes, who, as we have said, were raised up and deposed as it suited the greed or policy of the Porte. Their fortresses and garrisons on the Danube served as centres from which the Ottomans made raids into Wallachian territory, spreading desolation far and wide, and in addition to this scourge the suffering inhabitants had from time to time hostile visits ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... olive-trees, has the effect of a marvelous ripe fruit among the leaves. In Italy seeing is sensual: the eyes enjoy color, as the palate and the tongue delight in a juicy, scented fruit. Christophe flung himself at this new repast with eager childlike greed: he made up for the asceticism of the gray visions to which till then he had been condemned. His abounding nature, stifled by Fate, suddenly became conscious of powers of enjoyment which he had never ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... eventually for the heavy expenses incurred by it in its efforts to fight disease, misery and death. English statesmen, after these painful experiences, recognized the necessity of enforcing strict regulations for the protection of emigrants crossing the ocean, against the greed of ship-owners. The sad story of 1847-8 cannot now be repeated in times when nations have awakened to their responsibilities towards the poor and distressed who are forced to leave their old homes for that new world which offers them well-paid work, political ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... the business souls, would fish. I'm not a socialist, but Aitutaki shows that, released from the gain, man will serve his fellows for their plaudits. And, mind you, no person took more fish than he needed. There was no greed." ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in his eyes, his mouth half open, seemingly ready to snap shut the instant he detected greed or cupidity in Harlan's eyes, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves, two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole. 'Though that wouldn't quite do,' he considered, growing cooler as he got away. 'That's what would happen to ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... smaller grottoes, the boat-sail fixed in front securing them privacy. Harry Blew has done this. In the breast of the British man-o'-war's man there is still a spark of delicacy. Though his gratitude has given way to the greed of gold, he has not yet sunk to the level of that ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... could she say than what he already knew? Many agencies other than hers kept him informed of the state of affairs in Livonia. A bitter thought, this, for it showed Karl actuated by love of Hedwig, and not by greed of power. She feared that more ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Stupidity, Contumacy, Superstition, Querulousness, Distrust, Dirtiness, Tediousness, Sordid or Frivolous Desire for Praise, Illiberality, Ostentation, Pride, Timidity, Oligarchy, or the vehement desire for honour, without greed for money, Insolence, and Evil Speaking. One of these Characters may serve as an example of their method, and show their place in the ancestry of Characters as they were written in England in the ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... could establish his rights only by force of martial law, and with a miniature army at his back; for civil law here is paralyzed by a cloud of false witnesses, while equity is administered by a jury which is under the influence of the two strongest of human motives, greed and fear. ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... their own chief rabbi. He also allowed them to try all their own causes which did not concern pleas of the Crown; and all this justice only cost the English Jews 4,000 marks, for John was poor. His greed soon broke loose. In 1210 he levied on the Jews 66,000 marks, and imprisoned, blinded, and tortured all who did not readily pay. The king's last act of inhumanity was to compel some Jews to torture ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... is a story of wreck and wickedness on a desolate West Highland island where the rocks called 'the Merry Men,' as the tides boil and foam among them, make, as it were, an undercurrent of mad laughter that forms a fitting accompaniment to the hideous passions of greed and murder and the dead level of human misery that are the prevailing atmosphere of the tale. It is one of the best of the stories forming the volume, to which it gives its name, published by Messrs Chatto & Windus ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black |
