|
|
|
More "Pelf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so wise, I might seem to advise So great a potentate as yourself; They should, sir, I tell ye, spare't out of their belly, And this way spend some of their pelf. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the chase (for pelts or pelf) and careful of his status in the tribe, thinks only of himself and ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... zeal the writings of those pupils of Bayle, the English Deists. He honoured English freedom and the spirit of religious toleration. In 1728 the Henriade was published by subscription in London, and brought the author prodigious praise and not a little pelf. He collected material for his Histoire de Charles XII., and, observing English life and manners, prepared the Lettres Philosophiques, which were to make the mind of England favourably known to ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack: When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, He went away, and wisely hang'd himself: This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, If thou hash any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... upon it I will not give you reason to regret having trusted my honour. But," (he hesitated here) "you have referred to my position. If, in time and through God's goodness, I succeed in improving my position; in gaining by industry a sufficiency of this world's pelf to maintain Aileen in a condition of comfort approaching in some degree that in which she has been brought up, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... his tides well. Those healths will make thee and thy state look ill, Timon. Here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, Honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire: This and my food are equals; there's no odds: Feasts are too proud to give thanks to the gods. Immortal gods, I crave no pelf; I pray for no man but myself. Grant I may never prove so fond To trust man on his oath or bond; Or a harlot for her weeping; Or a dog that seems a-sleeping; Or a keeper with my freedom; Or my friends, if I should need 'em. Amen. ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... you about myself? Do I live in a house you would like to see? Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? 'Unlock my heart with ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... to Thomas, "Your rent I must raise, I'm so plaguily pinch'd for the pelf." "Raise my rent!" replies Thomas; "your honor's main good. For I never ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... in itself; It but reflects the lives of men; And they who lived and toiled for pelf Went out as vipers in a den. God cleans the sky from time to time Of every tyrant flag that flies, And every brazen badge of crime Falls to the ground and swiftly dies. Proud kings are mouldering in the dust; Proud flags of ages past are gone; Only the symbols of the ...
— The Path to Home • Edgar A. Guest
... in America to this day. They do not scruple to declare this themselves, and add that we shall be our own conquerors. Can not our common country, America, possess virtue enough to disappoint them? Is the paltry consideration of a little pelf to individuals to be placed in competition with the essential rights and liberties of the present generation, and of millions yet unborn? Shall a few designing men, for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing, at the expense ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... worth must understand; Whoe'er doesn't nobly drive the trade, 'Twere best from the business far he'd stayed. If I cheerily set my life on a throw, Something still better than life I'll know; Or I'll stand to be slain for the paltry pelf, As the Croat still does—and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... begg'd for my master, And got him store of pelf, But goodness now be praised, I'm begging for myself. And a-begging we will go, Will go, will go, And ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... soldier knows: Wandering over the face of the earth, Warming his hands at another's hearth: From the pomp of towns he must onward roam; In the village-green with its cheerful game, In the mirth of the vintage or harvest-home, No part or lot can the soldier claim. Tell me then, in the place of goods or pelf, What has he unless to honour himself? Leave not even this his own, what wonder The man should burn and kill ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... currency, coin, capital, funds, finances, change, legal tender, lucre, pelf, specie, sterling, revenue, assets, wherewithal, spondulics (Slang); wampum; boodle; bribe; bonus. Associated Words: bullion, cambist, bank, banker, capitalist, chrysology, till, coffer, economics, coin, coinage, mint, mintage, financial, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... been courted by the grafter, the promoter, the social climber, each beneath a thinly disguised friendship working for his own selfish ends. But here at last was the novel phenomena of one who scorned pelf, who would not even allow his gratitude to be bought. The sight was refreshing. It rejuvenated the New Yorker's jaded ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... paused: but, lifting at length His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength Into the utterance—"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!' ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... of those who hate me, because I will not join them in their treachery toward my empress—of those who hold out to me gold and diamonds, and who hate me because I will not sell my loyalty for pelf. Oh, I was flattered with orders and honors, promises and presents. But I would not listen. What cared I for future security? What mattered it to me that I was to be the victim of Paul's vengeance? I thought of you alone; and more to ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... it must come and God knows it is through no discrepancies on my part. Poor little Madge; she is a good child. If she were only settled I would feel more relief; but she is to be bartered for pelf, poor child. I will stand ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... dost then, farewel Pelf, Farewel Bridget, for I vow I'll: Either in my Bason hang my self, Or drown me in my Towel, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... the trance of a peasant girl named Mariana; and when Kirkup withdrew for a moment, the entranced Mariana relieved herself from the fatigue of her posturing, at the same time inviting Browning with a wink to be a charitable confederate in the joke by which she profited in admiration and in pelf. Browning, who would have waged immitigable war against the London dog-stealers, and opposed all treaty with such rogues, even at the cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose the new trade of elaborate deception. But his feeling was intensified by the personal repulsiveness ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... found; and our country has got along, perhaps, as well as one could have expected, considering what it has had to contend with: pressure of debt; primrose paths; pelf; party; patrio-Prussianism; the people; pundits; Puritans; proctors; property; philosophers; the Pontifical; and progress. I will not disguise from you, however, that we are far from perfection; and it may be that on your next visit, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... sonnet-sing you about myself? 25 Do I live in a house you would like to see? Is it scant of gear, has it store of pelf? "Unlock my heart ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... give both the law. When private interest did all hearts bend, And wild dissents the public peace did rend, Thou, neither won, nor worn, wert still thyself, Not aw'd by force, nor basely brib'd with pelf. What the insuperable stream of times Did dash thee with, those suff'rings were, not crimes. So the bright sun eclipses bears; and we, Because then passive, blame him not. Should he For enforc'd shades, and the moon's ruder veil Much nearer us than him, be judg'd to fail? ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear that ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... is good for you; you love your country as you love your pelf. You feel for the common people,—as the ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... was poor, the lad was frank and free; Of late he's grown brimful of pride and pelf; You wonder that he don't remember me? Why, don't you ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... master, And got him store of pelf; But now, Jove be praised! I'm begging for myself. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... of Braintree, on the Boston road, came, in Sixteen Hundred Twenty-five, one Captain Wollaston, a merry wight, and thirty boon companions, all of whom probably left England for England's good. They were in search of gold and pelf, and all were agreed on one point: they were quite too good to do any hard work. Their camp was called Mount Wollaston, or the Merry Mount. Our gallant gentlemen cultivated the friendship of the Indians, in the hope that they would reveal the caves and caverns where the gold grew lush and ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... whose mistress was a slave! So say old saws, my own in aid I crave; Woe to the court whose judge once spake for fees, Though he were readier than Isocrates! An advocate that pleaded once for pelf Scarce on the ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... I've meanly quitted For the sake of pelf; But ah, the Devil has me outwitted; Instead of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... indeed thou hast straitened my breast and distracted my mind." Quoth he, "Meseems thou art a hasty man;" and quoth I, "Yes ! yes! yes!" and he, "I rede thee practice restraint of self, for haste is Satan's pelf which bequeatheth only repentance and ban and bane, and He (upon whom be blessings and peace!) hath said, 'The best of works is that wherein deliberation lurks;' but I, by Allah! have some doubt about ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... my brothers Wherever they may be, And he is most my proper care Who most has need of me; Who most may need my counsel, My influence, my pelf, And most of all who needs my strength ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... verge of a single breath; and this world is an existence between two nonentities. Such as truck their deen, or religious practice, for worldly pelf are asses. They sold Joseph, and what got they by their bargain?—"Did I not covenant with you, O ye sons of Adam, that you should not serve Satan; for verily he is your avowed enemy":—By the advice of a foe you broke your faith ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... the Grumpy Guy was silent as a miser hoarding pelf. He knew 'twas time to put his grouch away upon the shelf. And so he did.—You see, I was just ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... an artificial and man-created condition, not God's arrangement and order; for it degrades man and ennobles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who eschew labor and live (no matter by what pretence or respectable cheat—for cheat it is) without ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... indeed—who knows—that but for that peculiarly early marriage, with its consequent family responsibilities, Shakspere would have allowed himself a little more of youthful breathing-time: it may be that it was the existence of Ann Hathaway and her three children that made him a seeker for pelf rather than a seeker for knowledge in the years between twenty and thirty, when the concern for pelf sits lightly on most intellectual men. The thesis undertaken in LOVE'S LABOUR LOST—that the truly effective culture is that of life in the world rather ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... soon managed to bind and rule the Queen-Regent,—managed to drive Sully into retirement in less than a year,—managed to make herself and her husband the great dispensers at Court of place and pelf. Penniless though Concini had been, he was in a few months able to buy the Marquisate of Ancre, which cost him nearly half a million livres,—and, soon after, the post of First Gentleman of the Bedchamber, and that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Goldsmith lies here, as famous for writing As his namesake old Noll was for praying and fighting, In friends he was rich, tho' not loaded with Pelf; He spoke well of them, and thought well ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... ask thee for no meaner pelf Than that I may not disappoint myself; That in my striving I may soar as high As I can now discern with this clear eye. That my weak hand may equal my firm faith, And my life practise more than my tongue saith. That my low conduct may not show, Nor my relenting lines, That I thy purpose did ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... war. Louis XIII. (1610-1643) was a child; and the queen, Mary de Medici, who was the regent, an Italian woman, with no earnest principles, deprived of the counsels of Sully, lavished the resources of the crown upon nobles, who were greedy of place and pelf. At the assembly of the States-general in 1614, nobles, clergy, and the third estate were loud in reciprocal accusations. The queen fell under the influence of the Concinis, an Italian waiting-maid and her husband, the latter of whom she made a marquis and a marshal of France. She ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... to-day is a tincture so strong, That, if dosing yourself, you are sure to go wrong. What men learnt in the past they say brings them no pelf, And the well-tried old remedies rest on the shelf. But the patient may haply exclaim, "Don't be rash, Lest your new-fangled physic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... freedom how should such as I Be able to imagine in such a self? Less hopeless far the miser man might try To image the delight of friend-shared pelf. Freedom is to be like thee, face and heart; To know it, Lord, I must be as thou art, I cannot breed ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... Billson's own self Who forked over the gold, With a smile. "Thar's the pelf," He remarked. "I make bold To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim: Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... and shades of life, It will be joy to call thee by The holy name of "wife!" I love thee for thy gentleness, I love thee for thy truth; I love thee for thy joyousness, Thy buoyancy of youth I love thee for thy soul that soars Above earth's sordid pelf; And last, not least, above these all, I love thee for thyself. Now come to me, my dearest, Place thy hand in mine own; Look in mine eyes, and see how deep My love for thee hath grown; And I will press thee to my heart, Will call thee "my dear wife," And own that thou art ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... A spirited cross of romantic and grand, All templars and minstrels and ladies and pages, And love and adventure in Outre-Mer land; But, ah, where the youth dreamed of building a minster, The man takes a pew and sits reckoning his pelf, And the Graces wear fronts, the Muse thins to a spinster, When Middle-Age stares from one's glass ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with your pelf Some respect, where you importune; Those may love me for myself, That regard you for your fortune. Rich or born of high degree, Fools as well as you may be; But that peace in which I live No descent nor ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's been true to one party—an' thet is himself;— So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall vote ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... make such a motion: Say, I should yield and grant you love, When most you did expect a sunshine day, My father's will would mar your hop'd-for hay; And when you thought to reap the fruits of love, His hard constraint would blast it in the bloom: For he so doats on Peter Plod-all's pelf, That none but he forsooth must be the man: And I will rather match myself Unto a groom of Pluto's grisly den, Than unto such a ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... not leave himself, But stays down with his cares, Or with his thoughts of pride and pelf, Though loud and long his prayers, Beyond earth's dome of arching skies They shall not rise. ...
— Poems of Optimism • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the prospect outside. There was first of all a garden with some pleasant terraces, and flights of stone steps, planned originally in the grand style, but now rather dilapidated and ill-kept, suggesting either a general shortage of pelf on the part of the owner—or ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is near its end, And, as my custom is, I come to thee; There is no other who has pelf to lend, At least no pelf to lend to hapless me; Nay, gentle Shekelsford, turn not away— I must have wealth, for this ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... breathless race, Nor misses station, power or pelf; And only loses in the chase The hunted lord of all,—himself. His gain is loss, His treasure dross. "Step, step, step," mocks the whip of the sky, "Hurry up, limp along, rest when ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... care no whit For pelf or place, It is enough for me to sit And watch Dulcinea's face; To mark the lights and shadows flit Across the silver moon ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... in the zenith of her power and greatness, think kindly of the native races, and now for once in her history rule this great island for right and righteousness, in justice and mercy, and not for self and pelf in unrighteousness, blood, and falsehood. It is to be hoped that future generations of New Guinea natives will not rise up to condemn her, as the New Zealanders have done, and to claim their ancient rights with tears ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... is great, and he alone, Who serves a greatness not his own, For neither praise nor pelf; Content to know and ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... tenant to perform personal service. It would be impossible for a tenant to pay his rent if his stock or implements were sold off the land. As the Tudor policy of money payments extended, the greed for pelf led to an alteration in the law, and the act of William and Mary allowed the landlord to sell the goods he had distrained. The tenant remained in possession of the land without the means of tilling it, which was opposed to public policy. This power of distraint was, however, confined to holdings ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... wine! Yet recollect, to drink, since you design, That afterward, my friend, you'll have to choose The thirty blows, or thirty pounds to lose. But, cried the peasant, I sincerely pray, Your lordship's goodness, that the garlick may Be taken in the account, for as to pelf, Where can an humble lab'rer, like myself, Expect the sum of thirty pounds to seize? Then, said the peer, be cudgelled if you please; Take thirty thwacks; for naught the garlick goes. To moisten well his throat, and ease his woes, The peasant drank a copious draught of wine, And ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... race put her owner right clear of his debts, He landed a fortune in stakes and in bets, He paid the old bailiff the whole of his pelf, And gave him a ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... step on life's highway, A grip on the bottom rung; A few good deeds done here and there, And my life's song is sung. It's not what you get in pelf that counts, It's not your time in the race, For most of us draw the slower mounts, And our deeds can't keep the pace. It's for each what he's done of kindness, And for each what he's done of cheer, That goes on the Maker's scorebook With each succeeding ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... dens, And the wishtonwish marmot, the kind prairie dog, Makes room in his hole for the tortoise and frog. The hamster runs home, with the pouch in his cheek Stuff'd with various provisions enough for a week; Then stores in his dark lonely cell the rich pelf, For, ill bred and greedy, he cares but for self. No children, no wife, no companion had he, With his very best friend he could never agree, But lived by himself without pleasure or mirth, In a hermit-like ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... tomfoolery? He never even heard us talk about his lineage, deplore the length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his daughter) "was born in November, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Meiklewham?" said her ladyship.—"That wretched old pettifogger," she added in a whisper to Tyrrel, "thinks of nothing else but the filthy pelf." ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... stigma upon the word radical than all that Castlereagh, Brougham, and Canning ever sent forth against those who bear it. It is confidently asserted by those who profess to know his private concerns, that he has feathered his dirty nest well, and that, as the best means of securing his ill gotten pelf, he has lately invested it in the French funds, to the amount of ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... plucked from the outmost twig Was somewhat withered, 'tis true, Long years had flown since it lightly danced To the summer air and the dew; Not much of a dowry brought she, In beauty or vulgar pelf, But she had two or three ancestors More than ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... and unclasps no chain; His heart is like the rock where sun nor dew Can rear one plant or flower of heavenly hue. No thought of mercy there may have its birth, For helpless misery or suffering worth; The end of all his life is paltry pelf, And all his thoughts are centred on—himself: The wretch of both worlds; for so mean a sum, First starved in this, then ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... nature merry, Somewhat Tom-foolish, and comical, very; Who has gone through the world, not unmindful of pelf, Upon easy terms, thank Heaven, with himself, Along bypaths, and in pleasant ways, Caring as little for censure as praise; Having some friends, whom he loves dearly, And no lack of foes, whom he laughs at sincerely; And never ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King I have redeemed myself with all I had, And now possess my fortunes poor but glad. With all I had I have redeemed myself, And escaped at once from slavery and pelf. The unruly wishes must a ruler take, Our high desires do our low fortunes make: Those only who desire palatial things Do bear the fetters and the frowns of Kings; Set free thy slave; thou settest ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... orchards fear no pelf or harm, By red Priapus sentinelled; By his huge sickle's formidable charm The bird ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the smoke and ashes into his face and beard: the result of his labour was debt instead of pelf. I sung through the burst window-panes and the yawning clefts in the walls. I blew into the chests of drawers belonging to the daughters, wherein lay the clothes that had become faded and threadbare from being worn over and over again. That was not the song that had been sung ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the Cafe I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! How pleasant it is ...
— English Satires • Various
... not all. Every foul bird comes abroad and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion. Strong measures deemed indispensable, but harsh at best, such men make worse by maladministration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for pelf, proceed under any cloak that will best cover for the occasion. These causes amply account for what has occurred in Missouri, without ascribing it to the weakness or wickedness of any general. The newspaper ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Reformers—Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox and others—were not they thought to be enthusiasts and zealots? Why? Because they were somewhat in earnest in the cause of Christ. Worldly men toil and strive night and day, in collecting together a little of the pelf and dust of the earth, and think themselves wise in doing so; but if the disciples of Christ show zeal or earnestness, in pursuits as much higher than theirs as heaven is higher than the earth, and as much more important as the immortal soul ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... hunt up those wretched small stones, and wear them night and day in a belt round his waist, as if he really loved them for their own mere sakes—dirty high-priced little baubles! Granville, for his part, couldn't bear to see such ingrained love of pelf. It was ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... strain Of possessing such a brain William always used to play Eighteen holes each Saturday. But he scarce could see at all, And he often lost his ball, Plus his temper and his pelf, So he made a ball himself, Which, if it should chance to roam Out of sight, played "Home, Sweet Home" On a small euphonium he Had inserted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... prevails in the city, and, until a new Dey is elected by the janissaries, the Moors and Jews are at the mercy of the rude soldiery. Of course, all who have enemies among them hide themselves and their pelf, if possible, until the anarchy ceases, which it does the moment the green standard of the Prophet is hoisted on the terrace of the palace, announcing that a new Dey is seated on the warm throne of his not quite ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... He soon arrives at Harley's gate; But was so dirty, pale, and thin, Old Read[10] would hardly let him in. Said Harley, "Welcome, rev'rend dean! What makes your worship look so lean? Why, sure you won't appear in town In that old wig and rusty gown? I doubt your heart is set on pelf So much that you neglect yourself. What! I suppose, now stocks are high, You've some good purchase in your eye? Or is your money out at use?"— "Truce, good my lord, I beg a truce!" The doctor in a passion cry'd, "Your raillery ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... your gallant chief," she said, "To keep his paltry pelf; The knight who would my castle win, Must dare to come himself." And forth she sternly bade him go, But followed with her eyes. I ween she knew the brave knight well Through all ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... pals of such reglar old foes; The horse don't half like him, I'm bound to admit it, Between you and me I don't like it myself, For me and dear JOSEPH have not always hit it. But then, he stands in; we must look to the pelf; Can't afford to offend him, our Stable can't—blow it! Eh! What? You have heard me disparage Boy Bill As too Free in his ways by long chalks. Well, I know it; But JOE is dead nuts on his go and his skill— The Blinkers? Oh yes! Horse not used ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... is that it is thyself, Thy body as it was ere death was it, Towering above the silence infinite That girds round life and its unduring pelf. Even as thou wert in life, thy corporal shade Is in the presence of the gods. My love Permits not that its carnal being fade Or one whit false to fleshly presence prove. Creeds may arise and pass, and passions change, Other ways may be born out of Time's dream, But this our love, made ...
— Antinous: A Poem • Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa
... those who your bribes and petitions contemn: Though plutocrats scorn the rewards you propose, there are others superior to them: Why burden the proud with superfluous pelf, who wealth in abundance possess, When indigent Worth (I allude to myself) would go ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... John Clavering, why for the sake of pelf and of honours that you will never harvest do you seek to part those who love each other and whom God has willed to bring together? Why would you sell your child to a gilded knave whom she hates? Nay, stop me not. I'd call him that and more to his face and none have ever known me lie. Why did ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... you always, Willie, Body and soul from harm; I'll guard your faith and honor, Your innocence and charm From the polls and their evil spirits, Politics, rum and pelf; Do you think I'd send my only son Where I would not ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... English had given Asaad 40 purses, (2000 dollars) to unite him with them, and that he had thought of giving Asaad the same sum, that no obstacle might remain to his leaving them. "This money," said he, "with which the English print books, and hire men into their service is but the pelf of the man of sin, and could you but be present to hear what the people say of you, through the whole country, for your associating with the English, you would never ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... and storehouse treasure Did He take thy hoarded pelf? Yes: to feed thee was His pleasure, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... should have not to distrain From several that vast beauty ne'er yet shown, To one exalted dame alone The total sum was lent in her pure self:— Heaven had made sorry gain, Recovering from the crowd its scattered pelf. Now in a puff of breath, Nay, in one second, God Hath ta'en her back through death, Back from the senseless folk and from our eyes. Yet earth's oblivious sod, Albeit her body dies, Will bury not her ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... my mind is fixed On one point and made up: To accept my lot unmixed; Never to drug the cup But drink it by myself. I'll not be wooed for pelf; I'll not blot out my shame With any man's good name; But nameless as I stand, My hand is my own hand, And nameless as I came I go to ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... different points of the coast. An inland navigation of unexampled rapidity conveys commodities up and down the rivers of the country. *u And to these facilities of nature and art may be added those restless cravings, that busy-mindedness, and love of pelf, which are constantly urging the American into active life, and bringing him into contact with his fellow-citizens. He crosses the country in every direction; he visits all the various populations of the land; and there is not a province in France in which the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that magnify a woman's charm, As flowers the creeping plant, I do not harm. I do not rob the Brahman of his pelf, Nor seize the sacrificial gold myself. I do not steal the baby from the nurse, Simply because I need to fill my purse. Even as a thief, I strive with main and might For just distinction 'twixt the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... that should be, in the case of a first-rate military hero and commander—Scipio notwithstanding. It brightens his flame, and it is agreeable to them. That is how they come to distinction: they have no other chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and they rush pelf-mall, all for the honour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... so-called Christian Scientists in sheep's clothing; and all "drunken without wine." They have small con- ceptions of spiritual riches, few cravings for the immortal, but are puffed up with the applause of the world: they have plenty of pelf, and fear not to fall upon the Stranger, [10] seize his pearls, throw them away, and afterwards ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... have done with the pelf, which must take its chance. Only, I pray you—I trust it to your honour and to your love of an old friend to bury it, burn it, cast it to the four winds of heaven before you suffer a Spaniard to touch a gem or ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... never fretted. When he his compliments had paid To royalty, thus newly made, "Great sire, I know a place," said he, "Where lies conceal'd a treasure, Which, by the right of royalty, Should bide your royal pleasure." The King lack'd not an appetite For such financial pelf, And, not to lose his royal right, Ran straight to see it for himself. It was a trap, and he was caught. Said Reynard, "Would you have it thought, You Ape, that you can fill a throne, And guard the rights of all, alone. Not knowing ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... a friend of noble mind, Who loves me more than praise or pelf, Reproves my faults with spirit kind, And thinks of me as ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... him to fight a delaying action while they mended their fences with the enemy, coming to the best terms possible. Yes, that had been the United Oil versus Allied Petroleum fracas, and Joe had emerged with little either in glory or pelf. ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Japan, as we see him in the literature of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion, for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better, certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently honorable men ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... And thereby win forgetfulness And pardon of the spirit's excess, Which soar'd too nigh that jealous Heaven Ever, save thus, to be forgiven. No Gospel has come down that cures With better gain a loss like yours. Be pious! Give the beggar pelf, And love your neighbour as yourself! You, who yet love, though all is o'er, And she'll ne'er be your neighbour more, With soul which can in pity smile That aught with such a measure vile As self should be at all named "love!" Your sanctity ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... Came a ghost, and for a moment walked in silence by my side — Now my heart was hard and bitter, and a bitter spirit he, So I felt no great aversion to his ghostly company. Said the Shade: 'At finer feelings let your lip in scorn be curled, 'Self and Pelf', my friend, has ever been ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... my marble brow; I'd take no thought of pelf; I'd lie the long day through at ease a-thinking of myself; For when a man's mere presence lends to any scene delight He needn't worry what he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... understanding that his absence from France was to be short; and he entrusted Andrea with a sum of money to be expended in purchasing works of art for his royal patron. The temptation of having a goodly amount of pelf in hand proved too much for Andrea's virtue. He spent the king's money and some of his own in building a house for himself in Florence. This necessarily brought him into bad odour with Francis, who refused to be appeased by some endeavours which the painter afterwards made to reingratiate himself. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fields stretched down almost in reach of the sullen sea. Here dwelt his wife, quiet Mistress Thatch, and here his brawny daughter. Seldom a word came to this rural home from the father, burning and robbing, sinking and slaying out upon the western seas. But from the stores of pelf which so often slipped so easily into his great arms, and which so often slipped just as easily out of them, came now and then something to help the brawn grow upon his daughter's bones and to ease ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... of wheat and flour was an ever-present theme; the oppression of autocracy and seigniorage, another. The cry for direct action always woke echo in the popular breast, sick over the delays of the Versailles lawgivers, and nourishing the hope of seizing pelf and power, rescuing their kinsfolk from the prisons, and beating down the Kingship and aristocracy to relinquish privileges and abate the hardships ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... destroy his health, for the sake of being the first jockey or the favourite courtier of his day. And how should it be otherwise, when from the lips whence other lessons should have proceeded, selfishness has been inculcated as a duty, a desire for vain distinctions and the love of pelf encouraged as virtues, and a splendid equipage, or it may be some bodily advantage, pointed out as the highest object of human ambition? To set the just value on every enjoyment, to choose noble and becoming objects of pursuit, are the first lessons a child should learn; and if he does not learn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there he, go, mark him well; High though his titles, proud his fame, Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim, Despite these titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung. Unwept, unhonour'd, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... design of walking in and chucking the two thousand pounds into Nancy's lap. On the contrary, he shoved them deeper down in his pocket, and resolved to see the old gentleman to bed, and then produce his pelf, and fix ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... and profit I had made till, one day, as I sat making merry and enjoying myself with my friends, there came in to me a company of merchants whose case told tales of travel, and talked with me of voyage and adventure and greatness of pelf and lucre. Hereupon I remembered the days of my return from abroad, and my joy at once more seeing my native land and foregathering with my family and friends; and my soul yearned for travel and traffic. So compelled by Fate and Fortune I resolved to undertake ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... His faithful steward in the shades below. He walk'd the streets, and wore a threadbare cloak; He din'd and supp'd at charge of other folk: And by his looks, had he held out his palms, He might be thought an object fit for alms. So, to the poor if he refus'd his pelf, He us'd 'em full as kindly as himself. Where'er he went, he never saw his betters; Lords, knights, and squires, were all his humble debtors; And under hand and seal, the Irish nation Were forc'd to own to him their obligation. He that cou'd once have half a kingdom bought, In half a ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... revenue of which they have been plundered, under the hollow knavish pretence of curing souls and forgiving sins. THUS will human laws kill the body of Antichrist. Every motive for professing to believe absurdities and contradictions will be at an end, when neither rule nor honour, nor pelf is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... lessons in rhetoric and how to construct those long melodious sentences that rolled like a "Hallelujah chorus" over his delighted audiences. But young Storrs chose the better part, and no temptation of fame or pelf allured him from the higher work of preaching Jesus Christ to his fellow men. He was—like Chalmers and Bushnell and Spurgeon—a born preacher. Great as he was on the platform, or on various ceremonial occasions, ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Moreover, if I want money, doubtless Antony, who is henceforth my master, will give me more; he is much beholden to me, and this he knows well. There, waste not the precious time in haggling o'er the pelf—not yet art thou all a merchant, Harmachis;" and, without more words, she thrust the pieces into the leather bag that hung across my shoulders. Then she made fast the sack containing the spare garments, and, so womanly thoughtful was she, placed in it an alabaster jar of pigment, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... And how was it possible to fall from political grace by withdrawing from the fellowship of the knaves and traders that formed the body-guard of the President, and were using the Republican party as the instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition of the term which would have made all the great apostates of ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... they'll whine how I met the great Bertrand himself, The miracle-worker and saint. But those women will tell any "walkers" for pelf, And swear I'm all ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... for workers; not toilers for pelf, But souls who have sought to eliminate self. Can the lame lead the race? Can the blind guide the blind? We must better ourselves ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... feature in Northbury society, and between the people who let lodgings for money, and those who lived genteelly on their means was a great and awful gulf. No people were poorer in their way than the Bells, and no one would have more dearly liked to add to her little store of this world's pelf than would poor Mrs. Bell. She could scarcely afford to take a fashionable girl in for nothing, and yet—dared she accept payment? Bell, if he knew, would never forgive her, and, as to the town, it ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... muttering all to himself, Just like a miser counting o'er his pelf? I do believe he's talking in blank verse, Or reasoning in rhyme, which would be worse. He's deaf; if he were blind, 't would suit us better, For then he ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... is a dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides that give place or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's ben true to one party,—an' thet is himself:— So John P. Robinson, he Sez he shall ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... not feed on either earth or pelf, But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; 'Twixt Feltro and Feltro shall ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... entirely trusting each other, and only anxious that the other should have the best of it. Yet, instead of that being the case, the mischief, the myriad mischief, of money set in, until I heartily wished sometimes that my miserable self was down in the hole which the pelf ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... when I'm king, And my gallant courtiers form a ring, Each so careless of power and pelf, Each so thoughtful for all but self, I'd give the best on his bended knee— Yes, barter them all, for the loyalty Of Little ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... dischargeth all cares, and leave you to the world that increaseth many sorrows: my silver hairs containeth great experience, and in the number of my years are penned down the subtleties of fortune. Therefore, as I leave you some fading pelf to countercheck poverty, so I will bequeath you infallible precepts that shall lead you unto virtue. First, therefore, unto thee Saladyne, the eldest, and therefore the chiefest pillar of my house, wherein should be engraven as well the ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Monday to walk in the way That is popular, populous, smooth-paved, and gay. The flesh it was strong, but the spirit was faint. He first was too young, then too old, for a saint. He wished well by his neighbors, did well by himself, And hoped for salvation, and struggled for pelf; And easy Tomorrow still promised to pay The still swelling debts of his bankrupt Today, Till, bestriding the deep sudden chasm that is fixed The sunshiny world and the shadowy betwixt, His Today with a pale wond'ring face ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... like the wise man, we may act our parts, To get the pearl of price; then we shall be Like godly Mary, Peter, Paul, and we Like Jacob, too, the blessing shall obtain; While Esau rides a-hunting for the gain Of worldly pelf, which will him not avail When death or judgment shall him sore assail. Now, to encourage us for to begin, Let us believe the kingdom we may win, And be possess'd thereof, if we the way Shall hit into, and then let nothing stay Or hinder us; the crown is at the end, Let's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that one which places racial weal above private gain—which exalts patriotism above pelf. It is controlled by men big enough and broad enough to eschew petty personalities and to avoid cheap sensationalism. It is piloted by men who breathe the atmosphere of freedom, whose inspiration is not drawn from the committee rooms of political parties, and whose ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... wisdom in this vaunted Veto, Is quite another question sense must see to. And general justice judge. But those who cheer The stale old fudge about the Poor Man's Beer, Should learn it is a dodge of vested pelf, And, rich or poor, a man can't rob himself. It is the poor who suffer from temptation, And drink's detestable adulteration, That crying ill which no one dares to tackle! Whilst Witlers howl, and Water-zealots cackle. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... thee I came To learn thy science. Name or pelf I had not, so was driven with shame, And here I learn all by myself. But still as Master thee revere, For who so great in archery! Lo, all my inspiration here, And all my ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... from the ranks of the followers. In a sermon John Wesley once said: "To adopt and live a life of simplicity and service for mankind is difficult; but to follow the love of luxury, making a clutch for place, pelf and power, labeling Paganism Christianity, and imagining you are a follower of Christ, this is easy. Yet all through life we see that the reward is paid for the difficult task. And now I summon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... the strains prolong, That gush from living founts of song, Without a cross; Here spirits never feel the weight Of Wrong, or Envy, or of Hate, Or earthly loss; The pomp of Pelf—the pride of Birth— The gilded trappings of this earth Return ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... same who saved old SELL-ALL'S life— 'Twas but the year before! And Sell-all rose and let him in, Not utterly unwilling, But first he bargain'd with the man, And took his only shilling! That night he dreamt he'd given away his pelf, Walk'd in his sleep, and sleeping hung himself! And now his soul and body rest below; And here they say his punishment and fate is To lie awake and every hour to know How many ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... OF THE STRANGER.—We urge you, gentle maiden, to beware of the silken enticements of the stranger, until your love is confirmed by protracted acquaintance. Shun the idler, though his coffers overflow with pelf. Avoid the irreverent—the scoffer of hallowed things; and him who "looks upon the wine while it is red;" him too, "who hath a high look and a proud heart," and who "privily slandereth his neighbor." ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... brothers as ancient as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons, welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his queer innocuous wit. Robert had had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... When the golden light was falling On distant dome and spire; And I heard a low voice calling, "Come up higher, come up higher, From the lowland and the mire, From the mist of earth desire, From the vain pursuit of pelf. From the attitude of self: Come up higher, come ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... of curling lip and brow of scorn, The worshiper of reason and of self, The atheist, wanton, and the giddy maid, The faith-betrayer and the love-betrayed; Self-righteous pharisees, who would adorn Or hide with pious garb their love of pelf. ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... generous spirits are ye, who, with small care for fame, and little reward from pelf, have opened to the intellects of the poor the portals of wisdom! I honor and revere ye; only do not think ye have done all that is needful. Consider, I pray ye, whether so good a choice from the Tinker's bag would have been made by a boy whom religion ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... thou'rt like Judas an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack, When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf, He went away and wisely hanged himself; This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt, If thou hast any bowels to ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... wooed for himself: Her father has sold her for land and for pelf: My steed, for whose equal the world they might search, In mockery they borrow to bear ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... to guide such high emprise, For Britain's weal was early wise; Alas! to whom the Almighty gave, For Britain's sins, an early grave! His worth, who in his mightiest hour A bauble held the pride of power, Spurned at the sordid lust of pelf, And served his Albion for herself; Who, when the frantic crowd amain Strained at subjection's bursting rein, O'er their wild mood full conquest gained, The pride he would not crush restrained, Showed their fierce zeal a worthier cause, And brought the freeman's arm ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... which naught can countervail? Naught save itself, ev'n such a thing is Love. And worldly wealth in worth as far doth fail, As lowest earth doth yield to heav'n above. Divine is love, and scorneth worldly pelf, And can be bought ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... to embody the ethics of Norse warfare at its best, and to present in the most poetic light the rampant, untamable individualism of the ancient Germanic paganism. In defiance of his friend Bjoern's advice, Frithjof, weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the high-seat beside her aged lord; and the sorrow which the years had dulled revives with an exquisite agony. He punishes ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... snares, Self-seeking men, by ignorance deluded, Strive by unrighteous means to pile up riches. Then, in their self-complacency, they say, "This acquisition I have made to-day, That will I gain to-morrow, so much pelf Is hoarded up already, so much more Remains that I have yet to treasure up. This enemy I have destroyed, him also, And others in their turn, I will despatch. I am a lord; I will enjoy myself; I'm wealthy, noble, strong, ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... an apostate black, In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack; When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf, He went away, and wisely hanged himself: This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt, If thou hast any Bowels ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... search! But see! One ancient institution Still doing business at the same old stand; 'Tis Messrs. Barclay's Bank, or I'm a Proossian, That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand; I'll borrow of their pelf And buy some ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... his head, and he warily said: "Though cunning be good, we take money instead, On the Rhine, thrifty Rhine; If ye fancy ye may without pelf have your way You'll find that there's both host and the devil to pay For your ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... native Ialysus, but who took Three silver talents with him, and his friend forsook. Bad luck go with the fellow, who unjustly some restores From exile, while some others he had banished from our shores, And some he puts to death; and sits among us gorged with pelf. He kept an ample table at the Isthmian games himself, And gave to every guest that came full plenty of cold meat, The which they with a prayer did each and every of them eat, But their prayer was 'Next year be there no ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... could be trusted with the very best when the native-born Protestant, Arnold, had betrayed the country for pelf and position among the oppressors of the native land of John Barry and the native land of ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... whatever the game, In law, or in love, it's ever the same: In the struggle for power, or scramble for pelf, Let this be your motto, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... spendthrift of thyself, Spendthrift of all the love in thee, Sold unto sin for little pelf, The captain ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... should have been Nelson's: but, he is rich in great and noble deeds; which t'other, poor devil! is not. So, let dirty wretches get pelf, to comfort them; victory belongs to Nelson. Not, but what I think money necessary for comforts; and, I hope, our, your's, and my Nelson, will get a little, for all ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... and caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbours; And bless'd herself, and cursed herself, And rested from ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at law, One happy christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown, and stores of learned pelf. With all the deathless bards of Greece and Rome, To spend a fortnight at his uncle's home. Arriv'd, and pass'd the usual how d'ye do's, Inquiries of old friends and college news; "Well Tom—the road—what saw you worth discerning? Or how goes study:—what is it you're learning?" "Oh! ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... give Yours Truly quite a pain. On the T square I do not like your style; For you are playing favorites again And you have got me handicapped a mile. Avaunt, false Life, with all your pride and pelf: Go take a ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... would let the matter lie over; and what do you think was his answer? In a voice that made me tremble, he said, disdainfully, "You oblige ME, sir!—and pray sir, who are you that presume to offer to oblige me?—call tomorrow, sir, on my treasurer, and the pelf shall be paid to you, sir." And as I went down stairs I could hear him say to himself several times, "Oblige ME indeed, ha, ha, hah!—you oblige ME!!" In a word I got the money from him, but never saw him after." "You saw Barry, though?" "Oh yes, he gave me a general order to the house, introduced ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... you rightly, for your hungry love of pelf; For your gross and greedy rapine, gormandizing by yourself— You that, ere the figs are gathered, pilfer with a privy twitch Fat delinquents and defaulters, pulpy, luscious, plump, and rich; Pinching, fingering, and pulling—tempering, selecting, culling; With a nice survey discerning which ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... hear. (The Shah had heard it long ago, And asked the taxman if 'twere so, Who promptly answered, rather airish, The man had long been on the parish.) The more he feared, the more he grew A cynic and a miser, too, Until his bitterness and pelf Made him a terror to himself; Then, with a razor's neckwise stroke, He tartly cut his final joke. So perished, not an hour too soon, The wicked Muley ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Craver my Father, a Maunder my Mother, [1] A Filer my Sister, a Filcher my Brother, A Canter my Uncle, that car'd not for Pelf, A Lifter my Aunt, and a Beggar myself; In white wheaten Straw, when their Bellies were full, Then was I got between a Tinker and a Trull. And therefore a Beggar, a Beggar I'll be, For there's none lives a Life ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... by the vices of age. Among them, cupidity caused him to urge Repeated demands on the pocket of Splurge, Till, wrecked in his fortune, that gentleman saw Inadequate aid in the practice of Draw, And took, as a means of augmenting his pelf, To the business of being a lord himself. His neat-fitting garments he wilfully shed And sacked himself strangely in checks instead; Denuded his chin, but retained at each ear A whisker that looked like a blasted career. He painted his neck an incarnadine hue Each morning and varnished it ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... talking to him with uncommon earnestness, and just as she was approaching, said, "To terms I am indifferent, for writing is no labour to me; on the contrary, it is the first delight of my life, and therefore, and not for dirty pelf, I wish to make it ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... divided, give but small fortunes to any of them. A meeting of the little army of claimants was held at the Temperance Hall, March 2, 1875, and there have been several attempts, notwithstanding the many previous adverse decisions, to re-open the battle for the pelf, no less than a quarter of a million, it is believed, having already been uselessly ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... up those wretched small stones, and wear them night and day in a belt round his waist, as if he really loved them for their own mere sakes—dirty high-priced little baubles! Granville, for his part, couldn't bear to see such ingrained love of pelf. It was miserable; ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... think we grow more wise When Radcliffe's page we cease to prize, And turn to Malthus, and to Hervey, For tombs, or cradles topsy-turvy; 'Tis sweet to flatter one's dear self, And altered feelings vaunt, when pelf Is passion, poetry, romance; — And all our faith's in three ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... her smiles wherewith she Mars did meet; Python a voice, Diana made her chaste, Ceres gave plenty, Cupid lent his bow, Thetis his feet, there Pallas wisdom placed. With these she queen-like kept a world in awe. Yet all these honors deemed are but pelf, For she is much more ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... has ne'er within him burn'd, As home his footsteps he hath turn'd, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there he, go, mark him well; High though his titles, proud his fame, Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim, Despite these titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung. ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... at its best, and to present in the most poetic light the rampant, untamable individualism of the ancient Germanic paganism. In defiance of his friend Bjoern's advice, Frithjof, weary of this bootless chase for glory and pelf, resolves to see Ingeborg once more before he dies, and, disguised as a salt-boiler, he enters King Ring's hall. There he sees his beloved sitting in the high-seat beside her aged lord; and the sorrow which the years had dulled revives with an exquisite agony. He punishes with fierce promptitude ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... barn and storehouse treasure Did He take thy hoarded pelf? Yes: to feed thee was His pleasure, Like the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... to the house whose mistress was a slave! So say old saws, my own in aid I crave; Woe to the court whose judge once spake for fees, Though he were readier than Isocrates! An advocate that pleaded once for pelf Scarce on the bench forgets ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... the Maid whose heart—yet free From Love's uneasy sovereignty— Beats with a fancy running high, Her simple cares to magnify; Whom Labour, never urged to toil, Hath cherished on a healthful soil; Who knows not pomp, who heeds not pelf; Whose heaviest sin it is to look Askance upon her pretty self Reflected in some crystal brook; Whom grief hath spared,—who sheds no tear But in sweet pity; and can hear Another's ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... Rubies and yellowbacks! Madison's lips thinned and curled downward at the corners. Oh, it was coming all right, money, jewels, pelf, rolling in merrily every day, there wasn't any stopping it, but he was paying for it, and paying for it at a price he didn't like—Helena. Helena! She wanted Thornton, did she—with his money! Wanted to dangle a millionaire on her string—eh? She'd throw ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... enjoy the constant strife Of days with work and worry rife, But that is not my dream of life: I think such men are crazy. For me, a life with worries few, A job of nothing much to do, Just pelf enough to see me through: I fear ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... fain would in my slender palm your horny fingers clasp, For I love the hand of honest toil, its firm and heartfelt grasp; And I know, O miners brave and true, that not alone for self Have ye heaped, through many wearying months, your glittering pile of pelf. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... lang hae I lo'ed her, and lo'ed her fu' dearly, For saft is the smile o' her bonny sweet mou'; An' aft hae I read in her e'en, glancing clearly, A language that bade me be constant an' true. Then ithers may doat on their gowd an' their treasure; For pelf, silly pelf, they may brave the rude sea; To lo'e my sweet lassie, be mine the dear pleasure; Wi' her let me live, an' wi' her let ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... disaster were so calm and resolute as they sternly struggled to stay the slow retreat are not silent yet. To us and to those who will come after us, they will speak of comfort and home relinquished, of toil nobly borne, of danger manfully encountered, of life generously surrendered and this not for pelf or ambition, but in the spirit of the noblest self-devotion and the most exalted patriotism. Proud as we who are here to-day have a right to be that we are the sons of this university, and not deemed unworthy of her when these are remembered, ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... stretching forth the songs to buy, That are so tragical; which She, and She, Deals out, and sings the while; nor can there be A breast so obdurate here, that will hold back His contribution from the gentle rack Of Music's pleasing torture. Irus' self, The staff-propt Beggar, his thin gotten pelf Brings out from pouch, where squalid farthings rest, And boldly claims his ballad with the best. An old Dame only lingers. To her purse The penny sticks. At length, with harmless curse, "Give me," she cries. "I'll paste it on ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... if I do discomfort those who think more of pelf than of courage and of virtue; those who, as that Hebrew prophet wrote, lay field to field and house to house, until the wretched whom they have robbed find no place left whereon to dwell? What if I proved your sagest chapmen fools, and gorge your greedy ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Her mother had not given her the best education. I believe she was a bit of a thief, and she could tell fibs with fluency and precision. The woman was a sinner; but her wild, strong affections were true, and her heart was not in pelf. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... murd'rous thing, "a beauty spot," Warmed on the finger by the taper's ray, Smear o'er the eye affected twice a day. Proffer not gold—I swear by my degree, From beauty's lily hand to take no fee; No glittering trash be mine, I scorn such pelf, The eye, when cured, will pay the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... Devil's corpse was leaded down; His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf, Mourning-coaches, many a one, 680 Followed his hearse along the town:— Where was the ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... rhetoric and how to construct those long melodious sentences that rolled like a "Hallelujah chorus" over his delighted audiences. But young Storrs chose the better part, and no temptation of fame or pelf allured him from the higher work of preaching Jesus Christ to his fellow men. He was—like Chalmers and Bushnell and Spurgeon—a born preacher. Great as he was on the platform, or on various ceremonial occasions, he was never so thoroughly "at home" as in his own pulpit; ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... guarded you always, Willie, Body and soul from harm; I'll guard your faith and honor, Your innocence and charm From the polls and their evil spirits, Politics, rum and pelf; Do you think I'd send my only son Where I would ...
— Are Women People? • Alice Duer Miller
... who saved old SELL-ALL'S life— 'Twas but the year before! And Sell-all rose and let him in, Not utterly unwilling, But first he bargain'd with the man, And took his only shilling! That night he dreamt he'd given away his pelf, Walk'd in his sleep, and sleeping hung himself! And now his soul and body rest below; And here they say his punishment and fate is To lie awake and every hour to know How many people read his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... self Who forked over the gold, With a smile. "Thar's the pelf," He remarked. "I make bold To advance it, and go twenty better that I'll ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... little Chicks to call him Father, And he sold his stolen Pelf, And bought a Palace, Horses, Slaves, and Peacocks ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... gems that magnify a woman's charm, As flowers the creeping plant, I do not harm. I do not rob the Brahman of his pelf, Nor seize the sacrificial gold myself. I do not steal the baby from the nurse, Simply because I need to fill my purse. Even as a thief, I strive with main and might For just distinction 'twixt the wrong ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... [5] some, so-called Christian Scientists in sheep's clothing; and all "drunken without wine." They have small con- ceptions of spiritual riches, few cravings for the immortal, but are puffed up with the applause of the world: they have plenty of pelf, and fear not to fall upon the Stranger, [10] seize his pearls, throw them away, and afterwards try to ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... no pelf; I pray for no man but myself; Grant I may never prove so fond, To trust man on his oath ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... rate, He soon arrives at Harley's gate; But was so dirty, pale, and thin, Old Read[10] would hardly let him in. Said Harley, "Welcome, rev'rend dean! What makes your worship look so lean? Why, sure you won't appear in town In that old wig and rusty gown? I doubt your heart is set on pelf So much that you neglect yourself. What! I suppose, now stocks are high, You've some good purchase in your eye? Or is your money out at use?"— "Truce, good my lord, I beg a truce!" The doctor in a passion cry'd, "Your raillery is misapply'd; Experience I have[11] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 40 purses, (2000 dollars) to unite him with them, and that he had thought of giving Asaad the same sum, that no obstacle might remain to his leaving them. "This money," said he, "with which the English print books, and hire men into their service is but the pelf of the man of sin, and could you but be present to hear what the people say of you, through the whole country, for your associating with the English, you would never be in ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... country for the country's good" and came South to fatten on the spoils of reconstruction, furnished unending targets for his satire. He declared that these so-called developers came for pelf, not patriotism. "Why, these men," he said, "are like thieving elephants. They will uproot an oak or pick up a pin. They would steal anything from a button to an empire." On one occasion he was bewailing the degeneracy of the times, and he exclaimed: "I am sorry I have got so much sense. I see into ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... sometimes fancy that when I'm king, And my gallant courtiers form a ring, Each so careless of power and pelf, Each so thoughtful for all but self, I'd give the best on his bended knee— Yes, barter them all, for the loyalty Of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... from me, That known me for thy faithful friend and true; Not only now I am so bound to thee, That I the knot can never more undo; But even from the beginning, when to be Thy deadly foeman I had reason due. Hope then that I will succour thee with pelf, With friends, with ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... We would remind them that in the past the Christian voice has been our only shield against legislative excesses of the kind now in full swing in the Union. But in the new ascendency of self and pelf over justice and tolerance, that voice will be altogether ignored, unless strongly reinforced by the Christian world at large. We appeal for deliverance from the operation of a cunningly conceived and a most draconian law whose administration ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... hate me, because I will not join them in their treachery toward my empress—of those who hold out to me gold and diamonds, and who hate me because I will not sell my loyalty for pelf. Oh, I was flattered with orders and honors, promises and presents. But I would not listen. What cared I for future security? What mattered it to me that I was to be the victim of Paul's vengeance? I thought of you alone; and more to me was the safety of your crown ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... ills its spirit braves, O'er mountain-crags and ocean-waves, Then make ourselves the worst of slaves, A slave to self, To satisfy the thirst that craves For yellow pelf. ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... Eagle-hunter, The valiant fate-confronter, The soldier brave, and blunter Of speech than BISMARCK's self? This bungler all-disgracing, This braggart all-debasing. This spurious sportsman, chasing No nobler prey than pelf? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... wandering on a foreign strand! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no Minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch, concentred all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... its weight has been ascertained, is put by the captain into little barrels, holding perhaps half a pint, and with the top screwing tightly on. This "glittering dust" (to use the phrase which moralists are fond of applying to worldly pelf), commands from sixteen to eighteen dollars per ounce, in England and the United States. It is gathered from the sands which the rivers of Africa wash down from the golden mountains; and, when offered for sale, small lumps of gold and rudely manufactured ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... Thomas, "Your rent I must raise, I'm so plaguily pinch'd for the pelf." "Raise my rent!" replies Thomas; "your honor's main good; For I never ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... many joys and griefs, The lights and shades of life, It will be joy to call thee by The holy name of "wife!" I love thee for thy gentleness, I love thee for thy truth; I love thee for thy joyousness, Thy buoyancy of youth I love thee for thy soul that soars Above earth's sordid pelf; And last, not least, above these all, I love thee for thyself. Now come to me, my dearest, Place thy hand in mine own; Look in mine eyes, and see how deep My love for thee hath grown; And I will press thee to my heart, Will call thee "my dear wife," And own that thou art all my joy And ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... which sometimes is as corrupting to vulgar souls as money, this man seems to have been as regardless as he was of pelf. He received the Cross of the Iron Crown from the Emperor of Austria. He accepted what was graciously offered, but he said that, as an Englishman, he did not know what good Crosses were to him. The circumstance reminded him that he had received other Crosses, but he had to ask his agent ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... pelf, Melancholic and thoughtful, his mind Look'd inward and dwelt on itself, Still pensive, pathetic, and kind; Yet oft in despondency drown'd, He from friends, and from converse would fly. In weeping a luxury found, And reliev'd others' ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... to Clarabella, And quickly homewards bent my way, And there became a rustic fellow, And donned a suit of hodden-grey. And then I hired me to a farmer, Concealing every sign of pelf, One Hodge, who had a pretty charmer, Who might love me ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... writings of those pupils of Bayle, the English Deists. He honoured English freedom and the spirit of religious toleration. In 1728 the Henriade was published by subscription in London, and brought the author prodigious praise and not a little pelf. He collected material for his Histoire de Charles XII., and, observing English life and manners, prepared the Lettres Philosophiques, which were to make the mind of England favourably ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... instructing and pleasing narrative of the manner in which he made the rich citizens of Bordeaux squeak, and gently led them by the public credit of the guillotine to disgorge their anti-revolutionary pelf. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to fall from political grace by withdrawing from the fellowship of the knaves and traders that formed the body-guard of the President, and were using the Republican party as the instrument of wholesale schemes of jobbery and pelf? To charge the Liberal Republicans with apostasy because they had the moral courage to disown and denounce these men was to invent a definition of the term which would have made all the great apostates of history ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... his worth must understand; Whoe'er doesn't nobly drive the trade, 'Twere best from the business far he'd stayed. If I cheerily set my life on a throw, Something still better than life I'll know; Or I'll stand to be slain for the paltry pelf, As the Croat ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... wealth, will joy to know His faithful steward in the shades below. He walk'd the streets, and wore a threadbare cloak; He din'd and supp'd at charge of other folk: And by his looks, had he held out his palms, He might be thought an object fit for alms. So, to the poor if he refus'd his pelf, He us'd 'em full as kindly as himself. Where'er he went, he never saw his betters; Lords, knights, and squires, were all his humble debtors; And under hand and seal, the Irish nation Were forc'd to own to him their obligation. He that ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the virtues. Men were unremitting, indiscriminate worshippers of money; they were not trained in the school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities, they become easily pervious to the promptings of all sorts ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... of the police. My excuse is that Jack Sincler and his brother Lishe were kindly men withal. The game-laws were their trouble, but as far as I could make out they did not poach for the sake of pelf but from sheer love of sport. Among poachers they ought, anyhow, to be placed in Class I., for they loved the open air and the freshness of the morning and all the things that make for a clean mind in a clean body. Jack, though a shade arrogant at times, is a stimulating figure, human ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various
... dreffle smart man: He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf; But consistency still wuz a part of his plan,— He's been true to one party—an' thet is himself;— So John P. Robinson he Sez he shall ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of men who were hostile in faith and covetous rivals in trade, is a repulsive figure. He seems to be a brutal wretch, seeking only gain, and willing to sell conscience, humanity and his religion, for pelf. In reality, he was an ordinary European, probably no better, certainly no worse, than his age or the average man of his country or of his continent. Further, among this average dozen of exiles in the interest of commerce, science or culture, there were frequently honorable ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... miser on a heap of rust Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust His own hands with the dust, Yet would not place one piece above, but lives In fear of thieves. Thousands there were as frantic as himself, And hugged each one his pelf; The downright epicure placed heaven in sense, And scorned pretence; While others, slipped into a wide excess, Said little less; The weaker sort slight, trivial wares enslave, Who think them brave, And poor, despised truth ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... relieve the awful strain Of possessing such a brain William always used to play Eighteen holes each Saturday. But he scarce could see at all, And he often lost his ball, Plus his temper and his pelf, So he made a ball himself, Which, if it should chance to roam Out of sight, played "Home, Sweet Home" On a small euphonium he Had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... head, and he warily said: "Though cunning be good, we take money instead, On the Rhine, thrifty Rhine; If ye fancy ye may without pelf have your way You'll find that there's both host and the devil to pay For your ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... kith now or kin, were access To his heart, did I press: Just a son or a mother to seize! No such booty as these. Were it simply a friend to pursue 'Mid my million or two, Who could pay me in person or pelf What he owes me himself! 30 No: I could not but smile through my chafe: For the fellow lay safe As his mates do, the midge and the nit, —Through minuteness, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the goose, and caught the pelf, And ran to tell her neighbours; And bless'd herself, and cursed herself, And ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... clubs,—the Clippers, Screws, The Fly-by-nights, Four Horse, and Blues, The Daffy, Snugs, and Peep-o-day, Tom's an elect; at all the Hells, At Bolton-Row, with tip-top swells, And Tat's men, deep he'd play. His debts oft paid by Snyder's{24} pelf, Who paid at last a debt himself, Which all that live must pay. Tom book'd{25} the old one snug inside, Wore sables, look'd demure and sigh'd Some few short hours away; Till from the funeral return'd, Then Tom with ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I marvel (if it be That aught may wond'rous seem to me) That Jove's high Gift, your noble Art, Bestow'd to raise Man's grov'ling heart, Refining with ethereal ray Each gross and selfish thought away, Should pander turn of paltry pelf, Imprisoning each within himself; Or like a gorgeous serpent, be Your splendid source of misery, And, crushing with his burnish'd folds, Still narrower make ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... Father's House, Jesus essayed to clear the place;[351] and, pausing not for argument in words, He promptly applied physical force almost approaching violence—the one form of figurative language that those corrupt barterers for pelf could best understand. Hastily improvizing a whip of small cords, He laid about Him on every side, liberating and driving out sheep, oxen, and human traffickers, upsetting the tables of the exchangers and pouring out their heterogeneous accumulations of coin. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold," but with blood, precious blood, even the blood of Christ. And the soul which cost that, we are ready to sell any day in the open market for a little more pleasure or a little more pelf. The birthright is bartered for the sorriest mess of pottage, and the jewel which the King covets to wear in His crown our own feet trample in the mire of the streets. The pity of it, the pity ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... assisting the efforts of the liberator. Viglius saw the position of matters with his customary keenness, and wondered at the blindness of Hopper and Philip. At the last gasp of a life, which neither learning nor the accumulation of worldly prizes and worldly pelf could redeem from intrinsic baseness, the sagacious but not venerable old man saw that a chasm was daily widening; in which the religion and the despotism which he loved might soon be hopelessly swallowed. "The Prince of Orange and his Beggars do ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... life, thus are the interests of science sacrificed on the shrine of a sordid love of gain and pelf. It is true that the merit of the fitting out of the expedition belongs to the enterprising spirit and the liberality of a few Liverpool merchants, but greatly indeed is that merit eclipsed, in a general point of view, when it is ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... man-created condition, not God's arrangement and order; for it degrades man and ennobles mere pelf. It demeans those who live by useful labor, and, in proportion, exalts all those who eschew labor and live (no matter by what pretence or respectable cheat—for cheat it ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and those who lived genteelly on their means was a great and awful gulf. No people were poorer in their way than the Bells, and no one would have more dearly liked to add to her little store of this world's pelf than would poor Mrs. Bell. She could scarcely afford to take a fashionable girl in for nothing, and yet—dared she accept payment? Bell, if he knew, would never forgive her, and, as to the town, it would simply ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... on either earth or pelf, But upon wisdom, and on love and virtue; 'Twixt Feltro and ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... scamping their work in order to establish a record. Their hearts must have been in everything they undertook, and their sole aim, whatever they did, to put into their work all their skill and knowledge and love of the beautiful. They, in fact, worked not for pelf but for sheer love of art, and so long as the work of these artists of various kinds endures the world will assuredly never ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... retrieval, revendication^, replevin [Law], restitution &c 790; redemption, salvage, trover [Law]. find, trouvaille^, foundling. gain, thrift; money-making, money grubbing; lucre, filthy lucre, pelf; loaves and fishes, the main chance; emolument &c (remuneration) 973. profit, earnings, winnings, innings, pickings, net profit; avails; income &c (receipt) 810; proceeds, produce, product; outcome, output; return, fruit, crop, harvest; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... wonderful, and grand, Looking out across the land When the golden light was falling On distant dome and spire; And I heard a low voice calling, "Come up higher, come up higher, From the lowland and the mire, From the mist of earth desire, From the vain pursuit of pelf. From the attitude of self: Come up ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... moment, the entranced Mariana relieved herself from the fatigue of her posturing, at the same time inviting Browning with a wink to be a charitable confederate in the joke by which she profited in admiration and in pelf. Browning, who would have waged immitigable war against the London dog-stealers, and opposed all treaty with such rogues, even at the cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose the new trade of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... hero and commander—Scipio notwithstanding. It brightens his flame, and it is agreeable to them. That is how they come to distinction: they have no other chance; they are only women; they are mad to be singed, and they rush pelf-mall, all for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the enemy, and kept the British arms in America to this day. They do not scruple to declare this themselves, and add that we shall be our own conquerors. Can not our common country, America, possess virtue enough to disappoint them? Is the paltry consideration of a little pelf to individuals to be placed in competition with the essential rights and liberties of the present generation, and of millions yet unborn? Shall a few designing men, for their own aggrandizement, and to gratify their own avarice, overset the goodly fabric we have been rearing, at ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... as he. And if life last, ye wull too; for there never waur a bad ane of that stock. Wi' heads kindly stup'd to the least, and lifted manfu' oop to the heighest,—that ye all war' sin ye came from the Ark. Blessin's on the ould name! though little pelf goes with it, it sounds on the peur man's ear like a ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cheerful, kind; Mistrusting none but self, injurious self, Of and to others wishing only good; With thee, suspicions crowd the gloomy mind, Suggesting all the world a viperous brood That acts a base bad part in hope of pelf: Virtue stands shamed, Truth mute misunderstood, Honour unhonoured, Courage lacking nerve, Beneath ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 'twas certainly conjur'd into his Pockets. No Matter how it came there (said t'other;) but you have above twenty Pounds about you of your own Money: Pray feel. Miles then felt, and pull'd out as much Silver as he could grasp, and laid it down on the Table. Hang this white Pelf; (cry'd his Friend) pay it in Gold, like your self, Come, apply your Hand to another Pocket: He did so, and brought out as many Broad-Pieces as Hand could hold. Now (continu'd his Friend) give the Waiter eight ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... spiritual hedger, Who backs his rigid Sabbath, so to speak, Against the wicked remnant of the week, A saving bet against his sinful bias— "Rogue that I am," he whispers to himself, "I lie—I cheat—do anything for pelf, But who on earth can say I am ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... fashion to-day is a tincture so strong, That, if dosing yourself, you are sure to go wrong. What men learnt in the past they say brings them no pelf, And the well-tried old remedies rest on the shelf. But the patient may haply exclaim, "Don't be rash, Lest your new-fangled physic should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... thee for thyself, Wealth-giver, ignorant of pelf; Fain would I learn thy upright ways And heart ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him burned As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go, mark him well. For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... world over, from Monte Carlo to Maine; From Dawson City to Dover, from San Francisco to Spain. Cards! They 'ave been me ruin. They've taken me pride and me pelf, And when I'd no one to play with—why, I'd go and I'd play ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... nation, let Britain, in the zenith of her power and greatness, think kindly of the native races, and now for once in her history rule this great island for right and righteousness, in justice and mercy, and not for self and pelf in unrighteousness, blood, and falsehood. It is to be hoped that future generations of New Guinea natives will not rise up to condemn her, as the New Zealanders have done, and to claim their ancient rights with tears ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... inflexible love of personal liberty among the Confederates. Yet here were men who knew little of the principles for which they staked their lives;—who enlisted from the commonest motives of convenience, whim, pelf, adventure, and foray; and who repented, after their first misfortune, with the salt rheum in their eyes. I think that all "great uprisings" resolve to this complexion. With due reverence for my own ancestry, I think that they sometimes stooped ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... is daily avenged," replied Lopez. "How many wicked, how many low souls, who basely squander divine gifts to obtain worthless pelf, there are among my people! More than half of them are stripped of honor and dignity on your altar of vengeance, and thrust into the arms of repulsive avarice. And this, all this. . . . But enough of these things! They rouse my inmost soul to wrath, and I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... prapperty' he and two other brothers as ancient as himself had been quarrelling over for twenty years, and were likely to go on quarrelling over, till all three litigants had closed their eyes on a mortal scene which had afforded them on the whole vast entertainment, though little pelf. Next him was a bowed and twisted old tramp who had been shepherd in the district in his youth, had then gone through the Crimea and the Mutiny, and was now living about the commons, welcome to feed here and sleep there for the sake of his stories and his queer innocuous wit. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... while observe what a cheap purchase of happiness is made by the strength of fancy. For whereas many things even of inconsiderable value, would cost a great deal of pains and perhaps pelf, to procure; opinion spares charges, and yet gives us them in as ample a manner by conceit, as if we possessed them in reality. Thus he who feeds on such a stinking dish of fish, as another must hold his nose at a yard's ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... find them in after-days, When the corpse is presumed to have done with gauds, Of use to the living, in many ways; For the boys get pelf, and the town applauds, And the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... man who hurls himself from the top of a mountain or church steeple. The man in question has forgotten to cut off evidence, and, in order to work out a theory, has killed two persons. He has committed a murder, and yet has not known how to take possession of the pelf; what he has taken he has hidden under a stone. The anguish he experienced while hearing knocking at the door and the continued ringing of the bell, was not enough for him: no, yielding to an irresistible desire of experiencing the same horror, he has positively ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... both in thought and deed, Of generous impulse, and above all greed; Not seeking praise, or place, or power, or pelf, But life's best blessings for her higher self, Which means the best for all. She must have faith, To make good friends of Trouble, Pain, and Death, And understand their message. She should be As redolent with tender sympathy As is a rose with fragrance. ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... and lets the Bolshy rave, He is condemned to toil in mines and galleries, Nourished inside with insufficient calories, A sordid mineral's uncomplaining slave, Till the rheumatics get him and his pallor is So marked he hardly dares to wash and shave. And shall I grudge the man sufficient pelf For toil I'd rather ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... appreciation. That gift we have, and it is momentarily increasing. To be entirely commercial, which view is of course not the right one, one need only watch the reports of sales at home and abroad to see what this latter-day appreciation means in pelf. In England a tapestry was recently unearthed and identified as one of the series of seven woven for Cardinal Woolsey. It is not of extraordinary size, but was woven in the interesting years hovering above and below the century mark of 1500. The time was when public favour spoke for the ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... traitorous uncle has wooed for himself: Her father has sold her for land and for pelf: My steed, for whose equal the world they might search, In mockery they borrow to ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... lifting at length His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the rest of his strength Into the utterance—"Pan spoke thus: 'For what thou hast done Count on a worthy reward! Henceforth be allowed thee release From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf!' ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... by Critics, to non-plus Euphranor, Cydias, and Antidotus. But what are they? Below my feet they lie; Poor sons of pelf. The son of art am I. Now rest thee, maiden, on this pillowy bed, With fragrance canopied, with beauty spread; Above thee hovers eglantine's caress, Around thee glows entangled loveliness; Shy primrose smiles, thy gentle ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... forthwith permitted to amass much honor and more wealth by wronging his less accomplished fellow-citizens. China is a student's paradise where the possession of learning is instantly convertible into unlimited pelf. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... underground dens, And the wishtonwish marmot, the kind prairie dog, Makes room in his hole for the tortoise and frog. The hamster runs home, with the pouch in his cheek Stuff'd with various provisions enough for a week; Then stores in his dark lonely cell the rich pelf, For, ill bred and greedy, he cares but for self. No children, no wife, no companion had he, With his very best friend he could never agree, But lived by himself without pleasure or mirth, In a hermit-like vault, five feet deep in the earth; But the sentinel marmot's shrill whistle ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... of another owner of land in Thimbleby, in the 15th century, whose apparent love of pelf would seem to have tempted him to defraud the king of his dues. A certain Thomas Knyght, of the City of Lincoln, Esquire, died in the 10th year of the reign of Henry VII. (A D 1495), seized of lands and tenements ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... I so wise, I might seem to advise So great a potentate as yourself; They should, sir, I tell ye, spare't out of their belly, And this way spend some of their pelf. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... a night and a day; He rifles the Buckwheat patches; Then battens his store of pelf galore Under ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... pardon of the spirit's excess, Which soar'd too nigh that jealous Heaven Ever, save thus, to be forgiven. No Gospel has come down that cures With better gain a loss like yours. Be pious! Give the beggar pelf, And love your neighbour as yourself! You, who yet love, though all is o'er, And she'll ne'er be your neighbour more, With soul which can in pity smile That aught with such a measure vile As self should be at all named "love!" Your sanctity the priests ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... length of his nose, or call him "clever-looking." We should have been ashamed to let him smell about us the tar-brush of a sense of property, to let him think we looked on him as an asset to earn us pelf or glory. We wished that there should be between us the spirit that was between the sheep dog and that farmer, who, when asked his dog's age, touched the old creature's head, and answered thus: "Teresa" (his daughter) ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Latin tongue deriv'd, Of whose sense girls are depriv'd 'Cause they do not Latin know.— But if all this anger grow From this cause, that you suspect By proceedings indirect, I would keep (as misers pelf) All this learning to myself; Sister, to remove this doubt, Rather than we will fall out, (If our parents will agree) You ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... stripling, training for the law, A dunce at syntax, but a dab at law, One happy christmas laid upon the shelf His cap and gown, and stores of learned pelf. With all the deathless bards of Greece and Rome, To spend a fortnight at his uncle's home. Arriv'd, and pass'd the usual how d'ye do's, Inquiries of old friends and college news; "Well Tom—the road—what saw you worth ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... still virtuous, and saw The sun give clouds, and Charles give both the law. When private interest did all hearts bend, And wild dissents the public peace did rend, Thou, neither won, nor worn, wert still thyself, Not aw'd by force, nor basely brib'd with pelf. What the insuperable stream of times Did dash thee with, those suff'rings were, not crimes. So the bright sun eclipses bears; and we, Because then passive, blame him not. Should he For enforc'd shades, and ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... they have been plundered, under the hollow knavish pretence of curing souls and forgiving sins. THUS will human laws kill the body of Antichrist. Every motive for professing to believe absurdities and contradictions will be at an end, when neither rule nor honour, nor pelf is to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that thou shouldst spend it. Moreover, if I want money, doubtless Antony, who is henceforth my master, will give me more; he is much beholden to me, and this he knows well. There, waste not the precious time in haggling o'er the pelf—not yet art thou all a merchant, Harmachis;" and, without more words, she thrust the pieces into the leather bag that hung across my shoulders. Then she made fast the sack containing the spare garments, and, so womanly thoughtful was she, placed in it an alabaster ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... be free to fix your wages; Capital, you'd be free to pick your men: Love of free Union the one's tongue engages, Love of free "Knobsticks" fires the other's pen; But love of Freedom for her own fair self,— How much of it moves Poverty or Pelf? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... orphan kiddie Of the group with their stars in the Flag, And it's looked on Outside as an alien, Where its treatment makes honest men gag. It's treated the same as the harlot Who barters her body for pelf And carries it home to her master And is told to look ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... from men, held up the scales; the sky Told Thetis that her son must go the way He sent Queen Hecuba's—himself must pay, Himself though young, splendid Achilles' self, The price of manslaying, with blood for pelf. A grief immortal took her, and she grieved Deep in sea-cave, whereover restless heaved The wine-dark ocean—silently, not moving, Tearless, a god. O Gods, however loving, That is a lonely grief that must go dry About ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... unlucky for some time now, and to tell the truth I may say always. But I am the last man in the world to grumble—as you, my dear Lingo, can testify. I always do the utmost, with a single mind, and leave the thought of miserable pelf to others, men perhaps who never saw a shotted cannon fired. You know who made eighty thousand pounds, without having to wipe his pigtail—dirty things, I am glad they are gone out—but my business is to pay other people's debts, and receive all my credits in the shape of cannon-balls. This ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
