"Greed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... town I took the road By the full-flood Tweed; The black clouds swept across the moon With devouring greed. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... slave-whip's poignant crack, The sound of avarice and turpitude, As hands unwilling plied their arduous task, Creating monuments to iron will, Human injustice, greed ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... shot wicked gleams of hate as they fell upon the object of his loathing. In them, too, was greed for the toothsome ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the spoils of wood and wold, From selfish greed and wilful waste your little hands withhold. Though fair things be common, this moral bear in mind, "Pick thankfully and modestly, and leave a ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... principles and actual practice, and they venture to believe that a professed self-government which deliberately ignores its own axioms is tending to decadence. They are not unmindful of the slow evolution of human government from earliest history, beginning in force and greed, reaching through struggles of blood, in the course of time, to the legislative stage where differences are adjudicated by reason, and the sword reserved as the last resort. This vantage ground has been gained only by a recognition of the primal right of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... Con exclaimed, "Methinks this Scot should be ashamed To snatch at once, in sateless greed, The fairest maid and finest steed; My realm is dwindled in mine eyes, I know not what to praise or prize, And even my noble dog, O Bard, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... touches were Forster all over. One would have given anything to let him have his two or three glasses, but one had to be cruel to be kind. Old Sam Johnson was of the same pattern, and could not resist a dinner-party, even when in serious plight. He certainly precipitated his death by his greed. ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... nose looked as if a heavy finger had settled upon its point, and pressed it downwards: its nostrils swelled wide beyond their base; underneath was a big mouth with a good set of teeth, and a strong upturning chin—an ambitious and greedy face. But ambition is a form of greed. ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... body of savages joined Burgoyne at Fort Edward. Better for him had they staid in their native wilds, for he presently found himself equally powerless to control their thirst for blood, or greed for plunder. ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... a godly parent's hand also. Little Obstinate's two parents were far from ungodly people, though they lived in such a city; but they were daily destroying their only son by letting him always have his own way, and by never saying no to his greed, and his lies, and his anger, and his noisy and disorderly ways. Eli in the Old Testament was not a bad man, but he destroyed both the ark of the Lord and himself and his sons also, because his sons made themselves vile, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... of that face were hard to read, drink had so swollen them, drink had so painted them, in tints that varied from brick-red to mulberry. The small grey eyes blinked, the lips moved, with greed; greed was the ruling passion; and though there was some good nature, some genuine kindliness, a true human touch, in the old toper, his greed was now so set afire by hope, that all other traits of character lay dormant. He sat there ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shows the desire for knowledge that would give universal power, a desire born of the Renaissance. The Jew of Malta is the incarnation of the passion for the world's wealth, a passion that towers above common greed only by the magnificence of its immensity. In that ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... court. At these words the Jew exclaimed, "God damn them all! I never once succeeded in finding among them any holiness, any devotion, any good works; but, on the contrary, luxurious living, avarice, greed, fraud, envy, pride, and even worse, if there is worse; all the machine seemed to be set in motion by an impulse less divine than diabolical. After what I saw, it is my firm conviction that your pope, and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... other day a boy was knocked down by a funeral-car. It may have been an accident, but it has all the appearance of greed. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... news from Palestine: news that there, too, after all the safeguards, the greed of a few was working to plant the old European wrong: for, the Sanhedrim being short of funds for a railway, a syndicate of five merchant-princes had offered to buy from it an estate between Jerusalem and ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... of this blackest of calamities? The speaker went on to show that the determining motive was not racial jealousy, but commercial greed. The fountain-head of the war was world-capitalism, clamouring for markets, seeking to get rid of its surplus products, to keep busy its hordes of wage-slaves at home. He analysed the various factors; ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... in his arms, more terrible still had heard his little child shriek with agony, clutch at him and pray for water—he saw the truth, and what power there is above so guided his arm that he struck. The man paid the just price for his colossal greed. The vultures plucked his heart out in the desert. ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of greed and corruption Clarence Brant stepped from the shadow of the War Department. For the last three weeks he had haunted its ante-rooms and audience-chambers, in the vain hope of righting himself before his superiors, who were content, without formulating charges against him, to keep ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded so moved his feelings, that he exclaimed, "Great God! I can't stand this any longer; Take this bread, and give it to that woman," (Mrs. Lee), and forgetting for the time the greed of gain which had brought him thither, he lent a helping hand most zealously to the care of the wounded. During the day, General McClellan's head-quarters were at Boonsboro', and his aids were constantly passing back and forth over the Sharpsburg ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... vices of the rulers, I have returned to these islands, and under the cloak of a merchant have visited the towns. My gold has opened a way for me and wheresoever I have beheld greed in the most execrable forms, sometimes hypocritical, sometimes shameless, sometimes cruel, fatten on the dead organism, like a vulture on a corpse, I have asked myself—why was there not, festering in its vitals, the corruption, the ptomaine, the poison of the tombs, to kill the foul bird? The ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... and were astonished at having fifty cents returned. Supposing there was some mistake, we demurred, when he said, "My charge is two York shillings or twenty-five cents United States money." Surely we thought the spirit of Yankee greed has not yet penetrated the Provinces, when two women, three trunks, satchels, &c., can be comfortably transported for so small a sum. At the hotel we were at once ushered into a warm and comfortable suite of rooms, a pleasant contrast to the usual season of weary waiting for a room. ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... at Lisbon. Throughout Spain also chaos reigned. Each provincial Junta refused co-operation with others, and instead of concerting measures for resistance against the great force that Napoleon was assembling on the frontier, thought only of satisfying the ambitions and greed of its members. The generals disregarded alike the orders from the central Junta at Madrid and those of the provincial Juntas, quarrelled among themselves to a point that sometimes approached open hostility, and each acted only for his private ends. Arms had been sent in vast numbers ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... many people of pessimistic disposition say much about greed in American life. One would think to hear them talk that we were a race of misers in this country. To lay too much stress upon the reports of greed in the newspapers would be folly, since their function is to report the unusual and even the abnormal. When a man ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... from a bad Consul, she had never before been afflicted by two together. While there was one Consul worthy of the name, Catulus had declared that Cicero would be safe. But there had come two, two together, whose spirits had been so narrow, so low, so depraved, so burdened with greed and ignorance, "that they had been unable to comprehend, much less to sustain the splendor of the name of Consul. Not Consuls were they, but buyers and sellers of provinces." These were Piso and Gabinius, of whom the former was now governor of Macedonia, and the ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... selfish and unprincipled of kings [Footnote: Whose conduct at this time largely hinged on the refusal of the Pope to grant him his wished-for divorce from Katherine.]—who was only progressive in the matter of wives—and by his ministers, who were, many of them, men of vile characters and greed. As to motive, it is very patent to-day what that was. It was that of the man who covets his neighbour's goods, i.e. the lands and moneys of the monasteries and churches, and who whitewashes his sin when his desire ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... justice, there was no greed in her nature, and she even offered Wilmet a turquoise hoop of her own, instead of a little battered ring of three plaited strands of gold, which their mother had worn till her widowhood, and they believed to be the ring of her betrothal. And when Wilmet suggested that the locket would delight Cherry, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ecclesiastical evidence is accepted, and deprived of any a priori objection by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology, show themselves ready to take poor Sludge seriously, and to believe that he is possessed by other devils than those of need, greed, and vainglory. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... that could happen here would be if one knew that this life was only a short journey that was to terminate at the beginning of an eternity of joy? But no one really believed this; and as for those who pretended to do so—their lives showed that they did not believe it at all. Their greed and inhumanity—their ferocious determination to secure for themselves the good things of THIS world—were conclusive proofs of their ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... that somehow, somewhere, in me arose an insatiable greed to feel better. I was so happy that I wanted to pitch my happiness even higher. And I knew the way. Ten thousand contacts with John Barleycorn had taught me. Several times I wandered out of the kitchen to the cocktail bottle, and each time I left it diminished by ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... continued the Hindu soldier, "you should have forgotten the blue diamonds, the abiding greed for which was the real cause of your undoing; you should have forgotten your lost wealth and honourable position, your dear ones gone to the abode of bliss, the enemies who had despitefully used you but who, as your own religion teaches, were in truth only God's emissaries sent ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... they have given me a quarter dinar for thee, that thou mayest go down and look at the little one and prescribe for it." As soon as the Jew saw the quarter dinar he rejoiced and rose quickly in his greed of gain and went forth hurriedly in the dark; but hardly had he made a step when he stumbled on the corpse and threw it over, when it rolled to the bottom of the staircase. So he cried out to the girl to hurry up with the light, and she brought ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... The Gujarati was showing himself in his true colors. His greed was roused, and the chance of setting up as a pirate on his own account, and making himself a copy of the man whose prisoner he had been, had prompted this pretty little scheme. Desmond crept noiselessly away and returned to his quarters. Not to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... would find the change From all that we have seen or heard, to others just as strange— But it never could be wise, dear, in haste to act or speak; It never could be noble to harm the poor and weak; It never could be kind, dear, to give a needless pain; It never could be honest, dear, to sin for greed or gain; And there could not be a world, dear, while God is true above, Where right and wrong were governed by any law ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... possessions to the Church, reserving in them a life-interest for his virtual wife; and when the cousinry swooped down on what they thought their prey, Madame Mulhausen could receive them and their condolences with the indignant scorn which their greed and cruelty deserved. They disputed the will on the alleged plea of the testator's insanity. The trial was interrupted by the events of 1870, but finally settled in the lady's favour; the verdict being uncompromising as to her moral, ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... need a few more optimists, The brave of heart that long resists The force of Hate and Greed and lust And keeps in God and man his trust, Believing, as he makes his fight That everything will end all right— Yet through the dreary days and nights Unfalteringly serves and fights, And helps to gain the joys which he Believes are ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... better for a great journal to do. The average girl is so helpless, and the greed of the employer is such, that unless some newspaper or some person of great influence comes to her assistance, she is liable not simply to be imposed upon, but to be made a slave. Girls, as a rule, ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... difference between annexation necessary to maintain the integrity of our glorious realm, as in the case of Bechuana, and the annexations so often observed in the policy of Continental Powers, springing from a mere greed of empire. We may deplore, indeed, that a preceding Administration has involved us in responsibilities almost beyond the power of statesmen to grapple with successfully; but that is the habit of preceding Administrations, and now that such measures are beyond recall we shall ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... "independent" trading-post at this village which seemed to present an object-lesson in rapacity and greed. There was not an article of standard quality in the store; the clothing was the most rascally shoddy, the canned goods of the poorest brands; the whole stock the cheapest stuff that could possibly be bought at bargain prices ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... emotional incident and sensuous perception. His adherence to the old political order was at bottom due to an aesthetic conviction that democracy was vulgar. To Valerius, on the contrary, the Republic was the chief concern and Caesar its saviour from fraud and greed. As the years passed he became more and more absorbed in his country's service at the cost of his own inclinations. Gravity and reserve grew upon him and the sacrifice of inherited moral standards to the claims of intellectual freedom would to ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... Damas answered: "I beseech you, deal mercifully with me, for all that I have done, I have done at the bidding of Queen Morgan le Fay." "A coward's plea," said the King; "how camest thou first to have traffic with her?" "Sir," replied Damas, "much have I suffered, first by the greed of my younger brother and now by the deceit of this evil woman, as ye shall hear. When my father died, I claimed the inheritance as of right, seeing that I was his elder son; but my young brother, Sir Ontzlake, withstood me, and demanded ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... her. I was breathless and colourless, with the heart of a hawk eyeing his bird—a fox, would be the truer comparison, but the bird was noble, not one that cowered. Her beauty and courage lifted me into high air, in spite of myself, and it was a huge weight of greed that fell away ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the course of his duty was called to arrest Henry Smith for being drunk and disorderly. The Negro was unruly, and Vance was forced to use his club. The Negro swore vengeance, and several times assaulted Vance. In his greed for revenge, last Thursday, he grabbed up the little girl and committed the crime. The father is prostrated with grief and the mother now lies at death's door, but she has lived to see the slayer ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... satellites responded to his lead, and indulged in a few feeble jests, the farmer and foresters hardly vouchsafed a word or a smile. In part, maybe, this was due to the poverty of the wit of their sable companions, but the three were obviously ill at ease. Greed and a sort of religious fanaticism had brought them into the ranks of the conspirators, but their national instincts were rebuking them each moment. They felt traitors, and not all the sophistries of the priests—which put the Church first, and country a long way after—could ease their ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... grows louder, the flame ringed een Glow with greed as the night sinks, black; Swerve and double still o'er your track The pitiless, questing ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... increase, Whate'er of light, gratuitous, imparts The Supreme Good; light, ministering aid, The better disclose his glory: whence The vision needs increasing, much increase The fervour, which it kindles; and that too The ray, that comes from it. But as the greed Which gives out flame, yet it its whiteness shines More lively than that, and so preserves Its proper semblance; thus this circling sphere Of splendour, shall to view less radiant seem, Than shall our fleshly robe, which yonder ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... no doubt of it. The small dark eyes were repellent with low cunning and greed. Instinctively he half turned to cast a glance toward the door. At once the smile disappeared, and the self-confessed law-breaker threw open his coat and significantly tapped the butt of a revolver. "No. You just sit still ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... — 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. covet, crave (desire) 865; grasp; exact, extort. Adj. greedy, avaricious, covetous, acquisitive, grasping; rapacious; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lurking deep in his eyes, his mouth half open, seemingly ready to snap shut the instant he detected greed or cupidity in Harlan's eyes, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... have during its persual the companionship that the writer had when it was made, they would think it altogether delightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going about the world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind is distracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. The delight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniary profit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which the philosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, as Plato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings and factions? whence but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the days of my youth, those merry days of California before the gold was about her dear form like prisoner's chains; before the greed of the States and England had forced us into the weary drudgery of the earth, and made us ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... to resist Turks, convert pagans, banish Moslems, and crush Protestants. Yet the very forces engaged in defending the church, the army and the Inquisition, were alien to the Christian life; they were fit embodiments rather of chivalry and greed, or of policy and jealous dominion. The ecclesiastical forces also, theology, ritual, and hierarchy, employed in spreading the gospel were themselves alien to the gospel. An anti-worldly religion finds itself in fact in this dilemma: if it remains merely spiritual, developing no material ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... 1903. The offspring of poverty: Greed, sordidness, envy, hate, malice, cruelty, meanness, lying, shirking, cheating, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Their greed thus excited, every hireling was anxious to earn the reward, and it would certainly be dangerous for any one to attempt again the cruel role of ghost, ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... Englishmen are feeling shocked that those who ought to be so far above the greed of gain have let their honor be trampled in the mire for the sake of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 34, July 1, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of "communism" that under such a condition "the incentive of private initiative would disappear" and that no other motive could take its place, is an argument based upon the assumption that human nature derives more inspiration from the idea of dishonourable greed than it derives from the idea of honourable and useful labour; which is an assumption so wholly opposed to true psychology that it has only to be nakedly stated to be seen in its ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... and complaining, were forced through the canyon to the bed of the narrow, shallow stream, on their way to the opening in the cliffs, through which the brook fell in a tiny waterfall over the edge of the precipice. These innocent instruments and victims of the greed and passions of man! ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... the prince in scorn: "My curse upon thee, viper! What to thee Is Caius? Still I live! And he was born To ape the others—lies, greed, roguery, And aught but manhood. If he had, 'twere vain; No hero now Rome's downfall may restrain. If gods there were, upon this ruined soil No god could bring forth fruit; but that weak lad! Nay, nay, not him—the spirits stern and sad That dog my steps and mock at all my coil, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and thyself have suffered, By greed of those transalpine lands distrained, The garden of the ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... gates. There he bade Tsamanni fling a purse to the crouching beggars—for is it not written in the Most Perspicuous Book that of alms ye shall bestow what ye can spare, for such as are saved from their own greed shall prosper, and whatever ye give in alms, as seeking the face of Allah ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... spokesman said: "we sold All of our gray garrotes of gold; With plated-ware we now compress The necks of those whom we assess. Plain iron forceps we employ To mitigate the miser's joy Who hoards, with greed that never tires, That which your Majesty requires." Deep lines of thought were seen to plow Their way across the royal brow. "Your state is desperate, no question; Pray favor me with a suggestion." "O King of Men," the spokesman said, ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... te kai biaiotatos kai phonikotatos}, or if {pleonektistatos te kai biaiotatis}, translate "such a manner of greed and violence as the one, of insolence, etc., as the other?" See ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... invasion threat? Then let the louns beware, Sir! Scotland, they'll find, is Scotland yet, And for hersel' can fare, Sir. The Thames shall run to join the Tweed, Criffel adorn Thames valley, 'Ere wanton wrath and vulgar greed On Scottish ground shall rally. ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... your consideration. When you plunged them into this abyss of greed and deceit did no phantom of their lost manhood rise and confront you ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... thanks to the Almighty God, I am above the base principle of holding anybody a slave that has as good right to her freedom as this girl has been proven to have; she was free before she was born; her mother was free, but kidnapped in her youth, and sacrificed to the greed of negro traders, and no free woman can give birth to a slave child, as it is in direct violation of the laws of God ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... geographical, anthropological, or ethnographical mission who was not something of a linguist or who was not accompanied by a linguist, and who had not given proof of sympathy with alien races. Hayward fell a victim as much to his temper as to the greed and treachery of Mir Wali, whom he had insulted. An Arabic proverb says that "the traveller even when he sees is blind," and if, in addition to this artificial blindness, he is practically both deaf and dumb owing to his ignorance of the language of the people among whom he moves, it is almost ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... greed for money has darkened and cramped your wife's life, and deprived her of self-expression, of needed rest and recreation, or amusement ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Beaudesart possessed a vast store of Debrett—information touching those early gentlemen-colonists whose enterprise is hymned by loftier harps than mine, but whose sordid greed and unspeakable arrogance has yet to be said or sung. Socially, she knew something fie-fie about most of our old nobility; and her class-sympathy, supported by the quasi-sacredness which invests aristocratic giddiness, lent ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... in his thoughts as superior to all the dignities and unsatisfying honors of the world; since it was founded, neither by any mortal man, nor by the caprice of the variable and servile populace, nor by the irruption or invasion of barbarians, nor by the violence of rebellious armies urged on by greed, nor by angel nor archangel, nor by any created power, but by the Paraclete himself. How, for a motive so unworthy, for a mere woman, for a tear or two, feigned, perhaps, scorn that august dignity, that authority that was not conceded ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... preceding only in a sense of that proud historic retrospect which concerns past radiant records of "the street." He may, if so minded, con other pages of its noble archives, and dazzle his young brain with admiration for the shining exploits of "Black Friday," an occasion when greed held one of its most sickening revels, and a clique of merciless financiers gathered together so many millions of gold coin that its price bred fright among the holders of depreciating stocks. Agony, ruin, the demolition of firesides, resulted from this infamous "corner" ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... wretch! Is it actually possible, sir, that you have no sense whatever of shame?—that you are so full of selfishness that there is no room in you for any other feeling? Are you forgetful of the fact, Mr Dale, that it is to your greed and clumsiness we are indebted for the greatly increased hardships of our situation? But for you, sir, the pinnace would probably have been still afloat; yet you are the one who presumes to murmur at the privations of ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... we turn to that great tragedy of family, "Pere Goriot," the change is complete. Now are we plunged into an atmosphere of greed, jealousy, uncleanliness and hate, all steeped in the bourgeois street air of Paris. In this tale of thankless daughters and their piteous old father, all the hideousness possible to the ties of kin is uncovered to our frightened yet fascinated eye. The plot holds us in a ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... hands of the successful cocotte," which somehow seemed oddly illuminating. Lady Clifford's hands had a meaning for her now. The soft cushioned palms spelled love of luxury, the stumpy, curving fingers and talon-like nails indicated acquisitive greed. She could ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... up the path to the little one-story house where the Ballards lived. Grandsir was by the fire, pounding walnuts in a little wooden mortar, to make a paste for his toothless jaws, and little 'Melia, a bowl of nuts before her, sat in a high chair at the table, lost in reckless greed. Her doll, forgotten, lay across a corner of the table, in limp abandon, the buttonholed eyes staring nowhere. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... allowed. In the majority of cases payment was evaded altogether. I have been amongst this sort of thing on several occasions, and feel some difficulty in writing with calmness when I reflect on all the unnecessary hardships and sufferings that were caused by sheer wanton greed. On four different voyages I learnt how terrible it was to be short of provisions and water, and in three out of the four this was preventable. The first case was excusable owing to the long continuance of easterly gales in the chops of the English Channel. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... things that are to be. The last great fight, the Armageddon, draweth very near. All that is good is on one side in the fight, and the Captain over all. What is bad is on the other side—all kinds of tyranny and greed and lust. I did not hear these words, but I felt the things, only without any fear, for round me were the everlasting arms. And the battlefield is Ireland, our dear Ireland which we love. All these centuries since the great saints died He has kept Ireland to be His battlefield. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... "He was neither. He was an ambition incarnate; an ambition so vast there were few to understand it, for it had no personal side. You said the other night that but few motives rule men. La Salle has been misunderstood because the usual motives—greed, the love of woman, and the desire for fame—did not touch him. He was the slave of one great idea, and so he was lonely and men feared him." I finished with some defiance. I knew that the blood had risen in my cheeks as I spoke, for some subjects touch me as if I were a woman. The Englishman ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... just returned to America by way of Tokio. She had been in London, Paris, Petrograd, Cairo; and, everywhere, as a result of the war, she said, she found a mad carnival of recklessness and extravagance. Everywhere the old standards of decency and honor had been set aside, greed and lust were rampant, the whole human race seemed to be swept as with a mighty tide, by three fierce desires—for money, for pleasure, for sensuality. And God ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... forces in life—the destructive and constructive. On the one side greed, selfishness, materialism: on the other generosity, sacrifice, and idealism. Which of them builded for the future? She saw men as wolves, sharks, snakes, vermin, and opposed to them men as lions and eagles. She saw women who did not inspire men to fare forth to seek, to imagine, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... taking, as they take in war. Were not all these heathen and given? But he would have another way round, though often he compromised with war; never wanting war but forced by his time and his companions. Sometimes, in the future, forced by the people we came among, but far oftener forced by greed and lust and violence of our own. Alas, again! Alas, again ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... conditions. So God help me, said Lionel, sir priest, but if ye flee from him I shall slay you, and he shall never the sooner be quit. Certes, said the good man, I have liefer ye slay me than him, for my death shall not be great harm, not half so much as of his. Well, said Lionel, I am greed; and set his hand to his sword and smote him so hard that his head yede backward. Not for that he restrained him of his evil will, but took his brother by the helm, and unlaced it to have stricken off his ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... in our money, was a pauper compared with John Burkett Ryder, whose holdings no man could count, but which were approximately estimated at a thousand millions of dollars. The railroads had created the Trust, the ogre of corporate greed, of which Ryder was the incarnation, and in time the Trust became master of the railroads, which after all seemed but ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... run that each one should look out for himself, rather than to be so careless of his own interests and needs as to require help from others. The problem in education is so to balance selfishness and greed with unselfishness and generosity that each serves as a check and a balance to the other. Not elimination but equilibrium ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... de dyar' up, an' hit wuz 'greed de race wuz ter be over seben mountain ridges, an' dat hit wuz ter be run 'twix' one wolf an' one tarr'pin, de res' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... heaven descend? Can the earth-worm soar and rise? Can the mortal comprehend Heaven's own hallow'd mysteries? Greed and glory, power and pelf— These are won by clowns and kings; Wherefore weariest thou ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... not the road 190 So shining and broad: Along it there speed With feverish tread The multitudes led By infamous greed. ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... never whispered then, Making slaves of eager men; Greed had never called me down To the gray walls of the town, Offering frankincense and myrrh If I'd be its prisoner; I was free to come and go Where the cherry blossoms blow, Free to wander where I would, Finding ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... longer girt by foes, He darkly stood beside that sullen wave, Watching the sluggish waters, whose repose Imaged the gloomy shadows in his heart; Vultures, that, in the greed of appetite, Still sating blind their passionate delight, Lose all the wing for flight, And, brooding deafly o'er the prey they tear, Hear never the low voice that cries, "depart, Lest with your surfeit you partake the snare!" Thus fixed by brooding and rapacious thought, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... other phenomena wholly or partially inexplicable. It is easy to see why Rome trended downward when great slave-tilled farms spread over what had once been a country-side of peasant proprietors, when greed and luxury and sensuality ate like acids into the fibre of the upper classes, while the mass of the citizens grew to depend not upon their own exertions, but upon the State, for their pleasures and their very ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... the expiation of this great crime. The Nibelungen Hoard, the cause of the shameful deed, was sunk in the middle of the Rhine in order to prevent future strife arising from human greed. But Chriemhild's undying sorrow was not mitigated, nor her unconquerable ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... than to ambush and attack the Spanish treasure trains that carried gold and jewels across the Isthmus of Panama,—riches wrung from the natives by Spanish greed. Leaving a small number of men in charge of his ships, Drake advanced into the wild and tropical country of Central America along the route that the treasure trains traveled. When the tinkling of the bells on the harnesses of the pack animals warned him of the approach of ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... that the ballot is a two-edged, nay, a many-edged sword, which may be made to cut in every direction. If wily politicians and sordid capitalists may wield it for mere party and personal greed; if oppressed wage-earners may invoke it to wring justice from legislators and extort material advantages from employers; if the lowest and most degraded classes of men may use it to open wide the sluice-ways of ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... into the cellars, musty and dull. Tuxedos totter through the rubble of the street. Faces are moldy and worn out. The blue morning burns coolly in the city. How quickly music and dance and greed melted... It smells of the sun. And day begins With trolleys, horses, shouts and wind. Dull daily labor cloaks the people in dust. Families silently wolf down lunch. At times a hall still vibrates through a skull, Much dull desire ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... another cigar. The night was getting on to what I may call its deepest hour, the hour most favourable to evil purposes of men's hate, despair or greed—to whatever can whisper into their ears the unlawful counsels of protest against things that are; the hour of ill- omened silence and chill and stagnation, the hour when the criminal plies his trade and the victim of sleeplessness reaches ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... measure the work that extorted it. Looking at it, it will be difficult for the reader to believe that a sacrifice was made of the man to whom it refers by a representative Christian body, and merely to sate for a time the inhuman slave-greed; yet it is only one fact out of many that might be adduced, and I have brought it forward because it is, in my father's words, "a fair exponent of the position of the Christian Church at that time upon the subject of Slavery." Henceforward, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... they do not touch with a finger.... They render justice not so much for truth's sake as for a price.... The Roman pontiff himself becomes burdensome to all, and almost intolerable." Honorius III in 1226 acknowledged to the English bishops that this greed was a long-standing scandal and disgrace, but he ascribed it to the poverty of Rome, and proposed that in order to remove the difficulty two stalls should be given to him for nomination in every cathedral and collegiate chapter. The magnates ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... order, and, in fact, really forming a branch of the last, we find the great group of storage-tissues, the granaries or bankers of the body-politic, distinguished primarily, like the capitalist class elsewhere, by an inordinate appetite, not to say greed. They sweep into their interior all the food-materials which are not absolutely necessary for the performance of the vital function of the other cells. These they form first into protoplasm, and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... fresh young pride in her arose in imperative demand for something better in the future. She listened with interest to what George Holt said to her. All her life she had been driven by a man of inflexible will, his very soul inoculated with greed for possessions which would give him power; his body endowed with unfailing strength to meet the demands he made on it, and his heart wholly lacking in sentiment; but she did not propose to start her new life by ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... unknown quantity, which penetrate everywhere. I can see how men down in the great city are weaving their nets of selfishness and falsehood, and calling them industrial enterprises or political combinations. I can see how the wheels of society are moved by the hidden springs of avarice and greed and rivalry. I can see how children drink in the fables of religion, without understanding them, and how prudent men repeat them without believing them. I can see how the illusions of love appear and vanish, and how men and women swear that their dreams ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... but if the rage of Exeter Hall should ever recur, and the orators of the old platform should revive a taste for anti-papal agitation, they might find in Matthew Paris as rich a repertory of testimonials against Roman aggression and greed as the most rabid Irish Protestant could desire. 'O thou Pope,' he bursts out once, 'thou the father of all the fathers in Christ, how it is that thou sufferest the realms of Christendom to be fouled by such creatures as are thine?' The 'creatures' were the papal legates and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... trying for a minute to shelve. How was it that in a land of milk and honey men were finding it so hard to live? How was it that with conditions in which every man might have enough and to spare, making it his aim to see that his fellow had the same, there could be greed and ingenious oppression and social crime, with the menace of things graver still? What's the matter with us? he asked, helplessly. Was it something wrong with the American people? or was it something wrong with the whole human race? or was it a ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... the sanction of royalty in the background. And this fact is further enhanced by one of its immediate consequences. Proceeding upon the abounding faith which these peoples have in business enterprise as a universal solvent, the unreserved venality and greed of their businessmen—unhampered by the gentleman's noblesse oblige—have pushed the conversion of public law to private gain farther and more openly here than elsewhere. The outcome has been divers measures in restraint of trade ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... of the British arms. Nobody outside of America believes that she can ever make good her claims of independence. No one has ever taken seriously her attempt at self-government. France, alone, actuated by that ancient hatred for England, inspired by the lust of conquest and the greed of spoliation, has sent her ships to our aid. But has she furnished the Colonies with a superior force of arms? Has she rendered herself liable for any indebtedness? Your mother country alone has made this benign offer to you, and it is to her alone that ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... creatures when there arrived, one morning, a party of men and horses and machines, who proceeded at once, with the clatter and confusion which follows the doings of men, to lay low their green protecting walls, and expose their cherished treasures to the greed or the cruelty of their worst enemies! Not less their surprise and grief when, after the uproar of cutting, raking and carrying away their only screen, there entered the silent but watchful spies, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... family of de Glane, part of which—through the marriage of Agnes to Count Rodolphe I, and of Juliane to Guillaume of the cadet branch of Gruyere—had extended the domain of the latter house. Undeterred by the greed of the bishop, Rodolphe piously preserved the traditions of his predecessors Raimond and Guillaume II, who had founded the monasteries of Humilimont and Hautcret, by continued gifts to the latter as well as to Hauterive. Yet the robber ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... Artiaga, and in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. "Valga me, Dios, Senor! What an experience was that trip to Arizona! It began and ended with disappointment and disaster. All the men of our party seemed to have lost their wits from the greed of gold. They began by hurrying. Those who had the best mounts rushed on ahead, carrying the Indian along with them, and strove to leave their companions who were not so well mounted behind. The first night's camp had of necessity to be made at a point on the Rio Puerco, distant about ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... horse at the outskirts of a huge crowd gathered round Paul's Cross, and had listened to a torrent of vituperation poured out by a famous orator against the mendicant friars; and from the faces and exclamations of the people round him he had learned once more that greed was ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... Indiana did not give an overwrought picture when he said: "Personally, I have seen so much physical ruin, mental blight and moral corruption from strong drink that I hate the traffic. I hate it for its arrogance; I hate it for its hypocrisy; I hate it for its greed and avarice; I hate it for its domination in politics; I hate it for its disregard of law; I hate it for the load it straps on labor's back; I hate it for the wounds it has given to genius, for the human wrecks it has wrought, for the alms-houses ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... had been misdirected, it seemed "o' purpose"; how Mrs. Fenn had died—"I lost her coming two year agone; a remarkable fine woman, my old girl, sir; if you'll excuse me," he added, with a burst of humility. In short, he gave me an opportunity of studying John Bull, as I may say, stripped naked—his greed, his usuriousness, his hypocrisy, his perfidy of the back-stairs, all swelled to the superlative—such as was well worth the little disarray and fluster of our ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... who will make it so strong, so beautiful, so glorified, that never again can it be torn or soiled or stained with human blood. The trumpets are calling for healers and binders who will not be appalled at the task of nursing back to health a wounded world, shot to pieces by injustice, greed, ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... women were finely built and well proportioned, but their best friends could not conscientiously pronounce them handsome; and their unattractiveness was further increased by the expression of their countenances which seemed to be compounded of suspicion, craftiness, greed, and cruelty. They saluted me respectfully enough, however, offered their presents, and then sat down, at my invitation, squatting upon their heels in the usual native fashion, while I sorted out the gifts which I intended to give them. These consisted of a bandana handkerchief or two, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... where heat was almost unbearable. True, their medical skill was the best and their hospitals of the latest design, but where they cured hundreds thousands died like flies. Added to all these disadvantages was extravagance and waste, greed and graft, mismanagement and misappropriation of funds to say nothing of palaces and ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... reduced. Soon there were in Virginia several hundred persons that had lived through the fatal months of June, July and August and were thoroughly "seasoned" or immune to the native disorders. Not until 1618, when the settlers, in their greed for land suitable for the cultivation of tobacco, deserted their homes on the upper James for the marshy ground of the lower country, and new, unacclimated persons began arriving in great numbers, did the pestilence again assume its ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... poet who met his death in the Bay of Spezzia. The Don Juan was no "traitorous" craft. Fuller and more authentic information is to hand now than the meager facts at the disposal of a writer in 1856; and we know that the greed of man, and not the lack of sea-worthiness in his tiny vessel, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... too, in yonder chamber let us look, If nothing missing, or perhaps if greed With impudence itself ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with a thought of beauty; Built by a lawless breed; Builded of lust for power, Builded of gold and greed. ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... first care was to draw down the blind, for Mr. Rolles still remained where they had left him, in an attitude of perplexity and thought. Then he emptied the broken bandbox on the table, and stood before the treasure, thus fully displayed, with an expression of rapturous greed, and rubbing his hand upon his thighs. For Harry, the sight of the man's face under the influence of this base emotion added another pang to those he was already suffering. It seemed incredible that, from his life of pure and delicate ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... think of. They could speak of nothing but that; and yet of that they could speak only falteringly. All business was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to generous sympathy and universal sorrow. Rear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels, but no monument will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... of Hope's character. James Finlay had sold his own honour, but there remained this much good in him, he refused to sell Hope's life. God, reckoning all the evil and baseness of James Finlay's treachery and greed, will no doubt set on the other side of the account the fact that even Finlay recognised high goodness when he saw it, that he did not betray Hope, that he grovelled on the floor before a man whom he hated for the chance of ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... she cast before her young, The man in a nook she throws: “Assuage your greed upon the steed, ...
— King Diderik - and the fight between the Lion and Dragon and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... that produced the already discredited treaty of Versailles? What is the code that made the deadly rivalry of mounting armaments between army and army, navy and navy, of the Europe before 1914? The code, to be sure, of cunning, of greed, of might; the materialism of the philosopher and the naturalism of the sensualist, clothed in grandiose forms and covered with the insufferable hypocrisy of solemn phrases. There are no conceivable ethical or religious interests and no humane goals or values that justify these ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... industry comes so near being common ground for all classes of people. The mineral industry is a field in which it is easy to capitalize not only honest and skillful endeavor, but hopes, guesses, and greed. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the popular mind the valuation of a mineral resource is little more than a guess, and sometimes not even ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... in a day, To raze and shatter, to abase and slay. Blind as the earthquake, headlong as the storm, Yet in such hideous subter-human form, Vulgar as venomous! Dragon indeed, And dangerous, but with no soul save greed, No aim save chaos. Bloody, yet so blind, The common enemy of humankind; Whose age-stored works and ways it yearns to blast, To smite to ruined fragments, and to cast Prone—as itself is prone—in common ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... in the wings of the Tower draw their inspiration from the days of the conquistadors. Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's Fountain of El Dorado is a dramatic representation of the Aztec myth of The Gilded One, which the followers of Cortez, in their greed for gold, mistook for a fact instead of a fable. (p. 54.) The Fountain of Youth by Edith Woodman Burroughs finds its justification as a part of the historical significance of the Tower in the legend of that Fountain of Eternal Youth sought by Ponce de Leon. ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... something to do in my own country. For my experiences there were vivid and amusing. It was exactly as if I had come out of a museum into a riotous fancy-dress ball. During my life with Florence I had almost come to forget that there were such things as fashions or occupations or the greed of gain. I had, in fact, forgotten that there was such a thing as a dollar and that a dollar can be extremely desirable if you don't happen to possess one. And I had forgotten, too, that there was such a thing as ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford |
