"Pelf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... talking to him with uncommon earnestness, and just as she was approaching, said, "To terms I am indifferent, for writing is no labour to me; on the contrary, it is the first delight of my life, and therefore, and not for dirty pelf, I wish to make it ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... divided, give but small fortunes to any of them. A meeting of the little army of claimants was held at the Temperance Hall, March 2, 1875, and there have been several attempts, notwithstanding the many previous adverse decisions, to re-open the battle for the pelf, no less than a quarter of a million, it is believed, having already been uselessly ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... up those wretched small stones, and wear them night and day in a belt round his waist, as if he really loved them for their own mere sakes—dirty high-priced little baubles! Granville, for his part, couldn't bear to see such ingrained love of pelf. It was miserable; ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... think we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... her smiles wherewith she Mars did meet; Python a voice, Diana made her chaste, Ceres gave plenty, Cupid lent his bow, Thetis his feet, there Pallas wisdom placed. With these she queen-like kept a world in awe. Yet all these honors deemed are but pelf, For she is much more ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... has ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there he, go, mark him well; High though his titles, proud his fame, Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim, Despite these titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... at its best, and to present in the most poetic light the rampant, untamable individualism of the ancient Germanic paganism. In defiance of his friend Bjoern's advice, Frithjof, weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the high-seat beside her aged lord; and the sorrow which the years had dulled revives with an exquisite agony. He punishes with fierce promptitude ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... barn and storehouse treasure Did He take thy hoarded pelf? Yes: to feed thee was His pleasure, Like the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... to the house whose mistress was a slave! So say old saws, my own in aid I crave; Woe to the court whose judge once spake for fees, Though he were readier than Isocrates! An advocate that pleaded once for pelf Scarce on the bench forgets ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... the Maid whose heart—yet free From Love's uneasy sovereignty— Beats with a fancy running high, Her simple cares to magnify; Whom Labour, never urged to toil, Hath cherished on a healthful soil; Who knows not pomp, who heeds not pelf; Whose heaviest sin it is to look Askance upon her pretty self Reflected in some crystal brook; Whom grief hath spared,—who sheds no tear But in sweet pity; and can hear Another's ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... Rubies and yellowbacks! Madison's lips thinned and curled downward at the corners. Oh, it was coming all right, money, jewels, pelf, rolling in merrily every day, there wasn't any stopping it, but he was paying for it, and paying for it at a price he didn't like—Helena. Helena! She wanted Thornton, did she—with his money! Wanted to dangle a millionaire on her string—eh? She'd throw ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... fain would in my slender palm your horny fingers clasp, For I love the hand of honest toil, its firm and heartfelt grasp; And I know, O miners brave and true, that not alone for self Have ye heaped, through many wearying months, your glittering pile of pelf. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... lang hae I lo'ed her, and lo'ed her fu' dearly, For saft is the smile o' her bonny sweet mou'; An' aft hae I read in her e'en, glancing clearly, A language that bade me be constant an' true. Then ithers may doat on their gowd an' their treasure; For pelf, silly pelf, they may brave the rude sea; To lo'e my sweet lassie, be mine the dear pleasure; Wi' her let me live, an' wi' her let ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... destroy his health, for the sake of being the first jockey or the favourite courtier of his day. And how should it be otherwise, when from the lips whence other lessons should have proceeded, selfishness has been inculcated as a duty, a desire for vain distinctions and the love of pelf encouraged as virtues, and a splendid equipage, or it may be some bodily advantage, pointed out as the highest object of human ambition? To set the just value on every enjoyment, to choose noble and becoming objects of pursuit, are the first lessons a child should learn; and if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... disaster were so calm and resolute as they sternly struggled to stay the slow retreat are not silent yet. To us and to those who will come after us, they will speak of comfort and home relinquished, of toil nobly borne, of danger manfully encountered, of life generously surrendered and this not for pelf or ambition, but in the spirit of the noblest self-devotion and the most exalted patriotism. Proud as we who are here to-day have a right to be that we are the sons of this university, and not deemed unworthy of her when these are remembered, ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... stretching forth the songs to buy, That are so tragical; which She, and She, Deals out, and sings the while; nor can there be A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back His contribution from the gentle rack Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self, The staff-propt Beggar, his thin gotten pelf Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings rest, And boldly claims his ballad with the best. An old Dame only lingers. To her purse The penny sticks. At length, with harmless curse, "Give me," she cries. "I'll paste it on ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... if I do discomfort those who think more of pelf than of courage and of virtue; those who, as that Hebrew prophet wrote, lay field to field and house to house, until the wretched whom they have robbed find no place left whereon to dwell? What if I proved your sagest chapmen fools, and gorge your greedy ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Her mother had not given her the best education. I believe she was a bit of a thief, and she could tell fibs with fluency and precision. The woman was a sinner; but her wild, strong affections were true, and her heart was not in pelf. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot," Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray, Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day. Proffer not gold—I swear by my degree, From beauty's lily hand to take no fee; No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf, The eye, when cured, will pay the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... Devil's corpse was leaded down; His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, Mourning-coaches, many a one, 680 Followed his hearse along the town:— Where was the ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... rhetoric and how to construct those long melodious sentences that rolled like a "Hallelujah chorus" over his delighted audiences. But young Storrs chose the better part, and no temptation of fame or pelf allured him from the higher work of preaching Jesus Christ to his fellow men. He was—like Chalmers and Bushnell and Spurgeon—a born preacher. Great as he was on the platform, or on various ceremonial occasions, he was never so thoroughly "at home" as in his own pulpit; ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... guarded you always, Willie, Body and soul from harm; I'll guard your faith and honor, Your innocence and charm From the polls and their evil spirits, Politics, rum and pelf; Do you think I'd send my only son Where I would ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... who saved old SELL-ALL'S life— 'Twas but the year before! And Sell-all rose and let him in, Not utterly unwilling, But first he bargain'd with the man, And took his only shilling! That night he dreamt he'd given away his pelf, Walk'd in his sleep, and sleeping hung himself! And now his soul and body rest below; And here they say his punishment and fate is To lie awake and every hour to know How many people read his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... self Who forked over the gold, With a smile. "Thar's the pelf," He remarked. "I make bold To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... little Chicks to call him Father, And he sold his stolen Pelf, And bought a Palace, Horses, Slaves, and Peacocks ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... gems that magnify a woman's charm, As flowers the creeping plant, I do not harm. I do not rob the Brahman of his pelf, Nor seize the sacrificial gold myself. I do not steal the baby from the nurse, Simply because I need to fill my purse. Even as a thief, I strive with main and might For just distinction 'twixt the wrong ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... [5] some, so-called Christian Scientists in sheep's clothing; and all "drunken without wine." They have small con- ceptions of spiritual riches, few cravings for the immortal, but are puffed up with the applause of the world: they have plenty of pelf, and fear not to fall upon the Stranger, [10] seize his pearls, throw them away, and afterwards try to ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... no pelf; I pray for no man but myself; Grant I may never prove so fond, To trust man on his oath ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... rate, He soon arrives at Harley's gate; But was so dirty, pale, and thin, Old Read[10] would hardly let him in. Said Harley, "Welcome, rev'rend dean! What makes your worship look so lean? Why, sure you won't appear in town In that old wig and rusty gown? I doubt your heart is set on pelf So much that you neglect yourself. What! I suppose, now stocks are high, You've some good purchase in your eye? Or is your money out at use?"— "Truce, good my lord, I beg a truce!" The doctor in a passion cry'd, "Your raillery is misapply'd; Experience I have[11] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 40 purses, (2000 dollars) to unite him with them, and that he had thought of giving Asaad the same sum, that no obstacle might remain to his leaving them. "This money," said he, "with which the English print books, and hire men into their service is but the pelf of the man of sin, and could you but be present to hear what the people say of you, through the whole country, for your associating with the English, you would never be in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... country for the country's good" and came South to fatten on the spoils of reconstruction, furnished unending targets for his satire. He declared that these so-called developers came for pelf, not patriotism. "Why, these men," he said, "are like thieving elephants. They will uproot an oak or pick up a pin. They would steal anything from a button to an empire." On one occasion he was bewailing the degeneracy of the times, and he exclaimed: "I am sorry I have got so much sense. I see into ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... sometimes fancy that when I'm king, And my gallant courtiers form a ring, Each so careless of power and pelf, Each so thoughtful for all but self, I'd give the best on his bended knee— Yes, barter them all, for the loyalty Of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... from me, That known me for thy faithful friend and true; Not only now I am so bound to thee, That I the knot can never more undo; But even from the beginning, when to be Thy deadly foeman I had reason due. Hope then that I will succour thee with pelf, With friends, with ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... We would remind them that in the past the Christian voice has been our only shield against legislative excesses of the kind now in full swing in the Union. But in the new ascendency of self and pelf over justice and tolerance, that voice will be altogether ignored, unless strongly reinforced by the Christian world at large. We appeal for deliverance from the operation of a cunningly conceived and a most draconian law whose administration ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... hate me, because I will not join them in their treachery toward my empress—of those who hold out to me gold and diamonds, and who hate me because I will not sell my loyalty for pelf. Oh, I was flattered with orders and honors, promises and presents. But I would not listen. What cared I for future security? What mattered it to me that I was to be the victim of Paul's vengeance? I thought of you alone; and more to me was the safety of your crown ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ills its spirit braves, O'er mountain-crags and ocean-waves, Then make ourselves the worst of slaves, A slave to self, To satisfy the thirst that craves For yellow pelf. ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... Eagle-hunter, The valiant fate-confronter, The soldier brave, and blunter Of speech than BISMARCK's self? This bungler all-disgracing, This braggart all-debasing. This spurious sportsman, chasing No nobler prey than pelf? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... its weight has been ascertained, is put by the captain into little barrels, holding perhaps half a pint, and with the top screwing tightly on. This "glittering dust" (to use the phrase which moralists are fond of applying to worldly pelf), commands from sixteen to eighteen dollars per ounce, in England and the United States. It is gathered from the sands which the rivers of Africa wash down from the golden mountains; and, when offered for sale, small lumps of gold and rudely manufactured ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Thomas, "Your rent I must raise, I'm so plaguily pinch'd for the pelf." "Raise my rent!" replies Thomas; "your honor's main good; For I never ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... many joys and griefs, The lights and shades of life, It will be joy to call thee by The holy name of "wife!" I love thee for thy gentleness, I love thee for thy truth; I love thee for thy joyousness, Thy buoyancy of youth I love thee for thy soul that soars Above earth's sordid pelf; And last, not least, above these all, I love thee for thyself. Now come to me, my dearest, Place thy hand in mine own; Look in mine eyes, and see how deep My love for thee hath grown; And I will press thee to my heart, Will call thee "my dear wife," And own that thou art all my joy And ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... which sometimes is as corrupting to vulgar souls as money, this man seems to have been as regardless as he was of pelf. He received the Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria. He accepted what was graciously offered, but he said that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good Crosses were to him. The circumstance reminded him that he had received other Crosses, but he had to ask his agent ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... pelf, Melancholic and thoughtful, his mind Look'd inward and dwelt on itself, Still pensive, pathetic, and kind; Yet oft in despondency drown'd, He from friends, and from converse would fly. In weeping a luxury found, And reliev'd others' ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... to Clarabella, And quickly homewards bent my way, And there became a rustic fellow, And donned a suit of hodden-grey. And then I hired me to a farmer, Concealing every sign of pelf, One Hodge, who had a pretty charmer, Who might love me ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... writings of those pupils of Bayle, the English Deists. He honoured English freedom and the spirit of religious toleration. In 1728 the Henriade was published by subscription in London, and brought the author prodigious praise and not a little pelf. He collected material for his Histoire de Charles XII., and, observing English life and manners, prepared the Lettres Philosophiques, which were to make the mind of England favourably ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... instructing and pleasing narrative of the manner in which he made the rich citizens of Bordeaux squeak, and gently led them by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge their anti-revolutionary pelf. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to fall from political grace by withdrawing from the fellowship of the knaves and traders that formed the body-guard of the President, and were using the Republican party as the instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition of the term which would have made all the great apostates of history ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... his worth must understand; Whoe'er doesn't nobly drive the trade, 'Twere best from the business far he'd stayed. If I cheerily set my life on a throw, Something still better than life I'll know; Or I'll stand to be slain for the paltry pelf, As the Croat ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wealth, will joy to know His faithful steward in the shades below. He walk'd the streets, and wore a threadbare cloak; He din'd and supp'd at charge of other folk: And by his looks, had he held out his palms, He might be thought an object fit for alms. So, to the poor if he refus'd his pelf, He us'd 'em full as kindly as himself. Where'er he went, he never saw his betters; Lords, knights, and squires, were all his humble debtors; And under hand and seal, the Irish nation Were forc'd to own to him their obligation. He that ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the virtues. Men were unremitting, indiscriminate worshippers of money; they were not trained in the school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities, they become easily pervious to the promptings of all sorts ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... of the police. My excuse is that Jack Sincler and his brother Lishe were kindly men withal. The game-laws were their trouble, but as far as I could make out they did not poach for the sake of pelf but from sheer love of sport. Among poachers they ought, anyhow, to be placed in Class I., for they loved the open air and the freshness of the morning and all the things that make for a clean mind in a clean body. Jack, though a shade arrogant at times, is a stimulating figure, human ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's been true to one party—an' thet is himself;— So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion, for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better, certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently honorable ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... miser on a heap of rust Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one piece above, but lives In fear of thieves. Thousands there were as frantic as himself, And hugged each one his pelf; The downright epicure placed heaven in sense, And scorned pretence; While others, slipped into a wide excess, Said little less; The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, Who think them brave, And poor, despised truth ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... relieve the awful strain Of possessing such a brain William always used to play Eighteen holes each Saturday. But he scarce could see at all, And he often lost his ball, Plus his temper and his pelf, So he made a ball himself, Which, if it should chance to roam Out of sight, played "Home, Sweet Home" On a small euphonium he Had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... head, and he warily said: "Though cunning be good, we take money instead, On the Rhine, thrifty Rhine; If ye fancy ye may without pelf have your way You'll find that there's both host and the devil to pay For your ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... kith now or kin, were access To his heart, did I press: Just a son or a mother to seize! No such booty as these. Were it simply a friend to pursue 'Mid my million or two, Who could pay me in person or pelf What he owes me himself! 30 No: I could not but smile through my chafe: For the fellow lay safe As his mates do, the midge and the nit, —Through minuteness, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the goose, and caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbours; And bless'd herself, and cursed herself, And ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... no pelf or harm, By red Priapus sentinelled; By his huge sickle's formidable charm ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... in itself; It but reflects the lives of men; And they who lived and toiled for pelf Went out as vipers in a den. God cleans the sky from time to time Of every tyrant flag that flies, And every brazen badge of crime Falls to the ground and swiftly dies. Proud kings are mouldering in the dust; Proud flags of ages past are gone; Only ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... clubs,—the Clippers, Screws, The Fly-by-nights, Four Horse, and Blues, The Daffy, Snugs, and Peep-o-day, Tom's an elect; at all the Hells, At Bolton-Row, with tip-top swells, And Tat's men, deep he'd play. His debts oft paid by Snyder's{24} pelf, Who paid at last a debt himself, Which all that live must pay. Tom book'd{25} the old one snug inside, Wore sables, look'd demure and sigh'd Some few short hours away; Till from the funeral return'd, Then Tom with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower make ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Father's House, Jesus essayed to clear the place;[351] and, pausing not for argument in words, He promptly applied physical force almost approaching violence—the one form of figurative language that those corrupt barterers for pelf could best understand. Hastily improvizing a whip of small cords, He laid about Him on every side, liberating and driving out sheep, oxen, and human traffickers, upsetting the tables of the exchangers and pouring out their heterogeneous accumulations of coin. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or a little more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess of pottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown our own feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, the pity ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... assisting the efforts of the liberator. Viglius saw the position of matters with his customary keenness, and wondered at the blindness of Hopper and Philip. At the last gasp of a life, which neither learning nor the accumulation of worldly prizes and worldly pelf could redeem from intrinsic baseness, the sagacious but not venerable old man saw that a chasm was daily widening; in which the religion and the despotism which he loved might soon be hopelessly swallowed. "The Prince of Orange and his Beggars do ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King I have redeemed myself with all I had, And now possess my fortunes poor but glad. With all I had I have redeemed myself, And escaped at once from slavery and pelf. The unruly wishes must a ruler take, Our high desires do our low fortunes make: Those only who desire palatial things Do bear the fetters and the frowns of Kings; Set free thy slave; ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... life, thus are the interests of science sacrificed on the shrine of a sordid love of gain and pelf. It is true that the merit of the fitting out of the expedition belongs to the enterprising spirit and the liberality of a few Liverpool merchants, but greatly indeed is that merit eclipsed, in a general point of view, when it is ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man-created condition, not God's arrangement and order; for it degrades man and ennobles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who eschew labor and live (no matter by what pretence or respectable cheat—for cheat it ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and those who lived genteelly on their means was a great and awful gulf. No people were poorer in their way than the Bells, and no one would have more dearly liked to add to her little store of this world's pelf than would poor Mrs. Bell. She could scarcely afford to take a fashionable girl in for nothing, and yet—dared she accept payment? Bell, if he knew, would never forgive her, and, as to the town, it would simply ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... on either earth or pelf, But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; 'Twixt Feltro and ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... scamping their work in order to establish a record. Their hearts must have been in everything they undertook, and their sole aim, whatever they did, to put into their work all their skill and knowledge and love of the beautiful. They, in fact, worked not for pelf but for sheer love of art, and so long as the work of these artists of various kinds endures the world will assuredly never ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... retrieval, revendication^, replevin [Law], restitution &c 790; redemption, salvage, trover [Law]. find, trouvaille^, foundling. gain, thrift; money-making, money grubbing; lucre, filthy lucre, pelf; loaves and fishes, the main chance; emolument &c (remuneration) 973. profit, earnings, winnings, innings, pickings, net profit; avails; income &c (receipt) 810; proceeds, produce, product; outcome, output; return, fruit, crop, harvest; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wonderful, and grand, Looking out across the land When the golden light was falling On distant dome and spire; And I heard a low voice calling, "Come up higher, come up higher, From the lowland and the mire, From the mist of earth desire, From the vain pursuit of pelf. From the attitude of self: Come up ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... moment, the entranced Mariana relieved herself from the fatigue of her posturing, at the same time inviting Browning with a wink to be a charitable confederate in the joke by which she profited in admiration and in pelf. Browning, who would have waged immitigable war against the London dog-stealers, and opposed all treaty with such rogues, even at the cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose the new trade of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hero and commander—Scipio notwithstanding. It brightens his flame, and it is agreeable to them. That is how they come to distinction: they have no other chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and they rush pelf-mall, all for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the enemy, and kept the British arms in America to this day. They do not scruple to declare this themselves, and add that we shall be our own conquerors. Can not our common country, America, possess virtue enough to disappoint them? Is the paltry consideration of a little pelf to individuals to be placed in competition with the essential rights and liberties of the present generation, and of millions yet unborn? Shall a few designing men, for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing, at ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... as he. And if life last, ye wull too; for there never waur a bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted manfu' oop to the heighest,—that ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark. Blessin's on the ould name! though little pelf goes with it, it sounds on the peur man's ear like a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cheerful, kind; Mistrusting none but self, injurious self, Of and to others wishing only good; With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind, Suggesting all the world a viperous brood That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf: Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood, Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve, Beneath ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 'twas certainly conjur'd into his Pockets. No Matter how it came there (said t'other;) but you have above twenty Pounds about you of your own Money: Pray feel. Miles then felt, and pull'd out as much Silver as he could grasp, and laid it down on the Table. Hang this white Pelf; (cry'd his Friend) pay it in Gold, like your self, Come, apply your Hand to another Pocket: He did so, and brought out as many Broad-Pieces as Hand could hold. Now (continu'd his Friend) give the Waiter eight ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... spiritual hedger, Who backs his rigid Sabbath, so to speak, Against the wicked remnant of the week, A saving bet against his sinful bias— "Rogue that I am," he whispers to himself, "I lie—I cheat—do anything for pelf, But who on earth can say I am ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... fashion to-day is a tincture so strong, That, if dosing yourself, you are sure to go wrong. What men learnt in the past they say brings them no pelf, And the well-tried old remedies rest on the shelf. But the patient may haply exclaim, "Don't be rash, Lest your new-fangled physic should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... sonnet-sing you about myself? Do I live in a house you would like to see? Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? 'Unlock ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... thee for thyself, Wealth-giver, ignorant of pelf; Fain would I learn thy upright ways And heart ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well. For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... world over, from Monte Carlo to Maine; From Dawson City to Dover, from San Francisco to Spain. Cards! They 'ave been me ruin. They've taken me pride and me pelf, And when I'd no one to play with—why, I'd go and I'd play ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... nation, let Britain, in the zenith of her power and greatness, think kindly of the native races, and now for once in her history rule this great island for right and righteousness, in justice and mercy, and not for self and pelf in unrighteousness, blood, and falsehood. It is to be hoped that future generations of New Guinea natives will not rise up to condemn her, as the New Zealanders have done, and to claim their ancient rights with tears ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... inflexible love of personal liberty among the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of the principles for which they staked their lives;—who enlisted from the commonest motives of convenience, whim, pelf, adventure, and foray; and who repented, after their first misfortune, with the salt rheum in their eyes. I think that all "great uprisings" resolve to this complexion. With due reverence for my own ancestry, I think that they sometimes stooped ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... sonnet-sing you about myself? 25 Do I live in a house you would like to see? Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? "Unlock my heart with ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... was ever truly great Who sought to serve himself alone, Who put himself above the state, Above the friends about him thrown. No man was ever truly glad Who risked his joy on hoarded pelf, And gave of nothing that he had Through ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... is daily avenged," replied Lopez. "How many wicked, how many low souls, who basely squander divine gifts to obtain worthless pelf, there are among my people! More than half of them are stripped of honor and dignity on your altar of vengeance, and thrust into the arms of repulsive avarice. And this, all this. . . . But enough of these things! They rouse my inmost soul to wrath, and I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancient as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons, welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his queer innocuous wit. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... while observe what a cheap purchase of happiness is made by the strength of fancy. For whereas many things even of inconsiderable value, would cost a great deal of pains and perhaps pelf, to procure; opinion spares charges, and yet gives us them in as ample a manner by conceit, as if we possessed them in reality. Thus he who feeds on such a stinking dish of fish, as another must hold his nose at a yard's ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... find them in after-days, When the corpse is presumed to have done with gauds, Of use to the living, in many ways; For the boys get pelf, and the town applauds, And the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... man who hurls himself from the top of a mountain or church steeple. The man in question has forgotten to cut off evidence, and, in order to work out a theory, has killed two persons. He has committed a murder, and yet has not known how to take possession of the pelf; what he has taken he has hidden under a stone. The anguish he experienced while hearing knocking at the door and the continued ringing of the bell, was not enough for him: no, yielding to an irresistible desire of experiencing the same horror, he has positively ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... both in thought and deed, Of generous impulse, and above all greed; Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf, But life's best blessings for her higher self, Which means the best for all. She must have faith, To make good friends of Trouble, Pain, and Death, And understand their message. She should be As redolent with tender sympathy As is a rose with fragrance. ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... pelf, And thy good broad lands for me; By God I swear this little hand fair Thy death, brother Bear, ...
— Alf the Freebooter - Little Danneved and Swayne Trost and other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... freedom how should such as I Be able to imagine in such a self? Less hopeless far the miser man might try To image the delight of friend-shared pelf. Freedom is to be like thee, face and heart; To know it, Lord, I must be as thou art, I cannot breed ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... and lets the Bolshy rave, He is condemned to toil in mines and galleries, Nourished inside with insufficient calories, A sordid mineral's uncomplaining slave, Till the rheumatics get him and his pallor is So marked he hardly dares to wash and shave. And shall I grudge the man sufficient pelf For toil I'd rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... appreciation. That gift we have, and it is momentarily increasing. To be entirely commercial, which view is of course not the right one, one need only watch the reports of sales at home and abroad to see what this latter-day appreciation means in pelf. In England a tapestry was recently unearthed and identified as one of the series of seven woven for Cardinal Woolsey. It is not of extraordinary size, but was woven in the interesting years hovering above and below the century mark of 1500. The time was when public favour spoke for the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... traitorous uncle has wooed for himself: Her father has sold her for land and for pelf: My steed, for whose equal the world they might search, In mockery they borrow to ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... lifting at length His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength Into the utterance—"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!' ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... by Critics, to non-plus Euphranor, Cydias, and Antidotus. But what are they? Below my feet they lie; Poor sons of pelf. The son of art am I. Now rest thee, maiden, on this pillowy bed, With fragrance canopied, with beauty spread; Above thee hovers eglantine's caress, Around thee glows entangled loveliness; Shy primrose smiles, thy gentle ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... forthwith permitted to amass much honor and more wealth by wronging his less accomplished fellow-citizens. China is a student's paradise where the possession of learning is instantly convertible into unlimited pelf. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... underground dens, And the wishtonwish marmot, the kind prairie dog, Makes room in his hole for the tortoise and frog. The hamster runs home, with the pouch in his cheek Stuff'd with various provisions enough for a week; Then stores in his dark lonely cell the rich pelf, For, ill bred and greedy, he cares but for self. No children, no wife, no companion had he, With his very best friend he could never agree, But lived by himself without pleasure or mirth, In a hermit-like vault, five feet deep in the earth; But the sentinel marmot's shrill whistle ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... of another owner of land in Thimbleby, in the 15th century, whose apparent love of pelf would seem to have tempted him to defraud the king of his dues. A certain Thomas Knyght, of the City of Lincoln, Esquire, died in the 10th year of the reign of Henry VII. (A D 1495), seized of lands and tenements ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... I so wise, I might seem to advise So great a potentate as yourself; They should, sir, I tell ye, spare't out of their belly, And this way spend some of their pelf. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... a night and a day; He rifles the Buckwheat patches; Then battens his store of pelf galore Under ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... pardon of the spirit's excess, Which soar'd too nigh that jealous Heaven Ever, save thus, to be forgiven. No Gospel has come down that cures With better gain a loss like yours. Be pious! Give the beggar pelf, And love your neighbour as yourself! You, who yet love, though all is o'er, And she'll ne'er be your neighbour more, With soul which can in pity smile That aught with such a measure vile As self should be at all named "love!" Your sanctity the priests ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his daughter) ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Latin tongue deriv'd, Of whose sense girls are depriv'd 'Cause they do not Latin know.— But if all this anger grow From this cause, that you suspect By proceedings indirect, I would keep (as misers pelf) All this learning to myself; Sister, to remove this doubt, Rather than we will fall out, (If our parents will agree) You ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... stripling, training for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at law, One happy christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown, and stores of learned pelf. With all the deathless bards of Greece and Rome, To spend a fortnight at his uncle's home. Arriv'd, and pass'd the usual how d'ye do's, Inquiries of old friends and college news; "Well Tom—the road—what saw you worth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... John Clavering, why for the sake of pelf and of honours that you will never harvest do you seek to part those who love each other and whom God has willed to bring together? Why would you sell your child to a gilded knave whom she hates? Nay, stop me not. I'd call him ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... still virtuous, and saw The sun give clouds, and Charles give both the law. When private interest did all hearts bend, And wild dissents the public peace did rend, Thou, neither won, nor worn, wert still thyself, Not aw'd by force, nor basely brib'd with pelf. What the insuperable stream of times Did dash thee with, those suff'rings were, not crimes. So the bright sun eclipses bears; and we, Because then passive, blame him not. Should he For enforc'd shades, and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... they have been plundered, under the hollow knavish pretence of curing souls and forgiving sins. THUS will human laws kill the body of Antichrist. Every motive for professing to believe absurdities and contradictions will be at an end, when neither rule nor honour, nor pelf is to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that thou shouldst spend it. Moreover, if I want money, doubtless Antony, who is henceforth my master, will give me more; he is much beholden to me, and this he knows well. There, waste not the precious time in haggling o'er the pelf—not yet art thou all a merchant, Harmachis;" and, without more words, she thrust the pieces into the leather bag that hung across my shoulders. Then she made fast the sack containing the spare garments, and, so womanly thoughtful was she, placed in it an alabaster ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... be free to fix your wages; Capital, you'd be free to pick your men: Love of free Union the one's tongue engages, Love of free "Knobsticks" fires the other's pen; But love of Freedom for her own fair self,— How much of it moves Poverty or Pelf? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... orphan kiddie Of the group with their stars in the Flag, And it's looked on Outside as an alien, Where its treatment makes honest men gag. It's treated the same as the harlot Who barters her body for pelf And carries it home to her master And is told to look ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... from men, held up the scales; the sky Told Thetis that her son must go the way He sent Queen Hecuba's—himself must pay, Himself though young, splendid Achilles' self, The price of manslaying, with blood for pelf. A grief immortal took her, and she grieved Deep in sea-cave, whereover restless heaved The wine-dark ocean—silently, not moving, Tearless, a god. O Gods, however loving, That is a lonely grief that must go dry About ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... unlucky for some time now, and to tell the truth I may say always. But I am the last man in the world to grumble—as you, my dear Lingo, can testify. I always do the utmost, with a single mind, and leave the thought of miserable pelf to others, men perhaps who never saw a shotted cannon fired. You know who made eighty thousand pounds, without having to wipe his pigtail—dirty things, I am glad they are gone out—but my business is to pay other people's debts, and receive all my credits in the shape of cannon-balls. This ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... a friend of noble mind, Who loves me more than praise or pelf, Reproves my faults with spirit kind, And thinks of me ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant |
