"Mercenary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with one or two or three others, staunch Bonapartist. He is always of the militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show of magnanimity; but his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp: it wants principle. For though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful object, make thorough-stitch work of any question, or join ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Napoleon offered to these bands the same reward which he had promised to the peasants. But to a man, they refused the gold. They had imbibed the spirit of their chief, his enthusiasm, and his proud superiority to all mercenary motives. "We are not toiling for money," said they, "but for your approval, and to share ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... the beauties of Art and Music is to add those beauties, by expression and the power of memory, to the self. Thus we may grow more beautiful, just as surely as by thinking ever in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence, we grow more sordid and mercenary. It is a perfectly commonsense process. Furthermore, the appreciation of beauty and of artistic expression develops our power of keener appreciation. Evolution in music cannot stop, for spirit is behind it: and the spirit within must eventually find its way back ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... would'st thou have me do? 'Gainst Otto's army our men count few; With one chance of victory, fight, say I! But not when defeat is a certainty. If Rudiger joins us with his free-lances, Our chance will be equal to many chances; For Rudiger is both prompt and wary; And his men are gallant though mercenary; But the knave refuses to send a lance Till half the money ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... surrendered at discretion, and was coyly accepted by the blushing lady. 'There was only one obstacle,' she timidly observed, 'to our happiness. The relatives of her late husband, by law her guardians, were prejudiced, mercenary wretches, anxious to marry her to an old hunks of a Spaniard, so that the property of her late husband, chiefly consisting of precious stones—he had been a lapidary—might not pass into the hands of foreigners.' I can scarcely believe it now," ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
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