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Greediness   Listen
noun
Greediness  n.  The quality of being greedy; vehement and selfish desire. "Fox in stealth, wolf in greediness."
Synonyms: Ravenousness; voracity; eagerness; avidity.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Greediness" Quotes from Famous Books



... But greediness is not an Italian fault. No greedy people would have a five-syllabled ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... he had become a changed man, and repented of his former greediness, he let out the story bit by bit to be a lesson to others, until his friends and neighbours, who loved to listen to anything about fairies, had gathered it all as I have told it to you here. And you may be quite sure it is all true, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... my mother all that had happened, and she declared that my little sister should have no dessert for two days. Regina was greedy, but her pride was greater than her greediness. She turned round on her little heels and, dancing her jig, began to sing, "My little stomach isn't at all pleased," until I wanted to rush at her and ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... sense of the word; nor was he a returned convict. He was simply an idle scamp, who had hung about the world for forty years, doing nothing, without principle, shameless, accustomed to eat dirty puddings, and to be kicked—morally kicked—by such men as Cheesacre. But he was moderate in his greediness, and possessed of a certain appreciation of the comfort of a daily dinner, which might possibly suffice to keep him from straying very wide as long as his intended wife should be able to keep the purse-strings altogether in her own hands. Therefore, I say that Mrs Greenow had been lucky ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... directed at her answered by a beatific, idiotical smile and with some sort of inarticulate animal lowing. If she were not given to eat, she would not even ask; but if food were brought, she would eat with greediness, right with her hands. She became so slovenly and forgetful, that it was necessary to remind her of certain necessary functions in order to avoid unpleasantness. Emma Edwardovna did not send out Pashka to ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... are stupefaction of judgment, obscuration of every faculty, darkness and blind darkness. By darkness is implied death, and by blind darkness is meant wrath. Besides these, the other indications of Tamas are greediness in respect of all kinds of food, ceaseless appetite for both food and drink, taking pleasure in scents and robes and sports and beds and seats and sleep during the day and calumny and all kinds of acts proceeding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... what comes of greediness and of trying to be too clever. Now, perhaps, you will learn to ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... converting the most delicate morsels to their own use, and, as it were, taking the food out of his very mouth! After an internal struggle of a few seconds, during which it seemed doubtful whether his emotions or his greediness in filling his jaws so full would choke him, he uttered a savage growl, and, with one stroke of his huge paw, felled his younger brother to the ground. Then turning to the second, he flew at him like a fury, ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... the soul, ravishes it, and renders it idle. It cannot help being sensible of its peace, and it desires to be always alone. It has again acquired a spiritual greediness. To rob it of solitude is to rob it of life. It is still more selfish than before, what it possesses being more delightful. It seems to be in a new rest. It is going along calmly, when all at once it comes to another descent, steeper and longer ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... would naturally be expected, the recipient of such inestimable privileges generally returned to pay a second visit to the kindly spirits who made his life worth living, "but," said the Lamas quite seriously, "when he goes a second time he will get blind or paralytic, as a punishment for his greediness." ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... always be supplied in sufficient quantities to become a plentiful source of human sustenance. It is of the best quality however, five or six months after a cow has calved. When she becomes with calf again, her milk will of course fall off, both in quantity and in quality. The impatient greediness of cow-keepers would have calves and milk at the same time, and on this account they seldom allow their dairies a fair interval for keeping up a successive supply of the best milk. To keep cows in the healthiest condition, and their milk consequently in the purest state, they ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... myself? with innumerable lies deceiving my tutor, my masters, my parents, from love of play, eagerness to see vain shows and restlessness to imitate them! Thefts also I committed, from my parents' cellar and table, enslaved by greediness, or that I might have to give to boys, who sold me their play, which all the while they liked no less than I. In this play, too, I often sought unfair conquests, conquered myself meanwhile by vain desire of preeminence. And what could I so ill endure, or, when I detected it, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... going out at the gate, looked much bigger over the hips than they had need, and insisted on a search. The truth is, these fair patriots, preparing for a great wedding in the country, had thus spoiled their shape, and brought themselves to all this disgrace by their over greediness for finery. But Mr. tory Smith affected to be so enraged by this trick, which the girls had attempted to play on him, that he would never afterwards suffer a woman to pass without first ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... my cloths would cover him, and his biggest wife too all over, he laughed at this, but still held out; and as we have meat, and he sent maize and calabashes, I went away. He turns round now, and puts the blame of greediness on me. I cannot enter into his ideas, or see his point of view; cannot, in fact, enter into his ignorance, his prejudices, or delusions, so it is impossible to pronounce a true judgment. One who has no humour cannot understand one who has: this is ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... hardihood, union of citizens, sturdiness, ferocious perseverance, courage, abstinence, valor: remark the results attained by these qualities,— Rome, the mistress of the world, with an empire stretching to the ends of the earth. Then note the causes of her fall,—greediness, wealth, luxury, effeminacy, satiety, corrupt morals,—and bring the lesson home to your own nation, and to your own selves. Says Mr. Ruskin, "It is of little consequence how many positions of cities a woman knows, or how many dates of events, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... I had brought with me, and a red Arab soup served in a gigantic bowl of palmwood. A candle guttered in the glass neck of a bottle, and upon the floor were already spread my gaudy striped quilt, my pillow, and my blanket. The Spahi surveyed these preparations with a deliberate greediness, lingering in ...
— The Desert Drum - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... has made a mistake in attacking us," observed Owen to his first mate. "His greediness tempted him to attack a big ship—he might have succeeded had he run alongside some of ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston

... prejudices; but when they saw the cooking process of the others nearly complete, they came, sat beside them, and ate the portion offered without ever remembering to return the compliment when their own turn came to be generous. The Makololo and the others grumbled at their greediness, yet always followed the common custom of Africans of sharing their food with all who sit around them. What vexed us most in the Johanna men was their indifference to the welfare of each other. Once, when they were all coming to the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... earnestness by taking hold of my baggage while asking for it. After taking turns at their chances in this way for a while, at the same time crowding the path in front of me so that I could not proceed, one of them in his greediness almost tore my satchel out of my hands, I responded to his supplication with such a tremendous no, that the next fellow assumed a stooping posture and asked me in a whisper! These people deserve our pity rather than censure. Many of them are ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... bosoms beat with the same passions as our own; whose hearts swell with the same aspirations,—the same ardent desire to improve their condition; the same wishes for what they have not; the same indifference towards what they have; the same restless love of social superiority; the same greediness of acquisition; the same desire to know; the same ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... social favorite. His school was always filled with scholars, and as a master he was kind and popular, although, according to Palomino, on one occasion he was so provoked that he broke a silver-mounted maul-stick over the head of one of his assistants. Greediness of gain seems to have been his besetting sin. He refused no commission that was offered to him, and he despatched them according to the prices he received, saying that "he had three sorts of pencils, made of gold, of silver, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... rare Italian master, Julio Romano, who, had he himself eternity, and could put breath into his work, would beguile nature of her custom, so perfectly he is her ape: he so near to Hermione hath done Hermione that they say one would speak to her and stand in hope of answer:—thither with all greediness of affection are they gone; and there they intend ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare

... nurse. And Augustin relates this story of a baby that he had seen: "I know, because I have seen, jealousy in a babe. It could not speak, yet it eyed its foster-brother with pale cheeks and looks of hate." Children are already men. The egoism and greediness of the grown man may be already descried ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... knowledge we seize with greediness the good that is within our reach; it is by after-consideration, and in consequence of discipline, that we refuse the present for a greater good at a distance. The nobility or elevation of all arts, like the excellence of virtue ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... their loveliness as well as for their utility. He will borrow from Nature the forms and coloring most in harmony with the scene in which his dwelling is placed. Might growth here be but slow enough! Might not a greediness for gain and show cheat men of all the real advantages ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... spirit of encroachment—many of them were the necessary precautions of self-defence. The Protestants had shown unequivocally enough what the Romanists might expect if they were unfortunate enough to become the weaker party. The greediness of the former for the property of the church, gave no reason to expect indulgence;—their bitter hatred left no hope ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... forty raisins and three sticks of candy with red stripes on them and a jew's-harp. That was the Christmas we went down to Aunt Liza's to spend the day and I helped myself to two pieces of cake when the plate was passed and cried because they all laughed at my greediness. It was the day when Aunt Liza's boy, Truman, got a silver watch and chain and her daughter Mary a gold ring, and when all the relatives were invited to come and be convinced, once and for all, of Uncle Roswell's prosperity and be filled with envy and reconciled ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... eye on their compatriot's scrawled and blotted quires, when they had just run the pen-knife through a new "Dombey," for which fifty compositors waited stick-in-hand, and which the million expected with insatiable greediness? The excellent person to whom I refer ran the gauntlet of such patrons with no better success than my questions imply; and if the dignified production to which I have referred shall ever see the light, I am informed that it will first ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... over the boats, and screamed; and sometimes darted down, and bore away the fish in their beaks. We purchased some very large fish, which were not cod, but very like them; and satisfied with their great likeness to that favourite fish, we ate them with greediness; but the heads being of an abominable bull-dog shape, the cook was ordered to decapitate, before committing them ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... p. 355) mentions 'the greediness with which he ate, his total inattention to those among whom he was seated, and his profound silence at the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... time, and one whose great weight would have proved a grievous burthen, in a long ride, to even a better-conditioned beast than the ill-favored provincial hack he had ridden, dismounted, and threw the bridle loose upon the drooping neck of the animal. The latter, without a moment's delay, and with a greediness that denoted long abstinence, profited by its liberty, to crop the herbage ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... attack them ourselves, if it would have done any good. The next day his daughter was more seriously ill than the peasant woman whose place she had taken. I should not have felt unhappy to learn that those women had been uncomfortably ill in consequence of their greediness. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... the other end of the sofa and fell upon the chicken with extraordinary greediness; at the same time he kept a constant watch on his victim. Kirillov looked at him fixedly with angry aversion, as though unable to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... think of the duties of your profession, that you wallow in greediness and drunkenness, and let religion ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... German lady, whom I met at Manitou, with three gentlemen, arrived, and we were as sociable as people could be. We had a splendid though rude supper. While Mrs. Link was serving us, and urging her good things upon us, she was orating on the greediness of English people, saying that "you would think they traveled through the country only to gratify their palates"; and addressed me, asking me if I had not observed it! I am nearly always taken for a Dane or ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... one. Moreover, the hold of the plant on the light, sandy soil is very slight; and the careless gatherer, not provided with knife or scissors, will almost invariably pull the root with the flower, thus totally annihilating that plant. When one witnesses such greediness, and remembers that these vandals are in general on the wing, and cannot stay to enjoy what they have rifled, but will leave it all to be thrown out by hotel servants the next morning, he cannot wonder at the indignation of ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... moment entered and dispelled her fears. He threw down the carcass of a large fat deer. "Behold what a fine and fat animal," cried the mysterious females, and they immediately ran and pulled off pieces of the whitest fat,[43] which they ate with greediness. The hunter and his wife looked on with astonishment, but remained silent. They supposed their guests might have been famished. Next day, however, the same unusual conduct was repeated. The strange females tore off the fat and devoured it with eagerness. The third ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft

... with pleasure, not with greediness, And he is neither grieved nor glad at it. This is ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... so despise us for greediness, or grudging, or snatching, or not sharing what we have got, or taking the best and leaving the rest, or helping ourselves first, or pushing forward, or praising Number One, or being Dogs in the Manger, or anything selfish. And we cannot bear ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... various dishes, and to prefer some to others. At that time she was twelve years old, but as fully formed in figure as a girl of eighteen, and taller than I was. Then the idea struck me of developing her greediness, and by this means of cultivating some slight power of discrimination in her mind, and to force her, by the diversity of flavors, if not to reason, at any rate to arrive at instinctive distinctions, which would of themselves constitute ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... and empty. And at a table sat the old man himself—the only living creature there—his white face pinched and sharpened by the greediness which made his eyes unnaturally bright—counting the money of which ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... Juliet arose out of her sackcloth and ashes, bathed her face, arranged her hair, and proceeding to the dining-room, so far forgot her intention of never eating again as to surprise the cook by her greediness. She then dressed, ordered her carriage, and was driven to ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious nasal drawl ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... his glass, but still he could not make up his mind to put it to his lips. He contemplated it regretfully, with longing and with fear; then he smelt it, tasted it, drank it in sips, swallowing them slowly, his heart full of terrors, of weakness and greediness; and then, when he had drained the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... they live: they eat scarcely any thing but the worst bread, and oil, or soups made of the wild herbs, of which tyranny cannot deprive them. Notwithstanding the wretchedness in which they are left by the government, they have still to satisfy the greediness of their priests, but these contributions they pay with cheerfulness. Many of the convents indeed are too rich to require their assistance, but those which are poor, together with all the parish priests and church officers, live upon the people. Such is the condition ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... With what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travellers received, their descriptions of sea and land monsters, their relations of wonderful adventures, strange men, and uncouth manners? But if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder, there is an end of common sense; ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al

... enterprise and address as a plunderer than as a fighter, and now his sole end and aim was the conveying of his precious booty and his precious body as speedily as possible to some place of security before he should be overtaken. But by means of this very booty with which in his greediness he had overloaded himself, and the keeping of which he had far more at heart than the maintaining of his own or his country's honor, he was fated in the end to overwhelm himself with ruin and disgrace, since, by the unwieldy clog thus laid upon his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady

... is as natural, and therefore as much implanted by God, as the hunger of the body. Neither must be gratified unlawfully; but when God sends food to either we should accept it thankfully, without either asceticism or greediness, and use the strength it gives us as a means of service. Does not the essence of the wrong sort of love consist in our looking on the affection we receive, or crave for, as a self-ending pleasure, instead of as a gift which is only sent to us to make us happier, ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby

... the Church. Unless his character and career have been grossly misrepresented, he was the most infamous of the many impostors who have so often disgraced the cause of religious reformation. By more than four centuries, he anticipated the licentiousness and greediness manifested by a series of false prophets, and was the first to turn both the stupidity of a populace and the viciousness of a priesthood to his own advancement; an ambition which afterwards reached its most signal expression in the celebrated John ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... breakfast in the cabin where I passed the night, but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of the meal. It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us; more orderly, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... too, her maternal self-sacrifice. The baby, Milita, who attracted attention because of her whiteness and ruddiness, had the strength that her mother lacked. The greediness of this strong, enslaving creature had absorbed all of the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... problems for the Americans is the negro problem. I heard a Rhodes scholar talking about it once. He simply foamed at the mouth. He hadn't any plan for it ... didn't seem to realise that a plan could be made ... and you know they've only got that problem through the greediness of their ancestors. Negroes aren't native to America. The planters wanted cheap labour and so they imported them ... and the end of that business is the ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... a bungler. Sometimes assisted by Canavas and the Abbe Palais, we had music in his apartment; or on holidays at his organ, and frequently dined with him; for, what was very astonishing in a monk, he was generous, profuse, and loved good cheer, without the least tincture of greediness. After our concerts, he always used to stay to supper, and these evenings passed with the greatest gayety and good-humor; we conversed with the utmost freedom, and sang duets; I was perfectly at my ease, had sallies of wit and merriment; Father Cato was charming, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... body and mind. Merely to think of him when he was absent was wont to make my flesh creep, so entirely evil beyond the nature of sinful mankind was this monster, and so set on working all kinds of mischief with greediness. Whether he had suffered some grievous wrong in his youth, which he spent his life in avenging on all folk, or whether, as I deem likely, he was the actual emissary of Satan, as the Maid was of the saints, I know not, and, as I lay there, had no wits left to consider of it. Only I knew ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... the barren, sandy ground of the desert, which sucks in all the rain and dews with greediness, but yields no fruitful herbs or plants for the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... is being punished for his greediness," your Aunt Amy replied; "but it isn't well to rejoice while others are in trouble, even when they brought it upon themselves, as did Mr. Gander. Suppose ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... have seen Albano and Nemi under your guidance, we managed the expedition, and were entranced with the scene even beyond our hopes, and since that time I have lived through it again in the pages of Eleanor, which I read with greediness, waiting each ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... bad with me, as that I needed to solicit surety for thirty pounds: yet partly from the greediness that extravagance always produces, and partly from a desire of seeing the humour of a petty usurer, a character of which I had hitherto lived in ignorance, I condescended to listen to his terms. He ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... her feet and looked at him. The very violence of his cry soothed her in an intuitive conviction of his love, and she hugged to her breast the lamentable remnants of that affection with the unscrupulous greediness of women who cling desperately to the very scraps and rags of love, any kind of love, as a thing that of right belongs to them and is the very breath of their life. She put both her hands on Almayer's shoulders, and looking at him half tenderly, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad

... man may forgive an injury, but he must never forget a good turn. He that refuses to do good to them whom he is bound to love, or to love that which did him good, is unnatural and monstrous in his affections, and thinks all the world born to minister to him; with a greediness worse than that of the sea, which, although it receives all rivers into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds and springs with a return of all they need. Our duty to those who are our benefactors is, to esteem and love their persons, to make them proportionable ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... the town was set free, except three especially "bad cases," who were hurried to Louviers before Francis reached Rouen, and brought back to Rouen when he had got to Louviers. As a contrast to this unfortunate greediness of the law, it is recorded that many persons hastened to confess their crimes, got imprisoned just before he arrived, and were joyfully delivered at his entry, all of which satisfied justice ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it; wine loved I deeply; dice dearly; and in women out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to woman; keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets,[3] thy pen from lenders' books, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... Man's greediness for profit has already driven the salmon from the rivers of New England where once they swarmed. Mechanical devices for taking them by the hundreds of thousands threaten a like result in the now teeming rivers of Washington and British Columbia. Mr. Lake's invention has the demerit ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... maid, who was neither kind nor pretty, and whose cruel nature had choked every germ of pleasantness and transformed her into a priestess of misery, a fatal, pitiless Eumenide, was pleasant and obliging to that brute. She admired his bearish manners, his roughness, his greediness, and his insolent, careless way of treating everybody, including the pompous Senor de Quinones. Manin was a solemn-faced rogue with his shameful rudeness, his deportment of a brave hunter of wild beasts. Sly-faced rogue! for with all his shameless rudeness, his ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... unto plump water-fowl. For thou art the orphan's father, the widow's husband, The desolate woman's brother, the garment of the motherless. Let me celebrate thy name in this land for every virtue, A guide without greediness of heart; A great one without ...
— Egyptian Literature

... my visits to see how Leah and her father would settle it amongst themselves. I reckoned on the Jew's greediness to work well for me. He was very fond of money, and must have been angry that his daughter had not made me buy the phaeton by some means or another, for so long as the phaeton was bought the rest would be perfectly indifferent to him. I felt almost certain that they ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... jug-handle, while Snap on the right hand and Puss on the other put up their paws towards a morsel which she held out of the reach of both—Snap occasionally desisting in order to remonstrate with the cat by a cogent worrying growl on the greediness and futility of her conduct; till Eppie relented, caressed them both, and ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... meal before he comes in (p. 52). The master of a dance is deeply chagrined and chides his wife severely, because she insists on dancing before he has invited all the others to take their turns (p. 70). Greediness is reproved in children and Aponitolau causes the death of his concubines whose false tales had led him to maltreat his wife (p. 116). Unfaithfulness seems to be sufficient justification for a man to abandon his wife and kill her admirer (p. 78); but Kanag ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... part of it with the bit of garlic, till it looked as polished as a new dining-table. That done, he turned the bread, crumb uppermost, and saturated it with oil, added a few drops of vinegar, sprinkled with pepper and salt, and, with a gleam of something very like greediness in his bright eyes, took up the knife to cut himself a first mouthful of the horrible mess that he had just concocted. "The best of breakfasts," said the Professor, seeing me look amazed. "Not a cannibal meal of chicken-life in embryo (vulgarly ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... himself? This effort to save his own soul was common to Goethe and Francis of Assisi; under different manifestations it was the same regard for self. And where it is an intellectual and not a spiritual greediness, I suppose it is what an old writer calls "laying ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... heard of men, who, through greediness of gain, have brought infected goods into a nation, which bred a plague, whereof the owners and their families perished first. Let those among us consider this and tremble, whose houses are privately ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... and unhesitatingly picked up a worm she found there. The fowls darted at her hands; but to amuse herself with the sight of their greediness she held the worm high above them. At last she opened her fingers, and forthwith the fowls hustled one another and pounced upon the worm. One of them fled with it in her beak, pursued by the others; it was thus taken, snatched ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... water-lily to mark the spot where they vanished, and to perpetuate the memory of this strange event. Meanwhile, the farmer looked with rueful countenance upon the spot where the elfin herd disappeared, and had ample leisure to deplore the effects of his greediness, as with them also departed the prosperity which had hitherto attended him, and he became impoverished to a degree below his original circumstances, and in his altered circumstances few felt pity for one who, in the noontide flow of prosperity, had shown himself so far forgetful of favours received, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... stay,—perfectly helpless both as to the means of defence and means of escape,—in the midst of plenty, yet suffering the terrible gnawings of hunger,—in the midst of houses, yet having no home,—among fellow-men, yet feeling as if in the midst of wild beasts, whose greediness to swallow up the trembling and half-famished fugitive is only equalled by that with which the monsters of the deep swallow up the helpless fish upon which they subsist,—I say, let him be placed in this most trying situation,—the situation in which I was placed,—then, and not till then, ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass

... she went to Naples. "Naples was beautiful, yes; but one always loves one's own country the best." She was very attentive and good, but at the end was rapacious of more and more buonamano. "Have patience with her, sir," said the blameless Antonino, who witnessed her greediness; "they do not understand certain ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... teacher.[256] The last entry in these letters to the absent father is curious:[257] "I love your Cicero as he deserves and as I ought. But I am letting him leave me, because I don't want to keep him from his masters, and because his mother is going away,—and without her I am nervous about his greediness!" Up to this point he has written in the warmest terms of the boy, but here, as so often in Cicero's letters about other people, disapprobation is barely hinted in order not to hurt the feelings of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler

... or prejudices, of any man who set himself up to be the owner of the beasts of the fields. Natur' then lay in its glory along the whole coast, giving a narrow stripe, between the woods and the ocean, to the greediness of the settlers. And where am I now? Had I the wings of an eagle, they would tire before a tenth of the distance, which separates me from that sea, could be passed; and towns, and villages, farms, and highways, churches, and schools, in ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... nodded. "That is so, when shareholders must be satisfied. Well, I expect I'm lucky because my partner's a good sort. When you needn't bother about other folk's greediness, you can take a cautious line. Now I come to think of it, I heard some of your people grumbling. I hope your boat will ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss

... the arm of God that must bow men to submit to Christ's imputed righteousness. Yet, the most part of men seem to be so far from seeking any righteousness, that they are rather seeking the fulfilling of their own carnal lusts, working wickedness with greediness, not caring how little they have to put confidence into. And yet, certain it is, that how much soever a man attains to of a form of religion or civil honesty, he is ready to put his trust in it, and to lean the weight of his soul upon it. But seeing ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood of anger, of love, of class spirit, or of male haughtiness. The analysis of woman's mind is typical. "Inclination to lies, falsehood, foolishness, greediness, hastiness, uncleanliness, and cruelty are inborn faults of the woman"; or "Water never remains in an unbaked vessel, flour in a sieve, nor news in the mind of women"; or "The mind of a woman is less stable than the ear of an elephant or the flash of lightning." On the other hand we read: "True ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... wrote, "As we shall certainly come out next week, I shall be in considerable anxiety until I hear from you that all the instalments sent by me have safely arrived and are in type. To secure despatch, I have sent them all by post, and, owing to the greediness of the United States government, it has cost me five pounds. I do not for a moment suppose the work will sell well during the civil war; but it is none the less important to occupy the shops with it, and then perhaps on the return of peace and the fine arts it will not be pirated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... the gravel path, into the land of dreaming flowers she goes. Pale moonbeams light her way as, with her gown uplifted, she wanders from bed to bed, and with a dainty greediness drinks in the honeyed breathings round her. Here now she stoops to lift with gentle touch a drooping head, lest in its slumber some defiling earth come near it; and here she stands to mark a spider's net, ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... promised the poor a division of the lands, and the rich, security for their debts. Solon, however, himself, says that it was reluctantly at first that he engaged in state affairs, being afraid of the pride of one party and the greediness of the other; he was chosen archon, however, after Philombrotus, and empowered to be an arbitrator and lawgiver; the rich consenting because he was wealthy, the poor because he was honest. There was a saying of his current before the election, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... forecast which of the two or three it is going to be. It takes seven years to complete a book by this method, but still it is a good method: gives the public a rest. I have been accused of "rushing into print" prematurely, moved thereto by greediness for money; but in truth I have never done that. Do you care for trifles of information? (Well, then, "Tom Sawyer" and "The Prince and the Pauper" were each on the stocks two or three years, and "Old Times on the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... out her purse. She found the five among her few bills, extended it with trembling fingers toward Mrs. Wylie. At the same time she lifted her eyes. The woman's expression as she bored into the pocketbook terrified her. Never before had she seen the savage greediness that is bred in the city among the people who fight against fearful odds to maintain their respectability and to save themselves from the ever threatened drop to the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... a fixed relation to pleasure and pain. In relation to pain, the true mean is found in neither fearing it nor courting it, and this is fortitude. In relation to pleasure, the true mean stands between greediness and indifference; this is temperance. The true mean between prodigality and narrowness is liberality; between simplicity and cunning is prudence; between suffering wrong and doing wrong is justice. ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... sent by a Spaniard of Santo Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, to one of his friends living in the interior of the colony. The messenger likewise carried some roasted utias which, as we have said, are rabbits. On the way, whether from hunger or greediness, he ate three; these animals not being larger than rats. The friend wrote upon one of these leaves what he had received. "Well, my man," the master then said, "you are a fine lad in whom to put confidence! So you have been so greedy as to eat the utias I gave you?" Trembling and amazed ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... guard against the sin of greediness, and especially on the night of the Nativity. Quickly, now, light the candles and sound the first bell for Mass; midnight is very near, and we must ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... it seemed to me that Cambridge was the fittest place in which they could see the light, because to Cambridge I mainly owe what little right method or sound thought may be found in them, or indeed, in anything which I have ever written. In the heyday of youthful greediness and ambition, when the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the universe, must needs know everything, or rather know about everything, at once and on the spot, too many are apt, as I have been in past years, to complain of Cambridge ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley

... away from him. It did not even so much as peep into his mind that he would have to endure many hardships of body, rain, and chilly winds, a bed of rock, and fare both hard and scanty. This was not what had troubled him in the old days. What had vexed his heart had been unclean words and deeds, greediness, hardness, cruel taunts, the lack of love, and the meanness and baseness of the petty life. All that was behind him now; he felt free and strong, and while he moved about to spy out his new kingdom, he sang loudly to himself a song of praise. The place ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... plum, and when ripe is yellow in color, and grows in long pendant bunches. When this fruit is at its best it is very juicy, and may be sucked away like a grape. The negroes are immoderately fond of it, and when permitted to do so are apt to make themselves ill by their greediness. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... bodies and claws of vultures. These ugly wretches were in the habit of snatching away his dinner, and allowed him no peace of his life. Upon hearing this the Argonauts spread a plentiful feast on the seashore, well knowing from what the blind king said of their greediness that the Harpies would snuff up the scent of the victuals and quickly come to steal them away. And so it turned out, for hardly was the table set before the three hideous vulture-women came flapping their wings, seized the food ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading strings of the Old World and were in the humor for democracy. There was only one thing to stop them from perfecting the democracy they started, and that thing was greediness. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... into the midst of a discussion, he was really disgusted with the ridiculous and intense greediness of ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... "Well, in his greediness he snapped at his shadow to get the other piece of meat, and dropped his own. Suppose I try to catch that other vessel and the crew prove too strong for me, and I lose ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... never yet gone down-town in the morning without seeing Gibb on the street. And very seldom have I gone home at night, even in the howling blizzards of winter, without passing Gibb leaning against the warm bright show window of the last open place of business, and waiting with placid greediness for one final event of some kind to transpire before going to ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch

... be noted is not a palpable trait of covetousness,—if such it were, —but the limitation to activity occasioned by preoccupation with a realized, but imperfect, success. The comparatively crude impression of greediness, produced by apparent absorption in a mere money gain, has prevented the perception of this more important and decisive element in Rodney's official character, revealed at St. Eustatius and confirmed on the evening of the 12th of April. What he ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... concluded between them. Bohemond had a proposal submitted to Godfrey to join him in attacking the Greek empire and taking possession at once of Byzantium; but Godfrey rejected the proposal, with the reminder that he had come only to fight the infidels. The emperor, fully informed of the greediness as well as ambition of Bohemond, introduced him one day into a room full of treasures. "Here," said Bohemond, "is wherewith to conquer kingdoms." Alexis had the treasures removed to Bohemond's, who at first refused, and ended by accepting them. It is even ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... been close to his former flame, the fair barefooted singer. He meets her quite often during the entr'acte in the saloon. She knows that he was once in love with her, and she kisses him often. That gives him no pleasure. He is disgusted by her paint and scent and her fat arms and her greediness. He ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... fat goose. But when it came to the giving of the penance, the fox found that the most weighty sin in all his shrift was gluttony. And therefore he discreetly gave him in penance that he should never for greediness of his food do any other beast any harm or hindrance. And then he should eat his food ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... everything badly, even hardly know how to manage their camels, after ages of experience. It is, however, very difficult to drive the camels past a prickly-pear hedge, they being voraciously fond of the huge succulent leaves of this plant, and crop them with the most savage greediness, regardless of the continual blows, accompanied with loud shouts, which they receive from the vociferous drivers to get them forward. I wore my cloak for two hours after dawn, and felt chilly, and yet at noonday the thermometer was at least 130° Fah., in the sun. We ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... facts, Shakespeare was in no way more careful than Greene, and he seems to have known, and it was in fact visible enough, the greediness of his public to be such that, ostrich like, they would swallow anything. He, therefore, changed very little. In Greene, ships "sail into Bohemia," a feat that cannot be repeated to-day; the Queen is tried by a jury "panelled" for that purpose; the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... Grimbart the badger, seeing that public opinion was decidedly against his relative, now begged that a third summons should be sent, and offered to carry the message himself. He furthermore declared that, even according to their own showing, the cat and bear had come to grief through their greediness; and then he ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... married clergy, for the maintenance of rules of fasting and for the preservation of purgatory among the doctrines of faith, whilst on the other side, wherever they still had firm footing, the priesthood opposed all the articles, which would set limits to their greediness and love of power. Hence the general resolutions were not carried out, and only showed the more strongly the inward weakness of ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... off the Bampton Shoals, was of a reddish-brown, with here and there almost true circular blotches of pure white. This poor fellow was twelve feet in length, and his death was caused by his frantic greediness to get at the whale and take his toll of blubber. The whale was struck late in the day, and the sea was so rough that the officer in charge, after having twice tried to get up and use his lance, determined to end the matter with a bomb before darkness came on. At this time there was a "pod" of ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke

... that he was? They were taking care of his life, so they said. His life? How many days? Ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred? Why? For his own sake? Or to preserve for some time longer the spectacle of his impotent greediness in ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant • David Widger

... himself of his treasure, was the feat of a moment. The brat's clamour drew out the father; and to him Beck (pocketing the coral, that its golden bells might not attract the more experienced eye and influence the more formidable greediness of the paternal thief) loudly, and at first fearlessly, appealed. Him he charged and accused and threatened with all vengeance, human and divine. Then, changing his tone, he implored, he wept, he knelt. As soon as the startled cracksman recovered his astonishment ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... has more to answer for than he ever dreamed of. His biological doctrine of the struggle for existence, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest, fairly intoxicated the Germans from the first. These theories fell in well with their militarism and their natural cruelty and greediness. Their philosophers took them up eagerly. Weissmann fairly made a god of natural selection, as did other German thinkers. And when they were ready for war, the Germans at once applied the law of the jungle to human affairs. The great law of evolution, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... him how it all happened. When the pope heard these words he actually shook all over with greediness. Going home, he did nothing by night and by day but think, "That such a wretched lout of a moujik should have come in for such a lump of money! Is there any way of tricking him now, and getting this pot of money out of him?" He ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... deep sleep. He awoke in a high fever and delirious. Some days later he came to himself, rose and went out. It was eight o'clock, and the sun had disappeared. The heat was as intolerable as before, but he inhaled the dusty, fetid, infected town air with greediness. And now his head began to spin round, and a wild expression of energy crept into his inflamed eyes and pale, meager, wan face. He did not know, did not even think, what he was going to do; he only knew that ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... cool shade. While I pour vinegar and ground ginger, I feel from joy as if I would go mad. With so much gluttony the prince's grandson eats his crabs that he should have some wine. The side-walking young gentleman has no intestines in his frame at all. I lose sight in my greediness that in my stomach cold accumulates. To my fingers a strong smell doth adhere and though I wash them yet the smell clings fast. The main secret of this is that men in this world make much of food. The ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... hand. Though Charles had for a moment deviated into a wise and dignified policy, his heart had always been with France; and France employed every means of seduction to lure him back. His impatience of control, his greediness for money, his passion for beauty, his family affections, all his tastes, all his feelings, were practised on with the utmost dexterity. His interior Cabinet was now composed of men such as that generation, and that generation alone, produced; of men at whose audacious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity of knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... at the back-doors of houses were not very satisfying. He began to stare at the food in a fascinated way that made Miss Lucy also stare, but at him. She had never seen just such a look on anybody's face, and though it expressed greediness it did not shock her, as she felt it ought to do. Because it was ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... you to the army, that they would have desired you to lead them to the utmost limits of Asia. But you rather chose to confine your conquests within the fruitful country of Mesopotamia, where plenty of money might be raised. How far that fatal greediness of gold may have influenced you, in breaking off the treaty[12] with the old Parthian King Orodes,[13] you best can tell; your enemies charge you with it, your friends offer nothing material in your defence; and all agree, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... affairs, as an unmitigated ass. He had overlooked the excellent natural mind which false education and foolish associations had tricked out in the motley, bells and bauble of "culture"; and so, he had taken no pains to cozen artistically. Also, as he thought greediness the strongest and hardiest passion in all human beings, because it was so in himself, he had not the slightest fear that anyone or anything could deflect his client from pursuing the fortune which dangled, or ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips



Words linked to "Greediness" :   selfishness, piggishness, greedy, gluttony



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