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More "Cupidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came down, accompanied by his two sons. They proceeded to discuss about peace and gold. Abibaiba declared that he had no gold, and that as he had never needed it, he had taken no pains to get it. The Spaniards insisting, the cacique said: "If your cupidity be such, I will seek gold for you in the neighbouring mountains and when I find it I will bring it to you; for it is found in those mountains you behold." He fixed a day when he would return, but neither then ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... contracts and the news of changing prices. There, on marble benches, spread with colored cushions, at the rear under the balcony, the richer men of business sat chattering to mask their real thoughts—Jews, Alexandrians, Athenians—a Roman here and there, cupidity more frankly written on his face, his eyes a little harder and less subtle, more abrupt in gesture ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... insanity, and eternal woe—be cherished; and twenty-five millions of dollars be wasted, and worse than wasted; and all this, that the producers and venders may feed and fatten on the gains? This objection lies equally against the temperance reform and every other reform, where cupidity and ...
— A Disquisition on the Evils of Using Tobacco - and the Necessity of Immediate and Entire Reformation • Orin Fowler
... nearer home, including the diamond locket. So cunningly had he chosen his treasure vault that not one of all his courtiers, not even his queens, could ever discover it, though they were all filled with the most intense desire and burning cupidity. The monarch thoroughly enjoyed the jest, for all the time they were sitting right over it, and that was, no doubt, why they could not see it, being under their feet. Well, the old king recollected that afternoon that he ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... will leave no means untried to detect the thief who has stolen his fairest jewel," said the Armenian, "and his reward will be so rich as to tempt the cupidity of every one, therefore ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... injured sense of consistency. He had to try to extricate his master from the cruel dilemma, either of having been an accomplice in a scheme now denounced by himself as a pirate's conspiracy, or of having betrayed, out of cowardice and cupidity, a faithful servant to foreign vengeance. That is the meaning of the exordium of this pamphlet published in November by the King's Printers, Bonham Norton and John Bill: 'Although Kings be not bound to give account of their actions to any ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... brains on fruitless struggles or on wretched expedients. Thus she immediately guessed the state of this melancholy sexagenarian's mind, and the illusions which attracted him to her, and scented the spoils which offered themselves to her cupidity of their own accord, and divined under what guise she ought to show herself, to make herself ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... I am very glad to hear that your schoolfellow displays a wisdom beyond his years. You see, the world is far from perfection; and weak, wicked, foolish people might have their cupidity excited by the sight of such an object, with results that would be extremely painful to every one here. May I ask, then—by ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... the great division into ten or twelve distinct languages, must not be neglected. But all these allegations of superiority of race and destiny neither require nor deserve any answer. They are but pretences under which to disguise ambition, cupidity, ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... all of a sudden. While she was about her work, scrubbing the floor of some vacant house; or in her room, in the morning, as she made her coffee on the oil stove, or when she woke in the night, a brusque access of cupidity would seize upon her. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistened, her breath came short. At times she would leave her work just as it was, put on her old bonnet of black straw, throw her shawl about her, and go straight to Uncle Oelbermann's store and draw against ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... had all left, but a few old crones generally remained in charge. These scowled at the invaders, and crossing themselves muttered curses beneath their breath upon those whom their priests had taught them to regard as devils. There was nothing to tempt the cupidity of the soldiers in these villages. Malcolm's duty was confined to a casual inspection, to see that no stragglers had entered for the purpose of ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... Fabricius was a fine specimen of the sturdy Roman character. He cultivated his farm with his own hands, and, like his contemporary Curius, was celebrated for his incorruptible integrity. The king attempted in vain to work upon his cupidity and his fears. He steadily refused the large sums of money offered by Pyrrhus; and when an elephant, concealed behind him by a curtain, waved his trunk over his head, Fabricius remained unmoved. Such respect did his conduct inspire, ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... he produced many rolls of silk, and presented them to the gate-keepers; and their cupidity made them blind; and the merchant, without ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... a fool of herself. She knew Audrey to be vain, she divined that she was selfish, but at least she had believed that she could be generous. By letting her feel that she held Ted's future in her hands, she had roused all her woman's vague cupidity and passion for power, and henceforth any appeal to her generosity would be worse than useless. With a little of her old artistic egoism, Katherine valued her brother's career very much as a thing of her own making, and the idea of another woman meddling with ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Prince de Conti, ordered him, under penalty of his high displeasure, to refund to the bank two-thirds of the specie which he had withdrawn from it. The prince was forced to obey the despotic mandate. Happily for Law's credit, De Conti was an unpopular man: every body condemned his meanness and cupidity, and agreed that Law had been hardly treated. It is strange, however, that so narrow an escape should not have made both Law and the regent more anxious to restrict their issues. Others were soon found who imitated, from motives ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... worse? For worse you are, since you were bad already. And that it would make you worse you knew not, hence you asked it of Me. I gave it to you and I proved you; you have found—and you are found out! You were hidden when you had nothing. Correct thyself! Vomit up this cupidity! Take a draught of charity!... Ask of Me better things than these, greater things than these. Ask of Me spiritual things. Ask of Me Myself!" ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... exploits. But to oppose the enemy, who brought with him certain destruction, five hundred men were the utmost that could be mustered within the city. At the first onset the Pope and his forces were overthrown." On the evening of May 6th the city was stormed and given over to the unbridled cupidity and brutality of the soldiers, who during many a long day of want and hardship had been looking forward to the hour that was to repay them amply for all past sufferings by the boundless gratification of every sense, and every caprice of lawless ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... and offered to rent it. When his increased offers were refused he drew from his pocket a paper which he said showed the location of a hidden treasure and offered the houseowner a share if he were permitted to make the search. The cupidity of the other was aroused and he would agree to take nothing less than three-fourths of the whole, whereupon the stranger in a rage lit a match and burnt the paper before the horrified houseowner's eyes, exclaiming: "Now you will never find it." For months afterwards ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... told all that you already so well know in as few words as I could, but leaving out no argument by which I could hope to work upon either the cupidity, the benevolence, or the patriotism of the Jew. He, with his hands folded under his beard, listened without once interrupting me, but with an expression of countenance so stolid, that when I had ended I could guess no better than when I began as to ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... for sale, and had paid him much more than a poids d'or, as indeed it was worth. By dint of further investigation, the man was identified, and proved to be the sacristan of San ——-. Short-sighted sacristan! He was arrested and thrown into prison, and one benefit resulted from his cupidity, since in order to avoid throwing temptation in the way of future sacristans, it became the custom, after the body had lain in state for some time in magnificent robes, to substitute a plain dress previous to placing the coffin in the vault. A poor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... the natives call Manoa.' Now he would go back to find the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that mysterious Manoa among those southern Mountains of Bright Stones which lay behind the Spanish Main. The king's cupidity was roused; and so, in 1617, Raleigh was commissioned as the admiral of fourteen sail. In November he arrived off the coast that guarded all the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in the far recesses of the Orinocan ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... world centuries ago, that would fain shape the features of its victims after one artificial pattern. We laugh too much, from which it necessarily follows that we often laugh at the wrong things, a fault which betrays intellectual weakness as well as moral cupidity. The determining quality in true laughter lies in the degree of innocent mirth it gives expression to; and when jealous satire, envy, or malice add their dissonant note to its sound, its finest effect is destroyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... to deal with; in this, with its novelty and nature and strange contrasts; in the old barbaric force and native colour of the passions as they burst out undisguised around the gold; in the hundred and one personal combats and trials of cunning; in a desert peopled and cities thinned by the magic of cupidity; in a huge army collected in ten thousand tents, not as heretofore by one man's constraining will, but each human unit spurred into the crowd by his own heart; in the "siege of gold" defended stoutly by rock and ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the 'cultured' article, women are coming already to despise them. But even if you take your fiancee a diamond ring, will she not merely say to herself: 'an excellent beginning, now what is the next thing I can get out of him?' Be wise and cultivate no such spirit of cupidity, foreign to a good woman's nature but encouraged by the men, who, for vanity's sake, heap presents upon her. Take rather this little cross, set with pure amethysts, the emblem of faith and so discover, my dear sir, whether she loves the man or the jewel, for indeed but few ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... anxious fears of the ambition of the victor. A less sagacious prince might easily have foreseen that the Persians would scarcely be secure in their new possessions, ere the wealth and domains of Lydia would tempt the restless cupidity of their chief. After much deliberation as to the course to be pursued, Croesus resorted for advice to the most celebrated oracles of Greece, and even to that of the Libyan Ammon. The answer he received from Delphi flattered, more fatally than the rest, the inclinations of the king. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... found a great national drama, based on the true principles of art, that was to be the envy of all nations; he was to drive from the stage the silly, childish plays, the "mirrors of nonsense and models of folly" that were in vogue through the cupidity of the managers and shortsightedness of the authors; he was to correct and educate the public taste until it was ripe for tragedies on the model of the Greek drama—like the "Numancia" for instance—and comedies ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... obstructed the operations of commerce by debasing the coin of the realm to meet the exigencies of the state, was always in want of money. His cupidity was excited by the wealth of the order of Knights Templars, and, emboldened by his successes over the spiritual power, he now entered upon the career of intrigue which resulted in the destruction and plunder of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... treachery opened the gates. In the dead of night the Gothic trumpets rang unanswered in the streets. The old heroic virtues were gone. No resistance was made. Nobody fought from temples and palaces. The queen of the world, for five days and nights, was exposed to the lust and cupidity of despised barbarians. Yet a general slaughter was not made; and as much wealth as could be collected into the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul was spared. The superstitious barbarians in some degree respected churches. But the spoils of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... the arm and tried to lead him with me. My argument had moved him; cupidity had banished for the moment the dreadful picture of the gallows that he had conjured up. I thought ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... or auscultating powers, and thus emancipate yourselves from the servitude of crassous ignorance. And that you may be induced to apprehend how sincerely I desire this in consideration of the studious cupidity that so demonstratively emicates at your external organs, from this present particle of time I retain you as my abstractors. Geber, my principal Tabachin, shall register and initiate you ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... And now this young brother coming on the scene seems to bring the dead man to life again. He's one of the worst type of young bounders I ever came into contact with. A creature without sentiment or feeling of any sort—nothing but an almost ravenous cupidity. He's wearing his brother's clothes now—thinks nothing of it! He hasn't a single regret. I haven't heard a single decent word pass his lips. But he wants the money. Nothing else! ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Jugurtha's history is one of war. The time for winning power by bribery was past. The people were so thoroughly aroused and incensed that none dared yield to cupidity. The indignation grew. The first army sent against Jugurtha was baffled by the wily African, caught in a defile, and only escaped by passing under the yoke, and agreeing to ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tell a white-pine table from a black felt hat"—were disposed about the room at measured distances from each other, equipped with four short-legged stools, a set of casters, and a jar of sugar, all so firmly fixed as to baffle both cupidity and nervousness. On walls, posts, and pillars were hung a number of allusions to the variety and ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... too common in France, that marriage should be a means of fortune. While I struggled with my conscience a sacred voice spoke to me. I swore solemnly to make my fortune myself, and not be led by motives of cupidity in choosing the companion of my life. I have also reproached myself for the blamable curiosity you have excited in me. You have not six millions. There is no concealment possible in Havre for a young lady who ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... the Swiss reinforcements were a different and far less efficient body than the volunteers of Granson and Morat had been. French gold, scattered freely, had done its work in exciting the cupidity of every man who could bear arms. There were some staunch leaders, like Waldemar of Zurich and Rudolph de Stein, but their kind was in the minority. Berne aided with money rather than with men, but she was not a generous ally as she insisted on having hostages to ensure her repayment. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... find the means," replied Harry. "I have a fine gold watch, and about seventy dollars in gold. These will be sufficient, I think, to attempt the cupidity of any Dutchman in the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... wonderful bowman who gave his name as Locksley. Ivanhoe, who fought with great valor, was badly wounded. Cedric had been accompanied to Ashby by his beautiful ward, the Lady Rowena, whose wealth and loveliness excited the cupidity of the lawless Norman knights. "The Siege of the Castle" opens with Cedric's discovery of his son's identity, and recounts the stirring incidents that follow the tournament. It gives a wonderful picture of warfare ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... The Indians, whose cupidity had been aroused by English gold, had searched the forest far and near for the regicides. Their knowledge of the forest and cunning in following a trail had two or three times brought them face to face with Cromwell's ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... internally things hidden and past, or present and future, I must not place them here in the rank of evil spirits. The devil has no other share in the matter than he has always in the crimes of men, and in that multitude of sins which cupidity, ambition, interest, and self-love produce in the world; the demon being always ready to seize an occasion to mislead us, and draw us into irregularity and error, employing all our passions to lead us into these snares. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... fixed my price; and if you do not consent, I now tell you that I will blazon forth, even in this house, who and what you are; and, let your schemes of ambition or of cupidity be what they may, you may be assured that ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... mounted upon his fine black horse, and, muffled in a strong serape, rode in front to pilot the way. His beautiful manga had been left behind, partly to save it from the rough wear of such an expedition, and also that it might not excite the cupidity of the prairie Indians, who, for such a brilliant mantle as it was, would not hesitate to take his scalp. Besides the manga, the embroidered jacket, the scarlet scarf, and velveteen calzoneros, had all been put off, and others of a coarser kind were ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... had scarcely any other kind, the monasteries and ecclesiastical buildings of every description were generally spared, even by the most ruthless marauders; and, had this not been the case, those possessing sufficient valuable property to attract the cupidity of the lawless were far more likely to provide an inconspicuous hiding place for their wealth than to advertise its possession by erecting a tower which, from every direction, was invariably the most conspicuous feature of the landscape. That the towers were not intended for belfries ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... calm her the more she sobbed, and persisted in her demands. She no longer wanted the body, she insisted on having the clothes, as much perhaps through the unconscious cupidity of a wretched being to whom a piece of silver represents a fortune, ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... numerous laws to protect such from their folly. A man may not sell a load of wood without the certificate from a licensed weighbridge or a loaf of bread without, if required, having to prove its weight; and we send those to gaol who practise on the credulity and cupidity of fools by means of the "confidence trick." Why not, therefore, where interests which may be said to be national are involved, endeavour to ensure ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... francs demanded of him—with which the peasant bought himself a morsel of land. When pious persons and vestrymen denounced the fraud, begging the abbe to consult them in future before lending himself to such cupidity, he ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... thundered, looking him straight between the eyes, so that again he sank back cowed. Then resuming the calm with which hitherto I had addressed him, "Your cupidity," said I, "your greed for the estates of Bardelys, and your jealousy and thirst to see me impoverished and so ousted from my position at Court, to leave you supreme in His Majesty's favour, have put you to strange shifts for a ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... de litt. relig., VIII, 1903, p. 431.—The peripatetic Alexander of Aphrodisias who fought fatalism in his [Greek: Peri heimarmenes], at the beginning of the third century, and who violently attacked the charlatanism and cupidity of the astrologers in another book (De anima mantissa, p. 180, 14, Bruns), formulated the contradiction in the popular beliefs of his time (ibid., p. ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... his subject directly, but mounted the metaphorical steps of his rostrum leisurely. He discoursed on the opportunities afforded by the almost limitless free range. He hinted at the possibility of internecine strife eventually awakening the cupidity of "land-sharks" all over the country. If there was land worth killing folks for, there was land worth stealing. If the Concho Valley was once thrown open to homesteaders, then farewell free range and fat cattle and sheep. And the mention of sheep led him to remark ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... himself in our power, while he was at the same time devoured with curiosity to see the articles of which I had given such a glowing description. Of course, as I wished above all things to excite his cupidity to the point of determining to possess the goods, even at the cost of having to give up the white men, I readily agreed to his proposal; and at once returned to the schooner and ordered the boat to be hoisted to ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... the little treat which the good-natured magnate provided for them. It is quite otherwise with the mob of stay-at-home gamblers; they do not care a rush for the horses; they long, with all the crazy greed of true dupes, to gain money without working for it, and that is where the mischief comes in. Cupidity, mean anxieties, unwholesome excitements, gradually sap the morality of really sturdy fellows—the last shred of manliness is torn away, and the ordinary human intelligence is replaced by repulsive vulpine cunning. If ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... whole these people present nothing peculiar as compared with other hill people: like them they are vindictive, savage, poor, dirty, remarkable for great cupidity, fond of red cloth, beads, etc. They are a mixed race, some are like Indians, some like Europeans, but in all the forehead is low, Tartar eyes, often light brown or grey, hair often light. Put them among the Nagas, etc. of the Assam frontier, and ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... "No; although I doubt not that might suffice. I mean cupidity. Each sailor, aboard has an interest in the salvage of this vessel under the English law. You tell me the schooner was a slaver, driven out to sea by storm immediately after discharging a cargo of slaves. There must be gold aboard—perhaps treasure also, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... twenty-six years, saying to all the millions of people passing up and down the great thoroughfares: "I am here to bless and educate, without money and without price, all the struggling ones who come under my wings?" That institution has for twenty-six years been crying shame on miserliness and cupidity. That free reading-room has been the inspiration of five hundred free reading-rooms. Great ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... arrested on his lips. He flushed deeply, then turned pale with excitement. For months past, flaring in all the public prints, that name had been advertised with every entreaty that humanity must regard, with every lure that might excite cupidity, with every threat that intimidation could compass. And here, in this sequestered spot, out of the world, as it were, among the remnant of an Indian tribe, of a peculiarly secluded life, of a strange ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... her, youth fled, and La Corriveau still sat in her house, eating her heart out, silent and solitary. After the death of her mother, some whispers of hidden treasures known only to herself, a rumor which she had cunningly set afloat, excited the cupidity of Louis Dodier, a simple habitan of St. Valier, and drew him into a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... usually carried forty-four guns, and were manned by a crew of over 500 men. Anson had only 200 sailors, of whom thirty were but lads, but this disproportion did not deter him, for he had the expectation of rich booty, and the cupidity of his men was sufficient guarantee ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... preparations to have me caught. I learned afterwards that my dress, and that of Mrs. Bruce's children, had been described to him by some of the Northern tools, which slaveholders employ for their base purposes, and then indulge in sneers at their cupidity ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... a spirit of cupidity, now that I had seen money glistening before me, I began to complain that I had received so little, and again expressed to Ali Mohamed my wish of bringing the case before the cadi; 'for,' said I, 'if I am entitled to these five hundred reals, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... was an unmeaning bravado; his conduct to myself testified his continued ill-will towards me,—an ill-will which might possibly have instigated him in the fraud scarcely less than the whispers of interest and cupidity. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... beautiful crown was the constant object of my thoughts, my affections and my preference; but I only looked at it myself at long intervals, every six months, very briefly, for fear of exciting the cupidity of servants, and exposing the glory of Agrippina ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of indolent parts. The odorous volatile oil of the fruit contains the hydro-carbons "Cymol," and "Cuminol," which are redolent of lemon and caraway odours. A dose of the seeds is from fifteen to thirty grains. Cumin symbolised cupidity among the Greeks: wherefore Marcus Antoninus was so nick-named because of his avarice; and misers were jocularly ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... had so excited Fagin's cupidity, to the banker's; and leaving Giles and another servant in care of the house, they departed to a cottage at some distance in the country, and took Oliver ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... been made in time to prevent any further paragraphs in the Jupiter. His affairs, however, were not allowed to subside thus quietly, and people were quite as much inclined to talk about the disinterested sacrifice he had made, as they had before been to upbraid him for his cupidity. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... his to see the end of the original democracy on this continent. The clouds were fast thickening on the eastern horizon. The day of individualism and equity between man and man must yield to the terrific forces of civilization, the mass play of materialism, the cupidity of commerce with its twin brother politics. Under such conditions the younger Hole-in-the-Day undertook to guide his tribesmen. At first they were inclined to doubt the wisdom of so young a leader, but he soon proved a ready student ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... did not at first appear desirous of acceding to the request of the negro; but the latter appeared to press the point with so much solicitation and earnestness that the white ruffian, stimulated by feelings of cupidity, evidently began to yield. Five blacks were offered in exchange for me—so Brace said, and they were now squabbling about a sixth! The captain had, in fact, virtually consented to sell me—it was only a question ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... the pin, adjusted it into his shirt-front, and once more placed his heels on the railing. The longer Tom talked with him the more he admired him, and the more he detested his avocation. The idea that such a man as that should deliberately prey upon the cupidity of his neighbors! But, then, if he was a gambler, he was the only man in the whole lot of passengers who had taken to him. There were a number of finely dressed planters who sat at the table with him, but not one had had a ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... house on the condition of his giving an inventory of his furniture and paying a yearly rent, and coming during eight days to live in a shed adjoining the domain, thus performing an act of service. The silversmith, to whom everyone spoke of the cupidity of the monks, saw clearly that the abbot would incommutably maintain this order, and his soul was filled with despair. At one time he determined to burn down the monastery; at another, he proposed to lure the abbot into a place where he could torment him until he had signed a charter for Tiennette's ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... "Their ambition and cupidity, veiled under the phantom of religion and the defence of their laws, pervade and desolate this vast kingdom, without the prospect of any termination of this madness but its entire ruin." She then proceeds with her ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... robbers and murderers—who could tell? Yet reason did not wholly desert him in extremity, for even while he tried to fight for his liberty he remembered that there was no good to be gained out of taking him prisoner; he had neither money nor valuables— nothing which could excite the cupidity of even a starving Bedouin. As this thought crossed his brain, he ceased his struggles abruptly, and stood still, panting for breath, when suddenly a sound ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the dishes, I thought to myself, this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal. But I did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put poison in our food. He ate the same things himself. Moreover, he had no poison. And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by cupidity as to sell poison to such ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... under which he smarted were all stabs given to his self-love and cupidity. He had learned how honest men looked upon him; and he had failed in the cherished expectation of laying his hands upon a great fortune, which he had fondly hoped to ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... So far as her small keen eyes and pointed nose went her long face was not unpleasant, but its expression of good nature was marred by her hard mouth, her thin lips, suggestive of artfulness and cupidity. Her gown of dark woollen stuff, her black cape, black mittens, and black cap with yellow ribbons, gave her the appearance of a respectable countrywoman going to mass in ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... of cupidity in Maggie. I have never been able to understand it. With her own money she is as free as air. But let her see a chance for illegitimate gain, of finding a penny on the street, of not paying her fare on the cars, of passing a bad quarter, and she ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Three: I don't care to have this affair advertised. If the papers get hold of it they'll cook up a lot of silly details that'll excite the cupidity of every thief in the country, and make me more trouble than I ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... managed the repeal of the decrees, and evaded a correction of other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory tendency of the repeal as much of irritation and disgust as possible." "In fact," he adds, "without a systematic change from an appearance of crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an open, manly, and upright dealing with a nation whose example demands it, it is impossible that good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which her policy aims at directing against her enemy should not, by her folly and iniquity, ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... the answer, but Sakr-el-Bahr, the scourge of the sea, the terror of Christendom, the desperate corsair your lies, cupidity, and false-heartedness have fashioned out of a sometime Cornish gentleman." He embraced them all in his denunciatory gesture. "Behold me here with my sea-hawks to present a ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... sanguine advocates of emancipation have been realized—if not surpassed—by the West Indies." What! the negro become idle, indeed! "He is more likely," says the enchanted doctor, "to fall into the civilized man's cupidity than into the filth and sloth of the savage." But all these magnificent boasts were quite premature. A few short years have sufficed to demonstrate that the deluded authors of them, who had so lamentably failed to predict the future, could ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Fornajo, an old companion of Charles Grammont. This man was known to have rifled his dead friend's clothing, and the popular impression appeared to be that I had either committed the murder from some other motive than cupidity, or had been disturbed, and that this poor scoundrel had striven to profit by my crime. Against us both the popular feeling was intense. It was noted by the crowd that both Fornajo and myself were naturalised British subjects, ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... and his satellites were parched. History offers no example of parallel horrors; for while party vengeance on other occasions has led to scenes of fury and terror, they arose, in this instance, from the vilest cupidity and the ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... accordance with Jimmy Knight's suggestion. Why, indeed, should she share her gains with anybody? If Max had no right to any part of the loot what possible claim had Jim to share in it? Once Lilas's cupidity was aroused it banished even that meager ghost of honor that is supposed to prevail among thieves; and, disregarding Max's caution, she decided to take things entirely into her own hands, riding this wave of success to the finish. Accordingly she ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... the pious clergy, tolerantly austere in the practice of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify it, without mingling in its joys and passions—but a clergy such as intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant, impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... said he, "my brethren, my disinterestedness; I do not sacrifice my belief to any vile interest. If I embraced a profession so directly opposed to my sentiments, it was not through cupidity. I obeyed my parents. I would have preferred to enlighten you sooner if I could have done it safely. You are witnesses to what I assert. I have not disgraced my ministry by exacting the requitals, which are ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... more in Europe now? And what divine exemption can we claim from the law? What right have we to suppose that it will be aught else, as long as there are wrongs unredressed on earth; as long as anger and ambition, cupidity and wounded pride, canker the hearts of men? What if the wise man's attitude, and the wise nation's attitude, is that of the Jews rebuilding their ruined walls,—the tool in one hand, and the sword in the other; for the wild Arabs are close outside, and the time is short, and the storm has ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... vengeance, murder. But this notary was already rich; and, clothed by society with a character almost holy, which imposes, ay, forces confidence, this man is induced to crime by a cold and implacable cupidity. The assassin only kills you once, and quickly, with his knife; he kills you slowly, by all the horrors of despair and misery into which he plunges you. For a man like this Ferrand, no patrimony of the orphan or savings of the poor are sacred! ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... tide of invasion or continuous colonization that the original inhabitants survive only as detached remnants, where protecting natural conditions, such as forests, jungles, mountains or swamps, provide an asylum, or where a sterile soil or rugged plateau has failed to attract the cupidity of the conqueror. The dismembered race, especially one in a lower status of civilization, can be recognized as such islands of survival by their divided distribution in less favored localities, into which they have fled, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Kalman, and departed. He had forty miles before him, and his horse was none of the best. Rosenblatt had two hours' lead and was, doubtless, well mounted. There was a chance, however, that he would take the journey by easy stages. But a tail chase is a long chase, especially when cupidity and hate are spurring on the pursued. Five hours' hard riding brought Brown to the wide plain upon which stood the Fort. As he entered upon the plain, he discovered his man a few miles before him. At almost the same instant of his discovery, Rosenblatt became aware of his pursuer, ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... your vigilant and persevering opposition to this disgraceful traffic, and attention to the discovery and prosecution of the offenders, and we are willing to hope that though a partial perversion of the public sentiment, and the cupidity of interested individuals, may for a time, present considerable discouragement, yet that the virtuous exertions of the friends of the human race, will at last be ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the Jews are tricksters, but they have almost been forced into their cupidity in getting money, yet the greatest promise of deliverance in the Bible is for that nation. The foundation stones of heaven and the pearly gates are named for the twelve tribes. No Christian should scorn ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... time; yes, upon the way you stage your finance plays depends their success." The fact is that by no other method could this scenic artist of finance have set his plans moving so rapidly. The man had calculated to a nicety on the romantic cupidity he aroused. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... she said for looking at her face. It seemed transformed by cupidity, a kind of mean penuriousness which he had observed in the faces of persons of small interests, but never to such a degree. "She's money mad," Grandmother Kunkel had said; ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... pettifogging Attorneys, cancel improper Advocates, to regulate Fees; to war, in a calm but deadly manner, against pedantries, circumlocutions and the multiplied forms of stupidity, cupidity and human owlery in this department;—and, on the whole, to realize from every Court, now and onwards, "A decision to all Lawsuits within a Year after their beginning." This latter result, Friedrich thinks, will itself be highly beneficial; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... raising the standard of education, and, if necessary, by an absolute prohibition of child-work, the State would be keeping well within the powers which the strictest individualist would assign to it, as it would be merely protecting the rising generation against the cupidity of parents and the encroachments of ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... gain is not to be considered unlawful because it comes from cupidity, avarice, forbidden trade, or opus peccaminosum <e.g. working on a saint's day>, unless there is fraud, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... up on the lawn on that memorable stormy Chistmas night, more than a year before, this had slipped from an inner breast-pocket of the coat, "right into her hand." Not caring to disturb the doctor's examination of his patient, or to tempt the cupidity of her fellow-servants by starting the notion that there might be other valuables hidden in the articles they handled so carelessly, she had pocketed it, unobserved by them, guessing that it would be of service at the inquest. Her purpose of producing it then was, according to her showing, reversed ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... service to you to know something of the many webs which ambition, cupidity and malice have woven about us here in this great government of France," he went on, speaking bitterly. "We never dare speak our thoughts, for blindness, silence, flattery and fawning seem surer passports to favor than are gallant deeds and ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... "welfare work." Because accidents such as gas in mines, fire in factories, fever in towns, and epidemics of diseases incident to certain trades were beyond the power of the workers themselves to control or prevent, wage earners have come to be looked upon as helpless victims of the cupidity and inhumanity of their employers. This attitude has weakened the usefulness of many bodies organized to promote industrial hygiene. Although the term "industrial hygiene" is broad enough to include all sanitary and hygienic conditions ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... apprenticeship, at a business which they had been all their lives employed in. It is not too much to say that it was a grand cheat—a national imposture at the expense of the poor victims of oppression, whom, with benevolent pretences, it offered up a sacrifice to cupidity ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... it has been with the odium theologicum. We have been told that the result was greatly or altogether due to the pride, arrogance, and avarice of the Roman Catholic priests; to the pretensions of the Pope, which came to be regarded with suspicion by the feudatory princes of Japan, as also to the cupidity and cunning of the traders. How far any or all of these alleged causes were responsible for the change in Japanese opinion I shall not venture to pronounce. Suffice it to remark that, whatever the cause, there must have been some powerful, impelling influence ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... the natives filled me with suspicions. The sight of so large a herd without protection might have excited their cupidity. They had expected my arrival with this grand supply of cattle, and instead of finding their villages occupied, I had observed that their own herds had been driven off for concealment; not a woman or child was to be seen in the country; the natives had refused to carry; and, lastly, ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... talk to his guest with some brightness. He told Colwyn a story of a seagoing ancestor of his who had entertained the Royal Family in his own frigate at Portsmouth in honour of Sir Horatio Nelson's victory of the Nile, and how the occasion had tempted the cupidity of his own fellow to make a nefarious penny by permitting the rabble of the town to take peeps at the guests through one of the port-holes. It happened that one Jack Tar, eager to gaze on his idol Nelson, got his head jammed in the port-hole, and broke up the party with a volley of terrible oaths ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... merely assert and maintain my right to live, they deny the right of any but themselves to live. I say I criticise them; but that does not mean that I sympathize with the public at large in its complainings against them. The public, its stupidity and cupidity, creates the conditions that breed and foster these men. A rotten cheese reviling the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... among the nation. Although, however, he was passionately fond of gambling, and made light of the imputation on his character,(25) it appears that in frequenting the gambling table he had other motives besides mere cupidity. Writing to his daughter he said, 'I send you a sum with which I should have gratified my companions, if they had wished to play at dice or odds and evens.' On another occasion he wrote to Tiberius:—'If I had exacted my ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... 40] taken over by a native company opposed to foreign ownership—at an advance of 300 per cent. It was a clever deal; but the Americans sacrificed the credit and the influence of their country, and a grand opportunity was lost through cupidity and want of patriotism. ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... century) was one of those unhappy persons, who, to use the words of a well known Scottish adage, "can never see green cheese but their een reels." He was extremely covetous and that not only of nice articles of food, but of many other things which do not generally excite the cupidity of the human heart. The following story is in corroboration of this assertion:—Being on a visit one day at the house of one of his parishioners, a poor lonely widow, living in a moorland part of the parish, he became fascinated by the charms of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... by our travelling at a slow rate. The necessity for separation however was obvious if the survey was to be continued farther; but I determined to halt for two days preparatory to our setting out, during which time I hoped by patient vigilance and firmness to disappoint the cupidity, and yet gratify the curiosity, of the natives, so as to induce them to draw off and ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... anew their courage, or their cupidity, and with a shout they sprang once more to their feet and ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... cause with some vehemence, the Duke flew into the greatest rage conceivable. Being thus in anger, he exclaimed: "This is just the same as with your Perseus, when you asked those ten thousand crowns. You let yourself be blinded by mere cupidity. Therefore I shall have the statue valued, and shall give you what the experts think it worth." To these words I replied with too much daring and a touch of indignation, which is always out of place in dealing with great princes: "How is it possible ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... had exposed her to this danger, and brought her to this fate! Some outlaw, some waterman, or fugitive negro had robbed and murdered her. Marian usually wore a very valuable watch; probably, also, she had money about her person—enough to have tempted the cupidity of some lawless wretch. He shrank in horror from pursuing conjecture—it was worse than torture, worse than madness to him. Oh, blindness and frenzy; why had he not thought of these dangers so likely to beset her solitary path? Why had he so recklessly exposed her to them? Vain questions, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... guard, nevertheless, against the effect of individual cupidity and treachery and to turn the corrupt projects of the enemy against himself, I recommend to the consideration of Congress the expediency of an effectual prohibition of any trade whatever by citizens or inhabitants of the United ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... were flourishing, ecclesiastically, in the Banat, the Bulgars had been painfully keeping alive, until 1767, their lonely Patriarchate at Ochrida. Time and again the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople had tried to suppress it, at first on account of cupidity and afterwards, say the Bulgars, for fear lest it should help to arouse the Bulgarian national spirit; but that spirit had fallen to such a depth that the second edition of a comparative lexicon of the Slav languages, which was issued, at the behest of the Empress Catharine in 1791, makes no mention ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... also murdered, when the Soui dynasty came to an end, and with it the magnificent and costly palace erected at Loyang, which was denounced as only calculated "to soften the heart of a prince and to foment his cupidity." ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... one hand, the crude superstitions of the masses, the subtler superstitions of the educated classes; gross materialism, bewildering Darwinism, pessimism, and degenerate political economy; on the other hand, unmitigated quackery and cupidity, with its weight of oppression on humanity,—everywhere confusion ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... after their last remnant shall have passed away. At the time when I first stepped upon these grounds the red man still grasped the sceptre which has since been wrenched from his hand. They saw the throne of their father beginning to totter. Their realm had attracted the cupidity of a race of strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined to assist in extirpating the red man, ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... a resounding victory at Ipswich. The last-mentioned contest was considered so important that Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Edward Carson went down to speak the evening before the poll for their respective sides. Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made his appeal to the cupidity of the constituency, which was informed that it would gain L15,000 a year from his new Budget, in addition to large sums, of which he gave the figure, for old age pensions and under the Government's ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... as fishes, when removed from their natural element, cannot live long on the land, so he began to pine when not in some post of authority which he was driven to be solicitous for by the squabbles of his troops of clients, whose boundless cupidity prevented their ever being innocent, and who thrust their patron forward into affairs of state in order to be able to perpetrate all sorts of crimes ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... love, ought (perhaps as generally) to be called by another name. Cupidity, or a Paphian stimulus, as some women, even of condition, have acted, are not words too harsh to be substituted on the occasion, however grating they may be to delicate ears. But take the word love in the gentlest and most honourable sense, it would have been thought by some highly ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... floods and famines and pestilence and evil spirits they have cried out for protection and propitiated what to them were gods." The Damanarkist spit upon the ground as if to spew contempt of pretense and cupidity. "I've no patience with it. If there is a God, He knows the cursed struggle life is with most of us; and if there isn't, prayer is but a waste ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... 100 per cent without the shadow of a risk. Meadows declined to violate the laws of Nature, but, said he, "If you like to stay a day or two I will introduce you to one or two who have money to fling away." And he introduced him to Mr. Merton. Now that worthy had a fair stock of latent cupidity, and Mr. Clinton was the man to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... neglected, or left for centuries unaccomplished. Their situation, however, was not disregarded by Mexico, though she did not, as might have been expected, extend to them a protecting and fostering care, but viewed them as objects of cupidity, rapacity, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... contracting too many alliances, lest there should be no nation to prey upon, and we read of a solemn debate in the Divan to decide which nation should be broken with, inasmuch as the slave-masters were becoming bankrupt from the pacific relations of the State. This was when the cupidity of the Dey had led him to accept a heavy bribe from Sweden in return for his protection, and the Corsairs rushed excitedly to the palace declaring that they had already too many allies: "Neither in ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... disguise of barbarous havoc and alien tyranny. The Conquest was the continuation of the process of migratory invasions by which the nations of modern Europe were founded, from restless ambition and cupidity, when it had ceased to be beneficent. It was not the superposition of one primitive element of population on another, to the ultimate advantage, possibly, of the compound; but the destruction of a nationality, the nationality of Alfred and Harold, of Bede and AElfric. The ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... busy street he read a dozen Jewish names on a line of stores; in the door of each stood a dark little man watching the passers from intent eyes—eyes gleaming with suspicion, with pride, with clarity, with cupidity, with comprehension. New York—he could not dissociate it now from the slow, upward creep of this people—the little stores, growing, expanding, consolidating, moving, watched over with hawk's eyes ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... is this English sentiment so much more efficient than our Irish sentiment, after all? Mr Broadbent spends his life inefficiently admiring the thoughts of great men, and efficiently serving the cupidity of base money hunters. We spend our lives efficiently sneering at him and doing nothing. Which of us has any right to reproach ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... in his madness the following anecdote will sufficiently show. Former kings had invested the Bohemian nobles with possessions which he, moved by cupidity, determined to have back. This is the method he took to obtain them. All the nobles of the land were invited to meet him at Willamow, where he received them in a black tent, which opened on one side into a white, and on the other into a red one. Into this ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... of her present mission than of the past errors of her people. The faster she walked the more vividly she pictured the possible complications of this meeting. She knew the dull, mean nature of her aunt, and the utter hopelessness of all appeal to anything but her selfish cupidity, and saw in this fatuous essay of Corbin only an aggravation of her worst instincts. Even the dead body of her son would not only whet her appetite for pecuniary vengeance, but give it plausibility in the eyes of their emotional but ignorant neighbors. She had still less ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... memory even in dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his inordinate cupidity, have caused ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... The change which their new and strange surroundings had operated in these peaceful, simple folk was not unnatural; loosed from all the anchors that held them to habits of industry and probity, they found themselves caught in new currents; cupidity was awakened by the gold-fever that infected all the colonists, the pious projects with which they left Spain under the guidance of their apostolic leader were easily abandoned when the influence of his enthusiasm was withdrawn, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... priests. This had already proceeded far enough, as was indicated by a passage cited above from Manu. But in the epic the greed and capacity of the priest exceeds all imaginable limits. He takes whatever he can get and asks for more. He has, by his own showing, scarcely one estimable trait. Avarice, cupidity, sensuality, gluttony, love of finery, effeminacy, meanness, and pride—everything charged against him by the Buddhist—are his most marked characteristics. He appears, however, to be worse than he always was. For nothing is ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... under the last reign. The connecting link between these two parties was Laetus, who belonged personally to the last, and still retained his influence with the first. Possibly his fears were alarmed; but, at all events, his cupidity was not satisfied. He conceived himself to have been ill rewarded; and, immediately resorting to the same weapons which he had used against Commodus, he stimulated the praetorian guards to murder the emperor. Three hundred of them pressed into the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... It has been supposed to possess great powers; and vague rumors have attributed to it arts to us unknown. Against nearly all the world, for thousands of years Japan has obstinately shut her doors; the wealth of the Christian world could not tempt her cupidity; the wonders of the Christian world could not excite her curiosity. There she lay, sullen and alone, the phenomenon of nations. England and France and the other powerful governments of Europe have at various times tried to conquer this Oriental exclusiveness, but the Portuguese ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... she said hoarsely, her eyes glittering with cupidity in their deep orbits, "I shall ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... getting out of hand. I could plan a ranch, but I had not a business head. I had neither the gift nor the experience to deal with lawyers and land-grabbers. I knew that with the increase of population and development our position was exciting the cupidity of those who find quicker profit in annexing what others have built than in building on their own account. I knew that we ought to have a great dam; that there was water to irrigate ten times the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... nourishing; and, moreover, some that, under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places where I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity, poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the opinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of poverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to live at our ease; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... beauty, her indifference, the mistaken attitude of Stark urged him, and, strongest of all, he was drawn by his cupidity, for she would be very rich, so the knowing ones said. Doubtless that was why Stark wanted her, and, being a man who acknowledged no fidelity to his kind or his Creator, Runnion determined to outwit his principal, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... the failure of the expedition undertaken by the brothers Roberval, more than half a century before. Several new attempts were made at this time, none of which was very successful. The fur trade, however, held out great inducements to private enterprise, and stimulated the cupidity of the merchants of Dieppe, Rouen and St Malo. In the heart of one of them something nobler than cupidity was aroused. In 1603, M. De Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, obtained a patent from the King conferring upon him and several ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the Eve, of all the novels, contains perhaps the most instructive political lesson England can learn. Europe has always had, and most assuredly England has been over-rich in those alarm-monger critics, watchdogs for ever baying at Slav cupidity, treachery, intrigue, and so on and so on. It is useful to have these well-meaning animals on the political premises, giving noisy tongue whenever the Slav stretches out his long arm and opens his drowsy eyes, but how rare it is to find a man who can teach ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... longer gained a livelihood. They believed that this was the fault of the republic which they had at first adored and from which each day they were now becoming more detached. The financiers, both Christians and Jews, became by their insolence and their cupidity the scourge of the country, which they plundered and degraded, as well as the scandal of a government which they never troubled either to destroy or preserve, so confident were they that they could operate without hindrance under all governments. Nevertheless, ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... the villagers, divided between terror and cupidity. Above waited the Castle folk. It was an amusing game for those who stood safely along the parapet and watched, one that convulsed them with merriment. Also, it improved the quality of those horses that ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... connection with the authority of the church, it was employed for extorting money from the sick. They knew little or nothing about medicine, so used charms, amulets, and relics in healing. The ignorance and cupidity of the monks led the Lateran Council, under the pontificate of Calixtus II, in 1123, to forbid priests and monks to attend the sick otherwise than as ministers of religion. It had little or no effect, so that Innocent II, in a council at Rheims in 1131, enforced the decree prohibiting the monks ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... going to the market, Thamar went out and started for the King's palace, her cupidity not having allowed her to forget his promise. She had provided herself with a great bag of coarse cloth which she proposed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... having one all-important though passive function which cannot be taken from her, and which is peculiarly connected with her own person, in the act of child-bearing, and her mere sexual attributes being an object of desire and cupidity to the male, she is liable in a peculiarly insidious and gradual manner to become dependent on this one sexual function alone for her support. So much is this the case, that even when she does not in any way perform this function there is still a ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... growled; and the threatening phalanx of sulphur-charged clouds rolled away, and melted into the quiet uniform tint which usually precedes sun-set. Dinner being dispatched, I rose to make a thorough examination of the ruins which had survived ... not only the Revolution, but the cupidity of the present owner of the soil—who is a rich man, living at Rouen—and who loves to dispose of any portion of the stone, whether standing or prostrate, for the sake of the lucre, however trifling, which arises from the sale. Surely the whole corporation of the city of Rouen, with the mayor at ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... millions were to be borrowed indiscriminately, of any man or body of men willing to advance the money on the securities offered. First come, first served, was not written, but it was implied. It was this which roused my curiosity, or cupidity, if ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... indiscriminate slaughter. But the Bedouins paid not well for my father's services, and gold was his idol. Hearing that the Bey was dead, he returned to Cairo, where he again practised. He was allowed once more to amass until the heap was sufficient to excite the cupidity of the new Bey; but this time he was fortunately made acquainted with the intentions of the ruler. He again escaped, with a portion of his wealth, in a small vessel, and gained the Spanish coast; but he never has been able to retain his money long. Before he ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... N. covetousness, ravenousness &c adj.; venality, avidity, cupidity; acquisitiveness (acquisition) 775; desire &c 865. [greed for money or material things] greed, greediness, avarice, avidity, rapacity, extortion. selfishness &c 943; auri sacra fames [Lat.]. grasping, craving, canine appetite, rapacity. V. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... adjusted it into his shirt-front, and once more placed his heels on the railing. The longer Tom talked with him the more he admired him, and the more he detested his avocation. The idea that such a man as that should deliberately prey upon the cupidity of his neighbors! But, then, if he was a gambler, he was the only man in the whole lot of passengers who had taken to him. There were a number of finely dressed planters who sat at the table with him, but not one had had ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... Ferguson was a study. Disappointed cupidity succeeded his first incredulity. He began to consider that he must convince Fred that he had acted in good faith. With an effort he smoothed down his face ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... thick walls, still remain, and make the interiors of many of these houses very picturesque; but the 'finds' of old furniture, curious brass or pewter dishes, and even stray bits of valuable tapestry, which used to rouse the cupidity of strangers, are now very rare. Almost all the brass work which is so eagerly bought by credulous tourists at Bruges in summer is bran-new stuff cleverly manufactured for sale—and sold it is at five or six times its real market value! There are no bargains to be picked up on the Dyver ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... eight million sheep, the value of which may be estimated at about two hundred million piastres, (the Turkish piastre, is worth about 2-1/4d.) It would have been impossible for such an important object to have failed exciting the cupidity of a government constituted like that of the Ottoman empire; in consequence, in 1829, they attempted to make a monopoly of the wool-trade. Fortunately, the clamorous despair of the owners of the flocks, and some good advice, caused the Divan to recall the measure, which would in all probability ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... I managed to be pretty good friends. If I could be exchanged, or sent home, I told him that my mother would pay liberally for my ransom; and I suppose this idea excited the cupidity of the commandant, for a trapper coming in the winter, whilst I still lay very ill with fever, Museau consented that I should write home to my mother, but that the letter should be in French, that he should see it, and that ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... amount of more remote evil. Besides, he felt a strong reliance on the liberality of the English authorities in the end, and had little doubt of being able to extricate himself and his ship from any penalties to which the indiscretion or cupidity of his subordinates might have rendered ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... shared the vicissitudes of Jerusalem, being, both from its situation and the nature of the relics which it contains, exposed to the rage or cupidity of barbarian conquerors. It fell under the power of the Saracens when led by their victorious calif; but for seven centuries it has been guarded by a succession of religious persons who, it has been said, suffer a perpetual martyrdom. In the time of Volney, they reckoned about six ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... fabric together, was first systematically loosened. All other opinions, under the name of prejudices, must fall along with it; and property, left undefended by principles, became a repository of spoils to tempt cupidity, and not a magazine to furnish arms for defence. I knew, that, attacked on all sides by the infernal energies of talents set in action by vice and disorder, authority could not stand upon authority alone. It wanted some other support than the poise of its own gravity. Situations formerly ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his shoulders, a tin box containing the letters and despatches for New York with which he was charged, happened to be at some distance from the former, and the Indians thought it a favorable opportunity to attack him and carry off his box, the brightness of which no doubt had tempted their cupidity. They threw themselves upon him so suddenly that he had no time to place himself on the defensive. After a short resistance, he received a blow on the head from a war club, which felled him to the ground, and the Indians seized upon their ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... fishing-boat gone to the rescue of the Ariel and brought off the poet and his companions, she would with her crew have been sent into quarantine for fear of cholera. It is not, however, to the Duchy of Tuscany that Shelley owes his death, but to the cupidity of the Tuscan sailors, one of them having confessed to the crime of running down the boat, seeing her in danger, in the hope of finding gold on "the milord Inglese." There seems but little reason for doubting ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... required that they should be delivered to it at low prices: the servants exacted more supplies than were wanted, and then sold the surplus for their own profit. In grotesque contrast with the disgraceful cupidity of his attendants is the exaggerated conception which James had formed for himself of the ideal importance of the royal authority, which at that time some persons attempted with metaphysical acuteness to lay down almost in the same terms as the attributes of the Deity. He had similar ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... has had many heroes; but never one who so entirely possessed the love of his fellow-countrymen as Nelson. All men knew that his heart was as humane as it was fearless; that there was not in his nature the slightest alloy of selfishness or cupidity; but that with perfect and entire devotion he served his country with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength; and, therefore, they loved him as truly and as fervently as he loved England. They pressed upon the parapet to gaze after him when his barge pushed ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... none of the churches or religious houses should suffer injury of any kind, all of which were preserved from violation by the appointment of guards for their protection. But the rest of the town, either from the want of that precaution, or owing to the cupidity of our people, was rifled and ransacked by the soldiers and mariners, who scarcely left a single house unsearched, taking out of them every thing that struck their fancy or seemed worth carrying away, such as chests of sweet wood, chairs, clothes, coverlets, hangings, bedding, and the like; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... price for which he waged it. As it was (and justly, I think), the party adverse to the duke in England were indignant at the lavish extravagance of slaughter, and demanded more eagerly than ever the recall of a chief, whose cupidity and desperation might urge him further still. After this bloody fight of Malplaquet, I can answer for it, that in the Dutch quarters and our own, and amongst the very regiments and commanders, whose gallantry was most conspicuous ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by the successive agglomeration of free men, living under and retaining their separate institutions, into powers which have no interest in war, but much interest in peace; until unions reach such a magnitude as to be able to forbid wars of cupidity, and offer a high tribunal for the redress of international grievances.... If all parts of a mighty union have their proportionate weight in questions of war and peace, no partial and vicious expediency ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... that you already so well know in as few words as I could, but leaving out no argument by which I could hope to work upon either the cupidity, the benevolence, or the patriotism of the Jew. He, with his hands folded under his beard, listened without once interrupting me, but with an expression of countenance so stolid, that when I had ended I could guess no ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... thought best to consult you before organizing an expedition. The fellow had only an old photograph of her on the back of which was pasted a newspaper cutting describing her and offering a reward. We feared that having found this somewhere it had aroused his cupidity and led him to believe that in some way he could obtain the reward, possibly by foisting upon us a white girl on the chance that so many years had elapsed that we would not be able to ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... function. But they would at least diminish the number of cases in which the influence of the mercenary motive made against rather than for excellence of work. The system which most encourages mere cupidity is one which affords too many opportunities for making "easy money," and our American system has, of course, been peculiarly prolific of such opportunities. As long as individuals are allowed to accumulate money from mines, urban real estate, municipal ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... priest's clothes, or habit.' The particle ga is used for people of inferior rank; e.g., Pedro ga fumi 'Peter's letter,' sochi ga mono 'your thing,' are ga cane 'your money,' tono va iocu ga fucai fito gia 'the Lord is of great cupidity, that is to say he is very eager.' Sometimes the particle to is suffixed to the genitive; e.g., Pedro no to degozaru 'it belongs to Peter.' But since this is not a perfect way of speaking, it is better not to use it. I have cited it so that if you hear ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... queen's innocency in this necklace transaction; and whereas Cardinal de Rohan had been made a martyr, whereas Parliament had declared him innocent, the queen consequently must be the guilty one, to whose cupidity the cardinal and the unfortunate Madame de la Motte and also the beautiful D'Olivia, who in this horrible farce had played the part of the queen, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... of the fierceness in battle of these giants called "Anzac." It was not long, however, before curiosity drew them from their hiding-places and our laughing good nature won their confidence. It was not surprising that our lavish spending of money should have roused their cupidity, for never had they seen so much wealth before, and never had we seen such poverty. Any of our privates was able to buy out the stock of a whole store, which was not worth more than a pound or two. One of them, to satisfy his hunger, on the first night walked into one of ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... contingencies, as diseases or other events, considered the visitations of God! One, or two, or three, sick and heavy hearts and wounded minds, in the midst of a hundred happy, light ones, buoyed up by fierce cupidity and keen bargain-hunting, and exhilarated by drink and by fun, and all drawn together by the misery of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... Wildschloss. He had delayed his distasteful marriage as long as possible, and it had caused him nothing but trouble and strife; his children would not live, and Thekla, the only survivor, was, as his sole heiress, a mark for the cupidity of her uncle, the Count of Trautbach, and his almost savage son Lassla; while the right to the Wildschloss barony would become so doubtful between her and Ebbo, as heir of the male line, that strife and bloodshed would be well-nigh inevitable. These ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and be almost as they are—perhaps a little better or somewhat worse than the average—no one may give him a thought. But let it be known that he has been able to detect the hollow mockery of social life, its hypocrisy, selfishness, sensuality, cupidity and other bad features, and has determined to lift himself up to a higher level, at once he is hated, and every bad, bigotted, or malicious nature sends at him a current of opposing will-power. If he is innately strong he shakes it off, as the powerful ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... Vernon set out with his dog, Dingo, to explore the center of Africa, guided by Negoro. The money which he carried had excited the wretch's cupidity, and he resolved to take possession of it. The French traveler, arrived at this point of the Congo's banks, had established his camp in this hut. There he was mortally wounded, robbed, abandoned. The murder accomplished, no doubt Negoro took to flight, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... woman suffrage in Washington in 1910. Following close upon it comes the signal victory of California, where as never before were the friends and foes of woman's freedom so equally lined up. Wherever vice, corruption and cupidity held sway, there the vote for woman suffrage was weak. Wherever refinement, education, industry and self-respecting manhood and womanhood dwelt, there the vote in favor of women was strong. These are the battles in this war for justice which have been victorious. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... determined on revenge. They surprised him at Lawers in bed, and threatened instant death, even in his wife's presence. He urged for time to pray, and that it might be for quietness in the chapel hard by, which request they granted. On the way thither he so played on their cupidity, offering them 10,000 merks if they would spare his life, that at last he prevailed. Faithful to his engagement, he raised this immense sum, much of it being gathered in halfpence, and carried on horseback to the appointed trysting-place. But Lawers was ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... districts here referred to) for a traveller to go upon, not only because the hospitality of the people has been damped by frequent communication with travellers, but, by intercourse with the semi-civilised merchant, their natural honour and honesty are corrupted, their cupidity is increased, and the show of firearms ceases to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... in heaven. Even the parlour variety sometimes smell of brimstone, and Cupid is blamed for many which are made by cupidity. The gossips and the busybodies would die of mal-nutrition were it not for marriage and ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... and melted into the quiet uniform tint which usually precedes sun-set. Dinner being dispatched, I rose to make a thorough examination of the ruins which had survived ... not only the Revolution, but the cupidity of the present owner of the soil—who is a rich man, living at Rouen—and who loves to dispose of any portion of the stone, whether standing or prostrate, for the sake of the lucre, however trifling, which arises from the sale. Surely the whole ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... measure authorizing this loan was rather a peculiar one. Five millions were to be borrowed indiscriminately, of any man or body of men willing to advance the money on the securities offered. First come, first served, was not written, but it was implied. It was this which roused my curiosity, or cupidity, if you will." ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... national where they had formerly been able to get only local protection. The members of Congress described in their letters to friends the fish battles, the salt battles, and other manifestations in legislative halls of the cupidity of mankind when opportunity is ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... economic causes, no longer gained a livelihood. They believed that this was the fault of the republic which they had at first adored and from which each day they were now becoming more detached. The financiers, both Christians and Jews, became by their insolence and their cupidity the scourge of the country, which they plundered and degraded, as well as the scandal of a government which they never troubled either to destroy or preserve, so confident were they that they could operate without hindrance under all ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... calls for a "samovar" (or urn), and invites her young bath-woman to drink tea with her. And finally she sends her home with a blue coffer, which turns out to be full of money. This present excites the cupidity of her stepmother, who sends her own daughter to the Baba Yaga's, hoping that she will bring back a similar treasure. The Baba Yaga gives the same orders as before to the new-comer, but that conceited young person fails to carry them out. She cannot make the bones burn, nor the sieve hold ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... soldier; his name ort to be there; it is all right to have it there and jest where it is, on a gravestun. All through the centuries it will stand there, a name carved by the hand of cupidity, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... nothing can check the tide that follows on. It is in vain for him to declare (perhaps really conscientiously) that he conceives the risk of loss of stock to be so great that none should undertake the journey; this is only ascribed to his cupidity and a desire to keep others out of the market; HE has done it, and why cannot more? This argument is irresistible, and adventurer after adventurer ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... exhibited the gifts he had received to his attendants. Sam then gave him to understand that we had many more of the same description on board. At first, I was afraid that he would not consent to accompany us; but at length his cupidity overcame his fears, and Sam, advising him to come lest others should obtain the goods we had to dispose of, he stepped ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... development; they were not simply a pawn in the game of Britain and the United States. Quite aside from the original rights or wrongs of the war, the invasion of Canada was from this standpoint an act of aggression. "Agrarian cupidity, not maritime right, wages this war," insisted John Randolph of Roanoke, the chief opponent of the "war hawks" in Congress. "Ever since the report of the Committee on Foreign Relations came into the House, we have heard but one word—like ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... stocked with muskets and gunpowder, with bales of longcloth, of cotton prints, of silks; with bags of rice and currency brass guns. She contained everything necessary for dealing death and distributing bribes, to act on the cupidity and upon the fears of men, to march and to organize, to feed the friends and to combat the enemies of the cause. She held wealth and power in her flanks, that grounded ship that would swim no more, without masts and with the best part of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... chiefly in Germany, like a visitation of pestilence or war. Those who tried to stop it fell victims to their own courage, and, unless they recanted, languished for years in prison, or were executed as possessed by devils themselves. At Treves the persecution was encouraged by the cupidity of the magistrates who profited by confiscation of the property of those sentenced. At Bonn schoolboys of nine or ten, fair young maidens, many priests and scores of good women ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... probably belonged chiefly to great maritime cities. These cities with their dependencies required even more vessels for communication with one another than for Rome herself,—the great central object of enterprise and cupidity. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... experience that the Jews are tricksters, but they have almost been forced into their cupidity in getting money, yet the greatest promise of deliverance in the Bible is for that nation. The foundation stones of heaven and the pearly gates are named for the twelve tribes. No ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... autumn, inspired the inmates of the chateau with no slight dread, as it seemed more than likely they would take advantage of the general disorder that prevailed to commit depredations upon any isolated dwellings that tempted their cupidity. Moreover, north of Nimes there were several villages whose fanatical and intensely excited inhabitants were strongly urged by their leaders to make an attack upon the Catholics, who were accused of opposition to the reform movement. It was rumored that these people intended ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... whereupon the Indian, with surprising quickness, caught it down and held it with a nervous grasp, his squaw taking his seat beside him. Tim offered the three knives which the party owned for it, opening and flicking them to excite his cupidity. The eager look that came into his face showed that he understood what was meant; but he only hugged his property more tightly and shook his head from side ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... had not conceived they would be so obdurate: he had, in fact, imagined that the elder woman must be flattered by his offer to marry her daughter, and when no evidence to support this was forthcoming he was driven to appeal to the cupidity which he believed occupies the heart of every middle-aged, hard-worked woman. But these statements also were received with a dreadful composure. He could have smashed Mrs. Makebelieve where she stood. Now and again his body strained to a wild, physical outburst, a passionate, red fury ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... expecting some disaster, if you get the chance, unless he hastes to prevent you. Therefore he is awake, and on the watch against us; he courts certain people, Thebans, and people in Peloponnesus of the like views, who from cupidity, he thinks, will be satisfied with the present, and from dullness of understanding will foresee none of the consequences. And yet men of even moderate sense might notice striking facts, which I had occasion to quote to the Messenians and Argives, and perhaps it is better they should ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... turned to watch the countenances of them that bought.—And there in like manner I saw no cupidity and no meanness. They spake humbly, yet not because they sought a favour, but because they were humble, for with their humility was mingled the confidence of receiving that they sought. And truly it was a pleasure to see how everyone knew ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... incorporation with the pile, caused us to think them, at first, a part of the edifice itself. This desecration of the Gothic is of very frequent occurrence on the continent of Europe, taking its rise in the straitened limits of fortified towns, the cupidity of churchmen, and the general indifference to knowledge, and, consequently, to taste, which depressed the ages that immediately followed the construction of most of ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is, perhaps, an incompleted happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In petty minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant saying, "Tell me what thou hast, and ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... to protect such from their folly. A man may not sell a load of wood without the certificate from a licensed weighbridge or a loaf of bread without, if required, having to prove its weight; and we send those to gaol who practise on the credulity and cupidity of fools by means of the "confidence trick." Why not, therefore, where interests which may be said to be national are involved, endeavour to ensure ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... answered d'Artagnan, but little convinced, as he knew better than anyone else how entirely personal the value of this letter was, and was nothing in it likely to tempt cupidity. The fact was that none of his servants, none of the travelers present, could have gained anything by ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and independent German state, but the governor of a French province—the despised oppressor of an enslaved people, robbed of their honor, independence, and nationality. Now, I commenced this war for the sake of my own honor and that of my people. I commenced it to set bounds to French cupidity and thirst for conquest; to preserve to Germany her German and to Prussia her Prussian character, and to drive back the Confederation of the Rhine beyond the frontier of the Rhine. The fortune of war ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... result; for these strangers to our groves would all eventually meet with the same fate as our rarer species and casual visitors—that is to say, they would be shot. There is no doubt that the amateur naturalist has been a curse to this country for the last half century, that it is owing to the "cupidity of the cabinet" as old Robert Mudie has it—that many of our finer species are exceedingly rare, while others are disappearing altogether. But it is surely not too soon to look for a change for the better in this direction. Half a century ago, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... "my brethren, my disinterestedness; I do not sacrifice my belief to any vile interest. If I embraced a profession so directly opposed to my sentiments, it was not through cupidity. I obeyed my parents. I would have preferred to enlighten you sooner if I could have done it safely. You are witnesses to what I assert. I have not disgraced my ministry by exacting the requitals, which are ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... the abbey church on the morrow, and were present at the Mass of the day; the poor English were there in small numbers; they could not worship devoutly in company with their oppressors, but frequented little village sanctuaries, too poverty stricken to invite Norman cupidity, where, on that very account, the poor clerics of English race might still minister to their scattered flocks, and preach to them in the language Alfred had dignified by his writings, but which the Normans compared to the "grunting ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... that no effort on their part to acquire it would be regarded as too great. Therefore we at once jumped to the conclusion that, animated by a deep sense of resentment at the indignity which we had inflicted upon them by flogging them, and possibly also spurred on by an overpowering cupidity, they had determined to risk their very lives in an attempt to return to their own island, there to report all that they had seen and learned during their sojourn with us, with the object of stirring up their fellow islanders to organise an ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... His cupidity was excited, and he felt sure of winning the dollar, as he had the twenty-five cents. But James had no idea of playing off now, and he played a better game, as he was well able to do. The result was that Mark was beaten ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... happily situated might, under better management, become a thriving and pleasing port; but neglect, cupidity, and misrule have shockingly deformed and degraded it. Nevertheless, by its picturesque site and surroundings of beauty, it retains its hold upon the regretful admiration of many Europeans and Americans, who in ill health have found strength and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... believed, in order to wring a larger, possibly a double, amount from the wretched mother. Fifty thousand was a goodly sum, but one hundred thousand was better; and this man had gigantic ideas where his cupidity was concerned. I remember how firmly he had once stood out for ten thousand dollars when he had been offered five; and I began to see, though in an obscure way as yet, how it might very easily be a part of his plan ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... exquisite poem of "Egeria," probably the most refined and artistic of all his productions; and in 1856 he gave to the world "The Lump of Gold," and "Under Green Leaves," two volumes of charming poetry; the first tracing the evils that flow from unrestrained cupidity; the second the delights of the country, under every circumstance that can or does occur. Latterly he has composed some popular airs, set to his own lyrics; thus giving to the melody he has conceived the immortality of his verse. With the late Sir Henry Bishop he was associated in re-arranging a ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of passenger vessels!"—a reply which was tantamount to saying that if the existing arrangements were inadequate to the ends desired, Government saw no way out of the difficulty, and people must just be left unprotected, and go to sea to be drowned or spared according as chance or the cupidity of ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... win over to his cause some personages influential at the court of France. The Duc de Morny, whose speculative spirit was easily seduced by the golden visions of large financial enterprises in a land the wealth of which was alluringly held up to his cupidity, took him under his powerful protection. There is little doubt that this was an important factor in the Mexican imbroglio. It is interesting to know that a just Nemesis overtook Jecker, whose unworthy intrigues had brought about such incalculable mischief. He was shot by order of the Commune ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... Austria did not really want an extension of territory at the cost of Poland. She could not hope to improve her frontier in that way, and economically she had no need of Galicia, a province whose natural resources were undeveloped and whose salt mines did not arouse her cupidity because she had salt mines of her own. No doubt the democratic complexion of Polish institutions was very distasteful to the conservative monarchy; Austrian statesmen did see at the time that the real danger to the principle of autocracy was in the West, in France, and that all the ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... stream that pours from Nature's cornucopia! Such is the law ordained by the Power that presides over the destinies of the world; and not all the interferences of man with His beneficent purposes can avail altogether to check and frustrate their happy operation. Yet have the blind cupidity, the ignorant apprehensions of national zeal dislocated, so far as was possible, the wheels and cogs of the great machine, hampered its working and limited its uses. And if there be anything of which this great nation may justly ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... religious sects, which first peopled America, have had a strong influence in transmitting to their posterity false notions on such subjects; for while the old world is accustomed to see Christianity used as an ally of government, and perverted from its one great end to be the instrument of ambition, cupidity, and selfishness, the new world has been fated to witness the reaction of such abuses, and to run into nearly as many errors in the opposite extreme. The two persons just mentioned, had been educated in ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Spanish authority almost extinct, and the colonial governments in a state of revolution, having no pretension to it, and sufficiently employed in their own concerns, it was in great measure derelict, and the object of cupidity to every adventurer. A system of buccaneering was rapidly organizing over it which menaced in its consequences the lawful commerce of every nation, and particularly the United States, while it presented a temptation to every people, on whose seduction ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... course most anxious to help the poor woman, especially as it appeared from what was reported to us that there were not the slightest grounds for the outrage, beyond the helplessness of her situation and the natural cupidity of the robber chief of the fort; but, unfortunately, we were travelling without credentials, the Envoy having declined to furnish us, lest the inhabitants should fancy that we were vested with any political power; and therefore we could not interfere, and what became of her I know ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... but little was found, the bulk having been carried off, as before related, by the myrmidons. Nevertheless, it was supposed there were other secret hoards, if a clue to them could only be found. Mompesson had been interrogated on the subject; but he only made answers calculated to excite the cupidity of his hearers without satisfying them, and they fancied ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... favourites, nor forbear regarding his huntsman's fate as a signal instance of the retributive justice of Providence, felt himself obliged to destroy the whole pack, after their ferocious banquet on human flesh; and with tears in his eyes, he forced himself to witness their execution, lest the cupidity or misjudging kindness of any of his retainers, should induce them to mitigate the culprits' doom. The horrid story spread far and wide, and one of its earliest results was the appearance at Castle Mortimer of a poor woman and three young children, who stated in an agony ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... independence. From New Spain to the south, the Spanish armies seemed to encounter no resistance. Morillo likened the silence and peace he found everywhere to the silence and peace of the cemeteries. There was no government anywhere, not even military authority. Crime prevailed; cupidity and vengeance were the guiding principles ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... many rolls of silk, and presented them to the gate-keepers; and their cupidity made them blind; and the merchant, without ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... old warrior, cried the youth, grasping his hand; I should be the last to reproach you. The curses of Heaven light on the cupidity that has destroyed such a race. Remember, John, that I am of your family, and it is now my ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... which continues to receive tribute from the Indians, probably from having, at a former period, been their tutelary genius. It is called, if I mistake not, by the white people resident in the neighbourhood, "The Sacrifice Rock," and is still deeply venerated by the few Indians spared by the cupidity of the Pilgrims ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that there is no water there. Now there are certain given facts in slavery. Slavery is Barbarism. It consists in holding men to compulsory servitude. The human heart is avaricious; it gets all it can, and keeps all it gets. Give it complete power over a human being, and there are no limits to its cupidity and wrong-doing, but the finite nature of the thing itself. Hence, does it not follow that there can be no disinterestedness, no tender mercies in slavery? Yes, dear Aunt, as we are perfectly sure that there can ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... something more than shock her. They had opened her eyes to the true nature—already dimly seen—of the plan to which she had lent herself. They had torn the last veil from the selfishness of those with whom she had acted, their cupidity and their ruthlessness. And they had shown the man himself in a light so new and startling, that even the last twenty-four hours had not prepared her for it. The scales of prejudice which had dimmed her sight fell at length, and wholly, ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... dazzled eyes of the French ambassadors. Unfortunately the presents which he gave them on their departure seemed to them poor and insignificant, after the marvels which they had seen in the Castello, and their cupidity was but ill-satisfied. ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... be adapted for his ideal colony. The change which their new and strange surroundings had operated in these peaceful, simple folk was not unnatural; loosed from all the anchors that held them to habits of industry and probity, they found themselves caught in new currents; cupidity was awakened by the gold-fever that infected all the colonists, the pious projects with which they left Spain under the guidance of their apostolic leader were easily abandoned when the influence of his enthusiasm ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Paris and the Tuileries, would there be met by his faithful de Marmont, who on bended knees in the midst of a brilliant and admiring throng would present to him the twenty-five million francs originally the property of the Empress herself and now happily wrested from the cupidity of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... the bourgeoisie already existed in the time of Charles VII. But cupidity was repressed by the confessor, and the tradesman, just like the labourer, was maintained by the corporations, which denounced overcharging and fraud, saw that decried merchandise was destroyed, and fixed a fair price and a high standard of excellence for commodities. Trades and professions were ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... present of money only excites his cupidity for more," I think; and so reply by a deprecatory shake of the head. This turns out to be an uncharitable judgment, however, for once; he goes through the pantomime of using a pen and says, "Abdurraheim Khan." He saw me write my name, the date of my appearance at Tabbas, etc., ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... generous and worthy of ruling a great people." At this time also he began to show the qualities of a statesman and diplomatist. He formed in 1194 a temporary alliance with the Kin emperor, Madacou, and the richness of his reward seems to have excited his cupidity, while his experience of the Kin army went to prove that they were not so formidable as had been imagined. The discomfiture of Chamuka has been referred to, but he had not abandoned the hope of success, and when he succeeded in detaching the Kerait chief, Wang Khan, from ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... is not to be considered unlawful because it comes from cupidity, avarice, forbidden trade, or opus peccaminosum <e.g. working on a saint's day>, unless there is fraud, ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... an old Jewess, whose countenance was expressive of avarice and cupidity, was a devoted servant of Samuel, who ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... need be added to this is that the later Christian slavery represented a distinct retrogression, deliberately revived from motives of sheer cupidity, and accompanied by more revolting features than the slavery of ancient ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Bishop's Chapel. Another chapel, (of St. Mary Magdalen,) was also connected with the south aisle of the church. The parishioners seem to have hitherto neglected the Lady Chapel, and to have shown their cupidity in ages long past. Through the influence of Dr. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, they were allowed to purchase the church of that wholesale sin-salesman, Henry VIII.; but after the parish had obtained the grant of the church, they ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... willing to take people at their own valuation, but are ever ready to multiply that valuation by ten. Obtrude romance—rich, stirring romance—into the lives of commonplace people, and they instantly lose their heads. Romance, more than cupidity, is what attracts ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... to say, extinguish self; love mercy, cut utterly away all the pride and wrath and all the cupidity that make this fair world a wilderness; walk humbly with thy God, take his will and set it in the place where thine own was wont to rule. Pluck down the tyrant from his place; set up the true Master on ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... circumstances to be their warmest friend. The Turks again, whom no circumstances could entirely disarm, were yet crippled for the time, and their whole attention preoccupied by another enemy, most alarming to their policy, and most tempting to their cupidity. Such an opportunity it seemed unpardonable to neglect. Accordingly, it was resolved to begin the insurrection. At its head was placed Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a son of that Hospodar of Wallachia whose deposition by the Porte had produced the Russian war of 1806. This prince's qualifications ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... co-operated with his anxious fears of the ambition of the victor. A less sagacious prince might easily have foreseen that the Persians would scarcely be secure in their new possessions, ere the wealth and domains of Lydia would tempt the restless cupidity of their chief. After much deliberation as to the course to be pursued, Croesus resorted for advice to the most celebrated oracles of Greece, and even to that of the Libyan Ammon. The answer he received from Delphi flattered, more fatally than the rest, the inclinations of the king. He was ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... set forth my cause with some vehemence, the Duke flew into the greatest rage conceivable. Being thus in anger, he exclaimed: "This is just the same as with your Perseus, when you asked those ten thousand crowns. You let yourself be blinded by mere cupidity. Therefore I shall have the statue valued, and shall give you what the experts think it worth." To these words I replied with too much daring and a touch of indignation, which is always out of place in dealing with great princes: "How is it possible that my work should be valued ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... and tolerant, and possessing a small fortune sufficient for his simple wants and charities, practiced only for a few friends or for the poor. His physic was friendship or charity in action. The medical career is so admirable when divested of all cupidity, it brings so much into play the better feelings of our nature, that it often ends by being a virtue after commencing as a profession, With Dr. Alain it was more than a virtue; it had become a passion for relieving the woes of the body and of the soul, which ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... pious clergy, tolerantly austere in the practice of its duty and charity, living in the world to console and edify it, without mingling in its joys and passions—but a clergy such as intrigue, cupidity, and ambition had made it; that is to say, the court abbes, rivalling the Roman priests, indolent, libertine, elegant, impudent, kings of fashion, autocrats of the salon, kissing the hands of those ladies of whom they boasted themselves the paramours, giving their hands to kiss ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... married woman is, on the whole, less pitiable than her unmarried sisters." In order to prove this thesis in due form, we begin at the beginning, and show how the marriage of Antonin Mairaut and Julie Dupont is brought about by the dishonest cupidity of the parents on both sides. The Duponts flatter themselves that they have cheated the Mairauts, the Mairauts that they have swindled the Duponts; while Antonin deliberately simulates artistic tastes to deceive Julie, and Julie as deliberately makes a show of business capacity ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... against my will, as it is a thing which should not recur to memory even in dreams; for the Commander Bobadilla maliciously seeks in this way to set his own conduct and actions in a brighter light; but I shall easily show him that his small knowledge and great cowardice, together with his inordinate cupidity, have ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Hanno, he whose slackness had assisted to lose the battle of the Aegatian islands; and as to his victory at Hecatompylos over the Libyans, even if he did behave with clemency, thought the Barbarians, it was owing to cupidity, for he had sold all the captives on his own account, although he had reported their deaths ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... triumvir with Pompey and Caesar; was avaricious, and amassed great wealth; appointed to the province of Syria, provoked out of cupidity war with the Parthians, in which he was treacherously slain; Orodes, the king, cut off his head, and poured melted gold into his mouth, saying as he did so, "Now sate thyself with the metal of which thou wert so ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Columbus is contained in this and a succeeding letter. Under the shallow pretense of benefiting the souls of idolators, he suggested to the Spanish rulers the advisability of shipping the natives to Spain as slaves. He appeals to their cupidity by picturing the revenue to be derived therefrom, and stands convicted in the light of history as the prime author of that blood-drenched rule which exterminated millions of simple aborigines in ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... the Charleston and Newbern editors seemed to believe,—that the attack on Hatteras Inlet was sure to end in failure,—they nevertheless thought it the part of wisdom to prepare for the worst; and they at once began the work of concealing everything that was likely to excite the cupidity of the lawless Union soldiers. Remembering what their Mobile papers had said about the ragged, half-starved appearance of the Massachusetts troops who marched through the streets of Baltimore, they even hid their clothing and carted the contents of their smoke-houses and corn-cribs into ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... departed over the bridge where the surly custodian still grumbled at his horse's feet trampling his clean wooden flooring. The young man rode a Spanish jennet of good stock, a plain beast to look upon, neither likely to attract attention nor yet to stir cupidity. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... its martyrs—the slayers and the slain. Is it not becoming such once more in Europe now? And what divine exemption can we claim from the law? What right have we to suppose that it will be aught else, as long as there are wrongs unredressed on earth; as long as anger and ambition, cupidity and wounded pride, canker the hearts of men? What if the wise man's attitude, and the wise nation's attitude, is that of the Jews rebuilding their ruined walls,—the tool in one hand, and the sword in the other; for ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... were known far and wide. Caravans returning to the coast proclaimed its splendours in their camel-loads of gold, ivory, hides, musk, and the spoils of the ostrich. So many attractions did not fail to rouse the cupidity of neighbouring territories, chief among them being Morocco. El Mansour, sultan of Morocco, invaded the Sudan in 1590, and in a few years the fall of the Songhois Empire was complete. Two elements of confusion ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... may go well with the country. If this malevolent rite should be followed by the desired effect, the sorcerer soon sees messengers arriving laden with presents, who entreat him to stay the famine. If his cupidity is satisfied, he rubs the stone again, inserts it upside down in the ground, and prays to his ancestors to restore plenty ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Channing, "that the hopes of the most sanguine advocates of emancipation have been realized—if not surpassed—by the West Indies." What! the negro become idle, indeed! "He is more likely," says the enchanted doctor, "to fall into the civilized man's cupidity than into the filth and sloth of the savage." But all these magnificent boasts were quite premature. A few short years have sufficed to demonstrate that the deluded authors of them, who had so lamentably failed to predict ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... removed from their natural element, cannot live long on the land, so he began to pine when not in some post of authority which he was driven to be solicitous for by the squabbles of his troops of clients, whose boundless cupidity prevented their ever being innocent, and who thrust their patron forward into affairs of state in order to be able to perpetrate all sorts of crimes ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... in the affirmative. It was somewhat singular, but the sisters did not then remark it, that a man so peaceable in his pursuits, and seemingly possessed of no valuables that could tempt cupidity, should in that spot, where crime was never heard of, use such ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the maimed P.T., gasping on Hiram's arm, to the victorious champion who had defeated this redoubtable bird so easily. His Yankee shrewdness told him that the showman had undoubtedly produced his best for this conflict; his Yankee cupidity hinted that by taking advantage of Hiram's present flustered state of mind he might turn a dollar. He glanced from Hiram to Cap'n Sproul, standing at one side, and said ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... a daughter, and his stolen riches had vanished almost as rapidly as they were acquired. He had at last settled down with his daughter in this old house. The treasure in the leathern bag, though a treasure to him, was not of a nature to excite general cupidity. It consisted, not of precious stones, but of relics of his dead wife—her rings, a lock of her hair, her letters, a miniature of her in a gold case. These poor keepsakes, and his daughter, had been the only solace of ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... greatest difficulty was experienced in procuring funds to carry on the war. A general lack of confidence in the stability of the Government prevented men from taking up readily the loans which the Government was forced to call for. Various expedients were adopted to attract the cupidity of capitalists. Among these the most successful was the custom of receiving loans upon tontines. This was a species of annuity. Twenty or thirty persons united in the purchase from Government of an annuity upon the joint lives of their whole number. At the death of each his ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... style, that her companions neither could nor would have dared to keep pace with her. How fortunate was her arrival need hardly be observed, as in all probability the English seamen would eventually have been sacrificed to the cupidity and ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as indeed it was worth. By dint of further investigation, the man was identified, and proved to be the sacristan of San ——-. Short-sighted sacristan! He was arrested and thrown into prison, and one benefit resulted from his cupidity, since in order to avoid throwing temptation in the way of future sacristans, it became the custom, after the body had lain in state for some time in magnificent robes, to substitute a plain dress previous to placing the coffin in the vault. A poor ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... and killing rule of no rule; the consecration of cupidity and braying of folly, and dim stupidity and baseness, in most of the affairs of men. Slop-shirts attainable three-half-pence cheaper by the ruin of living ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... swift change in his aspect was terrible. Fury replaced the smooth satisfaction of a few seconds before, and he seemed on the point of springing into his launch again to visit his fury on the woman. But cupidity proved too strong. He turned again to enter the wrecked companionway, for somewhere beneath those shattered timbers lay, to his belief, fifteen bags of the gold dust that he had jeopardized his ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... young man," replied the Mandarin, when a voice without passion was restored to him. "It tears me internally with hooks to reflect that you, whose refined ancestors I might reasonably have known had I passed my youth in another Province, should be victim to the cupidity of the ones in authority at Peking. A very short time before you arrived there came a messenger in haste from those persons, clearly indicating that a legal toll of sixteen taels was to be made on each printed paper setting forth the time and manner of the ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... rival. As, notwithstanding the French king's order of the previous year, he showed a commission from the vice-admiral of France which styled him as lieutenant-general of Acadia, Governor Winthrop, influenced by the merchants of Boston, whose cupidity was excited by the valuable fur trade of Acadia, permitted him to hire both men and shipping in Massachusetts. When his preparations were completed he sailed away, accompanied by a fleet of four ships and a pinnace, the property of two intimate friends of the governor—Major ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... a native chief, they were at a loss to determine. The king himself had never worn the tobe, nor did his predecessor, from a superstitious feeling; besides, observed the king, "it might excite the cupidity of ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... is not because of want of the usual percentage of criminally disposed people among them but because of want of education and opportunity. Commercial immorality and developed swindling are impossible without a commerce, but the cupidity that begets these forms of vice is not lacking amongst the Natives and waits only for the opportunities which developed commerce affords. The potential capacity for criminality and immorality is indeed no less among the ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... remnant shall have passed away. At the time when I first stepped upon these grounds the red man still grasped the sceptre which has since been wrenched from his hand. They saw the throne of their father beginning to totter. Their realm had attracted the cupidity of a race of strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... struggles or on wretched expedients. Thus she immediately guessed the state of this melancholy sexagenarian's mind, and the illusions which attracted him to her, and scented the spoils which offered themselves to her cupidity of their own accord, and divined under what guise she ought to show herself, to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... was given to Gabrielle and myself prior to the death of the chief victim, showed the utter callousness of the crime. Indeed, Gabrielle Engledue was actually witness of my beloved's mysterious seizure, little dreaming that in a short hour she herself would fall victim to the cupidity of that relentless poisoner who, by his crimes, hoped to amass one of the most ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... to disgorge all his offspring. "And he vomited out the stone first, as he had swallowed it last."(2) The swallowed children emerged alive, and Zeus fixed the stone at Pytho (Delphi), where Pausanias(3) had the privilege of seeing it, and where, as it did not tempt the cupidity of barbarous invaders, it probably still exists. It was not a large stone, Pausanias says, and the Delphians used to pour oil over it, as Jacob did(4) to the stone at Bethel, and on feast-days they covered it with ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... about, their faces lighted up as for holy war, with a smoke of cupidity. How disentangle the passion for equality from the passion of cupidity, when begins the fight for equality of possessions? But the God was the machine. Each man claimed equality in the Godhead of the great productive machine. Every man equally was part of this Godhead. But somehow, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... its history as round that of any nation, ancient or modern, in the Old World." Founded, nobody knows when, by the kings of the Quitus, it was conquered about the year 1000 by a more civilized race, the Cara nation, who added to it by conquest and alliance. The fame of the region excited the cupidity of the Incas of Peru, and during the reign of Cacha (1475), Huayna-Capac the Great moved his army from Cuzco, and by the celebrated battle of Hatuntaqui, in which Cacha was killed, Quito was added to the realm of the Incas. Huayna-Capac made Quito his residence, and reigned there thirty-eight years—the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... of Abd by the 12th, and it remained in our hands from this time forward. This abortive advance against Romani marked the last determined attempt of the Turks to invade the Suez Canal and Egypt. Henceforth the efforts of the Turks were confined to opposing the storm which their misguided cupidity ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... fever in towns, and epidemics of diseases incident to certain trades were beyond the power of the workers themselves to control or prevent, wage earners have come to be looked upon as helpless victims of the cupidity and inhumanity of their employers. This attitude has weakened the usefulness of many bodies organized to promote industrial hygiene. Although the term "industrial hygiene" is broad enough to include all sanitary and hygienic conditions that ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... everywhere, become the best they can become? What that may be, is not free, equal, and perpetual experiment, judged by conscience in the individual and by philanthropy in his brother, and not by arrogance or cupidity in his oppressor, to decide? To secure the wisdom and perpetuity of this experiment, are not governments instituted? Is not a monopoly of opportunity by any single class, by all historical and theoretical proof, not only unjust to the excluded, but crippling and suicidal to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... decrees, and evaded a correction of other outrages, has mingled with the conciliatory tendency of the repeal as much of irritation and disgust as possible." "In fact," he adds, "without a systematic change from an appearance of crafty contrivance and insatiate cupidity, for an open, manly, and upright dealing with a nation whose example demands it, it is impossible that good-will can exist; and that the ill-will which her policy aims at directing against her enemy should not, by her folly and iniquity, be drawn off against ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... long goads. Carlos himself was mounted upon his fine black horse, and, muffled in a strong serape, rode in front to pilot the way. His beautiful manga had been left behind, partly to save it from the rough wear of such an expedition, and also that it might not excite the cupidity of the prairie Indians, who, for such a brilliant mantle as it was, would not hesitate to take his scalp. Besides the manga, the embroidered jacket, the scarlet scarf, and velveteen calzoneros, had all been put off, and others of a coarser kind ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... stones. This beautiful crown was the constant object of my thoughts, my affections and my preference; but I only looked at it myself at long intervals, every six months, very briefly, for fear of exciting the cupidity of servants, and exposing the glory of Agrippina ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... hobnailed shoes on the oak floors, and of unrestrained clownish and churlish voices everywhere, were tremendous. Here a fat cottager might be seen standing on a lovely quilt of patchwork brocade, pulling down, rough in her cupidity, curtains on which the new-born and dying eyes of generations of nobles had rested, henceforth to adorn a miserable cottage, while her husband was taking down the bed, larger perhaps, than the room itself in which they would in vain try to set it up, or cruelly ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... or any other party measure in a divided administration, yet the President chafed under his inability to fulfill party pledges. The surplus continued to accumulate, to permit extravagance in Congress, and to arouse the cupidity of citizens. In his message to his second Congress, in 1887, Cleveland startled the country by devoting his undivided attention to this single topic. He set his party a text which could not be evaded, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... on, determined to speak out that which was in my mind, "had no business to make such a will, which could only lead to trouble. And I should have been a scoundrel had I sacrificed your happiness to my own cupidity—or, rather, had I attempted to do so. You might have thought it your duty to take me, Isabella, had I asked you to, for the sake of the money—though you have always spared me any doubts as to your opinion of me. You have always known my faults, and been less charitable towards them than ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... that during that year, in repeated instances, Indian men and widows of deceased Indians were driven from their homes by the threats of armed men; that in one case at least the habitation of an Indian woman was burned, and that the kind of outrages were resorted to which too often follow the cupidity of whites and the possession of fertile lands by defenseless and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... this English sentiment so much more efficient than our Irish sentiment, after all? Mr Broadbent spends his life inefficiently admiring the thoughts of great men, and efficiently serving the cupidity of base money hunters. We spend our lives efficiently sneering at him and doing nothing. Which of us has any ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... masters of your section of the country are disposed to treat their unfortunate slaves with kindness. But where the dreadful privilege of slave-holding is extended to all, in every neighborhood, there must be individuals whose cupidity is unrestrained by any principle of humanity, whose lusts are fiercely indulged, whose fearful power over the bodies, nay, may I not say the souls, of their victims is ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... however. Sira heard the propaganda division's latest fabrication about her alleged kidnaping by terrestrial agents. She needed no radiation meter to tell her of the intense wave of hatred for the Earth that swept over the densely packed area. And this was followed by another emotion—a wave of cupidity—set up by the offer of 100,000 I. P. dollars reward for her return. She saw about her faces greedy, faces wistful, even compassionate faces. But outnumbering them by far were faces ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... lives of families and its dire effects are directly traceable in the feuds and degeneration of their descendants. The chief lesson taught by history is danger of violating, physically, mentally, or spiritually the personal integrity of woman. Customs of the country and the cupidity of Laban, forced polygamy on Jacob, and all the shadows in his life, and he had no end of trouble in after years, are due to this. Perhaps nothing but telling their stories in this brutally frank way would ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... discomfiture of this ruffian did not affect the value of the evidence which he had volunteered. Langholm was glad to remember that he had volunteered it; the creature was well served for his spite and his cupidity; and the man of peace and letters, whose temperament shrank from contention of any kind, could not but congratulate himself upon an incidental triumph for which it was impossible to feel the smallest compunction. Moreover, he had gained his point. It was enough for him to know that ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... The Chinaman's cupidity was clearly excited by Bennett's offer, while the bare mention of the amount at stake was sufficient to overcome ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... had ever seen any legitimate marriages, no one had beheld any children whose parentage was indubitable; nor had any one any idea what great advantage there might be in a system of equal law. And so, owing to error and ignorance, cupidity, that blind and rash sovereign of the mind, abused its bodily strength, that most pernicious of servants, for the purpose of gratifying itself. At this time then a man,[56] a great and a wise man truly was he, perceived what ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... from the dangers of bombardment. This expected tribute of ten millions of dollars, (to be divided equally among them,) from the border cities, was the greatest inducement held out by the rebel leaders before leaving Canada, to their desperadoes, in order to excite their cupidity and zeal, and inflame their minds to such a pitch, that they would render a strict obedience to their officers, and hesitate at no act of violence. These were the plans of the conspirators, and although ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... humbug aired than that about our "brilliant" Wall Street financiers. Their "brilliancy" is merely a repulsive egotism in one of its worst forms,—that of cupidity. They are like misers with longer, quicker, and more sinewy fingers than other misers, in the gathering together of dollars. Their shrewdness may be exceptional, but a quality which consists half in accurate guessing and half in bullying defiance is hardly worthy of the name. As for their "nerve" ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... Congo—for the possession of which Germany has worked ceaselessly year in and year out during the last fifteen years by a steady and highly subsidized propaganda against the Belgian administration. She has done it through conscious and unconscious agents; by playing upon the cupidity of French and British Parliamentarians, of rum shippers, upon religious differences, and upon ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... period had elapsed she was buried in the vaults of the Apostles' Church. She was buried, as the custom then was, with her jewelled rings on her fingers, and most of her rich ornaments on her person. These tempted the cupidity of the sexton of the church. He argued with himself that they were no use to the corpse, and he determined to possess them. Accordingly he proceeded in the dead of night to the vault where she lay interred, ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... standard required by the wants of the Government. The rates required to produce a sufficient revenue for the ordinary expenditures of Government for necessary purposes were not likely to give to the private partners in this scheme profits sufficient to satisfy their cupidity, and hence a variety of expedients and pretexts were resorted to for the purpose of enlarging the expenditures and thereby creating a necessity for keeping up a high protective tariff. The effect of this policy was to interpose artificial restrictions upon the natural ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that I shall stand idly by, without a struggle to defend the name of my deceased benefactor from such impudent abuse? That I should be content to see the very hearth-stone of my friend seized, by the grossest cupidity? That I should surrender the guardianship of his grave to one, with whom he never had a thought, a feeling, a sympathy in common?—to one, who would not scruple to sell that grave ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Avignon, yet the undisputed writings of Clemangis contain denunciations of the corruptions of the church quite as decided as any found in the spurious treatise. In his tract De Praesulibus Simoniacis, for example, he declares that the degradation of the clergy, fostered by the cupidity of the episcopate, had indeed made God's house a den of robbers. It was "rapinae officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata etiam venduntur," etc. Muentz, 53. Certainly it would be hard to portray the life of the priests in darker colors than they appear in the letters ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... suspicion that Lady Mason could have been in any way to blame. He, the baronet, was thoroughly convinced that Mr. Mason was the great sinner in this matter, and that he was prepared to harass an innocent and excellent lady from motives of disappointed cupidity and long-sustained malice, which made him seem in Sir Peregrine's eyes a being almost too vile for humanity. And of Dockwrath he thought almost as badly—only that Dockwrath was below the level of his thinking. Of Lady Mason he spoke as an excellent ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
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