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More "Venal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a hand divine And wrote the judgment-sign, And Babylon fell!—So now, in that his place Of Tudor-Stuart pride, The golden gallery wide, 'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King Moved through ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... ordinary proceeding; and, in the present instance, the only course consistent with prudence and common sense. Those who maintained the contrary were either flighty enthusiasts, whose opinion was not worth considering, or venal orators, who had sold their country for a bribe. "Will you suffer yourselves," asked the indignant moralist, "to be blinded by these corrupt advocates, who amuse you with their eloquence, and then pocket the price? But it is your own fault: you ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... my friend, nor thou refuse This from no venal or ungrateful Muse. Whether thy hand strike out some free design, Where life awakes, and dawns at every line; Or blend in beauteous tints the colour'd mass, And from the canvas call the mimic face: Read these instructive leaves, in which ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... distant church in which the poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solitude about the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and the voters came down to the gardens of Pompeius where they received the money, so that the thing became notorious and Pompeius had an ill name for making that office which was the highest of all and which he obtained for his services, venal for those who were unable to attain to it by merit. "These reproaches however," said Cato to the women, "we must take our share of, if we become allied to Pompeius." On hearing this the women agreed ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... the Revolution, implied that South Carolina had been moved to her limited share in it against her direct interests, by a high-spirited patriotism and sympathy with the at present ungrateful and venal North. I do not think that the fact of my nationality influenced him in this; he evidently ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short. Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies of pastoral landscape shrink ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... for his encroachments, but unfortunately for the nation, that the English parliament, at that period, was more corrupt, venal, base, and sycophantic than at any period under the Tudor kings, or at any subsequent period under the Hanoverian princes. The House of Commons made no indignant resistance; it sent up but few spirited remonstrances; but tamely ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... honest Muse Walks forth Vindictive through a venal land; In vain Corruption sheds her golden dews, In vain Oppression lifts her iron hand; He scorns them both, and arm'd with Truth alone, Bids Lust and Folly tremble ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... through the silly things one after another—shoes which he could not wear, a sword which he could not use, a coat which must exhibit him a monkey—he grovelled before me and would have kissed my foot, but that I shrank from him in disgust. "Horrible, venal Venetian," I said, "thou hast shown me one more degraded than I." He was out of sight with his bundle of treasures before I could finish my reproof, and I busied ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... Spartan united political sagacity that was worthy of his great fellow-countryman Brasidas; but his merits were debased by mean and sordid vices; and his is one of the cases in which history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been accorded to the successful but venal soldier. But for the purpose for which he was required in Sicily, an abler man could not have been found in Lacedaemon. His country gave him neither men nor money, but she gave him her authority; and the influence of her name and of his own talents was speedily seen in the zeal with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... character to the British affairs and government. It marks and specifies the origin and true principle of all the abuses which Mr. Hastings was afterwards appointed to correct, and which the Commons charge that he continued and aggravated: namely, the venal depositions and venal exaltations of the country powers; the taking of bribes and corrupt presents from all parties in those changes; the vitiating and maiming the Company's records; the suppression of public correspondence; corrupt ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in the next presidential campaign. It implicated Mr. Adams equally with Mr. Clay. If the latter had been so corrupt as to offer his support on the promise of office, the former was quite as guilty in accepting of terms so venal. There never was a more base charge against American statesmen—there never was one more entirely destitute of foundation, or even shadow of proof! It was at no time considered entitled to the slightest particle of belief by those who were at Washington during ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... sensibilities of his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... Union may perhaps be worth notice. It has sometimes been suggested that it was carried by a venal oligarchy in opposition to the will of the great mass of the population, of the Roman Catholic population in particular. This is precisely the reverse of the truth. The oligarchy controlled the Parliament, and it therefore followed that ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... reception that awaited him in the capital. The assurances of the vile crew which surrounded him soon made that fear wear off, and when he plucked up the courage to return to his palace, he might himself have been amazed at the effusion of infamous loyalty and venal acclamation with which he was received. All Rome poured itself forth to meet him; the Senate appeared in festal robes with their wives and girls and boys in long array; seats and scaffoldings were built up along the road by which he ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... stronger sex have equal rights, and that the same pride reigns in my breast, which I see kindling in your eyes, my lord and king! My obedience to you, my husband and my ruler, shall be that of a slave, but I can never stoop to sue for the favor, or obey the orders of a venal servant, the most unmanly ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... slave-owners are interested in concealing enormities committed by their fellows, and are backed by a venal press, which, whether bribed or not (and there is every reason to suspect that this is often the case), puts such a construction on outrage, by garbled reports, as to turn the tide of sympathy from the victim to the perpetrator. No editor, possessing the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... object of our wishes, and this bright emblem for which I have so long striven will now finally become mine. I shall be the ruler of this land, and in the unrestricted exercise of royal power I shall behold these millions of venal slaves grovelling at my feet, and whimpering for a glance or a smile. Ah, how ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... scouted the proposal indignantly. Did I think justice was to be bought in Switzerland? It was the law I had outraged, not an individual merely. Besides—money is all powerful in this venal country—how could I pay, a poor devil like me, the necessary price? what could I produce in cash on the nail? My bond would not be worth the ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... your Greeks. Your music was ringing in the ears of mothers; their unborn children were being molded to the long roll of your hexameters. There came to be manuscripts of you in every city: corrupt enough, many of them, forgeries, many of them; lays fudged up and fathered on you by venal Rhapsodoi, to chant in princely houses whose ancestors it was a good speculation to praise. You were everywhere in Greece: a great and vague tradition, a formless mass of literature: by the time Solon was making laws for Athens, and Pisistratus was laying the foundations ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... he was sure acted on purer motives. They wept over their bleeding country, he had no doubt. Yet the patriot 'eye in a fine frenzy rolling' sometimes deigned to cast a wishful squint on the riches and honors enjoyed by the minister and his venal supporters. If he were not apprehensive of hazarding a ludicrous allusion, (which he knew was always improper on a serious subject) he would compare their conduct to that of the sentimental alderman in one of Hogarth's prints, who, when his daughter is expiring, wears indeed a parental face ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... worse than ignorant, superficially taught, with the politics and morals of girls at a boarding-school, rather than of men and statesmen; but it is not yet desperately wicked, or so scandalously venal as in former times. Did not a triennial parliament give up the national dignity, approve the Peace of Utrecht, and almost give up everything else in taking every step to defeat the Protestant succession? Was not the Constitution saved by those who had no election at all to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... nature of the crime. The Sun, after giving a cut of an old-fashioned parlor-grate as a diagram of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S house, and a portrait of Mr. JOHN RUSSELL YOUNG as a correct photograph of the alleged murderer by ROCKWOOD, said:—"The retention of Mr. FISH as Secretary of State by the present venal Administration, and the official countenance otherwise corruptly given to friends of Spanish tyranny who do not take the Sun, are plainly among the current encouragements to such crime as that in the full reporting of which to-day the Sun's advertisements are crowded down to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... vibrates with an undisguisedly fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag, the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... "The Presidency of the United States is not an office to be either sought or declined. To pay money for securing it is, in my opinion, incorrect in principle. The practices of all parties are tending to render elections altogether venal, and I am ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... in the Holy of Holies, the Deity made known his will to the most sacred personage of the nation, in order that no rash resolution of the people, or senate, or judge might be executed. And this response, given in an audible voice, was final and supreme, and not like the Grecian oracles, venal and mendacious. This oracle of the Hebrew God "was a wise provision to preserve a continual sense of the principal design of their constitution—to keep the Hebrews from idolatry, and to the worship of the only true God as their ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... when he added the development of the Palladium as the climax to the mystery of iniquity, it is small wonder that his book achieved notoriety to the extent of five thousand copies. He was assailed as a venal pamphleteer and his past achievements in literature were freely disinterred for his own benefit and for public instruction, but he was more than compensated by the approbation of Mgr. Fava, bishop of Grenoble, with ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... militarism. It will open the door for a conclusive German hegemony. Now, however clumsy and confused the diplomacy of these present Allies may be (challenged constantly, as it is, by democracy and hampered by a free, venal and irresponsible Press in at least three of their countries), the necessity they will be under will be so urgent and so evident, that it is impossible to imagine that they will not set up some permanent organ for the direction ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... enchantments,"—"beguiling unstable souls," so this second beast "maketh fire to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of (credulous) men." (2 Tim. iii. 8; Exod. vii. 22; Acts viii. 9-11.) The venal ministry of the heathenized church, (ch. xi. 2,) inculcate passive obedience to the beast of the sea, as to the "ordinance of God;"—to "resist" which, subjects the recusant to "damnation." (Rom. xiii. 2.) Here, then, we behold the counterfeits of the two great ordinances ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... ululation, umbrage, unanimous, undulate, urbanity, usurious, uxorious, vacillate, vacuous, vandalism, variegate velocity, venal, venereal, venial, venous, veracious, verdant, verisimilitude, vernacular, versatile, vestal, vibratory, vicarious, vicissitude, virulence, viscid, viscous, vitiate, vitreous, vituperate, vivacious, volatile, volition, voluminous, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... attempting to palliate her offence by blaming the cruelty of her parents in marrying her by force to a man much older than herself. Madame Dobson at once showed a disposition to assist them; not that the little woman was venal, but she had a passion for passion, a taste for romantic intrigue. As she was unhappy in her own home, married to a dentist who beat her, all husbands were monsters in her eyes, and poor Risler especially seemed to her a horrible tyrant whom ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD BOLINGBROKE have seemed among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate minister and a venal Parliament. Very little interest would have attached to his beans and vetches, if beans and vetches had caused him to forget that if he was happier on a farm he could be more useful in a Senate, and made him forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... slavery has been advocated by the venal and slavish-minded, while the independent and the warm-hearted were struggling without hope to save the liberties of mankind. But men of high and generous characters are now to be met with, whose opinions are at variance with their ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... best they would only have admitted him to the homes of decent, semi-educated families, and for such society he was altogether unfitted. The licence of the streets but seldom allured him. After his twenty-fourth year he was proof against the decoys of venal pleasure, and lived a life of asceticism exceedingly rare in young and lonely men. When Christian Moxey returned to London and took the house at Notting Hill, which he henceforth occupied together with his sister, a possibility of social intercourse at length appeared. Indeed it was a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, "Paris", and "Woman", and a "Syrian Tale", and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Greenwood's gay designs, Nor sleeps with 'sleeping beauties' but anon In five facetious acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean; But as some hands applaud—a venal few— Rather than sleep, John Bull ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... notions of honour and independence, I thoroughly believe. They have evidenced it lately on very important questions, and have given an example of adherence to principle, in preference to party and power, that must have astonished many of the venal and obsequious courts of Europe. Such are the glorious effects of freedom, when infused into a constitution. But it seems to me, that they are apt to forget the positive nature of their duties, and to fancy that their eminent privileges are only so many means of self-indulgence. They should ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... pant for glory, If you sigh to live in story, If you burn with patriot zeal; Seize this bright, auspicious hour, Chase those venal tools of power, Who subvert the ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... herds, no fleecy care, No fields that wave with golden grain, No meadows green, or gardens fair, A damsel's venal heart to gain. Then all in vain my sighs must prove, For I, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... professor, as practical as a Jew banker, as subtle as a Jesuit, he has as many ways of converting the folks among whom he is thrown as Panurge had of eating the corn in ear. For the simple and credulous—crosses and beads; for the hard-hearted and venal—material considerations; for the cultured and educated—a fine tissue of epigrams and anthropology; for the ladies—flattery and badinage. A spiritual ancestor of Anatole France's marvellous full-length figure of Jerome Coignard, Borrow's conception takes us back first to Rabelais and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and Cookes. Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint. Did some more sober ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... The authorities were by no means helpful, and the engineer was driven to an old expedient with the object of overcoming this difficulty. "We endeavour all we can," he says, in one of his letters, "to make ourselves popular, and this we find most effectually accomplished by 'regaling the venal beasts.'" {196} He also gave a ball at Mariquita, which passed off with eclat, the governor from Honda, with a host of friends, honouring it with their presence. It was, indeed, necessary to "make a party" in this way, as other schemers were already ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... haggard slaves. We declare that to be President of the United States is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption of a Jeffreys or a Marlborough in the past, and concede that bribery ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the enormous army of young women who, outside of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional sex life, venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an army which has existed since the beginning of time but which every postponement of the age of marriage causes to increase in relative numbers and to gain new strength for poisoning the ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... day celebrates, and the love of liberty which inspired the patriots' revolt on that memorable occasion. Yet two years earlier, as we have since discovered from a letter of Governor Hutchinson, he had been anonymously employing his venal pen in the service ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... the bitterness accumulated in the heart of that helpless creature had got into her veins, and, like some subtle poison, had decomposed her fidelity to that hateful pair. It was a great piece of luck for him, he reflected; because women are seldom venal after the manner of men, who can be bought for material considerations. She would be a good ally, though it was not likely that she was allowed to hear as much as the tables and chairs of the Chateau Borel. That could not be expected. But still.... And, at any ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... states, as well as all the other States to whose interests and rights under the Constitution she has always been true; and when disunion has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bonds which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and party that have plundered her revenues, taken away the power of self- government and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? Amid the gloom which the present and prospective condition of things must cast over the country, New York, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... gave me back the reverberating words! How the lime trees rocked to the final crack of the whip over the unhappy Grafton! "The learned dullness of declamation will be silent; and even the venal Muse, though happiest in fiction, will ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... the nominal leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my colleague, Croffut,—perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... tried, (He could do it indeed and not hear either side). Who'll now sit in judgment the whole year round? Now he that is judge of the shades underground Once ruler of fivescore cities in Crete, Must yield to his better and take a back seat. Mourn, mourn, pettifoggers, ye venal crew, And you, minor poets, woe, woe is to you! And you above all, who get rich quick By the rattle of dice ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... of venal doctors?" inquired Morris. "They're as common as blackberries: you can pick 'em ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conditions to develop the coalition of fortune and gifts. Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution, and the Emperor would never have existed; he would have been no more than a second edition of Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no amateurs, no celebrity, no cross of dishonor earned by squandering men's fortunes, is Correggio in a hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... years greatly improved. Men of eminence and great intellectual attainments were to be found among the contributors to the various journals, and what is much more important—for this was pre-eminently the age of bribery and corruption—men of honesty and integrity. Still there was a large class of venal hirelings in the pay of the Government. These were described by Mr. Pulteney as 'a herd of wretches whom neither information can enlighten nor affluence elevate.' He further expresses his conviction that 'if their patrons would read their writings, their salaries would be quickly withdrawn, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... litigation. The class of lawyers was large, and their gains were extortionate. Justice was not always to be found on the side of right. The law was uncertain as well as costly. The most learned counsel could be employed only by the rich, and even judges were venal, so that the poor did not easily find adequate redress. But all this is the necessary attendant on a factitious state of society, and by many is regarded as being quite as characteristic of modern, civilized ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... she answered. "It isn't likely, however; he is too old and tried an official to be venal. Furthermore we haven't any money at hand, and my instructions are to act independently of the German Embassy, and under no circumstances whatever to communicate with it. In such business as we are engaged, the Embassy never knows us nor of our plans. They don't dare to know; and they ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... of a venal race, Who think you cheat the sky With every pharisaic face And simulated lie; Round Freedom's lair, with weapons bare, We greet the light divine Of those who throned the goddess there, And yet ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... with which the Negro regarded the franchise. Thus it easily happened that more and more the better class of Negroes followed the advice from abroad and the pressure from home, and took no further interest in politics, leaving to the careless and the venal of their race the exercise of their rights as voters. The black vote that still remained was not trained and educated, but further debauched by open and unblushing bribery, or force and fraud; until the Negro voter was thoroughly inoculated with the idea that politics was a method of private ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... You grand vizier of lies! and you, dressed up adventurers, are you my people! Are these hired maidens, with their venal tricks, my people who pay taxes to us that we may say nay to their humblest request? No! I have never seen my people. Is this young woman, whom you have placed by my side, my mate who loves me? No—She is a heifer that you have let into my stall; she is an imp who is to shoot branches on ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... what law? Is there nothing more divine Than the patched-up broils of Congress, venal, full of meat and wine? Is there, say you, nothing higher? Naught, God save us! that transcends Laws of cotton texture, wove by vulgar ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... widely read press organs of the capital, with the exception of the moderately liberal Novosti ("The News") which managed to survive the shipwreck of the liberal press, became either openly or secretly the official mouthpieces of the Government. The venal Novoye Vremya, which the Russian satirist Shchedrin had branded as "the sewer," embarked, towards the end of the eighties, on the noble enterprise of hunting down the Jews with a zeal which was clear evidence of a higher demand ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in outspoken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unwary, and of obtaining from them, while heated by love or wine, every thing that flattery and false smiles can obtain in those unguarded moments: and so little infamous is the trade of prostitution, and so venal the women, that hardly any rank or condition set them above being bribed to it, nay, they are frequently assisted by their male friends and acquaintances to drive a good bargain; nor does their career of debauchery finish with ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Spain achieved an honourable renown in the last century, and may cite with pride her Varela, Musquiz, Gabarrus, Ulloa, Jovellanos, &c., was little cultivated or encouraged in that decay of the Spanish monarchy which commenced with the reign of the idiotic Carlos IV., and his venal minister Godoy, and in the wars and revolutions which followed the accession, and ended not with the death of Fernando his son, the late monarch—was almost lost sight of; though Canga Arguelles, lately deceased only, might compete with the most erudite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... words were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here! I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool! Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago with a New York millionaire ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... bad program, nor even that this scheme was badly carried out. That might be the case also; but the radical vice of the system was not that it was essentially incomplete in theory or faulty in practise, but that it was false. Its worst result was not poor scholars, but insincere and venal men. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... into the venture; senators, deputies, men of high social rank in public life, shamelessly sold their votes and their voices to secure the moral aid and the money of the state to aid their gambling enterprise, and the newspaper press of Paris, at all times venal, betrayed for bribes the trust that was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... "'The most venal and sordid of all the superstitions that have swept and darkened our globe may, indeed, like African locusts, have consumed the green corn in very extensive regions, and may return periodically to consume it; but the strong, unwearied labourer who sowed it hath ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... from the truth. It was simply a trick, a fraudulent, venal imposition. Mrs. C. B. M. herself admitted that she had absolutely nothing to do with the conduct of the business, nor did her previous experience in any way fit her to give advice in such matters. Her husband established the business under the name of the —— Medicine Company, and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... grown with the years that he has spent in it. Reading between the lines of his speech a cynic could only infer that the Upper House, as at present constituted, is such a useless and superfluous assembly that it does not much matter who gets into it or by what venal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... him to be deranged; so that his large estate was his great misfortune, to enjoy which his enemies had recourse to fraud, and pretended to doubt of the mercy of Heaven in restoring him from the condition of a brute to that of a man. In short, he talked so plausibly that he made the rector appear venal and corrupt, his relations unnatural, and himself so discreet that the chaplain determined to take him immediately to the archbishop, that he might be satisfied he ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... money, fonder still of what money could buy; he now hankered after revenge as the sweetest morsel that his hoarded ducats could procure for him. That the Sultan was well disposed to him he had every reason to think; none the less did he spend royally among the venal favourites of the Court in order that nothing might be left undone to inflame the ardour of Soliman against those whom he considered to be his ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... pathicorum" first came before me by a chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now defunct "Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company," the veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was reported to him that Karachi, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... by my sword I swear't, all this venal and base-born rabble shall rue their folly when thou art returned, O nonpareil of all the brave and hospitable! I pray thee bring rich booty from that province wherein thou dost now tarry—crowns, derniers, livres, ducats, golden angels, ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and it certainly did seem to the bystanders, that even the opposing counsel, even the judge on the bench, abstained from their prey because he was a member of Parliament. It was notorious to all the world that Griffenbottom had debased the borough; had so used its venal tendencies as to make that systematic which had before been too frequent indeed, but yet not systematized; that he had trained the rising generation of Percycross politicians to believe in political corruption;—and yet he escaped ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... the sweeping curve of white letters in which the name of the owner of the bakery was set forth was added in smaller letters the words "Cafe Nuernberger." Gottlieb and Aunt Hedwig and the man who made the sign (this last, however, for the venal reason that more letters would be required) had stood out stoutly for the honest German "Kaffehaus;" but Minna, whose tastes were refined, had insisted upon the use of the French word: there was more style about it, she said. And this was a case in which style was wedded to substantial ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... That the East India Company, by exporting their tea from England to America, whilst subject to a tax imposed thereon by the British Parliament, have evidently designed to fix on the Americans those chains forged for them by a venal ministry, and have thereby rendered themselves odious and detestable throughout all America. It is, therefore, the unanimous opinion of this meeting not to purchase any tea or other East India commodity whatever, imported after the first ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... of what must follow, and soon thereafter you see this great and gallant gentleman arrested on a trumped-up charge of high treason, bullied, vituperated, and insulted by venal, peddling lawyers, and, finally, although his wit and sincerity had shattered every fragment of evidence brought against him, sentenced to death. Thus far James went; but he hesitated to go further, hesitated to carry out the sentence. Sir Walter ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... their admirable and wonderful national prosperity, abandoned the government of their noble country and the preservation of its nobler institutions to the slaveholding aristocracy of the South—to a mob of politicians by trade, the vilest and most venal class of men that ever disgraced and endangered a country—to foreign emigrants, whose brutish ignorance did not prevent the Democratic party from seizing upon them as voters, and bestowing on the Irish and German boors just landed ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... various modern improvements have been introduced. The same hindrance is, however, experienced by the Bergheims which has paralyzed all other efforts for the improvement of the land. The difficulties raised by the venal and corrupt under-officials of the Government have been vexatious and incessant, being due to the determination to extort money by some means or other, or else to ruin the enterprise from which they could gain ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent tho more foolish acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... is almost thrown into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the darkest page of Scottish history, which we owe to the vindictive cruelty of the Covenanters—a party venal in principle, pusillanimous in action, and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the less disgust, since that very savage spirit which planned the woful scenes connected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... the venal maxim of those who understand the nature of philosophic prudence. The worth of money is to be estimated by the number of real pleasures which it can procure: there are many which are not to be bought by gold;[110] these will never lose their pre-eminent value with persons who have ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... odium of his more immediate personal delinquencies; his fawning sycophancy of Nicholas Biddle; his dirty work in behalf of that man for money, not for love; could he deluge with Lethean ocean the public memory, his malpractices as attorney-general; his venal career as a member of the Legislature; could he induce the public to overlook the bribes which he pocketed under the pretext of fees received for services never performed—bribes, the amount of which and the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... disguise could hide its identity from his penetrating glance. Without great vision or imagination, he knew criminals as did few other men; could reason from cause to effect within certain channels, unerringly. He was heartless, ruthless—some said venal. But he caught and convicted felons, solved the problems of his office by a dogged perseverance that ignored defeat. For, with a mind essentially tricky, he anticipated tricksters—unless their operations were beyond ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... wanderings, as it is unnecessary to describe in detail the evidence of intimacy so lavishly provided by the witnesses for the prosecution at the trial—evidence much of which was doubtless as false as it was venal. That the Princess, however, was infatuated by her cavalier, and that she was in the highest degree indiscreet in her relations with him, seems abundantly clear, whatever the precise degree of actual ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... as much by their virtues as their arms. They were now only to be distinguished from the rest of the people by their superior luxuries; and ruled the commonwealth by the weight of an authority gained from riches and mercenary dependents. 19. The venal and the base were attached to them from motives of self-interest; and they who still ventured to be independent, were borne down, and entirely lost in an infamous majority. 20. In short, the empire at this period ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... not unnaturally, that, in this sort of corrupt and venal appointment to high trust and office, Mr. Hastings has no other consideration than the money he received. But whoever thinks so will be deceived. Mr. Hastings was very far from indifferent to the character of the persons he dealt ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to marry, because, being a princess of the first rank, she might be offered and accepted to grace the harem of his brother; a mere prisoner of state, watched by the baleful eye of jealousy, and traduced by the venal tongues of courtiers; dwelling in a torment of uncertainty as to the fate to which his brother's explosive temper and irresponsible power might devote him, hoping for no repose or safety but in his funeral-urn,—he began to grow hard and defiant, and that which, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... revolution, followed by a foreign government, and a lavish expenditure, has demoralized sterner stuff than Greek politicians are made of, so that it is more to be regretted than wondered at, when it appears that the Greek court has an unusually large supply of venal political adventurers always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... kind, at home 'tis steadfast hate, And one eternal tempest of debate. What foul eruptions from a look most meek! What thunders bursting from a dimpled cheek! Such dead devotion, such zeal for crimes, Such licensed ill, such masquerading times, Such venal faiths, such misapplied applause, Such flattered guilt, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... A modern writer says of it: "It bristles with keen, well-pointed satire on the corrupt and venal politicians and courtiers of the day" (W.H. Husk in Grove's ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... did Pitt "blend Ireland with the industry and capital of Great Britain." Cupped by his finance she gave the venal blood of her industry to strengthen the predominant partner, and to help him to exclude for a time from these islands that pernicious French Democracy in which all states and peoples have since found redemption. Such was the first chapter in ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... these venal souls!" she muttered. "They measure every thing by their own standard, and cannot comprehend the longings and schemes of a great soul. Accursed be all those who turn traitors to their country and adhere to its enemies! May the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... soldiers. He offered immense concessions, which the allies against him rejected. He was obliged to continue the contest with exhausted resources and a saddened soul. He offered Marlborough four millions to use his influence to procure a peace; but this general, venal as he was, preferred ambition to money. The despair which once overwhelmed Holland now overtook France. The French marshals encountered a greater general than William III., whose greatness was in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Spittle Salivial Shoulder Humeral Shepherd Pastoral Sea Marine, maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical Spring Vernal Summer Estival Seed Seminal Ship Naval, nautical Shell Testaceous Sleep Soporiferous Strength Robust Sweat Sudorific Step Gradual Sole Venal Two Second Treaty Federal Trifle Nugatory Tax Fiscal Time Temporal, chronical Town Oppidan Thanks Gratuitous Theft Furtive Threat Minatory Treachery Insidious Thing Real Throat Jugular, gutteral Taste Insipid Thought Pensive Thigh Femoral Tooth Dental ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... search, and a scanty and feeble light of his own carrying, to the bounteous assistance of the sun in heaven? How this might be with Diogenes, I know not; but assuredly thus it fares with our Reformers:—The Journal of some venal or factious scribbler is the black and smoky lantern they are guided by; and the sunshine spread over the face of a happy country is of no use in helping them to find any object they are in search of.—The plea of the degraded state of the Representation of Westmoreland has been proved to be rotten;—if ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... caught Johnny up on that word—and he was game enough to take it well. Whenever something particularly bad happened to be also Southern, we called it the Chivalry. The word caught hold; so that later it came to be applied as a generic term to the Southern wing of venal politicians that early tried to control the new ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... their methods, as when, only a few years back, one or two of them seized an entire railroad under cover of what was the merest parody of purchase and opposed both to law and to public policy, afterward defending their outrage in the courts through the brazen aid of venal judges and bringing to Albany (headquarters of their attempted theft) a great carload of New York ruffians, each with a proxy in his soiled and desperate hand—an instrument almost as illegal as the pistol which those hands had doubtless too often fingered if ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... birth had come the aristocracy of money. Now one saw the reign of the caliphates of commerce, the despotism of the rue du Sentier, the tyranny of trade, bringing in its train venal narrow ideas, knavish and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... but the liberty of the press, and I will give to the minister a venal House of Peers—I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons—I will give him the full sway of the patronage of office—I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence—I will give him all the power that place can confer upon him to purchase up submission and overawe ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... encounter at this school, and which, but for a mere accident, would have fixed upon my character an indelible stain; and I am especially induced to notice it by the circumstance of its having been grossly misrepresented by the venal part of the public press. I believe it appeared either in one or both of those sinks of corruption, those stews of falsehood, those unblushing vehicles of calumny and lies, the Morning Post and the Courier, viz. "that Hunt, when a boy, was turned out ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the Romanists, who are three fourths of the Christian world, it is a most prominent doctrine, everywhere vehemently proclaimed and acted on: that is the meaning of the sacrament of extreme unction, whereby, on submission to the Church and confession to a priest, the venal sins of the dying man are forgiven, purgatory avoided or lessened, and heaven made sure. The ghost of the King of Denmark complains most of the unwarned suddenness of his murder, not of the murder itself, but of its suddenness, which ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the necessary funds. Without his cash, nobody would have paid for the summons, and the pious lawyers, from Sir Hardinge Giffard downwards, who harangued the magistrates, the judge and the jury, would have held their venal tongues, and left poor Religion to defend herself as she could. And who is Sir Henry Tyler? or, rather, who was he? for after emerging into public notoriety by playing the part of a prosecutor, he fell back into his natural obscurity. ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... him, I have, but in his happier hour, Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... scoundrels. The mob is loudest against the Chancellor, who I doubt is not to blame for our unreadiness, having little power of late over the King. Oh, there has been iniquity upon iniquity, and men know not whom most to blame—the venal idle servants, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... purification of legal business which it is hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful custom.—[New ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... was connived at by the officials for a "CONSIDERATION;" old title-deeds were exchanged for new on the application of the holder, and the seals of the venal authorities rendered them valid, at the same time that hundreds of acres were fraudulently transferred from the state. When the intention of a British occupation was made public, a general rush was made for obtaining an excess over the amount defined in ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... ground. This gloomy tyrant, whose despotic sway Compell'd the trembling nations to obey, 120 Through Greece for murder, rape, and incest known, The Muses raised to high Olympus' throne; For oft, alas! their venal strains adorn The prince whom blushing virtue holds in scorn: Still Rome and Greece record his endless fame, And hence yon mountain yet retains his name. But see! in confluence borne before the blast, Clouds roll'd on clouds the dusky noon o'ercast: The blackening ocean curls, the winds ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... drop; No wit that would not likewise pass For wisdom in the famished ass Who breaks his neck a weed to crop, When tethered in the luscious grass. And now, thank God, his hateful name Shall never rescued be from shame, Though seas of venal ink be shed; No sophistry shall reconcile With sympathy for Erin's Isle, Or sorrow for her patriot dead, The weeping of this crocodile. Life's incongruity is past, And dirt to dirt is seen at last, The worm of worm afoul doth fall. The sexton tolls his solemn bell ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... often falls little short of justifiable; as, I think, under those circumstances, his action was excusable. Protestants do not recognize the distinction between venial and mortal sins. Venial must not be confounded with the very different word VENAL. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... contempt, if not indeed of actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far on the revolutionary side, had never weaned of pouring contempt upon it. In his eyes it was the great opponent of progress, the venal slave which had not only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak, and whose endeavour had been to keep Ireland under the heel of her tyrant. To him the opposition as little deserved the name ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... self-seeking and made the most of my position, as was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until now, when at a stroke I had sold my honour and pledged myself to this ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... admirable discipline which prevailed among them all, soon won for them the respect even of the few revolutionists who were at Rome. These brave and self-sacrificing youths, many of whom served at their own cost, were addressed as "Signor Soldato" (Signor Soldier) by the passers-by, whilst the venal scribes of the outside revolutionary press did their best to stigmatize them as "the mercenaries of the Pope." Whilst some of these warriors devoted their life, others bestowed their gold. It is honorable to the Catholic people ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become satellites of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... confidential friends, many of whom resold the stock at a premium of twenty to twenty-five per cent. before the first payment had been made. Thus, the distribution of stock became a public scandal, deplored in the messages of the Governor and assailed by the press. "The unclean drippings of venal legislation," the New York Evening Post called it. But no remedy was applied. The Governor, in spite of his regrets, signed every charter the Legislature granted, and the commissioners, as if ignorant of the provisions to secure a fair ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... epithets as odious and cowardly, monstrous, vile, venal and vindictive, on the Association, which he declared he wanted to ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... hands it must be wrought, That we must stand unpropp'd, or be laid low. O Dastard whom such foretaste doth not chear! We shall exult, if They who rule the land Be Men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal Band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour which they ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... Had long exchanged the corselet for the gown: In peace forgotten the commander's art, And learned to play the politician's part,— To court the suffrage of the crowd, and hear In his own theatre the venal cheer; Idly he rested on his ancient fame, And was the shadow of a mighty name. Like the huge oak which towers above the fields Decked with ancestral spoils and votive shields. Its roots, once mighty, loosened by decay, Hold it no more: weight ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of the National Assembly. He could not even understand what was meant by the charges against them of having overturned the laws, the justice, and the revenues of their country. What were their laws? the arbitrary mandates of capricious despotism. What their justice? the partial adjudications of venal magistrates. What their revenues? national bankruptcy. This he thought the fundamental error of his Right Honorable Friend's argument, that he accused the National Assembly of creating the evils, which they had found ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... and Lady Hamilton. The Queen of Naples went with them to Vienna. While they were at Leghorn, upon a report that the French were approaching (for, through the folly of weak courts and the treachery of venal cabinets, they had now recovered their ascendancy in Italy), the people rose tumultuously, and would fain have persuaded Nelson to lead them against the enemy. Public honours, and yet more gratifying testimonials ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... rogues-gallery photograph. Times almost past counting he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he always had escaped conviction and imprisonment. There was no stink of the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy Marr's ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... inconveniences which proceed from jealousy, to keep themselves and their wives honest, make severe laws; against adultery present death; and withal fornication, a venal sin, as a sink to convey that furious and swift stream of concupiscence, they appoint and permit stews, those punks and pleasant sinners, the more to secure their wives in all populous cities, for they hold them as necessary as churches; and howsoever unlawful, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... secret soul, and in very opposition to my reason and understanding, that Malcolm Fleming, who could pledge his all upon the service of his country, is incapable of nourishing the versatile affection of an ordinary, a coarse, or a venal character. Methinks, were the difference upon his part instead of mine, he would not lose his interest in my eyes, because he was seamed with honourable scars, obtained in asserting the freedom of his choice, but that such wounds would, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is the spirit of a man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying and imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over the intellect, and ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... and envious, fiercely demanded their place and their rights amongst the privileged castes; its justice appeared hatred. The Assembly comprised in its bosom all these weaknesses, all this egotism, all these vices. Mirabeau was venal, Barnave jealous, Robespierre fanatic, the Jacobin Club blood-thirsty, the National Guard selfish, La Fayette a waverer, the government a nullity. No one desired the Revolution but for his own purpose, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the disgraceful scene of his cross-examination at Westminster, and the condemnation by his venal judges at the order of a paltry king. It became known, or shrewdly guessed, that Spain had sent to James I. a hectoring alternative that Raleigh must be executed in London or sent alive for a like purpose to Madrid. The trial was a cowardly and ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... public care, all venal strife, To try the Still, compared with Active Life. To prove by these the sons of men may owe, The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe, That ev'n calamity by thought refin'd Inspirits, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... cringe to Europe! Band it all in one, Stilt its decrepit strength, renew its age, Wipe out its debts, contract a loan to wage Its venal battles,—and, by yon bright sun, Our God is false, and liberty undone, If slaves have power to win your heritage! Look on your country, God's appointed stage, Where man's vast mind its boundless course shall run: For that it was your ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... for his attempt to bestow liberty on his subjects, languishes himself in prison. The person given to us by Monk was a man without any sense of his duty as a prince, without any regard to the dignity of his crown, without any love to his people,—dissolute, false, venal, and destitute of any positive good quality whatsoever, except a pleasant temper, and the manners of a gentleman. Yet the restoration of our monarchy, even in the person of such a prince, was everything to us; for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... particular evening he had in prospect a little dinner at Philippe's—not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty—and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in their size would have saved him from that vulgar temptation. He was somewhat choice in his tailors, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... recommending her to obey the orders of Boges, the eunuch, who was head over the house of women, she reminded him that she was a king's daughter, bound to obey the commands of her lord, but unable to bow to a venal servant. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... naturalization papers. In every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin in ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... Drood, when attacked by Jasper, was (like Durdles in the "unaccountable expedition") stupefied by drugs, and so had no valid evidence against his uncle. Whether science is acquainted with the drugs necessary for such purposes is another question. They are always kept in stock by starving and venal apothecaries in fiction and the drama, and are a ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans has been publicly noticed and commented upon time and again; but the ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... of munificence of this kind by rich nabobs, he breaks out, "would be more pleasing in the sight of Heaven, and more to the glory and advantage of their country, than building a dozen shingle church steeples, or buying a thousand venal votes at an election." This was in the ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg—they call it his arm. And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed in my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... with a proud modesty (Prag is not spoken of at all); and how the neighboring ravenous Powers, on-lookers hitherto, have opened their throats with one accord to swallow Prussia, thinking its downfall certain: "Poor mercenary Sweden, once so famous under its soldier Kings, now debased by a venal Senate;"—Sweden, "what say I? my own kindred [foolish Anspach and others], driven by perverse motives, join in the plot of horrors, and become ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... cat-like harmony of the aeolian harps: these harps were artlessly stretched across each of the old vaulted windows. We arrived at the high portal of the ancient manor, a genuine Roman construction of Aurelius Aquensis—a gateway with a round arch: it was obstructed by hired cabs, by whole herds of venal donkeys saddled and bridled, and by holiday-makers of Baden in Sunday clothes preserved for ten or fifteen years. The old pile itself is transformed into a hostelry. Gray was wrong: the paths of glory lead not to the grave, but to the gasthaus; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... has not been evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my experience ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... social rank in public life, shamelessly sold their votes and their voices to secure the moral aid and the money of the state to aid their gambling enterprise, and the newspaper press of Paris, at all times venal, betrayed for bribes the trust that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... particular occurrence which I had to encounter at this school, and which, but for a mere accident, would have fixed upon my character an indelible stain; and I am especially induced to notice it by the circumstance of its having been grossly misrepresented by the venal part of the public press. I believe it appeared either in one or both of those sinks of corruption, those stews of falsehood, those unblushing vehicles of calumny and lies, the Morning Post and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... before. The Candahar chiefs had meditated a night attack on his raw troops, but Macnaghten's intrigues and bribes had wrought defection in their camp; and while Kohun-dil-Khan and his brothers were in flight to Girishk on the Helmund, the infamous Hadji Khan Kakur led the venal herd of turncoat sycophants to the feet of the claimant who came backed by the British gold, which Macnaghten was scattering abroad with lavish hand. Shah Soojah recovered from his trepidation, hurried forward in advance of his troops, and entered Candahar on April 24th. His reception ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... joined to superiority of talent, ignores the art of cringing; it is even impossible that merit can lead to fortune in a corrupted and venal country: on the contrary, it becomes a cause of exclusion. Virtue elevates the soul, and can neither fawn nor buy credit, nor flatter vice and incapacity. "If such is the military constitution of a State," says M. Gaubert, in his ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... revive a sexual appetite weakened by abuse. Individuals who have become impotent often try to excite themselves by observing the coitus of others. In fact a leaven of corruption and ignominy ferments on the dunghill of venal and artificial excitation of the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... France patiently, and bless the firm hand that lopt off the rotten limbs. But, if the aristocracy of birth is levelled with the ground, only to make room for that of riches, I am afraid that the morals of the people will not be much improved by the change, or the government rendered less venal. Still it is not just to dwell on the misery produced by the present struggle, without adverting to the standing evils of the old system. I am grieved—sorely grieved—when I think of the blood that has stained ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... condition that some, at any rate, of the great established bodies have the sap of life in their members. In France not even the judiciary, usually the last to part from its ancient roots, was sound and quick. 'The administration of justice,' says Arthur Young, 'was partial, venal, infamous. The conduct of the parliament was profligate and atrocious. The bigotry, ignorance, false principles, and tyranny of these bodies were generally conspicuous.'[7] We know what the court was, we know what the noblesse ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... substance on the floating air; The floating air their downy substance glides Through springing waters, and prevents their tides; Seizes the rolling waves, and, as a god, Charms their swift race, and stops the refluent flood; The opening valves, which fill the venal road, Then scarcely urge along the sanguine flood; The labouring pulse a slower motion rules, The tendons stiffen, and the spirit cools; Each asks the aid of Nature's sister, Art, To cheer the senses, and to warm the heart. The gentle fair on ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... you with horror; for the creditors being in general servants of the Company renders my task, on the part of the Company, difficult and invidious." "I have freed the sanction of this government from so corrupt a transaction. It is in my mind the most venal of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to debts that cannot bear the light; and though it appears exceedingly alarming, that a country on which you are to depend for resources should be so involved as to be nearly three ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... took place between the doctor and the disease, the former relying on Pierrette's youth, one of those struggles which physicians alone comprehend,—the reward of which, in case of success, is never found in the venal pay nor in the patients themselves, but in the gentle satisfaction of conscience, in the invisible ideal palm gathered by true artists from the contentment which fills their soul after accomplishing a noble work. The ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... whom they might happen to be offered, would unhesitatingly reject them. Again, to absorb the gold would have been neither more nor less than partially to carry out the views entertained by the supporters of a metallic currency, and therefore surely, in their eyes, a venal, if not a meritorious, offence. But such was not the fact. In Scotland there was no such a thing known as a gold circulation. The fishermen, the cattle dealers, and the small traders, would not so much as take it; and the stranger who, through ignorance, had provided ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... judge of men and books, Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes. Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint. Did some more sober critic come aboard; If wrong, I smiled; if ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... father, "if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... response to Dryden's petitions and the reward of his services was not so insignificant as appears from the text, though it was meagre enough. The facts were not known fully even to Macaulay, and his ignorance enabled him, in perfect honesty, to make the case against Dryden, for supposed venal apostasy, stronger than it might otherwise appear. The documents referred to were discovered by Mr. Peter Cunningham and by Mr. Charles Beville Dryden, the latter of whom communicated his discovery to Mr. Robert Bell. As the facts are undoubted, and Macaulay's ignorance of them equally ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... tendered. This means mischief. How many will rush forward a year hence to volunteer their services on the plains of the South? Full many ensanguined plains will greet the horrific vision before this time next year; and many a venal wretch coming to possess our land, will occupy till the day of final doom a tract of six feet by two in some desolate and unfrequented swamp. The toad will croak his requiem, and the viper will coil beneath the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the toils, the anxieties, and, too often, the peculations of a life. Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... serene, well-practised skill, He "squares" Surveyors too! For Jobbery finds some baseness still For venal hands to do. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... was situated in the Rue Mouffetard. It has long since disappeared with many a haunt of my youth's revelry. The tide of frolic has set northward, and Montmartre, which to us was but a geographical term, now dazzles the world with its venal splendour. But the Moulin de la Galette and the Bal Tabarin of the present day lack the gaiety of the Bal Jasmin. It was not well frequented; it gathered round its band-stand people with shocking reputations; the sight of a man in a dress coat would have transfixed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he will go to the Treasury Department at Washington, D.C., and ask to see my voucher for $9.85, covering salary as United States commissioner for the Second Judicial District of Wyoming for the year 1882. It was at that time that a vile contemporary characterized me as "a corrupt and venal Federal official who had fattened upon the hard-wrung taxes of my fellow citizens and gorged myself for years at the public crib." This was unjust I was not corrupt I was not ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... though revolutionary in its programme, follows the laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... care, all venal strife, To try the still, compared with active, life; To prove, by these, the sons of men may owe The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe; That ev'n calamity, by thought refined, Inspirits and ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... almost thrown into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the darkest page of Scottish history, which we owe to the vindictive cruelty of the Covenanters—a party venal in principle, pusillanimous in action, and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the less disgust, since that very savage spirit which planned the woful scenes connected with the final tragedy of Montrose, has served ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... venal, in the church no less than in the state. Pardon was obtainable for all crimes for, as a papal vice-chamberlain phrased it, "The Lord wishes not the death of a sinner but that he should pay and live." Dispensations from the laws against marriage within the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... the proposal indignantly. Did I think justice was to be bought in Switzerland? It was the law I had outraged, not an individual merely. Besides—money is all powerful in this venal country—how could I pay, a poor devil like me, the necessary price? what could I produce in cash on the nail? My bond would not be worth the paper it ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... beaten both candidates and disfranchised the borough. As it is, it is probable the matter will be taken up and the borough disfranchised. The right of voting is as bad as possible in the freemen, who are the lowest rabble of the town and, as it appears, a parcel of venal wretches. Here comes the difficulty of Reform, for how is it possible to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... benevolently-meditative Vauvenargues. Nevertheless, they are seen in warm relation of friendship to each other, and the letters exhibit their characteristics. Mirabeau shamelessly pours out the catalogue of his shifting and venal loves, in confidences which Vauvenargues invariably receives with discretion, unupbraiding, but not volunteering any like confidence in his turn. A single example must be quoted: Mirabeau, wishing to get rid of a mistress of whom he is tired, but who is still devoted to him, writes her a ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... man, who saves His honesty in crowds of knaves; Nor yields up virtue at discretion, To villains of his own profession. Lindsay, you know what pains you take In both, yet hardly save your stake; And will you venture both anew, To sit among that venal crew, That pack of mimic legislators, Abandon'd, stupid, slavish praters? For as the rabble daub and rifle The fool who scrambles for a trifle; Who for his pains is cuff'd and kick'd, Drawn through the dirt, his pockets pick'd; You must expect ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... sympathy. He was taken to the Luxembourg and afterwards to Saint-Lazare. During the 140 days of his imprisonment there he wrote the marvellous Iambes (in alternate lines of 12 and 8 syllables), which hiss and stab like poisoned bullets, and which were transmitted to his family by a venal gaoler. There he wrote the best known of all his verses, the pathetic Jeune captive, a poem at once of enchantment and of despair. Suffocating in an atmosphere of cruelty and baseness, Chenier's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... martial hero first, with early care, Blown, like a pigmy by the winds, to war. A beardless chief, a rebel, e'er a man: So young his hatred to his prince began. Next this (how wildly will ambition steer!) 30 A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear. Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groan'd, sigh'd, and pray'd, while godliness was gain— The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train. But, as 'tis hard to cheat a juggler's eyes, His open lewdness he could ne'er disguise. There split the saint: ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the involuntary Tears: Honour's sworn Foe, the Libertine with Shame, Descends to curse the sordid lawless Flame; The tender Maid here learns Man's various Wiles, Rash Youth, hence dread the Wanton's venal Smiles— Sure 'twas by brutal Force of envious Man, First Learning's base Monopoly began; He knew your Genius, and refus'd his Books, Nor thought your Wit less fatal than your Looks. Read, proud Usurper, read with conscious Shame, Pathetic Behn, or Mauley's greater ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... of alluring to their arms, the young and unwary, and of obtaining from them, while heated by love or wine, every thing that flattery and false smiles can obtain in those unguarded moments: and so little infamous is the trade of prostitution, and so venal the women, that hardly any rank or condition set them above being bribed to it, nay, they are frequently assisted by their male friends and acquaintances to drive a good bargain; nor does their career of debauchery ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... vigorous opposition in the case of this Pennsylvania road. A public meeting was held at the Prince of Wales Tavern in Philadelphia in 1793 to protest in round terms against the monopolistic character of the Lancaster Turnpike. Blackstone and Edward III were hurled at the heads of the "venal" legislators who had made this "monstrosity" possible. The opposition died down, however, in the face of the success which the new road instantly achieved. The Turnpike was, indeed, admirably situated. Converging ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... police and that venal Mayor Poundstone!" Bryce retorted, with another snap of his fingers. "I'll rid the city of them at the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... will never be the venal maxim of those who understand the nature of philosophic prudence. The worth of money is to be estimated by the number of real pleasures which it can procure: there are many which are not to be bought by gold;[110] these will never lose their pre-eminent value with persons who have been educated ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... melancholy, unconscious charm, a curiously unadorned, uncolored personality, that attracted where it did attract with a magnetism that was perhaps all the more potent for being somewhat difficult to explain. Fox was always a lover in many kinds of love, fugitive, venal, illicit, honorable, and enduring. Pitt carried himself through temptations with a monastic rigor. There was a time when his friends implored him for the sake of appearances, and not to flout too flagrantly the manners of the time, to show ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Brougham were suckled on him. His farthest reaching achievement was his treatment of the French Revolution. His single voice rolled back that storm in Europe. But no words could retard revolution in Ireland herself. Venal government made the noblest conservative thinking seem treason to the highest interests of the country. The temporary success of Grattan's parliament had been largely won by the Volunteers. They had been drilled, ostensibly against foreign invasion, but virtually to secure reforms at home. ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... abuses his better judgment. Between customer and tradesman the balance is adjusted; between man and man there is an account which money will not settle. It is not indeed to be desired, that any class of men should be possessed With such a spirit of venal servility, as to be really insensible to the folly and oppression which enters into the exactions of fashionable caprice; or that, however compelled to be obsequious in manner, they should altogether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... excluded from competition except those who had great experience in public affairs, and who had commended themselves to the people by wisdom, virtue, and high services. Such men had no need of hired biographers and venal letter-writers to inform the people who they were. They needed no interpreters of letters to the public, cunningly devised to mystify what they pretended to elucidate. National conventions, Mr. Toombs contended, were contrivances to secure popular ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... made by her commanding beauty. She despised the usages of the world, and, believing herself exempted from them by her rank, after she became a duchess, she dispensed with them, and sacrificed to her venal ambition some of the most lovable qualities of her sex. One of her speeches, when honours became, as she thought, too common at court, betrays her pride and her coarseness. "Upon my word," she used to say, "one cannot look out of one's coach window without spitting on a ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Company's employees, untrained in war—namely that a weak-walled native town lying right against the northern wall of Fort St. George was a serious danger. The houses offered convenient cover for any enemies that might attack the Fort; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal townsman was in a position to give the assailants valuable help. The French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deliberate destruction of Black Town. He first destroyed the Town Wall, and then—for a distance of 400 yards from the northern ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short. Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies of pastoral ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to take it well. Whenever something particularly bad happened to be also Southern, we called it the Chivalry. The word caught hold; so that later it came to be applied as a generic term to the Southern wing of venal politicians that early tried to control ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Most venal of a venal race, Who think you cheat the sky With every pharisaic face And simulated lie; Round Freedom's lair, with weapons bare, We greet the light divine Of those who throned the goddess there, And yet inspire ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... share. It has long been the opinion adopted by writers on those subjects that the Carthaginians, as being a commercial and a trading nation, were quite an unequal match for the Romans; that in Rome all was virtue, public spirit, and every thing that was great and noble, while at Carthage all was venal, vile, and selfish. A spirit of war and conquest reigned, say they, in one place together with a spirit of glory, in the other a spirit of gain presided over private actions and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... imperial brain, and who found their strength in a national virtue which individualized itself in every citizen. The wind that moans among the columns of the Parthenon, or rustles through the weeds on the palaces of the Caesars, whimpers no truer prophecies than that venal breath which, at a signal from the patron in the White House, bends all one way the obsequious leaves of a partisan press, ominous of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... employed to extort, or the hire of the venal to buy, that engagement which the Tartar comes under to his prince, when he promises, "That he will go where he shall be commanded; that he will come when he shall be called; that he will kill whoever is pointed out to him; and, for the future, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... his hands together with intensity of fervour, 'when all is rotten to the core, venal, unjust, tyrannical, how endure without an endeavour at a remedy? Yet it may be that an imposing attitude will prevail! Self-defence ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stock at a premium of twenty to twenty-five per cent. before the first payment had been made. Thus, the distribution of stock became a public scandal, deplored in the messages of the Governor and assailed by the press. "The unclean drippings of venal legislation," the New York Evening Post called it. But no remedy was applied. The Governor, in spite of his regrets, signed every charter the Legislature granted, and the commissioners, as if ignorant of the provisions to secure a fair distribution of the stock, continued to evade the law ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... busy, already doubted, when we have organized and equipped a Bureau of Forestry consisting of trained, enthusiastic and honest men? Reluctantly the transfer was made. The forestry men picked up the tangle that incompetent, perfunctory and often venal management had dropped. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... and not unnaturally, that, in this sort of corrupt and venal appointment to high trust and office, Mr. Hastings has no other consideration than the money he received. But whoever thinks so will be deceived. Mr. Hastings was very far from indifferent to the character of the persons he dealt with. On the contrary, he made a most careful ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... document Buonaparte sets forth in fiery phrase the early enthusiasm of republicans for the return of Paoli, and their disillusionment when he surrounded himself with venal men like Pozzo di Borgo, with relatives like his nephew Leonetti, with his vile creatures in general. The misfortunes of the Sardinian expedition, the disgraceful disorders of the island, the failure of the commissioners to secure Ajaccio, are all alike attributed to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... notwithstanding that a gloss [*St. Augustine, QQ. in Deut., qu. 37] on Deut. 23:17, says: "This is a prohibition against going with whores, whose vileness is venial." For instead of "venial" it should be "venal," since such is the wanton's trade. In order to make this evident, we must take note that every sin committed directly against human life is a mortal sin. Now simple fornication implies an inordinateness that tends to injure the life of the offspring to be born of this union. For we ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... must follow, and soon thereafter you see this great and gallant gentleman arrested on a trumped-up charge of high treason, bullied, vituperated, and insulted by venal, peddling lawyers, and, finally, although his wit and sincerity had shattered every fragment of evidence brought against him, sentenced to death. Thus far James went; but he hesitated to go further, hesitated to carry out the sentence. Sir Walter had too many friends in England ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... came all that way to save me from an unjust death. And is such a woman to be insulted? I blush for the hired advocate who cannot see his superior in an incorruptible witness, a creature all truth, piety, purity, unselfishness, and goodness. Yes, sir, you began by insinuating that she was as venal as yourself; for you are one that can be bought by the first-comer; and now you would cast a slur on her chastity. For shame! for shame! This is one of those rare women that adorn our whole sex, and embellish human nature; and, so long as you have the privilege of exchanging words with her, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... Santa Conversazione. Hampton Court. Madonna and Donors. London. Daphnis and Chloe; Portrait of Lady. Bridgewater House: Holy Family. Milan. Brera: Descent of Holy Spirit; Baptism; S. Dominio presented to the Saviour by Virgin; Madonna and Saints; Venal Love. S. Maria pr. Celso: Madonna and S. Jerome. Munich. Portrait; Man counting Jewels. Paris. Portraits. Rome. Colonna: Holy Family and Saints. Treviso. Madonna and Saints. Duomo: Adoration of Shepherds; Madonna and Saints. Venice. Academy: Fisherman and Doge; Paradise; Storm calmed by ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal lenity shown by Tallien to aristocrats rendered him an object of suspicion, whilst the marked tendency displayed by Robespierre to mistrust and, finally, to immolate his coadjutors was an ominous indication ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... when the venal pomp proceeds From echoing town to town! The clam'rous preacher and his train, Organ and bell with sound inane, The crimson cross, the book, the keys, The flag that spreads before the breeze, The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... if you pant for glory, If you sigh to live in story, If you burn with patriot zeal; Seize this bright, auspicious hour, Chase those venal tools of power, Who ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to augment this sum by all expedients, how pernicious soever to the public, or dangerous to royal authority. He put to sale the revenues and manors of the crown; the offices of greatest trust and power, even those of forester and sheriff, which anciently were so important [c], became venal; the dignity of chief justiciary, in whose hands was lodged the whole execution of the laws, was sold to Hugh de Puzas, Bishop of Durham, for a thousand marks; the same prelate bought the earldom of Northumberland for life ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... routine, had twice given the order for retreat, and it was Bennigsen's disobedience which made the conflict so indecisive that Russia claimed it as a victory. If a victory, it was a barren one, because a weak and venal administration of the commissary department had deprived the soldiers of sustenance at the critical moment. Kamenski, who was seventy-six years old, was retired on the ground of his health, and Bennigsen succeeded ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... plate-glass windows beneath the sweeping curve of white letters in which the name of the owner of the bakery was set forth was added in smaller letters the words "Cafe Nuernberger." Gottlieb and Aunt Hedwig and the man who made the sign (this last, however, for the venal reason that more letters would be required) had stood out stoutly for the honest German "Kaffehaus;" but Minna, whose tastes were refined, had insisted upon the use of the French word: there was more style about it, she said. ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... which I see kindling in your eyes, my lord and king! My obedience to you, my husband and my ruler, shall be that of a slave, but I can never stoop to sue for the favor, or obey the orders of a venal servant, the most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... situations of the drama, sustains an eminence above all rivalship; physical defects may often be lessened or concealed; but they will sometimes be too stubborn for the force of art, and thus, in the language of venal compliment, the poet said "Pritchard's genteel and Garrick's six feet high" it cannot be denied that the former was eclipsed by the easy elegance of Mrs. Woffington, and the latter overborne by the majestic stature and deportment of Barry. The first appearance of Miss Smith last night in lady Macbeth, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... the little outlier, looked barren. Not the least curious part of this outcrop is the black thread of iron silicate which, broken in places, subtends it to the east: some specimens have geodes yielding brown powder, and venal cavities lined with botryoidal quartz of amethystine tinge. In other parts of the same hills we found, running along the "Mar," single and double lines of this material, which ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... people, issued an edict forbidding its introduction into China. This did not check the trade, its only effect being to convert legitimate into smuggling traffic. The trade went on as briskly as before, the smugglers being openly aided by venal officials not only at Canton but at other points along the coast. By 1838 the disregard of the law, and the quantity of opium smuggled into the empire by small boats on the Canton River, had become ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... because, being a princess of the first rank, she might be offered and accepted to grace the harem of his brother; a mere prisoner of state, watched by the baleful eye of jealousy, and traduced by the venal tongues of courtiers; dwelling in a torment of uncertainty as to the fate to which his brother's explosive temper and irresponsible power might devote him, hoping for no repose or safety but in his funeral-urn,—he began to grow hard and defiant, and that which, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... execute them. The Spanish sovereigns were more humane than their subjects, but the latter were ready with expedients for evading laws whose execution would have hindered their avaricious undertakings in the distant colonies, while venal officials lent their connivance to these violations, instead of administering the laws in the spirit in which their authors had conceived them. The statute books of the worst despotisms are adorned with the wisest and most liberal ordinances. From the irades of the Ottoman Sultans and ukases ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon hard rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the dragon, could he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it? Now he beheld a new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the dragon; her first words, "How did you know where we ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... and my misery might melt a stone." He listened for an answer, he prayed for an answer. There was none. Once in a mad-house, the sanest man is mad, however interested and barefaced the motive of the relative who has brought two of the most venal class upon the earth to sign away his wits behind his back. And once hobbled and strapped, he is a dangerous maniac, for just so many days, weeks, or years, as the hobbles, handcuffs, and jacket happen to be left upon ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... contain his rogues-gallery photograph. Times almost past counting he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he always had escaped conviction and imprisonment. There was no stink of the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... reached those hidden sensibilities of his inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... his father, had juggled more than a thousand acres of the Hanyards away from my father by some musty process of law and a venal bench. The reference angered me, and I cried loudly, "You shall not have it ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... might be the case also; but the radical vice of the system was not that it was essentially incomplete in theory or faulty in practise, but that it was false. Its worst result was not poor scholars, but insincere and venal men. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... eaten until the following morning, what reason was there for him to hurry? He would know that evening if the Congregation of the Council had annulled his marriage, he would know how far the so-called "Justice of God" was venal and mendacious! Certainly he would suffer nobody to be poisoned, not even Cardinal Boccanera, though the latter's life was of little account to him personally. But had not that little basket, ever since leaving ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... manifest, because more matured. It is not the greatest mind which marks the greatest soul, and it is not the most successful who are the noblest and best. The shrewd, the mean, and the selfish grow rich, and are prosperous, and are courted and preferred, because there are more who are mean and venal in the world than there are who are generous and good. But it is the generous and good who are the great benefactors of mankind; and yet, if there was no selfishness in human nature, there would be no means of doing good. Wealth ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... just at the caprice of the master, he was treated to various applications of the lash, and restricted allowances of his miserable rations. His slavery was the most abject, his misery the most consummate, and his degradation the most venal and depraved: he was the image of the man without the mental spark; the human being in semblance, but ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... arrived at the sum of 56,750, a final conference was held at Buthrotum between Ali and the Lord High Commissioner. The latter then informed the Parganiotes that the indemnity allowed them was irrevocably fixed at 150,000! The transaction is a disgrace to the egotistical and venal nation which thus allowed the life and liberty of a people to be trifled with, a lasting blot on the honour ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... treats the whole of their labors as mere cant and slang; I suppose it must mean compared with its own dignified and masterly pages. The majesty of the people is truly a monstrous Deity in the eye of venal and sell-created consequence. It is merely for repeating some of the sentiments expressed at these meetings, that the editor of the Journal is assailed as the arch-disturber of our ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... the Hojo family. Thus it had come about that a tutor now controlled the regent; who was supposed to control the shogun; who was supposed to be the vassal of the emperor; who in turn was generally a child under the control of a corrupt and venal court. Truly government in Japan had sunk to its lowest point, and it was time for ...
— Japan • David Murray
... dubious, from a rational point of view, is Fiesco's relation to the Moor. That a man having large political designs requiring secrecy and fidelity should, on the spur of the moment, choose as his confidential agent a venal scoundrel who has just tried to murder him, is, to say the least, a little improbable. Here Schiller was evidently trying to Shaksperize again; trying, that is, to assert the poet's sovereign lordship over the ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... easily; it resembles genius in so far that they both need a concurrence of favorable conditions to develop the coalition of fortune and gifts. Eliminate the strange prologue of the Revolution, and the Emperor would never have existed; he would have been no more than a second edition of Fabert. Venal beauty, if it finds no amateurs, no celebrity, no cross of dishonor earned by squandering men's fortunes, is Correggio in a hay-loft, is genius starving in a garret. Lais, in Paris, must first and foremost find a rich man mad enough to pay ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... indeed, the same degree of turbulence and disorder as at Carthage, but the magnificence and ostentation of the Roman family and life, their splendid palaces and festive orgies, could not but prove very injurious to habits of study. The youth had imbibed the venal corruption everywhere prevalent. Hence it not seldom happened that Roman scholars conspired to rob their master of his salary and desert his class in a body. Roman vileness and baseness disgusted Augustine even more than Punic insubordination. He therefore took advantage of a request made ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... began to make speeches, as he was even then fluent and impudent, Phokion said, "Will you not be silent, and remember that you are only a newly-bought servant of the people." When Harpalus fled from Asia with a large amount of treasure and came to Athens, where all the venal politicians paid great court to him, he gave them but a very small part of his hoard, but sent a present of seven hundred talents to Phokion, placing all his other property and his person in his hands. Phokion ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... by Lord John Russell and Charles Tennyson respectively could scarcely have been thrown out by the same house, but squabbles arose in the cabinet, partly on the comparative guiltiness of the two venal constituencies, but chiefly on the disposal of the seats to be vacated. It was agreed at last that Penryn should be merged in the adjacent hundred, and the majority of the cabinet, represented by Peel, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... predetermined act of violence and rapacity; and when the reports and the letters of the visitors are quoted in justification of the Government, the discussion is closed with the dismissal of every unfavourable witness from the court, as venal, corrupt, calumnious— in fact, as a suborned liar. Upon these terms the argument is easily disposed of; and if it were not that truth is in all matters better than falsehood, it would be idle to reopen a question which cannot ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... has become a fixed and certain fact, why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and corrupt master—to a people and a Party that have plundered her revenues, attempted to ruin her commerce, taken away the power of self-government, and destroyed the Confederacy of which she was the proud Empire City? * ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions. Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... you never took any care to provide yourself a better—to say nothing of me." And she went on to tell how Johnny had idled and drank his life away, and brought her here at last. Much of Johnny's idling and drinking having been connected with electioneering in an abominably venal city, he was a great talker on politics, and the state was made responsible for all his troubles. He said it was a shame that any body should die in a workhouse; he appealed to his neighbor Smith, who was warming his broth, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... "Splendid! Some of these gentlemen would discuss theology with God. I can see Father Brennan getting up: 'Sire, my reason for entering the said sin as a venal sin, etc.'" ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... to feed the hungry unless the hungry can pay; but a doctor who allows a fellow-creature to suffer or perish without aid is regarded as a monster. Even if we must dismiss hospital service as really venal, the fact remains that most doctors do a good deal of gratuitous work in private practice all through their careers. And in his paid work the doctor is on a different footing to the tradesman. Although ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... based on his other poems, and although his dramas have conduced scarcely at all to his fame, he did play a principal part in this department of literary work. Dryden made haste to answer the call, and his venal muse wrote to please the town. The names of many of his plays and personages are foreign; but their vitality is purely English. Of his first play, The Duke of Guise, which was unsuccessful, he tells us: "I undertook this as the fairest way ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... with a native, or an inhabitant; [116] or from purchasing slaves, lands, or houses, within the extent of his jurisdiction. [117] Notwithstanding these rigorous precautions, the emperor Constantine, after a reign of twenty-five years, still deplores the venal and oppressive administration of justice, and expresses the warmest indignation that the audience of the judge, his despatch of business, his seasonable delays, and his final sentence, were publicly sold, either by himself ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... showed only an intermittent zeal in the public cause until the preliminary work was done, and Benjamin Church, half-hearted and venal, early began the double-dealing which was to bring him to a traitor's end. There was need in this group of a man of sufficient ascendency, thorough intellect and character, to win deference from all—wise enough to see always the supreme end, to know what ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... armies in the southern States had turned the Creeks into open antagonists of the Americans, and their war parties were sent out in quick succession, the British agents keeping alive the alliance by a continued series of gifts—for the Creeks were a venal, fickle race whose friendship could not otherwise be permanently kept. [Footnote: State Department MSS. Papers Continental Congress. Intercepted Letters, No. 51. Vol. II. Letter of British Agents Messrs. Rainsford, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... his penetrating glance. Without great vision or imagination, he knew criminals as did few other men; could reason from cause to effect within certain channels, unerringly. He was heartless, ruthless—some said venal. But he caught and convicted felons, solved the problems of his office by a dogged perseverance that ignored defeat. For, with a mind essentially tricky, he anticipated tricksters—unless their operations were ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... The praise attending pomp and power, The incense given to kings, Are but the trappings of an hour — Mere transitory things! The base bestow them: but the good agree 10 To spurn the venal gifts as flattery. But when to pomp and power are join'd An equal dignity of mind — When titles are the smallest claim — When wealth and rank and noble blood, 15 But aid the power of doing good — Then all their trophies last; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... this (how wildly will ambition steer), A vermin wriggling in the usurper's ear, Bartering his venal wit for sums of gold, He cast himself into the saint-like mould; Groaned, sighed, and prayed, while godliness was gain, The loudest ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... fortunately for his encroachments, but unfortunately for the nation, that the English parliament, at that period, was more corrupt, venal, base, and sycophantic than at any period under the Tudor kings, or at any subsequent period under the Hanoverian princes. The House of Commons made no indignant resistance; it sent up but few spirited remonstrances; but tamely acquiesced in the measures of Charles and his ministers. Its members ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... buried, and could not but exult in the malediction which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship with the epitaphs and escutcheons and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solitude about the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility; but human nature ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in regard to Spain. Giovio, from his intimate relations with the principal persons of his time, had also access to the best sources of knowledge, while in the notice of foreign transactions he was but little exposed to those venal influences, which led him too often to employ the golden or iron pen of history as interest dictated. Unfortunately, a lamentable hiatus occurs in his greatest work, "Historiae sui Temporis," embracing the whole period intervening between the end of Charles VIII.'s expedition ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... as Schurtz has pointed out, in every society in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is socially disapproved. "Venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free sexual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary consequences being impeded by unusually early marriages."[130] The repression of sexual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... love, Little worked hard upon his new flying-machine. His labors were lightened by talking of the beloved one with her French maid Therese, whom he had discreetly bribed. Mademoiselle Therese was venal, like all her class, but in this instance I fear she was not bribed by British gold. Strange as it may seem to the British mind, it was British genius, British eloquence, British thought, that brought her to the feet of this ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... settlement, it would have been humiliating enough to have had to exult over it as a victory of Freedom. With what depth of shame, then, should we contemplate the compassing of their end by the Slavocrats, through the venal surrender of the rights so long and so manfully asserted, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wealth of that prelate was a sufficient evidence of his guilt, since it was neither derived from the inheritance of his fathers, nor acquired by the arts of honest industry. But Paul considered the service of the church as a very lucrative profession. His ecclesiastical jurisdiction was venal and rapacious; he extorted frequent contributions from the most opulent of the faithful, and converted to his own use a considerable part of the public revenue. By his pride and luxury, the Christian religion was rendered ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Tartaree From the Navel to the Knee; That her Father's Gracy-Grace Might give him a Placy-Place. He no longer writes of Mammy Andromache and her Lammy Hanging panging at the Breast Of a Matron most distrest. Now the Venal Poet sings Baby Clouts, and Baby Things, Baby Dolls, and Baby Houses, Little Misses, Little Spouses; Little Play-Things, Little Toys, Little Girls, and Little Boys: As an Actor does his Part, So the Nurses get by Heart Namby Pamby's Little Rhimes, Little Jingle, Little Chimes, To repeat to Little ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... a principle that commerce is the venal interchange of what human art or nature yields, and which should not be purchased by wealth, but demanded by want. Labor and commerce, when badly regulated, scatter withering curses ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of women to the courts. It was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful custom.—[New ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... science—for which Spain achieved an honourable renown in the last century, and may cite with pride her Varela, Musquiz, Gabarrus, Ulloa, Jovellanos, &c., was little cultivated or encouraged in that decay of the Spanish monarchy which commenced with the reign of the idiotic Carlos IV., and his venal minister Godoy, and in the wars and revolutions which followed the accession, and ended not with the death of Fernando his son, the late monarch—was almost lost sight of; though Canga Arguelles, lately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... well her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit, little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out of her sphere, and infers that she is neglectful ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... told very little; and it certainly did seem to the bystanders, that even the opposing counsel, even the judge on the bench, abstained from their prey because he was a member of Parliament. It was notorious to all the world that Griffenbottom had debased the borough; had so used its venal tendencies as to make that systematic which had before been too frequent indeed, but yet not systematized; that he had trained the rising generation of Percycross politicians to believe in political corruption;—and yet he escaped that ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... enough as a corrective in the days of hired advocates, and a bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made it dependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but justice could actuate ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... your advantages unworthily, have incurred the greater disgrace. This topic, then, I shall pass over. Indeed, Athenians, a correct observer will find the source of his greatness here, [Footnote: In this assembly, by the contrivance of venal orators, or through the supineness of the people. In the first Philippic there is a more pointed allusion to the practices of Philip's adherents, who are charged with sending him secret intelligence of what passed at home. ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... case had been tried, (He could do it indeed and not hear either side). Who'll now sit in judgment the whole year round? Now he that is judge of the shades underground Once ruler of fivescore cities in Crete, Must yield to his better and take a back seat. Mourn, mourn, pettifoggers, ye venal crew, And you, minor poets, woe, woe is to you! And you above all, who get rich quick By the rattle of dice and ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... embarrassed by a faction which, since the death of Placidia, infested the imperial palace; the youth of Italy trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the barbarians, who, from fear or affection, were inclined to the cause of Attila, awaited with doubtful and venal faith the event of the war. The patrician passed the Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely deserved the name of an army. But on his arrival at Aries, or Lyons, he was confounded by the intelligence that the Visigoths, refusing to embrace the defence of Gaul, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... to the gardens of Pompeius where they received the money, so that the thing became notorious and Pompeius had an ill name for making that office which was the highest of all and which he obtained for his services, venal for those who were unable to attain to it by merit. "These reproaches however," said Cato to the women, "we must take our share of, if we become allied to Pompeius." On hearing this the women agreed that he formed a better judgment than themselves ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... determined to rush to the battle at once. Battle he knew there must be. To be brought in for the district of Tillietudlem was a prize which had never yet fallen to any man's lot without a contest. Tillietudlem was no poor pocket borough to be disposed of, this way or that way, according to the caprice or venal call of some aristocrat. The men of Tillietudlem knew the value of their votes, and would only give them according to their consciences. The way to win these consciences, to overcome the sensitive doubts of a free and independent Tillietudlem elector, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... Rosewell was eminent for loyalty and devoted attachment to the Government. Alas! he was a Dissenting teacher of high standing, of extensive acquirements, and of great earnestness in seeking the salvation of sinners; and, under the direction of that brutal judge, the venal jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to be hung. This frightful sentence would have been executed but from a singular interposition of Providence. Sir John Talbot was present during the trial, and a stranger to Mr. Rosewell; but he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... boasting coffers richly stor'd, And plenty smiling on thy board, In grandeur's costly garbs array'd, With servile homage basely paid From summon'd tribes of venal bands, That wanton luxury commands, Let thy untainted mind beware And shun ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... to humanity as they are, contain few examples of persecutors such as Calvin or Torquemada, to whom, ruthless as they were in their savage and narrow malignity and zeal for what they thought the truth, no suspicion of venal motives is attributed. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent tho more foolish acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... my intention to have written any Preface to this book, but to have allowed it simply to speak for itself. As it is very likely, however, that both it and the motives of its author may be misrepresented by bigoted or venal pens, I think it necessary to introduce it to the reader by a few brief observations. In the first place, then, I beg to say, that the work presents phases of Irish life and manners that have never been given to the public before by any other writer upon the same subject. So ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... with each other from the beginning. The Spaniards and Flemings participated in the mutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. The unscrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their grasping and venal ambition, enraged and disgusted the haughty Spaniards. This international malignity furnishes one of the keys to a proper understanding of the great revolt ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, being venal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and hazard are set ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... curious particulars, the letter of expostulation, said to have been written by the Prussian monarch to the king of Great Britain after the defeat of Kolin is treated as an infamous piece of forgery, produced by some venal pen employed to impose upon the public. The author also, in his endeavours to demonstrate his Britannic majesty's aversion to a continental war, very justly observes, that "none but such as are unacquainted with the maritime force of England, can believe, that, without a diversion on ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... naturally in this type of exposure that King should criticize some of the legal subterfuges, which in turn brought him to analysis of the firm's legal advisers, who had previously enjoyed a good reputation. From such subjects he drifted to dueling, venal newspapers, and soon down to the ordinary criminals such as Billy Mulligan, Wooley Kearny, Casey, Cora, Yankee Sullivan, Ned McGowan, Charles Duane, and many others. Never did he hesitate to specify names and instances. He never dealt in innuendoes. This was bringing him very ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... because he was poor, goes away to curse woman's fickleness and to marry some one whom he can not love; and the thoughtless girls, by whom the glitter of fortune is taken for the real gold of happiness, follow the venal example, and flirt and jilt till they fancy that they have secured ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... sought office with as much desire as More avoided it; Bacon used as much solicitation to obtain it as More endured to accept it, and each, when in it, was equally true to his character. More was simple, as Bacon was ostentatious. More was as incorruptible as Bacon was venal. More spent his private fortune in office, and Bacon spent the wages of corruption there. Both left office poor in worldly goods; but while More was rich in honor and good deeds, Bacon was poor in everything; ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... old fighter, grown a bit lazy, no diplomatist (the stories of his being venal, I take it, were simply abominable calumnies), unable to get anything out of the Cuban authorities but promises and lofty protestations, had made up his mind, under direct pressure from home, to take matters into his own hands. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... that in any country, but most of all in a monarchical and in aristocratic one, such manners can exist in the higher ranks, without inducing a total depravity of general thought, and perversion of the power of mind. Talent, often the most venal of venal things, follows in the wake of corruption. Covetous of gain, thirsting for patronage, it fans, instead of lowering, the passions by which all hope to profit. Whenever prevailing vices have set in upon a nation, be they such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... the Senate, therefore, it was necessary to be elected by the people to one of the great magistracies. In the early ages of the Republic the people were incorruptible; but when foreign conquest, slavery, and other influences demoralized them, they became venal and sold their votes. Hence only rich men, ordinarily, were elected to high office; and the rich men, as a rule, belonged to the old families. So the Senate was made up not only of experienced men, but of the aristocracy. There were rich men outside the Senate,—successful plebeians, men ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... politics. Mark Twain was no longer actively interested in the political situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in outspoken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the most simple thing, for your entire character is described in these four words: venal, ferocious, frivolous and insubmissive!" ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... impure, spurious, alloyed, counterfeit; low-minded, unworthy, ignoble, mean, servile, groveling; despicable, discreditable, disgraceful, venal; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... engineer was driven to an old expedient with the object of overcoming this difficulty. "We endeavour all we can," he says, in one of his letters, "to make ourselves popular, and this we find most effectually accomplished by 'regaling the venal beasts.'" {196} He also gave a ball at Mariquita, which passed off with eclat, the governor from Honda, with a host of friends, honouring it with their presence. It was, indeed, necessary to "make a party" in this way, as other schemers ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... into Africa with an army to punish the insolent usurper, sold himself to the robber. An investigation was ordered; but many prominent officials at Rome were implicated in the offences, and the matter was hushed up with money. The venality of the Romans disgusted even Jugurtha, who exclaimed, "O venal city, thou wouldst sell thyself if thou ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... most intolerable hardships. Even the tenderness of panegyric, confessing that the glory of the emperor was sullied by the disobedience of his soldiers, chooses to draw a veil over the circumstances of this melancholy retreat. Yet one of those venal orators, so jealous of the fame of Constantius, relates, with amazing coolness, an act of such incredible cruelty, as, in the judgment of posterity, must imprint a far deeper stain on the honor of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... remembered in Africa, killed on two successive days the guilty one and his betrayer. His wife died shortly after, and he was left more lonely than ever. He was not the man to console himself with venal love; a gross remark made him blush; the corps de ballet inspired him with terror. He did not dare to avow it, but the dream of his old age, with his fierce moustache and his grim countenance, was the devoted love of some young girl, at whose feet he might pour out, without ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... but in his happier hour, Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... imitating crew, What their vain blust'ring, and their empty noise, Ne'er seek: but still thy noble ends pursue, Unconquer'd by the rabble's venal voice. Still to the Muse thy studious mind apply, Happy in temper as ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... democratic papers, using his summer journeyings to try to attach not abilities in the countries he passed through, and his stay at the waters to draw up a great speech, with which he toured on his return. And now a new cry! The cowardly venal Press must be swept away. "As true as you are here, hanging on my lips, eager and transported, as true as my soul trembles with the purest enthusiasm in pouring itself wholly into yours, so truly does the certainty penetrate me that a day will come when we shall launch the thunderbolt which will ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... second, you must have good men to carry them out, after they are made. Bad men can abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions. Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... from his penetrating glance. Without great vision or imagination, he knew criminals as did few other men; could reason from cause to effect within certain channels, unerringly. He was heartless, ruthless—some said venal. But he caught and convicted felons, solved the problems of his office by a dogged perseverance that ignored defeat. For, with a mind essentially tricky, he anticipated tricksters—unless their operations were ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... me." She wrote him letters of tearful protest. They were ignored. She protested by word of mouth. Ludwig, in unbrotherly fashion, told her to "mind her own business." Caroline's next move was to take clerical counsel. "These creatures are always venal," said the Jesuits. "They only care for cash." An emissary was accordingly despatched to the Barerstrasse mansion, to convey an offer. Unfortunately, however, he had not advanced beyond "Gnaedige Frau, erlauben," when ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Conquest, and the lawyers are now fighting tooth and nail over the costs. The judges gave me one hundred and sixty pounds damages, but, as I lost the demurrer with costs, the balance will doubtless be small. But, if the pecuniary result is small, the victory over the pirates and the venal part of the press ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Namby Pamby Pilli-pis, Rhimy pim'd on Missy-Miss; Tartaretta Tartaree From the Navel to the Knee; That her Father's Gracy-Grace Might give him a Placy-Place. He no longer writes of Mammy Andromache and her Lammy Hanging panging at the Breast Of a Matron most distrest. Now the Venal Poet sings Baby Clouts, and Baby Things, Baby Dolls, and Baby Houses, Little Misses, Little Spouses; Little Play-Things, Little Toys, Little Girls, and Little Boys: As an Actor does his Part, So the Nurses get by Heart Namby ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... from succour, by sheer force of character makes felt the weight of British influence in favour of just and cleanly government. And acting thus honourably they were naturally detested by the lower class of venal rulers, whose idea of government was, and is at all times and on all occasions, by persuasion, force, or oppression, to squeeze dry the people committed to their charge. Ready to the hand of a discontented satrap, sighing for the illicit gains of a less austere rule, ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... inutility of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD BOLINGBROKE have seemed among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers and ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate minister and a venal Parliament. Very little interest would have attached to his beans and vetches, if beans and vetches had caused him to forget that if he was happier on a farm he could be more useful in a Senate, and made him forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... will be easily bribed to forgive sins. Here then is, ethically speaking, a flaw in the strata of religion, a flaw found in the creeds of ghost-worshipping barbarians, but not of non-ghost-worshipping savages. A crowd of venal, easy-going, serviceable deities has now been evolved out of ghosts, and Animism is on its way to supplant or overlay a rude early form of theism. Granting the facts, we fail to see how they are explained by the current theory which makes the highest god ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... you, as you have used your advantages unworthily, have incurred the greater disgrace. This topic, then, I shall pass over. Indeed, Athenians, a correct observer will find the source of his greatness here, [Footnote: In this assembly, by the contrivance of venal orators, or through the supineness of the people. In the first Philippic there is a more pointed allusion to the practices of Philip's adherents, who are charged with sending him secret intelligence of what passed at home. Such men as Aristodemus, Neoptolemus, perhaps Demades ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... the same course; and two circumstances contributed to make that course easy. One was the great length of coast line on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes over which a surveillance had to be exercised, making it difficult to catch the interlopers. The other was the venal connivance of the governors of the ports, who often tolerated and even encouraged the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.[36] The subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When a vessel wished to enter a Spanish port to trade, the captain, pretending that ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... the anxieties, and, too often, the peculations of a life. Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for party must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was for a time extremely popular, and was distinguished for his firmness and even-handed justice. He succeeded in putting an end to slavery, and to the practice of slave-killing in the island, which at that time was of very common occurrence, and deemed by the planters a venal offence punishable only by a small fine of 15. In consequence of his humane proceedings in this matter he became obnoxious to many of the colonists, and, in 1806, he finally left the island. In 1808 he ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... our own right-hands it must be wrought; That we must stand unprop'd, or be laid low. O dastard! whom such foretaste doth not cheer! We shall exult, if they who rule the land Be men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant, not a venal band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour which ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Poverty his honest Muse Walks forth Vindictive through a venal land; In vain Corruption sheds her golden dews, In vain Oppression lifts her iron hand; He scorns them both, and arm'd with Truth alone, Bids Lust and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... hear of venal doctors?" inquired Morris. "They're as common as blackberries: you can pick 'em up for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... friend, nor thou refuse This from no venal or ungrateful Muse. Whether thy hand strike out some free design, Where life awakes, and dawns at every line; Or blend in beauteous tints the colour'd mass, And from the canvas call the mimic face: Read these instructive leaves, in which conspire Fresnoy's close ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... is the enormous army of young women who, outside of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional sex life, venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an army which has existed since the beginning of time but which every postponement of the age of marriage causes to increase in relative numbers and to gain new strength for ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... me but the liberty of the press, and I will give to the minister a venal House of Peers—I will give him a corrupt and servile House of Commons—I will give him the full sway of the patronage of office—I will give him the whole host of ministerial influence—I will give him all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... opium by his people, issued an edict forbidding its introduction into China. This did not check the trade, its only effect being to convert legitimate into smuggling traffic. The trade went on as briskly as before, the smugglers being openly aided by venal officials not only at Canton but at other points along the coast. By 1838 the disregard of the law, and the quantity of opium smuggled into the empire by small boats on the Canton River, had become so great that the Peking government determined ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Green were fragrant of rain and the rain-sodden earth gave forth its mortal odour, a faint incense rising upward through the mould from many hearts. The soul of the gallant venal city which his elders had told him of had shrunk with time to a faint mortal odour rising from the earth and he knew that in a moment when he entered the sombre college he would be conscious of a corruption other than that of Buck Egan ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... matters? A scapegoat, belike, to suffer for higher scoundrels. The mob is loudest against the Chancellor, who I doubt is not to blame for our unreadiness, having little power of late over the King. Oh, there has been iniquity upon iniquity, and men know not whom most to blame—the venal idle servants, or the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... repinings. Sidonie told her of Georges, of their relations, attempting to palliate her offence by blaming the cruelty of her parents in marrying her by force to a man much older than herself. Madame Dobson at once showed a disposition to assist them; not that the little woman was venal, but she had a passion for passion, a taste for romantic intrigue. As she was unhappy in her own home, married to a dentist who beat her, all husbands were monsters in her eyes, and poor Risler especially seemed to her a horrible tyrant whom his wife was quite justified ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... like—are desirable, but shade off into mere want of pluck; while the active virtues—courage, charity, clemency, cheerfulness, helpfulness—are ever those upon which the elect and noble souls in history have laid the greater stress. I frankly detest Blank, M.P., because I believe him to be a venal person, a colourable (and no doubt self-deceiving) imitation of the type. But, supposing him to be the real thing, I still think that, if you want a model for your son, you will do better with Sir Philip Sidney. If ever a man illustrated the beauty ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... upon as we have, but they went at things in a sort of rule-of-thumb, rough-and-ready style, and when one party had dragged the country into the mire, the other dragged it out again. It was customary for the party that was out of office to say that the party that was in was corrupt and venal—that every man of it was a liar, was a thief, was taking bribes, would soon be kicked out, etc. Then the party that was in had to say that the party that was out should look to its own sins and remember that everyone of its men when they were in proved himself ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... fate intended Sir Oliver by Lionel was to be fulfilled; and it was to be shared by Master Leigh himself, which had not been at all in that venal fellow's reckoning. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... praise attending pomp and power, The incense given to kings, Are but the trappings of an hour — Mere transitory things! The base bestow them: but the good agree 10 To spurn the venal gifts as flattery. But when to pomp and power are join'd An equal dignity of mind — When titles are the smallest claim — When wealth and rank and noble blood, 15 But aid the power of doing good — Then all their trophies last; and flattery turns ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... frequently exist (and these are characteristically feminine, unstable, and liable to betrayal), love-attachments are less common, and when they occur must naturally be based upon considerable self-deception. Venal gratifications are always, of course, as possible as they are unsatisfactory, and here perhaps some of the peculiarities of taste accompanying inversion may admit of elucidation. In considering the peculiar predilection shown by inverts for youths of inferior ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications. He went to study in Paris with the determination that when he provincial home again he would settle in some provincial town as a general practitioner, and resist the irrational severance between ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... for the safety of their country. In the present times, money has taken the place of this spirit; it has become the universal lever, and you are in want of it. A spirit of finance affects every department of the state; it reigns triumphant at Court; all have become venal; and all distinction of rank is broken up. Your Ministers are without genius and capacity since the dismissal of MM. d'Argenson and de Machault. You alone cannot judge of their incapacity, because they lay before you what has ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... I have, but in his happier hour, Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power; Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art, and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... even the opposing counsel, even the judge on the bench, abstained from their prey because he was a member of Parliament. It was notorious to all the world that Griffenbottom had debased the borough; had so used its venal tendencies as to make that systematic which had before been too frequent indeed, but yet not systematized; that he had trained the rising generation of Percycross politicians to believe in political corruption;—and yet he escaped that utter turning inside out of which ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... about men's pantings, an' DoesannyoneknowwhereIcangeta biscuit, an' In th' spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to Pocohontas plug, not made be th' thrusts. Th' editor left thim sacrilegious advertisements f'r his venal contimp'raries. His was pious an' nice: 'Do ye'er smokin' in this wurruld. Th' Christyan Unity Five-Cint See-gar is made out iv th' finest grades iv excelsior iver projooced in Kansas!' 'Nebuchednezzar grass seed, f'r man an' beast.' 'A handful iv meal in ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... followed by captains and lieutenants, whose journeymen were the prisoners of the crown, and who, beside the emoluments of office, engrossed the profits of smiths and carpenters—of tailors and shoemakers. Those settlers, excluded from participation in the loan labor, denounced the venal partiality of its distribution. Long lists were published of workmen allotted to the relatives and confidants of the Governor, to display ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... of the principal agents in promoting his downfall had been the most famous rover of them all. After robbing his companions of most of their legitimate proportion of the spoils of Panama, Sir Henry had bought his knighthood at the hands of the venal Charles, paying for it in treasure, into the origin of which, with his usual careless insouciance, his easy-going majesty had not inquired any too carefully. And the old pirate had settled down, if not to live cleanly at least ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... alike; whose genius ne'er confines Her flight to garnish Greenwood's gay designs, Nor sleeps with 'sleeping beauties' but anon In five facetious acts comes thundering on, While poor John Bull, bewildered with the scene, Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean; But as some hands applaud—a venal few— Rather than sleep, John Bull ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... Hurons confessed that none of them had had the good hap to find the monster and break his horn, nor indeed had they any idea of his whereabouts; but their neighbors, the Algonkins, furnished them at times small fragments for a large consideration.[114-4] Clearly the myth had been taught them for venal purposes by their trafficking visitors. Now among the Algonkins, the Shawnee tribe did more than all others combined to introduce and carry about religious legends and ceremonies. From the earliest times they seem to have had peculiar aptitude for the ecstasies, deceits, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... extension and consolidation of their admirable and wonderful national prosperity, abandoned the government of their noble country and the preservation of its nobler institutions to the slaveholding aristocracy of the South—to a mob of politicians by trade, the vilest and most venal class of men that ever disgraced and endangered a country—to foreign emigrants, whose brutish ignorance did not prevent the Democratic party from seizing upon them as voters, and bestowing on the Irish and ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... justifiable; as, I think, under those circumstances, his action was excusable. Protestants do not recognize the distinction between venial and mortal sins. Venial must not be confounded with the very different word VENAL. Compare VENAL. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... he, clasping his hands together with intensity of fervour, 'when all is rotten to the core, venal, unjust, tyrannical, how endure without an endeavour at a remedy? Yet it may be that an imposing attitude will prevail! ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... been the most unhappy rascal upon earth, for I should have always suspected that every woman liked me for my wealth—I should have had no pleasure in the smiles of an angel—angels, or their mothers, are so venal now-a-days, and so fond of the pomps and vanities ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... whose divine right was the imperial brain, and who found their strength in a national virtue which individualized itself in every citizen. The wind that moans among the columns of the Parthenon, or rustles through the weeds on the palaces of the Caesars, whimpers no truer prophecies than that venal breath which, at a signal from the patron in the White House, bends all one way the obsequious leaves of a partisan press, ominous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... cocksure, ambitious, leftist politician, who knows what is best for everybody better than anybody else does, and who is convinced that he is inescapably right and that whoever differs with him is not only an ignoramus but a venal scoundrel as well. One was a beefy man in a gold-laced cream-colored dress tunic; he had thick lips and a too-ready laugh. Another was a rather monkish-looking young man who spoke earnestly and rolled his eyes upward, as though at some ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking, by which alone they could be cherished and preserved. Nothing vigorous or great can come from a pen totally venal. Necessity, nay, even avarice, perhaps, would have made me write rather rapidly than well. If the desire of success had not led me into cabals, it might have made me endeavor to publish fewer true and useful works than those which might be pleasing ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... advice may perhaps be called coyness, but it is only a coarse primitive phase of that attitude, based on sordid, mercenary motives, whereas true modern coyness consists in an impulse, grounded in modesty, to conceal affection. The germs of Greek venal coyness for filthy lucre may be found as low down as among the Papuan women who, as Bastian notes (Ploss, I., 460) exact payment in shell-money for their caresses. Of the Tongans, highest of all Polynesians, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Then Penfentenyou, venal and adaptable politician of the type that survives at the price of all the higher emotions, appeared at the window of the house on my right, broken and congested with mirth, the woman beside him, and the child in his arms. I saw ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... The king's aversion to decisive measures, and well-known horror of civil war, made him the worst of colleagues for the only policy his tool could wield with effect; and the great demagogue himself, when obliged to discard the mask of democratic hypocrisy that still partly hid the subtle and venal traitor of his party, would have lost, like Strafford, many of the elements of his potency; and despoiled, especially, of the miraculous resources of his eloquence, must have contented himself with that lucid, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... large and pour'd abroad Her unrelenting Train; Informers - Spies - Hateful Projectors of aggrieving Schemes To sell the starving many to the few, And drain a thousand Ways th' exhausted Land... And on the venal Bench Instead of Justice, Party held the ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... might almost say that she was venal. She had received money for simply committing this crime. She would receive money again for perpetuating it in a more flagrant form. So much down on the awful day of publication; a half-yearly revenue as long as the abominable work endured. There might be a great deal of money ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... prayer to God, he fearlessly presented his breast to the cowardly assassin. Montsoreau did not complete the extermination of the Huguenots of Angers, and Puigaillard soon after arrived to prosecute it; but the Protestant prisoners whom he was to have murdered knew his venal disposition, and found little difficulty ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... that a weak-walled native town lying right against the northern wall of Fort St. George was a serious danger. The houses offered convenient cover for any enemies that might attack the Fort; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal townsman was in a position to give the assailants valuable help. The French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deliberate destruction of Black Town. He first destroyed the Town Wall, and then—for a distance of 400 yards from the ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... breeds corruption inevitably. Venal men aspiring to place, avow themselves the friends of the Secretary, and if through such avowals they secure appointments, the offices will be used ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... mothers; their unborn children were being molded to the long roll of your hexameters. There came to be manuscripts of you in every city: corrupt enough, many of them, forgeries, many of them; lays fudged up and fathered on you by venal Rhapsodoi, to chant in princely houses whose ancestors it was a good speculation to praise. You were everywhere in Greece: a great and vague tradition, a formless mass of literature: by the time Solon was making laws for Athens, and Pisistratus was laying ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... entirely too cheap. We permit every creature that can poise on its hind legs and call itself a man, to sway the scepter of American Sovereignty—to become an important factor in the formation of our public polity; and then, with this venal vote on the one hand, eager to be bought, and the plutocrat on the other anxious to buy, we wonder why it is that the invariable tendency of our laws is to make the rich man a prince and the poor man a Populist—why we are "great only ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... pray send the lady to me; she can't be all stone, and my misery might melt a stone." He listened for an answer, he prayed for an answer. There was none. Once in a mad-house, the sanest man is mad, however interested and barefaced the motive of the relative who has brought two of the most venal class upon the earth to sign away his wits behind his back. And once hobbled and strapped, he is a dangerous maniac, for just so many days, weeks, or years, as the hobbles, handcuffs, and jacket happen to be left upon him by inhumanity, economy, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... but timid in its apprehensions as to protection, was ready to acquiesce in the most extravagant opinions; in other words, like trade and commerce every where, too much disposed to make merchandise of its politics. The balance of the non-slaveholding population, if we except a venal pulpit and press, had not even a specious motive, pecuniary or political, moral or social, that should have drawn it into rebellion. It was a part and portion of the great brother-hood of free labor, and could not by any possibility raise up a plausible pretense of jealousy against its natural ally—free ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... hand Hath thus made desolate all my company, And left me a poor, childless man—behold They who once felt it pride to call me friend, Make of my name a by-word, which was erst Like harp or tabret to their venal lip. Mine eye is dim with grief, my wasted brow Furrow'd with wrinkles. Soon I go the way Whence I shall not return. The grave, my house, Is ready for me. In its mouldering clay My bed I make, and say unto the worm Thou art my sister." With unpitying voice ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... unmarried, though in the meridian of life, and of course, uncontrolled master of all his movements. He was very peculiar in character, and his impulses, rather than his principles, guided his actions. He did not love his relatives, because he thought their attentions were venal, and resolved to adopt this beautiful boy, not so much from feelings of benevolence towards him, as a desire to disappoint his mercenary kindred. Bryant's natural affections were not strong enough to prove ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... everything. They are horror-stricken at the prospect of a return to his light railways and heavy sentences. Hence this attempt to damage his prestige. Unhappy Mr. Balfour! To be protected by one hundred and fifty mounted police, and not to know of it! And the venal English press which conceals the fact, what shall be said of it? Where would England be but for Irish ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... fonder still of what money could buy; he now hankered after revenge as the sweetest morsel that his hoarded ducats could procure for him. That the Sultan was well disposed to him he had every reason to think; none the less did he spend royally among the venal favourites of the Court in order that nothing might be left undone to inflame the ardour of Soliman against those whom he considered to ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... degrees of complacency and panegyric, "Paris", and "Woman", and a "Syrian Tale", and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... when his tight-pursed lips unclenched themselves and he drew in great breaths even of Ghetto air with the huge contentment of one who has known suffocation. "One can breathe here," he seemed to be saying. The atmosphere, untainted by spies, venal officials, and jeering soldiery, seemed fresh and sweet. Here the ground was stable, not mined in all directions; no arbitrary ukase—veritable sword of Damocles—hung over the head and darkened the sunshine. In such a country, where faith ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... heavily; but their president declared that such bargains were not got at Washington for nothing. Members of Congress had to be paid to assist in such things. At least he could not reduce his little private bill for such assistance below 1600l. He had, he said, positively paid out so much to those venal members of Congress, and had made nothing for himself to compensate him for his own exertions. When this president came to be examined, he admitted that he had really made no payments to members of Congress. His own capacity had been so great that no such ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... congregation, she can not act well her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit, little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out of her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... formidable wizard! Antonia, the mother of seven children, is to be—like the unchaste vestal—immured! Oh Heaven! whilst Druso the Informer, receiving at the same time the portion of a prince for his venal treachery, will celebrate his union with Phaedera, amidst the shrieks and groans of his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... one place alone. The progress of judicial venality and of official venality would have kept pace with the progress of parliamentary venality. But nothing is more certain than that, while the legislature was becoming more and more venal, the courts of law and the public offices were becoming purer and purer. The representatives of the people were undoubtedly more mercenary in the days of Hardwicke and Pelham than in the days of the Tudors. But the Chancellors of the Tudors ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... tribunes, and so it will be proved in almost every instance: the reason why the excess of power is more destructive when in the hands of the people is, that either they, by retaining the power in their own hands, exercise a demoralising despotism, or if they have become sufficient venal, they sell themselves to be ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... you pant for glory, If you sigh to live in story, If you burn with patriot zeal; Seize this bright, auspicious hour, Chase those venal tools of power, Who ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Soft were my numbers; who could take offence While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... left us no choice, they were to treat us as the lowest and vilest of all mercenaries,—if they were to send us far from the aid of our king and our suffering country, to squander us away in the most pestilential climates for a venal enlargement of their own territories, for the purpose of trucking them, when obtained, with those very robbers and murderers they had called upon us to oppose with our blood? What would be our sentiments, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... reward save such as may be reckoned in the number of palkis and pletnis (whips and lashes); sons, whether rich or poor, to be exposed to cavil, cunning, and vindictiveness, to the practices of gambling judges and a profligate soldiery, to a venal police, to fraudulent employes, themselves badly paid for service, but whose extortions and abuses always meet with approval, a single complaint against whom would expose the complainant to be sent through that hopeless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate. Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will, therefore, say, that Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the Third be a blot on ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... precipice on which they are disporting! Debt is the prolific mother of folly and of crime; it taints the course of life in all its dreams. Hence so many unhappy marriages, so many prostituted pens, and venal politicians! It hath a small beginning, but a giant's growth and strength. When we make the monster we make our master, who haunts us at all hours, and shakes his whip of scorpions for ever in our sight. The ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... where there is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, being venal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... express to the world what they had not in their own souls. They deified their light and Wandering affections, and were continually playing off the tremendous jest, alluded to above, of offering the features of some venal beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. A deficiency of earnestness and absolute truth is generally discoverable in Italian pictures, after the art had become consummate. When you demand what is deepest, these painters have not wherewithal to respond. They substituted a keen ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... realization, and that is the secret of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... shocked that gentleman's prejudices.' This did not appear to me at that time quite the thing and this happened in the year 1794.—Twice has the iron entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal Crew gone over it: once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer, with reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on prejudices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration; once again when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen dragged backward ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... which the name of the owner of the bakery was set forth was added in smaller letters the words "Cafe Nuernberger." Gottlieb and Aunt Hedwig and the man who made the sign (this last, however, for the venal reason that more letters would be required) had stood out stoutly for the honest German "Kaffehaus;" but Minna, whose tastes were refined, had insisted upon the use of the French word: there was more style about it, she said. And this was a case in which style was wedded to substantial ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... creditors being in general servants of the Company renders my task, on the part of the Company, difficult and invidious." "I have freed the sanction of this government from so corrupt a transaction. It is in my mind the most venal of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to debts that cannot bear the light; and though it appears exceedingly alarming, that a country on which you are to depend for resources should be so involved ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... about Milton's venal pen is no less false than his other gibes. The places of those who served the Commonwealth, were places of "hard work and short rations." Milton never received for his Defensio a sixpence beyond his official salary. It has indeed been asserted that he was paid 1000 l.. for it by order ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... indignantly. Did I think justice was to be bought in Switzerland? It was the law I had outraged, not an individual merely. Besides—money is all powerful in this venal country—how could I pay, a poor devil like me, the necessary price? what could I produce in cash on the nail? My bond would not be worth the paper it was ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... performers on the stage of the Theatre Francais, and to a multiplicity of other causes which it would be too tedious to discuss, or even to mention. Notwithstanding the encomiums daily lavished on the performers by the venal pen of newspaper writers, the truth is well known here on this subject. Endeavours are made by the government to repair the mischief by forming pupils; but how are they to be formed without good masters ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... him to the homes of decent, semi-educated families, and for such society he was altogether unfitted. The licence of the streets but seldom allured him. After his twenty-fourth year he was proof against the decoys of venal pleasure, and lived a life of asceticism exceedingly rare in young and lonely men. When Christian Moxey returned to London and took the house at Notting Hill, which he henceforth occupied together with his sister, a possibility of social intercourse at length appeared. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... debased, impure, spurious, alloyed, counterfeit; low-minded, unworthy, ignoble, mean, servile, groveling; despicable, discreditable, disgraceful, venal; plebeian, obscure, untitled, unhonored. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to be a ball for the tenantry in the evening of the wedding-day, in a marquee on the lawn. The gardens were to be illuminated in a style worthy of the chateau of Vaux, when Fouquet was squandering a nation's revenues on lamps and fountains and venal friends. Lady Mabel protested against all ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... requires virtue to execute them. The Spanish sovereigns were more humane than their subjects, but the latter were ready with expedients for evading laws whose execution would have hindered their avaricious undertakings in the distant colonies, while venal officials lent their connivance to these violations, instead of administering the laws in the spirit in which their authors had conceived them. The statute books of the worst despotisms are adorned with the wisest and most liberal ordinances. From the irades of the Ottoman ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... of the wisdom of mankind. It is a story that will never grow old. That is why Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced the Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has failed, as everything merely rational fails in this country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save this big lot of silver. Decoud's plan of a counter-revolution may be practicable or not, it may have ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... harness, we shall receive her again as a sister, and recollect her wanderings among the crimes only of the parricide party, which would have basely sold what their fathers so bravely won from the same enemy. Let us look forward, then, to the act of repentance, which, by dismissing her venal traitors, shall be the signal of return to the bosom and to the principles of her brethren; and if her late humiliation can just give her modesty enough to suppose that her southern brethren are somewhat ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... conceited Cynic, he preferred darkness for his time of search, and a scanty and feeble light of his own carrying, to the bounteous assistance of the sun in heaven? How this might be with Diogenes, I know not; but assuredly thus it fares with our Reformers:—The Journal of some venal or factious scribbler is the black and smoky lantern they are guided by; and the sunshine spread over the face of a happy country is of no use in helping them to find any object they are in search of.—The plea of the degraded state of the Representation of Westmoreland has ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... temper to employ, so full was her heart of yearning pity for the hardly-used babe, and displeasure at the mother's weak selfishness. It was easier to forgive and forget Rosa's sins; to lessen, in the retrospect, her worst faults into foibles, than it would have been to overlook the more venal failings of one less mercurial, and whose personal fascinations did not ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... across each of the old vaulted windows. We arrived at the high portal of the ancient manor, a genuine Roman construction of Aurelius Aquensis—a gateway with a round arch: it was obstructed by hired cabs, by whole herds of venal donkeys saddled and bridled, and by holiday-makers of Baden in Sunday clothes preserved for ten or fifteen years. The old pile itself is transformed into a hostelry. Gray was wrong: the paths of glory lead not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... apply to * * * * to compose, or rather to compound, something very clever on my remarkable frugality; that I write to one of my most esteemed friends on this wretched paper, which was originally intended for the venal fist of some drunken exciseman, to take dirty notes in a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and its equivalents a life-purpose—the aim and end of our earthly hopes—our service becomes idolatry, and a blight falls upon the nobler self. Money is the equivalent of what is venal,—of all that may be bought or sold; but the best, the godlike, the distinctively human, cannot be bought or sold. A rich man can buy a wife, but not a woman's love; he can buy books, but not an appreciative mind; he can buy a pew, but not a pure conscience; he can buy men's votes and flattery, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... sincerely sympathize with you in all that you have suffered, and we consider the persecution with which you have been pursued by a venal Court and an imperious and uncharitable priesthood, as an illustrious proof of your personal merit, and a lasting reproach to that Government from the grasp of whose tyranny you are ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
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