"Insolvency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some whose talents and character would have been valuable anywhere. Public spirit abounded, and the men of that day evidently felt as men should feel who are destined to be the ancestors of great cities. In 1837, when the business affairs of Chicago were in a distressing state, and private insolvency was rather the rule than the exception, many debtors and a few demagogues called a public meeting, the real though not the avowed object of which was to bring about some form of repudiation. Some inflammatory suggestions, designed to excite to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and to hae, at ane and the same time, a pair o' such calamities sae oddly thrust upon me, as my ain death, and the bankruptcy o' my faither. However, sae it was. But my business noo was to remedy, as far as possible, the mischief that had been done by the unfounded rumour o' oor insolvency. Wi' this view I hastened awa to a newspaper office, to begin the cure by an advertisement; and, in doin this, I had occasion to pass the coach-office whar I had landed the day before. Observin the place, I thocht I micht as weel step ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Joicey, with a laugh. "Up to your mark, Hartley, or my own mark, or someone else's mark? The average mark in Mangadone is low water. There have been a lot of defaulters this year, and even admitting that the place is rich, there is a good deal more insolvency about than I like or than the directors care for. It keeps me grinding and grinding, and wears ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... have come in good time, said he. Something must speedily be done, or you lose Melissa forever. The day after you were here, her father received a letter from Beauman, in which, after mentioning the circumstance of your father's insolvency, he hinted that the consequence would probably be a failure of her proposed marriage with you, which might essentially injure the reputation of a lady of her standing in life; to prevent which, and to place her beyond the reach of calumny, ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... received at this office from the office of the Chicago Tribune states that the utmost public distress is prevailing in St. Louis. A frightful pestilence is raging, complete anarchy prevails, most of the merchants have gone into insolvency, and ruin stares St. Louis in the face in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... squire, a lady who six years hence will have to exist upon a pittance, should run up such a bill as this is to my mind an act of folly that is almost criminal. From this moment I abandon all my ideas of nursing your estate, of providing comfortably for our future. Henceforward we must drift towards insolvency, like other people. It would be worse than useless for me to go on racking my brains in the endeavour to secure a given result, when behind my back your thoughtless extravagance is stultifying all ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... right to refuse to perform a duty than to refuse to pay a debt. Moral insolvency is certain to him who neglects and disregards his duty to his fellow-men. Nor can we hire another to perform our duty. The mere accident of having money does not release you from your duty to the world. Nay, it increases it, for ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... decade which has passed since his assumption of the office, contributed in no small measure to the present efficient organization and very gratifying prosperity of the school. In May, 1858, he was appointed Judge of Probate and Insolvency for Bristol county, holding the office twenty-five years, and ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... example out of a score—he had been obliged to apply for the benefit of the Insolvent Act, in Philadelphia, owing to losses he had sustained by lending money to distressed compatriots, and eleemosynary outcasts, and had been opposed in the Court of Insolvency by Colonel John Stille, Jr. and Mr. Henry McIlvaine, who threatened him with a prosecution for the forgery of consular papers, if he dared to appear. He declared that he did appear, nevertheless, and was honorably discharged; that his claims and evidences of debt, handed over to Mr. McIlvaine, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... practicable) and thought that the new weapon might fail in an emergency. Colt found a market in Texas and among the frontiersmen who were fighting the Seminole War in Florida, but the sales were insufficient, and in 1842 the company was obliged to confess insolvency and close down the plant. Colt bought from the company the patent of the revolver, which ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... been very different, and the insolvency of many provincial Banking Companies, of the most established reputation for stability, has greatly distressed the country, and alarmed London itself, from the necessary reaction of their misfortunes upon their correspondents ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... Gwynne, after his Honour, Justice Gwynne), 186 degrees. North side of the creek, to another hill about two miles and a half off (which I have named Mount Mann, in memory of the late Commissioner of Insolvency), 249 degrees. Central Mount Stuart bears 131 degrees to the highest point. At the north-west termination of the next range, to which I shall now go, there are two very large hills, the north one, which is the highest, I have ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... the end of an administration in which corruption and treason and every evil principle have been contending for the mastery, when our ships are all away beyond sea, when our arms and our fortifications are out of our hands, when our treasury is bankrupt, our people divided, insolvency and ruin threatening our country, and all the Gulf States defying the authority of the Government? No, sir! this is no time to try the strength of the Government. When we do that, let us select some ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... to suit them. Some articles were dressed by having hot air forced rapidly through them. Lace curtains, shawls, veils, spreads, tidies and all similar articles, were by this process made to look like new, and at a cost that I thought ought certainly to reduce the establishment to beggary or insolvency. But here chemistry again was the magician that had made such cheap labor profitable. And such advanced knowledge of chemistry was the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... 16. In case of insolvency, or if any sentence of imprisonment is passed against the President, the Volksraad shall be able to ...
— Selected Official Documents of the South African Republic and Great Britain • Various
... the security of the landholder, were thus in some measure sacrificed to the advantage of commerce, an imprisoned debtor was not left entirely at the mercy of an inexorable creditor. If he made all the satisfaction in his power, and could show that his insolvency was owing to real misfortunes, the court of chancery interposed on his petition, and actually ordered him to be discharged from prison, when no good reason for detaining him could be assigned. This interposition, which seems naturally to belong to a court of equity, constituted with a view to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... expression, to wrong a laborer of his hire. We have men who go in debt to tradesmen perhaps without a thought of paying them; but when we speak of such a one who has descended into the lowest mire of insolvency, we say that he has not paid his washerwoman. Out there in the West the washerwoman is as fair game as the tailor, the domestic servant as the wine merchant. If a man be honest he will not willingly take either goods or labor ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... this the insolvency of the Second National Bank of New York, for a very large sum, became public, and the alleged gross misconduct of the president of that bank, John C. Eno, became a matter of public notoriety. Steps were taken by the officers and stockholders of the bank, including the father of the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... mire when renewed accommodation-bills with his name upon them are ripening in the iron safes of Judah. Philip Sheldon found himself sinking gradually and almost imperceptibly into that bottomless pit of difficulty in whose black depths the demon Insolvency holds his dreary court. While his little capital lasted he had kept himself clear of debt, but that being exhausted, and his practice growing worse day by day, he had been fain to seek assistance from money-lenders; and now even the money-lenders ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... certain ruin to producers. It is causing in the United States a condition frightful to contemplate. The mass of debts is piling up at a ratio that absolutely threatens, if a halt in the automatic process is not soon called, a universal insolvency. Indeed a general liquidation is already impossible. He is no alarmist who counsels a timely and rational remedy as not only demanded by justice, but as anticipatory of violent readjustment. Under such disquieting conditions is it not as criminal as ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... strength engender. Devoted to the task that he had inflicted upon himself, he grudged every hour that kept him from the field of operations. Firm in his determination to realize, by his exertions, a sum of money equal to his parent's debts, and to redeem the estate from its insolvency, he was uneasy and impatient until he could resume his yoke, and press resolutely forward. Rich and independent as he was, in virtue of the fortune of his wife, he still spurned the idea of relying upon her for his release—for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... years all this has been reversed. We now look in vain for the signs of prosperity that before existed. In their place, we hear of complaints loud and deep; of insolvency, of reduction in the Government expenditure; of a falling off of trade; of many beggars, where none before were known; of large agricultural estates allowed partially to return to their natural wildness; of cattle and all stock sold at half ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... opposed to profit from a trading partnership, which, as we shall see presently, consisted of gain coupled with the risk of loss. It could not be lost sight of, however, that in fact there might be a risk of the loan not being repaid through the insolvency of the borrower, or some other cause, and the question arose whether the lender could justly claim any compensation for the undertaking of this risk. 'Regarded as an extrinsic title, risk of losing the principal is ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... remained in Riversborough, and resumed his position as head of the firm. He had returned with the intention of doing so, having heard abroad of the extravagant manner in which his junior partner was living. The bank, though seriously crippled in its credit and resources, was in no danger of insolvency, and there seemed no reason why it should not regain its former prosperity, if only confidence could be restored. He had reserved to himself the power of taking in another partner, if he should deem it advisable; and an eligible one presenting himself, in the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Little did any in Barkington guess the doubts and fears, the hopes and despondencies, which agitated and tore the heart and brain that schemed, and throbbed, and glowed, and sickened by turns beneath that steady modulated exterior. And so for months and months he secretly battled with insolvency; sometimes it threatened in the distance, sometimes at hand, but never caught him unawares: he provided for each coming danger, he encountered each immediate attack. But not unscathed in morals. Just as matters looked brighter, came ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business, the one a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bankrupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but himself. They are both drowned. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... isolation of interest and probable insolvency. To dig in a clay bank, foretells you will submit to extraordinary demands of enemies. If you dig in an ash bank and find clay, unfortunate surprises will combat progressive enterprises or new work. Your efforts are likely to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... in the common receptacles of misery, by debts, which, without his own consent, were accumulated on his head. To the relief of this distress, no other objection can be made, but that by an easy dissolution of debts fraud will be left without punishment, and imprudence without awe; and that when insolvency should be no longer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... living, or have wasted it in vanities or misdirected ambition. Having become bankrupts in health, there is necessarily a failure of the menstrual function, and then follows a panic. All the blame of the insolvency and general derangement, is unjustly attributed to the non-performance of the duties of the uterus. Thus, this organ is altogether dependent Upon the general health for its functional ability, yet frequently treatment is instituted to compel menstruation, regardless of the condition of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... now lecturing for my own benefit. This is an error. I intend the lectures as well as the property for the creditors. The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency and start free again for himself. But I am not a business man, and honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less than 100 cents on the dollar and its debts never outlaw. From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour I am ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... to do which has heretofore constituted a prominent objection to the measure—would afford extensive relief I do not doubt. The distress incident to the derangements of some years past has visited large numbers of our fellow-citizens with hopeless insolvency, whose energies, both mental and physical, by reason of the load of debt pressing upon them, are lost to the country. Whether Congress shall deem it proper to enter upon the consideration of this subject at its present extraordinary session it will doubtless wisely determine. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... I were in your place," Gresham hastily assured him with such heartiness as he could assume. "I am delighted to learn that the rumor I heard of Mr. Gamble's insolvency is unfounded." ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... were used; wooden plows, brush harrows, straw collars, grapevine harness, and poor shelter for animals and crops; but were the Virginia methods any better? In these operations there was apparently a good deal of sudden profit and mushroom prosperity accompanied by a good deal of debt and insolvency. In this, too, they were like the Virginians and Carolinians. There seem to have been also a good many slaves in West Jersey, brought, as in the southern colonies, to work on the large estates, and this also, no doubt, helped to foster the ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... the Beechams very, very much. It was sad to think of Five-Bob—pleasant, hospitable Five-Bob—as shut up, with no one but a solitary caretaker there pending the settling of the Beecham insolvency; with flowers running to seed unheeded in the wide old garden, grass yellowing on the lawns, fruit wasting in wain-loads in the great orchard, kennels, stables, fowl-houses, and cow-yards empty and deserted. But ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... day, which decided to accept banknotes as legal tender for any amount. Thus a crash was averted. But Fox, Sheridan, and the Opposition ably accused Pitt of leading his own country to the brink of bankruptcy, even while he proclaimed the imminent insolvency of France. They thundered against the export of gold to the Emperor, and demanded a searching inquiry into the high-handed dealings of the Minister with the Bank and with national finance. "We have too long had a confiding House ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... combination had gone to pieces at Cleveland, and his company were straggling back to New York as they could. Godolphin was deeply in debt to them all, and to everybody else; and yet the manager spoke cordially of him, and with no sort of disrespect, as if his insolvency were only an affair of the moment, which he would put right. Louise took the same view of it, and she urged Maxwell to consider how Godolphin had promptly paid him, and ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... transaction, included a considerable portion of the settlers, and illustrated the trading habits which prevailed. Mr. Gunning being indebted to Mr. Loane, a merchant, agreed to pay him in cattle: this arrangement was superseded. Fearing, notwithstanding, that his claim would be damaged by a general insolvency, Loane took with him seven men, and swept from Gunning's premises a herd of various ownership. For this he was called in question by the police as a felon: in retaliation, he instituted actions for malicious prosecution. Crossley, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... credit, a depleted till, the most valiant resolves to keep smiling, could not prevail for ever against these insistent phenomena. One might bustle about in the morning before dinner, and in the afternoon after tea and forget that huge dark cloud of insolvency that gathered and spread in the background, but it was part of the desolation of these afternoon periods, these grey spaces of time after meals, when all one's courage had descended to the unseen battles of the pit, that life seemed stripped to the bone and one saw ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... third quarter of the eighteenth century closed with the death of Louis XV, all intelligent French administrators recognized the dilemma; either relief must be given, or France must become insolvent, and revolution supervene upon insolvency. But for the aristocracy revolution had no terrors, for they believed that they could crush revolution as their class had ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... juncture, it was of the utmost importance to keep up a show of prosperity. In reality, it was impossible for her, while she had the means to pay her way for a week ahead, to lapse into a form of existence like Gerty Farish's. She had never been so near the brink of insolvency; but she could at least manage to meet her weekly hotel bill, and having settled the heaviest of her previous debts out of the money she had received from Trenor, she had a still fair margin of credit to go upon. The situation, however, ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... that house. But in a very few years the rule in it passed to a generation whose folly surpassed the usual limit of imaginable incapacity. In a short time they substituted ruin for prosperity and changed opulence into insolvency. Such great folly is happily rare; and the business of a bank is not nearly as difficult as the business of a discount company. Still much folly is common, and the business of a great bank requires a great deal of ability, and an even ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... Great Northern Railway or Hill line, now completing its main artery to the Pacific—were far-reaching enough in themselves to bring the Union Pacific upon evil days. Consequently few were surprised when, under the great pressure of the panic of 1893, the property was forced to confess insolvency. The Union Pacific had simply repeated the story of most American railroads; it had been constructed in advance of population and had to pay the penalty. Yet it had more than justified the hopes of the daring ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavour to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest and incomprehensibility. The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the trembling lip on every such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners gave him up as ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... three years of military training; our children will do five, they will do ten. We pay two thousand million francs a year in preparation for war; we shall pay twenty, we shall pay fifty thousand millions. All that we have will be taken; it will be robbery, insolvency, bankruptcy. War kills wealth as it does men; it goes away in ruins and smoke, and one cannot fabricate gold any more than soldiers. We no longer know how to count; we no longer know anything. A billion—a million millions—the word appears to me printed on the emptiness ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... his romances, beginning with "Crime and Punishment," Dostoevsky has something in common with Count L. N. Tolstoy. Both writers were disenchanted as to European progress, admitted the mental and moral insolvency of educated Russian society, and fell into despair, from which the only escape, so it seemed to them, was becoming imbued with the lively faith of the common people, and both authors regarded this faith as the sole means of getting into ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Local clashes were growing more frequent. The "Socialistic" ministers were exhorting the masses to be patient. All decisions and measures, including the calling of the Constituent Assembly, were being postponed. The insolvency and the instability of ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... he was, in turn, cow-keeper on the rue du Petit-Banquier, keeper of a livery-stable, and cabman. As cow-keeper, Vergniaud, having a wife and three sons, being in debt to Grados, and giving too generously to Chabert, ended in insolvency; even then he aided Luigi Porta, again in trouble, and was his witness when that Corsican married Mademoiselle di Piombo. Louis Vergniaud, being a party to the conspiracies against Louis XVIII., was imprisoned for his share in these crimes. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and he himself effected less than he expected, in order to raise the passions of the people, he dropped it, and promulgated two others; one, by which he remitted the annual rents of the houses to the tenants, the other, an act of insolvency: upon which the mob made an assault on Caius Trebonius, and having wounded several persons, drove him from his tribunal. The consul Servilius informed the senate of his proceedings, who passed a decree that Caelius should be removed from the management of the republic. Upon this decree, the consul ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... laid-out town on the shores of Port Denison. It is inhabited by some six hundred people—mostly official loafers and spongers of the worst type. The community consists of boozy squatters, snobbish wives of snobbish officials, anaemic old maids, obsequious tradesmen on the verge of insolvency, and two respectable and hard-working persons—the latter are Chinamen. The 'tony' society of Bowen is about as lively and intelligent as that of a decaying Cathedral town in the old country. The atmosphere of matchless snobbery and ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... adjoins that of Sum-yukin, the son of Sa-Nebo-s, as well as the lower field, which forms the boundary of the house of the Seer, and is planted with palm-trees and grass, is the security of Nadin-Merodach, to which (in case of insolvency) he shall have the first claim. No other creditor shall take possession of it until Nadin-Merodach has received in full the capital and interest. In the month Tisri the dates which are then ripe upon the palms shall be valued, and according to the current ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce |
