"Usurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and expense. Their relationship had become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. The strategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded out the memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidences to-night, when common recollections took them unawares and opened ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... and the coming voyage, without touching points which had been, and would be, specially painful. Not a word had ever been spoken between them as to Davis. There had, of course, been letters, very angry letters; but the usurer's name had never been mentioned. Nor was there any need that it should be mentioned now. It was John's affair,—not in any way his. So he asked and listened to much about Richard Shand, and the mode of gold-finding practised ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... of brave fellows slaves to their vices; The Usurer to his gold, drunkards to Wine, Adulterers ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... of a bully in having such a tall, strong, daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes and clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred in small towns by wealth. Let anyone dare make fun of the old usurer when he had such a fire-eater ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ON BANKS THE USURER. Banks feels no lameness of his knotty gout, His moneys travel for him in and out, And though the soundest legs go every day, He toils to be at hell, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... takes the food provided by a Sudra, it dims his Brahmanic lustre; and if he takes the food provided by a goldsmith or a woman who has neither husband nor children it lessens the period of his life. The food provided by a usurer is equivalent to dirt, while that provided by a woman living by prostitution is equivalent to semen. The food also provided by persons that tolerate the unchastity of their wives, and by persons that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... "the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master's day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time to demand the spoils! She has filched ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was surveyor of the roads; had been a kind of toad-eater to Sir Robert Walpole and Lord Godolphin; was a great frequenter of Newmarket, and a notorious usurer. His reputed wealth is stated, in the Gentleman's Magazine, at ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Venice: he was an usurer, who had amassed an immense fortune by lending money at great interest to Christian merchants. Shylock being a hard-hearted man, exacted the payment of the money he lent with such severity, that he was much disliked by all good men, and particularly by Anthonio, a young merchant ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... ashamed of it, Baron!—these holes are honourable to you. Many a shirt of fine linen, ruffled and embroidered, according to the latest fashion, disguises the graceless person of some rascally parvenu—and usurer as well perhaps—who usurps the place of his betters. Several of the great heroes, of immortal fame, had not a shirt to their backs—Ulysses, for example, that wise and valiant man, who presented himself before the beautiful ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... Of course she can't. You know that as well as I do. She can have four hundred pounds, if she wants it. But seeing all she gets out of the concern, she has no right to press for it in that way. She is the —— old usurer I ever came across in ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... usurers and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... with a conscious blush, "you may accuse me of deception in this instance. He has not asked me the sum I owe—and Heaven knows I could not go and thrust my bills in his face. I thought perhaps there was some usurer, whom you had heard of, who could let me have the money. They are debts of honor, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap. They, in common with Huckaback, had an intense desire to share in his anticipated good fortune, and determined to do so according to their opportunities. The excellent Huckaback (a model of an usurer on a small scale) had promptly and adroitly seized hold of the very first opportunity that presented itself, for securing a little return hereafter for the ten shillings, with which he had so generously ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... girl, and went about town; P was a parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a queen, who wore a silk slip; R was a robber, and wanted a whip; S was a sailor, and spent all he got; T was a tinker, and mended a pot; U was an usurer, a miserable elf; V was a vintner, who drank all himself; W was a watchman, and guarded the door; X was expensive, and so became poor; Y was a youth, that did not love school; Z was a Zany, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... to call the baron, but had not the strength to rise, she was so overcome by emotion. At length she said to the usurer: "Would you have the kindness to ring ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... nameless words that slip From darkening soul to whitening lip. The snaky usurer,—him that crawls, And cheats beneath the golden balls, The hook-nosed kite of carrion clothes— I stabbed them deep with muttered oaths: Spawn of the rebel wandering horde That stoned the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... part of the old wisdom of humanity), in the tale of the Merchant of Venice; in which the true and incorrupt merchant,—kind and free beyond every other Shakspearian conception of men,—is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... something of a usurer, a millionaire living in 1821-1822 on quai Saint-Michel, where he discussed a business deal with Lucien de Rubembre, who had been piloted there by Lousteau. [A Distinguished Provincial at Paris.] He was a ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... attendants, faith, I think his gossip, the Hangman Marshal, with two or three of his retinue, and Oliver, his barber, may be the most considerable—and the whole bevy so poorly arrayed, that, by my honour, the King resembles most an old usurer, going to collect desperate debts, attended by ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... proprietors in whom there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and decoration, one of the men who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral species, these people hold a middle place between the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are all faithful to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of moving a cupboard or a door, of opening the most indispensable air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear like ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... before, since the hoods had gone out of fashion. The same woman had taken a contract to supply a large firm with wrappers, and employed many in the neighborhood, paying them the smallest possible prices. This woman was a usurer on a scale so pitiful and petty that it almost condoned usury. Sometimes a man on discovering the miserable pittance for which his wife toiled during every minute which she could snatch from her household duties ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and usurer—a vile and violent soul, who humors me because he thinks me a man of resources; a wild beast only half-tamed yet cowed by my audacity. If I showed fear he would devour me. (Going to the door.) Come in, Pierquin, ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... taking a very long time to make up her mind to prefer you to Monsieur de Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and, although these transactions of his ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... is clearly true when one considers nowadays the delicate and important functions of the world of banking and finance. The old-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods were regarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantile life, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and the desire to be useful members of the community. But in these days the banks are not merely private money-making ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... the earliest, most familiar and most courted forms of Roman enterprise—one whose intrinsic attractions for the grasping Roman mind had resisted every effort of the legislature by engaging in its support the wealthiest landowner as well as the smallest usurer. It is true that a taint clung to the trade—a taint which was not merely a product of the mistaken economic conception of the nature of the profits made by the lender, but was the more immediate outcome of social ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the saint—the prude!" said Crevel. "I tell you what, Hulot, do you go back to your wife; your money matters are not looking well; I have heard talk of certain notes of hand given to a low usurer whose special line of business is lending to these sluts, a man named Vauvinet. For my part, I am cured of your 'real ladies.' And, after all, at our time of life what do we want of these swindling hussies, who, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... to collect through the medium of several sub-renting classes. Hence the peasant suffers, and except a generally futile appeal to the Rajah, he has no redress. The law secures him tenure as long as he can pay his rent, and to do this he has recourse to the usurer; borrowing in spring (at 50, and oftener 100 per cent.) the seed, plough, and bullocks: he reaps in autumn, and what is then not required for his own use, is sold to pay off part of his original debt, the rest standing over till the next season; and thus it continues to accumulate, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... there is an odd thing about which I cannot make up my mind; I do not know whether it is unconscious observation or fiendish irony. But it is this. In Our Mutual Friend is an old patriarch named Aaron, who is a saintly Jew made to do the dirty work of an abominable Christian usurer. In an artistic sense I think the patriarch Aaron as much of a humbug as the patriarch Casby. In a moral sense there is no doubt at all that Dickens introduced the Jew with a philanthropic idea of doing justice to Judaism, which he was told he ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... our gains are akin to the passion of usury; these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in act and imagination. Have none of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crew that pilfer one another, Betray my friend, and persecute my brother; Turn usurer, o'er cent. per cent. to brood, Or quack, to feed like fleas ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... never empty of mourners and advisers. Within the memory of man never had so many Jews been seen together in L. Extremely embittered by the murder of their co-religionist they had spared neither pains nor money to trace the criminal. It is even known that one of them, commonly called "Joel the Usurer," offered one of his customers, who owed him many hundreds and whom he considered an especially sly fellow, remission of the entire sum if he could help him to arrest Mergel; for the belief was general among the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... between those showy, occasional acts of so-called generosity which such men perform, and the true, habitual, self-denying benevolence of a solvent and just member of society. "Despise the usurer and the miser as much as you will," he would exclaim, "but the spendthrift is more selfish than they." But his very honesty was most curiously blended with his toryism. One of his friends ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... in the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the noblest Romans of the day, only second, if second, to Cato in general ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... worse. There is what some of us are pleased to call a popular preacher there. I speak the plain and simple truth, and say he is a hireling—a paid actor, without the credit that attaches to the open exercise of an honourable profession. The owner of the chapel is a usurer, or money-lender—no speculation answers so well as this snug property. The ranter exhibits to his audience once a-week—the place is crowded when he appears upon the stage—deserted when he is absent, and his place is occupied by one who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... of advice on it; they had them painted in their tapestries, stamped on the most ordinary utensils, on the blades of their knives,[30] the borders of their plates,[31] and "conned them out of goldsmiths' rings."[32] The usurer, in Robert Greene's "Groat's worth of Wit," compressed all his philosophy into the circle of his ring, having learned sufficient Latin to understand the proverbial motto of "Tu tibi cura!" The husband ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... graves and ringing dead men's knells; And after that was I an engineer, And in the wars 'twixt France and Germany, Under pretence of helping Charles the Fifth, Slew friend and enemy with my stratagems. And after that was I an usurer, And with extorting, cozening, forfeiting, And tricks belonging unto brokery, I filled the jails with bankrupts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals, And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hung himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... are offered to them in him, and to him in them. Antonio has scorned his religion, balked him of usurious gains, insulted his person: therefore he hates him as a Christian, himself a Jew; hates him as a lender of money gratis, himself a griping usurer; hates him as Antonio, himself Shylock. Moreover, who but a Christian, one of Antonio's faith and fellowship, has stolen away his daughter's heart, and drawn her into revolt, loaded with his ducats and his precious, precious jewels? Thus his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... To find yourself a usurer in your dreams, foretells that you will be treated with coldness by your associates, and your business ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... as 1795, being removed or stolen on the erection of the present building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker—a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon). After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, where he built Gresham House. ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... puts a complicated machine in motion. Here we have a lover of the daughter, who, disguised as a servant, flatters the avarice of the old man; a prodigal son, who courts the bride of his father; intriguing servants; an usurer; and after all a discovery at the end. The love intrigue is spun out in a very clumsy and every-day sort of manner; and it has the effect of making us at different times lose sight altogether of Harpagon. Several scenes ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... professions peculiar to prisons develop behind the bars. There is the vendor of liquorice-water, the vendor of scarfs, the writer, the advocate, the usurer, the hut-maker, and the barker. The artist takes rank among these local and peculiar professions between ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... exclaimed Mr. Watchorn, returning his horn to its case, and eyeing Mr. Sponge and Miss Glitters sailing away with the again breast-high-scent pack. 'Oh, you exorbitant usurer!' continued he, gathering his horse to skate after them. 'Well now, that's the most disgraceful proceedin' I ever saw in the whole course of my life. Hang me, if I'll stand such work! Dash me, but I'll 'quaint the Queen!—I'll ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... be a murderer? Soche a thyng saieth he, is [Fol. xxxvij.v] Usurie. A brief sentence againste Usurers, but wittely pro- nounced from the mouth of a godlie, sage, noble, and descrite persone, whiche sentence let the Usurer, ioigne to his Usury retourned, and repeate at the retourne thereof, this sentence [Sidenote: The sentence of Cato a dis- comfort to v- surers.] of Cato, I haue murthered. This one sentence will discou- rage any Usurer, knowyng hymself a murtherer. Though moche more maie be spoken ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... ought rather to fill the audience with horror than pleasure and mirth; and if in the conclusion their plots should be baffled, even this would come too late to prevent that ill impression. But in the Lawsuit this is admirably avoided: for the character chosen is a rich, avaricious usurer: the pecuniary distresses of such a person can never be looked upon with horror; and if he should be even handled unjustly, we always wait ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes treats ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is like a usurer, giving very little and exacting upon it a high percentage. To-day, as I am growing more composed and can think again, I must render Aniela justice; she never encouraged me or exacted anything. What I mistook for a touch of coquetry at Warsaw was mere joyfulness of a youthful spirit that had shaken ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb, less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's remains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him as its own. ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... for more than a couple of days. It was absolutely indispensable that I should procure these thousand florins somehow. I would not ask my husband for them and that was very foolish of me. I got the amount at last from a wretched usurer at an enormous rate of interest. When the amount plus interest became due again, I was still more afraid to tell my husband, and so kept on giving fresh bills, with the result that the amount of my indebtedness grew ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... benefits is simple: so much is expenditure; if there is any return, that is clear gain; if there is no return, that is not a loss. I gave it for the sake of giving. No one registers his benefits in a ledger, or, like an exacting usurer, presses to the day and hour for repayment. An honourable man never thinks of such matters, unless reminded by someone returning a favour; otherwise they assume the form of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... sound of the usurer in that," the blind man said at the end of the performance. "It is said with the reflective air of a man to whom ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Talk not of love. Love has no thought of self! Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold The loathsome prostitution of a hand Without a heart? Love sacrifices all things To bless the thing it loves! He knows not love. Father, his love is hate—his hope revenge! My tears, my anguish, ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... with its tides of joy and sorrow. Speculation, that glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the banker's bureau during the eclipse of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... though I had crucified Christ.... My whole youth and manhood have been lost, tied down to this tomb.... I see multitudes with incomes of 2000 or 3000 crowns lying in bed, while I with all my immense labour toil to grow poor.... I am not a thief and usurer, but a citizen of Florence, noble, the son of an honest man, and do not come from Cagli." (These and similar outbursts of indignant passion scattered up and down the epistle, show to what extent the sculptor's irritable nature had been exasperated ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... The usurer foresaw the destruction of his oppressive extortion, and he resisted it with the vigor of his craft. The rich man foresaw his profits diminished on government contracts, and he vehemently and virtuously opposed it on all public principles. Loud therefore ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... man, but his status of chu[u]gen made my grandfather very angry. He drove the twain from the house. Thus deprived of means to live, my father took a position as cook in the yashiki of a great noble. Here he was frightened into becoming the tool of a very wicked man. Having killed an usurer this man forced my father to dispose of the body under penalty of death if he refused. The body being placed in a cloth, my father had carried it to his house. During his short absence my mother's curiosity led her into untying the bundle. Her ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... belonging to a fat Chinese usurer, Willy for very little money came into possession of a quantity of Japanese prints. These were the next things he showed Frederick. There were most of Hiroshige's views of Lake Biwa; there were the thirty-six views of Fujiyama by Hokusai. One of ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... rent—well, we shall risk it. I'm sick of waiting. And it isn't fair to a girl—that's my view. Two years now; an engagement that lasts more than two years isn't likely to come to much good. You'll think my behaviour pretty cool, on one point. I don't forget, you old usurer, that I owe you something more than a ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... as it were, a new era of liberty to the Roman commons; in this that a stop was put to the practice of confining debtors. This alteration of the law was effected in consequence of the lust and signal cruelty of one usurer. His name was Lucius Papirius. To him one Caius Publilius having surrendered his person to be confined for a debt due by his father, his youth and beauty, which ought to have excited commiseration, operated on the other's mind as ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... done it for years. I have endured shame and agony unspeakable, that my darling's secret might be safe. I have been his tool and his scapegoat. I, an old man, on my way to the grave, have earned—and rightly earned—the names of usurer and thief. All this I have done and suffered that he should never blight my child's happiness by his presence. He has broken the contract. He came down here that night you went to Richmond, and, with his fiendish ways and threats, nearly killed her. Well, ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... house, with servants, such as they are, around me. It's all in appearance. In reality, I'm not the owner. I once was, as my father before me; but can't claim to be any longer. Even while we're sitting here, drinking this Catalan, the mortgagee—that old usurer Martinez—may step in and ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg, though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the world. Know me for such. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... "The old usurer is at home, I know," muttered Stephano to himself; for the moment he had knocked a gleam of light, peeping through a crevice in an upper casement, had suddenly disappeared. He now rapped more loudly at the door with the handle of his ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... in his character of protector of the Jews, and Samuel Pfefferkorn, a Hebrew usurer, had just left the hall ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lark? Do you think a great fortune will all of a sudden change such a chap as that into an honest man? No, what's ill got is ill spent, and old Giffrey Jenkins's money 'ill never turn to good account. He that grinds the poor, and goes against scripture as a usurer, 'ill never find his son do well. Howel shall never have my consent to marry Netta, and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... no means of acquiring fresh supplies for play, but by the sword. They are frequently borne away with such a desperate ardor, that, when the loser has given up his arms, the only part of his property which he greatly values, he sets the power over his life at a single cast to the winner or usurer. It is a fact, that a person, known to the Roman emperor, paid the price of a servitude which he had by this means brought upon himself, by suffering death at ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... usurer being in bed, Robin in the shape of a night-raven[7] came to the window, and there did beat with his wings, and croaked in such manner that this old usurer thought he should have presently died for fear. This was but a preparation ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable. Janet knew what was in his mind. She drew the lamb a little closer and tucked her skirt in around it. Again she fell to contemplating the prairie—and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... You shall have a hundred thousand, this very day. Ptitsin, get the money, you gay usurer! Take what you like for it, but get it by the evening! I'll show that I'm in earnest!" cried Rogojin, working himself up ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... house-rent free, annual pensions or money, they shall be relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced to work. [653]"For I see no reason" (as [654]he said) "why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, when as in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... have been effusively praised. There is nothing in those Commandments to restrain the sweater, the rack-renter, the jerry-builder, the slum landlord, the usurer, the liar, the libertine, the gambler, the drunkard, the wife-beater, the slave-owner, the religious persecutor, the maker of wheat and cotton rings, the fox-hunter, the bird-slayer, the ill-user of horses and dogs and cattle. There is nothing about "cultivating towards all ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... As a usurer takes each one of a bag of silver angels, feeling each coin to find whether it be clipped or not, so the Sheriff, as all rode slowly and sadly back toward Nottingham, took up thought after thought in turn, feeling around the edges of each but finding in every one some flaw. At last ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... possessed a sunny prosperity of its own upon mediaeval lines, the banker has had to be suggestive and persuasive, sympathetic and helpful. These are unaccustomed attitudes for British capital. The field has been far more attractive to the German banker, who is less of a proudly impassive usurer and more of a partner, who demands less than absolute security because he investigates more industriously and intelligently. This great bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, is a bank of the German type: to begin with, it was certainly dominated by German directors; ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... of the world. In older times, when the Christian laborer was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the spendthrift was drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State, religion and law, seized on the Jew and drained him as a Christian duty. When the forces of lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems, driven by invisible proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the earth, and forcing themselves ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... I was a keeper of accounts in the service of a rich zemindar, whose estate lay in the Country of the Five Rivers. He was a usurer as well as a landowner, as had been his fathers before him for many generations. So in his castle was an accumulation of great stores of wealth—gold and silver and precious stones, cloth of gold, silks, brocades, and ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... long ago that you were an old usurer," Cabinska was thinking, tinkling her glass ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... tells us a similar tale: A merchant of Venice, having been informed by private letter that Drake had taken and plundered St. Domingo, sent word to Sampson Ceneda, a Jewish usurer. Ceneda would not believe it, and bet a pound of flesh it was not true. When the report was confirmed the pope told Secchi he might lawfully claim his bet if he chose, only he must draw no blood, nor take either more or less than an ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... consequences on the morals of the officers can scarcely be overrated. They are epitomized by the two words "army usury" and "money marriages." To live beyond one's means leads to indebtedness. And there we have the simple genesis of the army usurer, so-called. He exists and thrives in every garrison in the empire, and the broad swath he mows within the ranks of the army testifies to his diligence and to his successful methods. It would be going too far to expatiate on this matter. Suffice it to say that ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... it. Really one usurer in a family is enough. My father made the gold, and if I spend it, I consider that I do all that is required of ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... characters or typical portraits: "Characters upon essaies morall and divine, 1615," dedicated to Bacon, and concerning wisdom, learning, knowledge, patience, love, peace, war and other, even then, rather trite subjects. "The good and badde," 1616, contains characters of a knave, an usurer, a virgin, a parasite, a goodman, an "atheist or most badde man: hee makes robberie his purchase, lecherie his solace, mirth his exercise, and drunkennesse his glory," &c. These books of "Characters" were extremely popular. Cf. "Characters of virtues and vices" by Hall, 1608; Sir Thomas ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... to the little man for a promptitude in money matters which reminded her of her own beloved Poppar. "Of course it's all right!" She cast a casual glance over the cheque, and broke into a surprised laugh. "It isn't, though! You've paid me too much! I guess I'm not a usurer, to want interest for a single night. It was only two hundred that ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... father and the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four men were seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to break. He began in his measured tones, in a voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer weighs ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week, cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly, as to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart. Tell a usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution, you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep, and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of the world choke the good ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... pocketing several thousands of that country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made a profit of L80,000 on a capital of L90,000: a profit large enough to make the mouth of the deceased usurer Kirkwood dry with envy. But, while our legislature passed laws to restrain the usurer in his exactions, the "war profiteer" has no restriction placed on him. His workmen can, in certain cases, be fined or sent to prison if they absent themselves from work, and ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... delightful and lasting, that neither would the people long endure their governors, nor the servant his master, nor the master his footman, nor the scholar his tutor, nor one friend another, nor the wife her husband, nor the usurer the borrower, nor a soldier his commander, nor one companion another, unless all of them had their interchangeable failings, one while flattering, other while prudently conniving, and generally sweetening one another with ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... backwoods usurer, "I'll charge you twelve per cent. I do love a good interest. There is no Antonio about me. I'll lend no money gratis and bring down the rate of ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... afflictions. In appearance you do him a pleasure, but in reality ruin him, like one who, overeome by a sick man's importunities, gives him wine, a present satisfaction, but a real poison. Usury gives no relief, but makes your neighbor's want greater than it was. The usurer is no way profitable to the republic, neither by tilling the ground, by trade, &c.; yet idle at home, would have all to produce to him; hates all he gains not by. But though you were to give alms of these unjust exactions, they would carry along with them the tears of others robbed by ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... peace in the plaintive breeze, Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered, Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon; That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered That was the debt that we paid to the usurer June. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... of sadness took place in the lone churchyard, unholy watch was kept over the second coffin by the myrmidons of the law. The usurer who made the seizure had brought down from Dublin three of the most determined bailiffs from amongst the tribe, and to their care was committed the keeping of the supposed body in the old barn. Associated with these worthies were a couple of ill-conditioned ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... jurisdiction against Henry III. and Edward I. Having inducted certain Bishops into their sees without waiting for the royal letters, he sustained a long litigation in the Anglo-Irish courts, and was much harassed in his goods and person. Seizing from a usurer 400 pounds, he successfully resisted the feudal claim of Edward I., as lord paramount, to pay over the money to the royal exchequer. Edward having undertaken to erect a prison —or fortress in disguise—in his episcopal city, the bold Prelate publicly excommunicated the Lord Justice who undertook ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... relief and significance went round the circle. The fame of Eli or "Skinner" Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... triumphantly, "how many sonnets would you give for me? If you were a usurer in gold instead of in rhyme, I would ask how many dollars. But it is unjust to pay in a coin that we value little. To a man starving in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than all the treasures of the earth. To you, I warrant your poems are the standard of appreciation. ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... this tyranny shall fight to the death against it. Wars indeed there shall be in the world, great and grievous, and yet few on this score; rather shall men fight as they have been fighting in France at the bidding of some lord of the manor, or some king, or at last at the bidding of some usurer and forestaller of the market. Valiant men, forsooth, shall arise in the beginning of these evil times, but though they shall die as ye shall, yet shall not their deaths be fruitful as yours shall be; because ye, forsooth, are fighting against villeinage which is waning, but ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... sadly your list of the honest and worthy poor; for the money lies by me, and brings me no interest. You see I am become a mere usurer; and want to make use upon use: and yet, when I have done all, I cannot do so much as I ought. God ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... morning, with disdainful laugh, Had quaffed the cup of pleasure to its dregs, And now, grown old, must pay the penalty In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness; The widow, who, but newly desolate, Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone; The spendthrift and the sordid usurer, Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold; The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight Of wassail inclination dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time from intemperance; And she who had forgot ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... to pay your debts," says the old gentleman;" but sure, on such an occasion, any man but the rankest usurer would be contented to stay a little while for his money; and it will be only a little while I am convinced; for, if you deposit this sum in the great man's hands, I make no doubt but you will succeed immediately ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... adopted the equally dangerous course of hoarding up all his savings, until it became a passion with him. After a while he retired from business, but the passion clung to him with all the tenacity of a long established habit, and he became a usurer. He was known to all the young profligates, the bad young men who throng our city, and became as necessary to them as the poor avaricious Jew was in former days to the spendthrifts and gamesters in London. He told me frightful ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... little Isaac with Newton. If we apply the words "little Dicky" to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... contributed to a number of different journals. Emile de Girardin had welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829, under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman (signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication of which Balzac protested because ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... circumstances. You were bound to keep up appearances, and, in order to do so, got into the hands of Eli Moser, the moneylender. You married Lady Orlebar, and had entered London society when, of a sudden, the scoundrelly usurer began to put the screw upon you. At that moment you—luckily, I think, for yourself—met me, and—well, I was your salvation, for I pointed out to you an easy way by which to pay your creditors and rearrange your affairs upon ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... borrowed a louis from a friend. An ordinary creditor only thinks of a large interest; and if that is paid him he holds his peace. A friend is never satisfied until everybody knows that he has generously obliged you. It is far better to apply to a usurer.' I thought all that very sensible, and I quite agreed with you when you added: 'So, Monsieur le Marquis, no borrowing of this kind until after your marriage—not on any pretext whatever. Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still good; but it is being slowly undermined—and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... went forth in a troop to ensnare souls on earth. Lucifer left the minstrel in charge of the infernal regions, promising, if he let no souls escape, to treat him on the return with a fat monk roasted, or a usurer dressed with hot sauce. But while the fiends were away St. Peter came, in disguise, and allured the minstrel to play at dice, and to stake the souls which were in torture under his care. Peter won, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... little Max made out the way That Grootver pressed that poor harassed old man. His money he must have, too long delay Had turned the usurer to a ruffian. "But let me take my ship, with many bales Of cotton stuffs dyed crimson, green, and blue, Cunningly patterned, made to suit the taste Of mandarin's ladies; when my battered sails Open for home, such stores ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... is, a heart set upon worldly things. Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week, cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly, as to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart. Tell an usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution, you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep, and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... not always rattles, Remember, reader! you have had before The worst of tempests and the best of battles That e'er were brew'd from elements or gore, Besides the most sublime of—Heaven knows what else: An usurer could scarce expect much more— But my best canto, save one on astronomy, Will turn ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... by Moses, positively forbade usury or interest, and this prohibition was so repeated that there was no mistaking the meaning. Ex. 22:25: "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... manufacturers who drive along the streets of the village, crushing men and beasts; in the bailiff and the recorder, who are such bad characters that their very faces betray their knavery;" and finally, in the central figure of the story, Axinia, the wife of Stepan, the youngest son of Tzibukine, a usurer and monopolist. ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... provided Master Gripe the usurer, who upon the instant will be ready to step in, charge the serjeants to keep thee fast, and that now he will have his five hundred pounds, or thou ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... with a shrewd and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... thy Laura—give me her whom Love To thy heart's core endears; The usurer, Bliss, pays every grief—above!" I tore the fond shape from the bleeding love, And gave—albeit with tears! "What bond can bind the Dead to life once more? Poor fool," (the scoffer cries;) "Gull'd by the despot's hireling lie, with lore That ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... "have you no failings?" Yes; Failings enough, but different, maybe less. One day when Maenius happened to attack Novius the usurer behind his back, "Do you not know yourself?" said one, "or think That if you play the stranger, we shall wink?" "Not know myself!" he answered, "you say true: I do not: so I take a stranger's due." Self-love like this is knavish ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... this time the enthusiastic usurer had said his say and had his audience, and was straightway pushed on one side. Then my usurer, not knowing me, though indeed I knew him, or not liking the looks of me, as indeed his looks were distasteful to me, for ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... speak still of the common wealth but every man procureth his private wealth. Here where nothing is private the common affairs be earnestly looked upon." "What justice is this, that a rich goldsmith or usurer should have a pleasant and wealthy living either by idleness or by unnecessary occupation, when in the meantime poor laborers, carters, ironsmiths, carpenters and plowmen by so great and continual toil . . . do yet get so hard and so poor a living ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... vex a stranger, nor oppress him, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Ye shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child." "If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer." "If thou at all take thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down, for that is his covering." "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the deuce! a bad business!" said Jacquet, examining the letter as a usurer examines a note to be negotiated. "Ha! that's a ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... experience may convince them that the most generous giver gets the biggest share." That is to make the child superficially generous but really greedy. He adds that "children will thus form the habit of liberality." Yes, a usurer's liberality, which expects cent. per cent. But when it is a question of real giving, good-bye to the habit; when they do not get things back, they will not give. It is the habit of the mind, not of the hands, that needs watching. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... that? Give us the secret!" exclaimed Sinang in a loud voice and in the tone of a defrauded usurer. ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... apes for foreign fashions pay, And English legs are dress'd th' outlandish way, So fine too, that they their own shadows woo, While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe; I'm mad at Fate, and angry ev'n to sin, To see deserts and learning clad so thin; To think how th' earthly usurer can brood Upon his bags, and weigh the precious food With palsied hands, as if his soul did fear The scales could rob him of what he laid there. Like devils that on hid treasures sit, or those Whose jealous eyes trust not beyond their nose, They guard the dirt and the bright idol hold ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... cozened, nor is she undone. They slander me, by this light they slander me: Look you, my uncle here's an usurer, and would undo me, but I'll stand in law; do you but bail me, you shall do no more: you, brother Civet, and Master Weathercock, do but bail me, and let me have my marriage money paid me, and we'll ride down, ...
— The London Prodigal • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... Usurer, for money lent, Making out his cent per cent - Widow plump or maiden rare, Deaf and dumb to suitor's prayer - Tax collectors, whom in vain You implore to "call again" - Cautious voter, whom you find Slow in making ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the heroine Flavia, "Enter Flavia as a Prologue," runs the stage direction; and she begins—"Gentles of both sexes and of all sorts, I am sent to bid ye welcome. I am but instead of a prologue, for a she prologue is as rare as a usurer's alms." And the prologue to Shirley's "Coronation," 1640, was also delivered by one of the representatives of female character. A passage is worth quoting, for its description of ordinary ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure of the Austrian war indemnity. It was his fixed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the building and its contents being sometimes worth a million of dollars. People live up to every cent of their incomes, and often beyond them. It is no uncommon occurrence for a fine mansion, its furniture, pictures, and even the jewels of its occupants, to be pledged to some usurer for the means with which to carry on this life of luxury. Each person strives to outdo his or her acquaintances. Those who have studied the matter find no slight cause for alarm in the rapid spread of extravagance ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer and alderman ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... being in bed, Robin in the shape of a night-raven[7] came to the window, and there did beat with his wings, and croaked in such manner that this old usurer thought he should have presently died for fear. This was but a preparation to what he did intend; for presently after he appeared before him at his bed's feet, in the shape of a ghost, with a torch in his ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... the mortgage was in the hands of a money shark, for even little villages boast their loan offices, where some usurer expects to get ten per cent. on his money, and will not hesitate to foreclose if it ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... loans, with relatively easy terms, were contracted for amounts of 90, 110 and 150 millions. One saw the peasant, who a short time before had sold his harvest while it was still green (zeleno) to the local usurer (hence called the "Zelenac"), now demanding every day by telegram via Belgrade or Smederevo the market prices at Antwerp. In 1895 Serbia had sunk to such depths that a Dalmatian leader said openly to a German journalist ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... but did not venture to ask what kind of business her husband had to transact with this usurer. ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... can, the evil which a country usurer exercises, armed against them with such burdensome rights; it is the feudal seigniory in the hands of Harpagon, or rather of old Grandet. When, indeed, a tax becomes insupportable we see, by the local complaints, that it is nearly always a fermier who enforces it.[1346] It ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... disastrously torn by any considerable war; and that in consequence it is to the interest of the usurers to preserve peace. But here, it seems to me, we must make a clear differentiation. It may easily be to the interest of a particular usurer, or group of usurers, to provoke war; that very financial crisis which Mr. Angell anticipates may quite probably be a source of profit to them. That it would not be to the interest of a nation of usurers to fight is very probable. That such a nation would not fight, or, if it did, would ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... strange is life, and how little do the fates of men resemble! To-morrow, at the hour when you will be so unspeakably happy, I shall be walking in a thorny, a cursed path; I shall be on my way to the usurer." ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... invited him to accompany his nephew to the studio. Daylight would last an hour longer. He might paint a Jew; no usurer nor dealer in clothes, but one of the noble race ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... infrequently), Pettit went to pieces. All those pains, those lover's doubts, those heart-burnings and tremors of which he had written so unconvincingly were his. Talk about Shylock's pound of flesh! Twenty-five pounds Cupid got from Pettit. Which is the usurer? ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... said one of the guests; "thanks to him, creditors take care of the health of their debtors. This morning a usurer, who feels a particular interest in my existence, brought me all sorts of anti-choleraic drugs, and begged me to make use ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Adams discovered, but that of his antithesis, the pig-breeding Mr Trulliber, was thought to exist in the person of the Rev. Mr Oliver, the Dorsetshire curate under whose tutelage Fielding had been placed when a boy. Tradition also connects Mr Peter Pounce with the Dorsetshire usurer ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... corner of the church was a tomb bearing the effigy of John O'Combe, who we thought might have hailed from the neighbourhood of the old abbey of that name which we passed the night before. In spite of his benefactions recorded in the church, he was looked upon as a usurer, because he charged 10 per cent, for his money. He was at one time a friend of Shakespeare, and often asked the poet, who was no doubt acquainted with his rate of interest, to write him an epitaph. When at length he acceded to his request he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... beast that is spoken of in the Revelations." The "moderate" Udall, after publishing a dialogue (in which an Anglican bishop called Diotrephes is represented, among other things, as planning measures against the Puritans in consort with a papist and an usurer), further composed a Demonstration of Discipline in which, writing, according to Mr. Arber, "without any satire or invective," he calls the bishops merely qua bishops, "the wretched fathers of a filthy mother," with abundant epithets ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... wrongs of human equity are very different from right and wrong in the sight of God. In the sight of God no landlord has a RIGHT to his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not justified in drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free to spend the profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of savings nor of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... those who stand against it. But when one man stands single-handed against our march, we do not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not see Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen." Again she paused a moment, and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle desired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys are always aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he struck boys bigger than himself,—fought till he was half killed. ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his twenty per cent. Not that he appeared in these transactions—he had too many good irons in the fire to let himself be called a usurer. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... "Usurer, viper, blanketed thief, benevolent old rascal," the trooper enumerated as courteously as "Senor Don" or "Your Mercy," "you don't surprise me a bit, not when you charge us three thousand dollars gold for freight on a ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the Fortunes of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he is, he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hundreds of years. The money-lender has his accounts to produce, and these can hardly be disputed, the debtor as a rule being unable to keep accounts of his own, or, indeed, to read or write. Before the British dominion was established in India, the usurer no doubt existed, but his opportunities were fewer, his position more precarious, and his operations more under control than they are at present. The money-lender then knew that his life would not ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... in surprise and dismay. Is it possible that the Baron is in earnest? He is horribly in earnest. "The woman who will buy me," he says, "is in the next room to us at this moment. She is the wealthy widow of a Jewish usurer. She has the money I want to reach the solution of the great problem. I have only to be that woman's husband, and to make myself master of untold millions of gold. Take five minutes to consider what I have said to you, and tell me on my return which of us is to marry for ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... Fakredeen had grown sometimes a little wearied even of the choice excitement of pecuniary embarrassment. It was too often the same story, the adventures monotonous, the characters identical. He had been plundered by every usurer in the Levant, and in turn had taken them in. He sometimes delighted his imagination by the idea of making them disgorge; that is to say, when he had established that supremacy which he had resolved sooner or later to attain. Although he never kept an account, his memory was so faithful that ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... a ship, it's a Leviathan!" remarked with a devout sigh the pock-marked and stooping Trofim Zubov, cathedral-warden and principal usurer ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... term for a particular kind of conveyance, often used in Spain as a usurer's device, and best explained by an example. A house-owner wishes to raise money by giving a mortgage on his house. But if he is in straits, the lender may refuse to accept the mortgage as security, and demand a bill of sale of it, which contains a clause providing that the ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... patience had been exhausted by the delays of the court. He received a hint from some of the hangers-on of the Chancellor that a present of one hundred pounds would expedite matters. The poor man had not the sum required. However, having found out an usurer who accommodated him with it at high interest, he carried it to York House. The Chancellor took the money, and his dependants assured the suitor that all would go right. Aubrey was, however, disappointed; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reason why I moved away from that place? You'll find it out some day. The man is a usurer ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... I say to every man, 'Don't come to me—I can get you money on much easier terms than any one else;' and what's the result? You come so often that you ruin yourself; whereas a regular usurer without conscience frightens you. 'Cent per cent,' you say; 'oh, I must pull in.' If you have influence over your friend, tell him to stick to his bill-brokers, and have nothing to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... one to a very doleful tune. How a usurer's wife was brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, and how she long'd to eat adders' heads and ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... pawnbrokers on Saturday night only to wander back, almost without fail, before the next Wednesday, until at last some accident makes the final redemption impossible, and one article after another falls into the clutches of the usurer, or until he refuses to give a single farthing more upon the battered, used-up pledge. When one has seen the extent of intemperance among the workers in England, one readily believes Lord Ashley's statement ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... imagine the subject of your conversation,' she said at last. 'The Marquis of Blair was endeavouring to impose usurer's terms upon you, while you, nobly scorning such mercenary considerations, had perhaps resolved to leave us ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... (Omnem) his substance in the absence of his father. When he returns, Tranio deceives the old man (Senem); he says that frightful (Terrifica) apparitions have been seen in the house, and (Et) that at once they had removed from it. A Usurer, greedy of gain (Lucripeta), comes up in the meantime, asking for the interest of some money, and again the old man is made sport of (Lusus) for the servant says that a deposit for a house ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... him the gold, Davus; he is a regular usurer. Give him three aurei, and then buckle these to my heel. Ha! that is well, my Paullus, here come your fellows with black Aufidus, and our friend Geta on the Numidian. They have made haste, yet not sweated Nanthus ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... borrow money is perhaps the worst. If of a friend, he ceases to be one the moment you feel that you are bound to him by the heavy clog of obligation. If of a usurer, the interest, in this country, soon doubles the original sum, and you owe an increasing debt, which in time swallows up all ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... great lords; to whom he presented the lady royally robed, and looking so fair and so gracious that she won, as she deserved, the praise of all, and likewise Alessandro, splendidly arrayed, and bearing himself not a whit like the young usurer but rather as one of royal blood, for which cause he received due honour from the knights. There, before the Pope himself, the marriage-vows were solemnly renewed; and afterwards the marriage, which was accompanied by every circumstance that could add grace and splendour ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... became enamored of the beautiful Jewess. What would have appeared inexplicable to the public, was the hundred thousand piasters, the price of her hand; but this bargain was secret. And besides, Samuel trafficked in sentiments as in native productions. A banker, usurer, merchant, ship-owner, he had the talent to do business with everybody. The schooner Annonciation, which was hovering about the mouth of the Rimac, belonged to the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... of all thought for the necessaries of life. But, in consideration of the outlay the Stopfer couple expected to make, they bargained for three months' residence and a month's payment in advance. Rub a Swiss ever so little, and you find the usurer. After breakfast, Rodolphe at once made himself at home by depositing in his room such property as he had brought with him for the journey to the Saint-Gothard, and he watched Leopold as he set out, moved by the spirit of routine, to carry out the excursion ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... done?" The unhappy wretch came out into the light with bloodshot, blinking eyes, and a bloody shirt-front. "You know—you've seen—but I'll tell you if you like. I've killed a robber; that's all. I've killed a robber, a usurer, a jackal, a blackmailer, the cleverest and the cruellest villain unhung. I'm ready to hang for him. I'd ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... his hands on all that came in his way. Brutus took the opportunity of helping himself to some of the plunder in his uncle's absence. At a later time he had large sums out at interest in Cyprus and partly in other persons' names. He was a merciless usurer. (Cicero, Ad Attic., v. 18 and 21; vi. 21; and the Life of ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... esteemed commercial firm of Heggelund, whose chief falls into the toils of the scoundrel, Stuwitz, very much as Baron Rothsattel was dragged to ruin by the Jew Veitel Itzig. But no more than Freytag can find it in his heart to award the victory to the Hebrew usurer, can Lie violate the proprieties of fiction by permitting Stuwitz to fatten on his spoil. He could not, like the German novelist, conjure up a noble gentleman of democratic sympathies and practical ability (like von Finck) ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... he said, "I'm no extortioner, I'm no usurer—it would be better," he said, "to lay hands ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... both To his obedience; but relinquish that And come to Conscience: does it not comaund In its strict Canons to exact no more Then blood for blood, unlesse you doe extort Worse then an usurer. For Thurstons life I offer myne, which if it be to meane To appease your Justice, let it satisfie Your mercie. Spare my Sonn and I shall goe As willingly to death as to my rest After a painfull child birthe. Looke on him! ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... an Usurer, Old fat Guts he came grunting; The Devil left all care, For joy he fell a Jumping—To ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various |
