"Rapacity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manufacture—the children imploring charity. These people, scattered throughout Europe—these people, whose manner of life is so mysterious and whose origin is more mysterious still—seem to be closely allied both to the Moors and to the Hindoos, not only in appearance but in their phlegm, fanaticism and rapacity. Such of our readers as have travelled in Southern Europe must have frequently encountered these Bohemians, who come from no one knows where only to disappear again like the swallows at the approach ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... kind with banishment and even graver penalties. They measured every ship about to depart, to learn if her cargo exceeded the lawful amount; they guarded creditors against debtors and protected poor debtors against the rapacity of creditors, and they punished thefts sustained by the merchants. It is curious to find contemporary with this beneficent magistracy, a charge of equal dignity exercised by the College of Reprisals. A citizen offended in ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... undisguised rapacity—is indecent and revolting," Beaumaroy remarked. He seemed to be in the highest spirits. "I wonder if they've ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... finance, and is, as such, bound to be a thrifty manager of the royal treasure. He is a member of this House, and is, as such, bound to see that the burdens borne by his constituents are not made heavier by rapacity and prodigality. To all these trusts he has been unfaithful. The advice of the privy councillor to his master is, 'Give me money.' The first Lord of the Treasury signs a warrant for giving himself money out of the Treasury. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be seen, but here the trees are all covered with them. Amongst the various smaller ones, we came upon a huge vulture's nest on a very small tholukh, which seemed to bend and look unhappy beneath the weight of this den of rapacity and violence. There are hereabouts no rocks for the eagles to build upon. We halted amidst abundance of herbage and small trees, which afforded a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... was immediately seized on by several, and its death hastened by their blows. The "Beagle" was at the Falklands only during the summer, but the officers of the "Adventure," who were there in the winter, mention many extraordinary instances of the boldness and rapacity of these birds. They actually pounced on a dog that was lying fast asleep close by one of the party; and the sportsmen had difficulty in preventing the wounded geese from being seized before their eyes. It is said that several together (in ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... exposed by their defenseless situation, and the more ruinous restrictions to which this government subjected them, it would require not many more years to have made them the greatest in the world. Is this immense wealth always to be exposed as a prey to the rapacity of freebooters? Why will you protect your citizens and their property upon land, and leave them defenseless upon the ocean? As your mercantile property increases, the prize becomes more tempting to the cupidity of foreign nations. In the course of things, the ruins and aggressions ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... chirata, and charas, or extract of hemp. Formerly the Lamas of Degarchi (Teeshoo) and Lassa sent much bullion to the mint at Kathmandu, and made a very liberal allowance for having it coined; but the rapacity of Rana Bahadur induced him to alloy the money, which of course put an entire stop to this source of wealth. Of these articles, the greater part of the musk, chaungris, hurtal, borax, and bullion, are sent to Patna, or the low country. From thence again are brought up ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... pivotal point for Jefferson, America and the world; for Jefferson gave the rudder of the Ship of State such a turn to starboard that there was never again danger of her drifting on to aristocratic shoals, an easy victim to the rapacity of Great Britain. Hamilton's distrust of the people found no echo in ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... and of peace, and have brought in their hands the precious treasure of the Gospel of Christ. But their number is so small as to be almost lost among the multitude. For one who has taught righteousness, purity, truth and mercy, thousands have taught, by their example, rapacity, drunkenness, lewdness and cruelty. For one who has led us in the path of life, thousands have led us in the paths of destruction. For one who has brought the Bible, thousands have brought rum. For one whose example has been salutary, the intercourse of thousands ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... the property of the State was unfortunately not extended to the property of its clients. Even before the provinces had yielded a prey rendered easy by distance and irresponsibility, Italian cities had been forced to complain of the violence and rapacity of Roman commanders quartered in their neighbourhood,[118] and the passive silence with which the Praenestines bore the immoderate requisitions of a consul, was a fatal guarantee of impunity which ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... unfortunate folk cowering in deeper terror and despair than before. The utter misery of the Indians may be imagined when the measures they took to free themselves are taken into consideration, for in the end they adopted the plan of committing suicide as the only means of cheating the rapacity of their white oppressors. Native families, and even entire villages, found gloomy consolation in a self-sought death. Even in this they were not invariably successful. Perhaps never has the irony of fate been more strongly illustrated than in the tale that is told of one large slave-owner ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... the garrison being soon distressed for provisions. But Burley did not inform Morton of a fact which he himself knew full well, namely, that most of these provisions never reached the garrison, owing to the rapacity of the dragoons sent to collect them, who readily sold to one man what they took from another, and abused the Major's press for stores, pretty much as Sir John Falstaff did that of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... appetites to escape so small an expense as that which is now to be imposed upon them; and even of those whose poverty can sink no lower, who are in reality exhausted by every day's debauch, it is at least as likely that they will insist upon more pay for their work, or that they will steal with more rapacity, as that they will suffer themselves to be debarred from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... island besides themselves; and thought that this unknown animal might possibly sally forth as soon as the sun set and darkness reigned, in search of its prey, when he and Fritz would fall victims to its rapacity. "I did not understand you ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fifteenth century. He has shown that the spoliation of the great merchant was a deliberately calculated act, and that the king sacrificed him without scruple or shame to the avidity of a sin- gularly villanous set of courtiers. The whole story is an extraordinary picture of high-handed rapacity, - the crudest possible assertion of the right of the stronger. The victim was stripped of his property, but escaped with his life, made his way out of France, and, betak- ing himself to Italy, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fifteen purses from this district. The Emir Djahdjah resides at Baalbec, and keeps there about 200 Metaweli horsemen, whom he equips and feeds out of his own purse. He is well remembered by several Europeans, especially English travellers, for his rapacity, and ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... he done to deserve it all? That had always been John McIntyre's cry. Why must he and his be singled out for such suffering? Why should his innocent loved ones be the victims of a villain's rapacity? ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... preyed upon by insects; and were it not for ordinary cleanliness, he would become a mass of vermin; even this does not protect him from the rapacity of ticks, mosquitoes, fleas and many others. Intestinal worms feed on him within, and, unseen, use their slow efforts ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the most formidable leagues history had then recorded, the celebrated league of Cambray. No sympathy need be wasted upon the Venetians, the victims of this coalition, for they had rendered themselves universally detestable by their arrogance, rapacity, perfidy and pride. France joined the coalition, and, in view of her power, was to receive a lion's share of the prey—the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, and the Ghiradadda. The King of Arragon was to send ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... from her high place, so that the retreat of the sea in this place was scarcely less disastrous to the town's prosperity than its advance had been at Ravenserodd; and possibly the waters of the Humber, glutted with their rapacity close to Spurn Head, deposited much of the disintegrated town in the waterway ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... there is not so much to be dreaded from the rapacity of men. You do not hear of such alarming burglaries there every day; every hand is not at another's throat there, or in another's pocket; at least, not until after nightfall; and when the dark should come on, Anthony had determined to make ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... these woes with such patience and mercy, that she drew five hundred dollars, which had been invested for her in a safe place, and put them in those hapless hands, where, of course, the money was only the prey of new rapacity, to be bewailed by new reproaches. When one of her friends had occasion to allude to this, long afterwards, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... events. It is really refreshing to meet with a British traveller who is so happily delivered from the haunting consciousness of a personal identity. The reader is not called upon to bemoan the tribulations of temperance-taverns, the hardships of indiscriminate railroad-carriages, nor the rapacity of New-York hackmen. There is scarcely an offence against good taste or good feeling in Mr. Dicey's volumes; and whatever American homes may have been opened to him would doubtless reopen far more readily than to most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as well as I do, and they dare not contradict me, that the Nabob of Arcot and his creditors are not adversaries, but collusive parties, and that the whole transaction is under a false color and false names. The litigation is not, nor ever has been, between their rapacity and his hoarded riches. No: it is between him and them combining and confederating, on one side, and the public revenues, and the miserable inhabitants of a ruined country, on the other. These are the real plaintiffs and the real defendants in the suit. Refusing ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reverence for the monarch and his ministers and fostered a deep-rooted sentiment of conservatism which made disloyalty and innovation almost sacrilegious. In the Spanish colonies in particular the Church not only protected the natives against the rapacity of many a white master but taught them the rudiments of the Christian faith, as well as useful arts and trades. In remote places, secluded so far as possible from contact with Europeans, missionary pioneers gathered together groups of neophytes whom they rendered docile and industrious, ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... Having in this glorious cause triumphed over the combined resistance of interest, prejudice, and pride, he took his post among the foremost of the honorable band associated to deliver Africa from the rapacity of Europe, by the abolition of the slave-trade; nor was death permitted to interrupt his career of usefulness, till he had witnessed that act of the British Parliament by which the abolition was decreed." After viewing minutely ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... rapacity for pleasure encreased with his uneasiness, once more ventured to speak with his lady upon the subject of reformation; counselling her to take advantage of his present apparent discontent, which showed at least some sensibility ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most prone: rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... resting on violence, let us answer that we simply don't believe it. If anybody tells us that by Christ's law we are not to oppose the gigantic ambition of a "War Lord" who claims Divine right to stalk over Europe in scenes of blood, rapacity, and impurity, let us answer that we simply don't believe it. If anybody tells us that Christ's words, "Resist not evil," were intended to say that spiritual forces will of themselves overcome all forms of war (including, as they needs must, crime, disease, and death) let us answer ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... Her father was a clever but unlucky artisan. No joy had lighted up his laborious days. He died at fifty; all the years of his life he had panted under the thumb of masters whose rapacity exacted from him the price of the water, of the salt, of the very air he breathed; taxed the sweat of his brow and claimed the blood of his sons. No protection, no guidance! What had society to say to him? Be submissive and be honest. If you rebel ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... again and again that this Bull amounting to a declaration of war, was no more than a pretext to indulge his rapacity; but surely it bears the impress of a real grievance, and, however blameable the results that followed out of it, for the measure itself there were ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... imposition is attempted upon the subject, undoubtedly it will not bear on its forehead the name of Ship-money. There is no danger that an extension of the Forest laws should be the chosen mode of oppression in this age. And when we hear any instance of ministerial rapacity, to the prejudice of the rights of private life, it will certainly not be the exaction of two hundred pullets, from a woman of fashion, for leave to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... willowy brook that turns the mill; to the south the dense pine woods, peopled in our imaginations, with fairy elves, owls, and hobgoblins—now, alas, owing to the rapacity of the sawmills, naught but a howling wilderness of stumps ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... articles of capitulation which promised large privileges. But the Governor and soldiery refusing the English propositions, the fort was stormed and plundered, three of the Dutch being killed and ten wounded. In violation of his promises, Carr now exhibited the most disgraceful rapacity; appropriated farms to himself, his brother, and Captains Hyde and Morely, stripped bare the inhabitants, and sent the Dutch soldiers to be sold as slaves in Virginia. To complete the work, a boat was despatched to the city's colony at the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... having been collecting edible birds' nests for a Celebes trader. Rajah Allang pretended to be the only trader in his country, and the penalty for the breach of the monopoly was death; but his idea of trading was indistinguishable from the commonest forms of robbery. His cruelty and rapacity had no other bounds than his cowardice, and he was afraid of the organised power of the Celebes men, only—till Jim came—he was not afraid enough to keep quiet. He struck at them through his subjects, and thought himself pathetically in the right. The situation was complicated ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... various tribes he had to pass through, but carried with him in safety a large trunk, containing Clapperton's clothes and other property, three watches, which he had secured about his person to preserve them from the rapacity of Bello, and all his master's papers and journals, with which, after a journey of nine months, accompanied by three blacks, he arrived ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... I began to look over Woodruff's legislative program in advance, I was amazed at the rapacity of my clients, rapacious though I knew them to be. I had been thinking that the independent newspapers—there were a few such, but of small circulation and influence—were malignant in their attacks upon my "friends." In fact, as I soon saw, they had told only a small part of the truth. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... he carried the war on to the land, to glean what the Black Band had left. With 1200 men he took Hoorn by escalade; plunder-laden and sated, they returned to the sea. Nothing was too small or too helpless for his rapacity. Along the coast they picked up a barge of Enckhuizen. Its only crew, master and mate, were thrown overboard, and Peter's fleet sailed upon its way. We must remember that the provinces engaged in this internecine strife were not widely diverse in race, and that to-day ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... a certain order and shed even a ray of the faintest dawn among the violences and the darkness of the race. It was reverence rather than sensibility, a noble and philosophic conservatism rather than philanthropy, which raised the storm in Burke's breast against the rapacity of English adventurers in India and the imperial crimes of Hastings. Exactly the same tide of emotion which afterwards filled to the brim the cup of prophetic anger against the desecrators of the Church and the monarchy of France, now poured itself out against those who in India had "tossed ...
— Burke • John Morley
... capture of the city by force of arms, and without capitulation, the troops were clamorous to be permitted to plunder. Amru again checked their rapacity, and commanded that all persons and property in the place should remain inviolate, until the will of the Caliph could be known. So perfect was his command over his troops that not the most trivial article was taken. His letter to the Caliph shows what must have been ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... that I had the most dreadful appetite all the way through. "Really," Halicarnassus would say, "it is quite charming to see you in such fine health," being at the same time reduced to a state of extreme disgust at my rapacity. He made an estimate, one day, that I had eaten since we started thirty-one and a half chickens, and I have no doubt I had; for chickens were my piece de resistance as well as entrees; and then they WERE chickens, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... the "free companies"—bands of organized marauders—ravaged the country with fire and sword, plundering Guelf and Ghibelline alike. Gregory's legates in the government of the ecclesiastical states rendered themselves so odious to the people by their immorality and rapacity that a league of the more powerful political factions was formed for throwing off the yoke of the "absentee" papal rulers. This was the beginning of the War of Liberation (1375) that was to shake the papal power in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... conquests were made, excited the thirst of the Indians for more. Not satisfied with the plundering of Ruddle's and Martin's stations, their rapacity prompted them to insist on going against Bryant's and Lexington. Prudence forbade it. The waters were rapidly subsiding, and the fall of the Licking river, would have rendered it impracticable to convey their artillery to the Ohio. Their success too, was somewhat doubtful; and it was ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to Rome. His father was dead; how long before is not known. If the little property at Venusia had remained unsold, it was of course confiscated. When the lands of men, like Virgil, who had taken no active part in the political conflicts of the day, were being seized to satisfy the rapacity of a mercenary soldiery, Horace's paternal acres were not likely to escape. In Rome he found himself penniless. How to live was the question; and, fortunately for literature, "chill penury" did not repress, but, on the ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... disaster a few months before, one reverse of fortune had succeeded another. He who had entered every country a conqueror at the head of his armies, whose myriads of soldiers had overrun every land, eating it up with ruthless greed and rapacity, and spreading destruction far and wide, was now at bay. He who had dictated terms of peace in all the capitals of Europe at the head of triumphant legions was now with a small, weak, ill-equipped, unfed army, ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... In his absence Cressingham, the treasurer, and Ormesby, the justiciar, became the real representatives of the English power. Cressingham was a pompous ecclesiastic, who appropriated to his own uses the money set aside for the fortification of Berwick, and was odious to the Scots for his rapacity and incompetence. Ormesby was a pedantic lawyer, rigid in carrying out the king's orders but stiff and unsympathetic in dealing with the Scots. Under such rulers Scotland was neither subdued nor conciliated. No real effort was made ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... future provision, and as affording you the means of passing the remainder of your days in ease and tranquillity. What would become of you in case of the worst? Your numerous creditors would besiege you with a rapacity, still further excited by the support they would receive from court. You look at me with surprise because I speak the language of truth; be a reasonable creature I implore of you once in your life, and do not thus sacrifice the interests of your life to a romantic disregard of self." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... enemy to the Queen. Then they commenced an attack upon the Queen in the council; and being supported by the popular voice, succeeded in driving out of the country Madame Berlips, a German favourite of hers, who was much hated on account of the undue influence she exerted, and the rapacity she displayed. The next measure was of equal importance. Madrid and its environs groaned under the weight of a regiment of Germans commanded by the Prince of Darmstadt. The council decreed that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885 is a magazine of such cases,—a summary of all the horrors that the worst conditions can include. Aside from the revolting pictures of the life lived from day to day by the workers themselves, it gives in detail case after case of rapacity and over-reaching on the part of the employers; and parallel ones may be found in every labor report which has touched upon ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... the new king perceived that the cause of the past failure of the Goths lay in the alienated affections of the people of Italy. The greater misgovernment of the Emperor's servants, the coldly calculating rapacity of Alexander the Scissors, and the arrogant injustice of the generals, terrible only to the weak, had given him a chance of winning back the love of the Italian people and of restoring that happy state ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... is to this intercourse, with these classes of persons, that the bad faith, the savage barbarities, and border-wars, of which so much complaint is made against the Indians, are to be mainly attributed. The rapacity of our people, for their peltries and their land, the feeble execution of laws made for their protection, and the loose morality which has governed our general intercourse with them, have wasted their numbers, debased their character, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... the other hand, under the prospect of an arrangement with France, rapidly recovered from the blow inflicted upon them by the violence and mercenary rapacity lately charged upon their French friends, but which they now insisted, was a charge without foundation. Taking advantage of the dissatisfaction at the heavy taxes necessarily imposed to meet the expenses of warlike preparations, and especially of the unpopularity of the alien and sedition ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... long as the sovereign could extort from them whatever portion of their accumulations he saw fit to demand, they were worth guarding. A time had now come when the populace clamored for their expulsion from the island, on the ground that their usury and rapacity ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of the imagination to appreciate the rage Frontenac must have felt when, on returning to Canada, he saw before his eyes the effects of La Barre's rapacity and Denonville's perfidy, of which the massacres of Lachine and La Chesnaye furnished the most ghastly proofs. But in these two cases the element of tragedy was so strong as to efface the mood of exasperation. There remained a third incident which must have provoked pure rage. This was ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby
... not confine itself to impolite remarks. It proceeded to get rid of what it deemed western rapacity by ceding the whole overmountain territory to the United States, with the proviso that Congress must accept the gift within twelve months. And after passing the Cession Act, North Carolina closed the land office in the undesired domain and nullified ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... and canoes, and carrying up the goods along the narrow margin of the rapids. With these precautions they all passed unmolested. The only accident that happened was the upsetting of one of the canoes, by which some of the goods sunk, and others floated down the stream. The alertness and rapacity of the hordes which infest these rapids, were immediately apparent. They pounced upon the floating merchandise with the keenness of regular wreckers. A bale of goods which landed upon one of the islands was immediately ripped open, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... prejudice the monarch against him. Again fortune favoured him, and two days before Christmas he was closeted with the King, and explained in the fullest detail the state of things in the islands; the extinction of the natives, which was following rapidly on the barbarities and rapacity of the Spaniards, and the violation of the royal provisions which the benevolence of the late Queen and the sagacity of the King had decreed. He was astute enough to couple with the argument that these iniquities lay heavily on ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... that tribe as he had the Raritans, and called upon the people to shoulder their muskets for the fray; but they, seeing the danger to which the rashness of the governor was leading them, refused. They had been witnesses of his rapacity and greed, and they now charged him with seeking war that he might "make a wrong reckoning with the colony," and reproached ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... the king. "Sir," said he, "accept the homage of the clergy, the respects of the noblesse, and the most humble supplications of the third estate." The untimely applause which greeted the bishop's words were excited by the picture he drew of the misery in the country-places exhausted by the rapacity of the fiscal agents. At this striking solemnity, set off with all the pomp of the past, animated with all the hopes of the future, the eyes of the public sought out, amidst the sombre mass of deputies ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... man[32], was at first led by inclination, like most others, to engage in political affairs[33]; but in that pursuit many circumstances were unfavorable to me; for, instead of modesty, temperance, and integrity[34], there prevailed shamelessness, corruption, and rapacity. And although my mind, inexperienced in dishonest practices, detested these vices, yet, in the midst of so great corruption, my tender age was insnared and infected[35] by ambition; and, though I shrunk ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... of affairs couldn't last forever. The Spanish administration wasn't so bad as is generally supposed, yet of course there was too much rapacity and not enough industry. Central America, broadly speaking, was known as the treasure-chest of the world, and there were constant wars and disturbances. The colonies as a whole did not progress like those in the North, and in course of time deteriorated. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... of the system by which men usurped power over the lives and liberties of their fellows through economic means was destroyed. Therefore not one outrage, not one act of oppression, not one exhibition of conscienceless rapacity, not one prostitution of power on the part of Executive, Legislature, or judiciary, not one tear of patriotic shame over the degradation of the national name, not one blow of the policeman's bludgeon, not a single bullet or bayonet thrust of the soldiery, could ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and suffused with the exuding dyes of its jewels, took now a dewy lustre, as if weeping precious gum and amber. The Jew felt an instant's sense of superstition, which he dashed away, and placing the child, already sleeping, before the fire, awakened rapacity led him to hunt the hovel over. He found nothing but a few religious books, and amongst them a leather-covered Testament, which he opened and read with insensibility—passing on, at length, to interest, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... had been visited by Cossacks, but had received no injury whatever; on the contrary the poor woman related with all the eloquence of Truth and the French animation that from their own soldiers they had suffered all that cruelty and rapacity could devise—indeed, the house and gardens bore evidence to the facts—window shutters pierced with bullets, broken doors, furniture gone, and above 800 francs' worth of honey destroyed out of pure wantonness—in short the poor people seemed ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... are on such a footing as this it is always ill with the community at large. The Hurons were among the most despicable of the Indians in their manners. They were hideous gluttons, gorging themselves when occasion offered with the rapacity of vultures. Gambling and theft flourished among them. Except, indeed, for the tradition of courage in fight and of endurance under pain we can find scarcely anything in them ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... birds taking shelter from the storm. Now what refuge is there? The island has been covered by the sea. Rome is no more. The birds have fled from the Seven Hills.—The Alps only are left for them. There, amid the rapacity of Europe, stands (for how long?) the little island of twenty-four cantons. In truth it has not the poetic radiance and glamor of the Eternal City: history has not filled its air with the breath of gods and heroes; but a mighty ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... and Alexandria, and made approaches to the seat of the mission as near as Aleppo, Damascus, Tiberias, and Acre; but from this terrible judgment the inhabitants of Beirut were providentially shielded. They suffered much, however, from the rapacity of the Pasha of Acre, until his power was broken by the invading army of the Viceroy of Egypt, under Ibrahim Pasha. With the aid of ten or fifteen thousand men from Mount Lebanon, under the Emir Beshir, Ibrahim Pasha ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... that wealth excited the rapacity of the encomenderos and soldiers, abandoned the working of the mines, and the religious historians assert that they counseled them to a similar action in order to free them from annoyances. Nevertheless, according to Colin (who was "informed ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... empire. Under Justinian (527-565), the Hellenic race and institutions in Greece itself received the severest blow. Although he gave to the world his great system of civil law, his internal administration was remarkable for religious intolerance and financial rapacity. He restricted the powers and diminished the revenues of the Greek municipalities, closed the schools of rhetoric and philosophy at Athens, and seized the endowments of the Academy of Plato, which had maintained an uninterrupted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... at the second custom-house, though the officers eyed our ornaments with a confiscating rapacity. For my part I took my revenge, by showing off the only ornament I had to the utmost. A—— had made me a present of a sapphire-ring, and this I flourished in all sorts of ways, as it might be in open defiance. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the illustrious champion of freedom, Jonathon Higginbottom, and of the elevation of Ebenezer Hogsflesh to the perpetual Presidency. They will not choose to proceed in a journey which would expose them to the insults of that brutal soldiery, whose cruelty and rapacity will have devastated Mexico and Colombia, and now, at length, enslaved their ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... beyond the Missouri, beyond the Arkansas, bordering upon Mexico; and there you have deluded them with the hope that they will find a permanent abode, a final resting-place from your never-ending rapacity and persecution. There you have undertaken to lead the willing, and drive the reluctant, by fraud or by force, by treaty or by the sword and the rifle—all the remnants of the Seminoles, the Creeks, of the Cherokees and the Choctaws, and of how many other tribes I cannot ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Eugenics will show: Elizabeth Tuttle, the grandmother of Jonathan Edwards, the eminent scholar and divine, was, according to H. E. Walter, a "woman of great beauty, of tall and commanding appearance, striking carriage, of strong, extreme intellectual vigor, and mental grasp akin to rapacity, but with an extraordinary deficiency in moral sense. She was divorced from her husband on the ground of adultery and other IMMORALITIES. The evil trait was in the blood, for one of her sisters murdered her own son, and a brother murdered ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... sort of drama has an obviously autobiographical basis. His own road ran into strange places in the days of his youth. He moved among men who were menaced by all the terrestrial cruelties, and by the almost unchecked rivalry and rapacity of their fellow men, without any appreciable barriers, whether of law, of convention or of sentimentality, to shield them. The struggle for existence, as he saw it, was well nigh as purely physical among human beings as among ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... mad; but then we shall none of us be able to criticise the others. Or possibly the thing may work its own cure. You know the ingenuity of the political economists in justifying the egotism to which conditions appeal. They do not deny that these foster greed and rapacity in merciless degree, but they contend that when the wealth- winner drops off gorged there is a kind of miracle wrought, and good comes of it all. I never could see how; but if it is true, why shouldn't a sort of ultimate immunity come back to us from the very excess and invasion of the appeals ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... interior tent of heavy skins to retain the heat of the oil lamps. Of his own supplies of blubber and walrus meat, which he had secretly buried early in the hunting season and which had thus escaped the rapacity of the white men, he gave more than half to Annadoah. He fixed her lamps with oil, and arranged them solicitously in positions where they would give most heat. He placed supplies in the house, and buried the rest outside so that Annadoah might readily reach them. Meanwhile Annadoah sat ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... Even the whites themselves they have not only embittered, but corrupted. We were pained the other day when our municipal councillors refused, by a majority, to make the production of invoices obligatory at the Custom-house. Yet who shall blame them, when the Chief Justice, with a smallness of rapacity at which all men wondered, refused to pay, and I believe, still withholds the duties on his imports? He was above the law, being the head of it; and this was how he preached by example. He refused to pay his customs; the white councillors, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with letters from Gonzalo to some of the principal inhabitants of that city urging them to favour his designs. In these letters, he pretended that he was exceedingly displeased on hearing of the violence and rapacity with which Bachicao had conducted himself towards the inhabitants of Panama, in direct contradiction to his orders, which were to land the Doctor Texada without doing injury to any one. He informed them that Hinojosa was now on his way to their city, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... It is the rapacity of the chiefs of the various tribes that renders African exploration so difficult. Each tribe wishes to monopolize your entire stock of valuables, without which the traveller would be utterly helpless. The difficulty of ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Germany would assimilate and absorb the Prussian State. Alas! it was the Hohenzollern State which was to annex and subject the German Empire. Little did the Germans know Prussian tenacity. Little did they know the rapacity of the Black Eagle. Still less did they know the black magic of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... was not confined to his own doings. His hostility, in a position so commanding, emboldened every Shimei to curse. In Ardishai, two or three unprincipled drunkards, with their dissolute bishop (Mar Gabriel), saved themselves from Mohammedan rapacity by taking part against the converts. These last were made examples of, to deter others from attending preaching or sending their children to the schools.' One poor widow, with four children,—a most consistent Christian,—was driven from her house by her father-in-law, because she allowed ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... themselves insatiable. Thus, Conde rendered himself formidable and odious to Mazarin, and made himself detested by the people as Mazarin's supporter, at the same time that by his arrogance he shocked the Parliament, already unfavourably disposed towards him on account of his rapacity and his ambition.[1] ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of the highest modern civilization, progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious—and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with whom building was a ruling passion; and for many ages the Coliseum became a quarry. The Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Palazzo Barberini, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Palazzo Veneziano were all built mainly from the plunder of the Coliseum; and meaner robbers emulated the rapacity of their betters, by burning into lime the fragments not ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Meer's presence. "Friend," said this benign ruler, "stay here a little longer; it is not right that, having made a sum of money in my country, you should spend it in your own." Since then, he added, he had been ill-treated and robbed several times to satisfy the rapacity of this wicked monster; and then, as if frightened at his own expressions, he peered cautiously round the tent, apparently fancying the Meer himself would start from behind the screen to punish him for his audacity. I returned him his 250 rupees, but told him if his story were true I would use ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites,—in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity,—in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption,—in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Empress, that the King was disposed to respect the neutrality, provided Holland was excluded. This has come to the knowledge of the plenipotentiaries, and it is supposed on being known to the States, will hasten the conclusion of the affair, which must put an end to the piratical rapacity of Great Britain, or involve her ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... world, whether engaged in open resistance to German rapacity, or as onlookers, do well to see, as indeed they have seen since its beginning, that modern civilization is at stake. On every continent, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and both the Americas, recognition of this great fact was instinctive. It was obvious ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... excited the rapacity of the viceroy Count Lemos, who, to obtain possession of it, accused him of exciting the natives to rebellion, and cast him into prison. In vain Salcedo entreated that he might appeal to the mercy of the ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... that within a few years after the conquest of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America were overrun by military adventurers whose rapacity and violence drove the harmless and timid Village Indians from their pueblos into the forests; thus destroying in a few years a higher culture than the Spaniards were able to substitute in its place. Nothing can be plainer, I think, than ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... unless they can reach the treasury of the United States, their sympathy for the murdered inhabitants will soon evaporate. I hope, however, and believe that the war for the present is at an end. But the peace will only be temporary, for the rapacity of the avaricious land speculator will not be satisfied until the red man is deprived of ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... whole scheme of Moses was a shocking one; but he was probably the greatest man that ever lived on the face of the earth, if he was the leader and organizer of a band of depredators who for bloodthirst and rapacity had no parallel in history. How could it be expected that a kingdom founded upon the massacre of men and cemented by the blood of women and children should survive? It had survived only as example to the world of the impossibility of a permanent ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... his address to the German nobility, speaking of the pope, "He is a shepherd: yes, so far as you have money, and no farther." The above passage from Bunyan is altogether in the manner of Luther when describing the rapacity and avarice of Rome. hath removed them. And these seeds has antichrist sown where the kingdom of Christ should stand.] as the pedlar cries, "broken or whole," is the sinews of their religion; and it is for that they ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... Lebanon in a semi-independent position. Since then the terraced mountain has been marvellously developed, and every foothold has been planted with vines and figs and mulberries. The industrious peasantry, comparatively safe from Turkish rapacity, have cultivated the ledges among its crags and peaks, and enjoy the fruits of their industry, sitting under their vines and fig trees. The bloodthirsty and turbulent Druzes, restrained by law, and unable to hold ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Salt, Flour &c. drawn from the Magazine—he has not stopped here, he has descended much lower—& defrauded the old Veteran Soldiers who have bled for their Country in many a well fought field—for more than five Campaigns among others an old Sergeant of mine has felt his rapacity by the Industry of this man's wife they had accumulated something handsome to support them in their advanced age—which coming to the knowledge of this cruel Spoiler—he borrowed 4500 dollars from the poor Credulous Woman & ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... Nova Scotia), who, losing their way in fog, landed here. The peaceful little community, after only a few weeks' occupancy, were routed by that grasping individual, Argall, the deputy governor of Virginia, who was detested by his own colonists for his tyranny and rapacity. That person, not content with the domains which his position entitled him to govern, cruised along the Atlantic coast, making many such incursions among the colonists. In this case, after destroying the buildings, he cruelly ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... dark and sad From proofs of hate displayed, From envy and rapacity, And kindness ill-repaid; The baseness of humanity Hath spoiled a cherished dream; Dear Heart, how different is the lake When Evil ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... ruins,—objects that had really so often afflicted her heart. Waking from those distressing spectacles, she would fall into a fitful doze, which presented her with remembrances still more alarming: bands of fierce deserters, that eyed her travelling party with a savage rapacity which did not confess any powerful sense of inferiority; and in the very fields which they had once cultivated, now silent and tranquil from utter desolation, the mouldering bodies of the unoffending peasants, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... replied the other, coldly. "When all the civilization of a planet has been given to destruction by the unreasoning stupidity and insatiable rapacity of its royalty, allegiance to such royalty is at an end. SIT DOWN!" he thundered as Fenor sprang to his feet. "You are no longer in your throne-room, surrounded by servile guards and by automatic rays. You are in MY laboratory, and by a movement of my finger I ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... the boy flung himself upon the box with the rapacity of a hawk upon its prey, after being long poised in the air, to fix its certain aim; thrusting his hands to the right and left, in order to secure the finest specimens of the coveted fruit, scarcely allowing himself time to breathe until ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to find a parallel in history for the rapacity combined with unscrupulousness and ingenuity displayed during that fateful period by dishonest individuals, and left unpunished by the state. Doubtless France was not the only country in which greed was insatiable and its manifestations disastrous. From other parts of the Continent ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... one word of a frail man on the throne of France tearing a hundred thousand sons from their homes, breaking asunder the sacred ties of domestic life, sentencing myriads of the young to make murder their calling and rapacity their means of support, and extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Reasonable allowances are made to witnesses both for time and expences at the public charge—a loss is not doubled by the costs of a prosecution to recover it. In cases of robbery, where property found is detained for the sake of proof, it does not become the prey of official rapacity, but an absolute restitution takes place.—The legislature has, in many respects, copied the laws of England, but it has simplified the forms, and rectified those abuses which make our proceedings in some cases ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... for the observant eye of piety to watch their movements, and to penetrate their camps. Alas! those whom we admire as the defenders of our country, we weep over as the corrupters of our morals; and too often the page which celebrates their prowess, is stained with the record of their rapacity. But, however unwelcome an attendant, let them remember that an omniscient eye witnesses both their private transactions, and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... tragedy, or, if you like to have it so, a terrible comedy—the death of an old bachelor delivered over by circumstances too strong for him to the rapacity and greed that gathered about his bed. And other forces came to the support of rapacity and greed; there was the picture collector's mania, that most intense of all passions; there was the cupidity of the Sieur Fraisier, whom you shall presently behold in his den, a sight ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... where he had been seized. Foulon represented all that was worst in the old regime. As commissary with the French armies and later in the internal administration of the country, he had displayed the most heartless rapacity. His attitude towards the lower classes was echoed in utterances that were popularly quoted. The people, he declared, might feed on hay while he was minister;—the people had now got him in their clutches. In vain Bailly and Lafayette, during a long agony at the Hotel de Ville, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... the Man of Figures. He has a deep affection, amounting to rapacity, for accuracy in recorded computation. On any subject at all, he goes burrowing after statistics, gathers them with the industry of an insect, and serves them up on any one who will listen. Just now, while ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... however, far too loyal to associate men who held the commission of George III, with the irregular warriors, whose excesses he had so often witnessed, and from whose rapacity, neither his poverty nor his bondage had suffered even him to escape uninjured. The Cowboys, therefore, did not receive their proper portion of the black's censure, when he said, no Christian, nothing but a "Skinner," could betray a pious child, while honoring his father with ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... superstitious from education, they become ferocious from the murders they commit, and corrupted by the most horrible debauchery." On the other hand, they had every sort of incentive and teaching to prompt them to rapacity and lawlessness. "The young peasant, sold in Mingrelia or Georgia, no sooner arrives in Egypt, than his ideas undergo a total alteration. A new and extraordinary scene opens before him, where everything conduces to awaken his audacity and ambition. Though now a slave, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... were those soldiers to follow Joan wherever she would lead them, and it is not improbable that such a crusade as she dreamt of, had it been possible, in which the two nations, so closely connected by religious feeling, and so closely united by position, but so long enemies owing to the rapacity and greed of their kings, might have again placed the cross on the battlements of the Holy City, under the leadership of her whom her countrymen ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... essential element in the Universal Brotherhood of Man; a thing largely overlooked in the modern theory of Evolution, and ignored, or set at naught by Romanism by its dogmas, anathemas, and persecutions. Instead of the brotherhood of man, she has exhibited the cruelty and rapacity of devils. (Establishment of ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... said old Martin, in his quiet way. 'I am sure of it. I said so. It was disinterested too, in you, to draw that herd of harpies off from me, and be their victim yourself; most other men would have suffered them to display themselves in all their rapacity, and would have striven to rise, by contrast, in my estimation. You felt for me, and drew them off, for which I owe you many thanks. Although I left the place, I know what passed ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... disturbed at Mabel's insistence upon the financial possibilities of literature, but in this she was only a child of her time. The point worthy of note is not her rapacity but the dexterity with which she utilized literature to further her ambition. She was identifying herself with literature and so fortifying her position. She was really far better fitted to be the wife of a fictionist than Imogene. ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... motives of their desertion must be imputed to their landlords, may be reasonably concluded, because some Lairds of more prudence and less rapacity have kept their vassals undiminished. From Raasa only one man had been seduced, and at Col there was no ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... they had a genuine regard for good government, and a decent faith in reform; but when we chide the selfishness of machine politicians hunting office in modern democracy, let us console ourselves by recalling the rapacity of our oligarchies. 'It is melancholy,' muses Sir James Graham this Christmas in his journal, 'to see how little fitness for office is regarded on all sides, and how much the public employments are treated as booty to be divided among ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... could employ in extending the business or strengthening the position of the company appears to some directors a necessity hardly less unpleasant than an increased wages bill, or an Excess Profits Duty. Concessions must indeed be made to the shareholders' rapacity: but when something has been done in this direction, dust can easily be thrown in their not very observant eyes. Reserves, which within limits are a necessity of sound finance, can be accumulated beyond those limits, ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... sank, covered. "I earnestly pray that may be so," Mr. Marrapit said. "I doubt. Rapacity and greed stalk the land. Mrs. Major had five-and-twenty pounds per annum. I will not go above ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... South Carolina and Wright of Virginia estimated illicit introduction at 13,000 and 15,000 respectively.[127] Judge Story, in charging a jury, took occasion to say: "We have but too many proofs from unquestionable sources, that it [the slave-trade] is still carried on with all the implacable rapacity of former times. Avarice has grown more subtle in its evasions, and watches and seizes its prey with an appetite quickened rather than suppressed by its guilty vigils. American citizens are steeped ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... convinced of the worth of the medicine by the Pole's rapacity. Surely nothing less than the greatest of medicines could enable a man in the shadow of death to stand up and drive ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... susceptible of considerable improvement in this respect, but the Custom-house above all others would do well to take example from the United States and render itself somewhat less odious and offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French officials is sufficiently contemptible; but there is a surly boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the nation that keeps such ill-conditioned curs ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... with which he has resisted the recent efforts to force a fraudulent treaty on the remnant of this injured people, and drive them against their will, and against law and treaties sacredly made, away from their lands, to satisfy the rapacity of unprincipled men. ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame? This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... advanced. Under Clarke's government at Berlin the inhabitants were subjected to all kinds of oppression and exaction. Amidst these exactions and infamous proceedings, which are not the indispensable consequences of war, the Dutch generals distinguished themselves by a degree of rapacity which brought to mind the period of the French Republican peculations in Italy. It certainly was not their new King who set the example of this conduct. His moderation was well known, and it was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... represented truth. If his followers have half the prophet's faith and half his spirit of sacrifice, the odds will be presently even and will in little while turn against the despoilers of Turkey. Already the rapacity of the Allies is telling against themselves. France finds her task difficult. Greece cannot stomach her ill-gotten gains. And England finds Mesopotamia a tough job. The oil of Mosul may feed the fire she has so wantonly ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... the treasure was in the shape of plates or tiles, from the interior of the temples or palaces which did not take up much space. The great temple of the Sun at Cuzco had a heavy outside cornice, or moulding, of pure gold. It was stripped of this dazzling ornament to satisfy the rapacity of the conquerors. There was also a vast quantity of silver which was stored in other chambers. Silver hardly counted in view of the deluge of the ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... was not allowed to enter. The New World was then no less the region for romantic enterprise than profitable exertion, although the explorers of these distant climes had too often sunk the generosity of the soldier in the rapacity of the spoiler. In Sir Philip Sydney the world of Columbus would have had a visitor of a different order. To the courage of Smith and the accomplishments of Raleigh he would have added a spirit of honor and moderation ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... of the hand of anyone who offered it to them; and with like freedom, to take it where it was not offered, but found within reach of their long prehensile beaks. Often had they pilfered provisions to which they were anything but welcome; and, among other acts of their rapacity, there was one of which Fritz had been an interested spectator, and for which he was not likely ever to forgive them. That was, their robbing him of a dainty piece of meat, which one of the cooks had presented to Fritz himself; and upon which he had been going to make ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... upon the mausoleum, glittered with gold and silver and precious stones. To complete the whole, the effigy of the king had been added to the tomb, at some period subsequent to its original erection.—A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship.—The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... action de pecuniis repetundis against the avarice and rapacity of the provincial governors, they made at length a law[23] which, one may say, was against their virtues. For they prohibited them from receiving addresses of thanks on their administration, or any other public mark of acknowledgment, lest they should ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... think there is the devil in women: all these years passed, never a sight of the man, little enough kindness to remember (by all accounts) even while she had him, the notion of his death intervening, his heartless rapacity laid bare to her; that all should not do, and she must still keep the best place in her heart for this accursed fellow, is a thing to make a plain man rage. I had never much natural sympathy for the passion of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Seneca became the wife of the Roman Governor of Egypt. It was at a time when the scheming rapacity of women was so much in evidence that the Senate debated whether it should not forbid its representatives abroad to be accompanied by their wives. France has seen such times—England and America have glanced that way. Women, like men, often do not know that the big prizes ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Obizzo' of Este.] Marquis of Ferrara and of the Marca d'Ancona, was murdered by his own son (whom, for the most unnatural act Dante calls his step-son), for the sake of the treasures which his rapacity had amassed. See Ariosto. Orl. Fur. c. iii. st 32. He died in 1293 according to Gibbon. Ant. of the House of Brunswick. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... bruising and prostrating hail had preceded them in that series of visitations, but they came to do the work of ruin more thoroughly. For not only the crops and fruits, but the foliage of the forest itself, nay, the small twigs and the bark of the trees are the victims of their curious and energetic rapacity. They have been known even to gnaw the door-posts of the houses. Nor do they execute their task in so slovenly a way, that, as they have succeeded other plagues so they may have successors themselves. They take pains to spoil what they leave. Like the Harpies, they smear every thing that ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Lord Sligo's mountains, near the Killeries, I heard many particulars of the eagle's habit and history from a grey-haired peasant who had passed a long life in these wilds. The scarcity of hares, which here were once abundant, he attributed to the rapacity of those birds; and he affirmed, that when in pursuit of these animals, the eagle evinced a degree of intelligence that appeared extraordinary. They coursed the hares, he said, with great judgment and certain success; one bird was the active ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... attraction for its owner. He had once described to a fellow-writer the impression produced on him by that plaster face, so capaciously ugly, as though comprehending the whole of human life, sharing all man's gluttony and lust, his violence and rapacity, but sharing also his strivings toward love ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... so many cities and so many souls? . . . Do we not see that noble cities are erected by the people and destroyed by princes? that a state grows rich by the industry of its citizens and is plundered by the rapacity of its princes? that good laws are enacted by elected magistrates and violated by kings? that the people love peace and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith |
