"Rapacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Governor stimulates a rapacious and licentious soldiery to the personal search of women, lest these unhappy creatures should avail themselves of the protection of their sex to secure any supply for their necessities; and he positively orders that no stipulation should be made for any provision for them. The widow and mother ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... stream to the poor; and the people turned their eyes towards them in all their distresses. We must observe, that the monks of that time, especially those from Ireland,[45] who had a considerable share in the conversion of all the northern parts, did not show that rapacious desire of riches which long disgraced and finally ruined their successors. Not only did they not seek, but seemed even to shun such donations. This prevented that alarm which might have arisen from an early and declared avarice. At this time the most fervent and holy anchorites retired ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rapidly acquired; pressure reduces few to want; he who serves is, if anything, more in demand than he who is to be served; and the want of temptation produces exemption from the liability to corruption. Men will, and do, daily corrupt themselves in the rapacious pursuit of gain, but comparatively few are in the market to be bought and sold by others. Notwithstanding this, money being every man's goal, there is a secret, profound, and general deference for it, while money will do less than in almost any other country in Christendom. ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the seat of rapacious Viking raiders and later a major power in northwestern Europe, Denmark has evolved into a modern, prosperous nation that is participating in the political and economic integration of Europe. So far, however, they have opted out of some aspects of the European Union's ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... throw themselves in the way of the greatest danger in order to avert it from their progeny. Thus a partridge will tumble along before a sportsman in order to draw away the dogs from her helpless covey. In the time of nidification the most feeble birds will assault the most rapacious. All the hirundines of a village are up in arms at the sight of an hawk, whom they will persecute till he leaves that district. A very exact observer has often remarked that a pair of ravens nesting in the rock of Gibraltar would suffer no vulture or eagle to rest near their ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... pleasures; which, as he would have been delighted not to have had attended them, so was he no less pleased with any opportunity to rid himself of the incumbrance. He passed, in the world's language, as an exceeding good father; being not only so rapacious as to rob and plunder all mankind to the utmost of his power, but even to deny himself the conveniencies, and almost necessaries, of life; which his neighbours attributed to a desire of raising immense fortunes for his children: but in fact it was not so; he heaped up money for ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... Thallus, hungry rascal you, as hurricane rapacious, When winks occasion on the stroke, the gulls ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... to a rambling old grey mansion, clothed with a great magnolia and many roses, standing in old-time gardens, and shrubberies of laurel and ilex and Spanish chestnut, and rhododendron, upon the South Dorset cliffs, that are vanishing so slowly yet so surely in the maw of the rapacious sea. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... town of Europe. I have lost my little pile. The eight five-franc pieces which I annually devote out of my scanty store to the tutelary god of roulette have been snapped up, one after another, in breathless haste, by the sphinx-like croupiers, impassive priests of that rapacious deity, and now I am sitting, cleaned out, by the edge of the terrace, on a brilliant, cloudless, February afternoon, looking across the zoned and belted bay towards the beautiful grey hills of Rocca-bruna and the gleaming white spit of Bordighera in the distance. 'Tis a modest tribute, my poor ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... Henriot, 225 Foul parricide—the sworn ally of Hbert, Denounced by all—upheld by Robespierre. Who spar'd La Valette? who promoted him, Stain'd with the deep dye of nobility? Who to an ex-peer gave the high command? 230 Who screen'd from justice the rapacious thief? Who cast in chains the friends of Liberty? Robespierre, the self-stil'd patriot Robespierre— Robespierre, allied with villain Daubign— Robespierre, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the day some facts which he would not be ashamed of as a serious observer of life in Leipsic, and he remembered that their guide had said house-rent was very low. He generalized from the guide's content with his fee that the Germans were not very rapacious; and he became quite irrelevantly aware that in Germany no man's clothes fitted him, or seemed expected to fit him; that the women dressed somewhat better, and were rather pretty sometimes, and that they had feet as large as the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... woman married to an elderly man, whose fatherly kindness wins her grateful esteem. With her knowledge and sanction he leaves the bulk of his property to charitable objects, thereby disappointing her rapacious relatives. She is quite willing, as a widow, to marry the man her mother dismissed in order to wed her to a millionaire, but James Merion, the cured suitor, prefers a fresh love.—Ellen Olney Kirk, A Daughter ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... bearers are low-class coolies from the country, whose rough gait makes riding in a chair the nearest approach to horseback exercise. The jinrikisha is also largely in evidence, but the bearers are a great contrast in their rapacious manners to the courteous and smiling Japanese in all the cities ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... although the practice cost me many a sleepless night, I preserved, and ultimately brought home, many specimens of rare and beautiful birds and beasts, which would otherwise have been destroyed by those rapacious insects. ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Afric, and soft Asia, With Europe's cultured plains; and in their turns Their scatter'd tribes: those whom the hot Crab burns, The tawny Ethiops; Orient Indians; Getulians; ever-wandering Scythians; Swift Tartar hordes; Cilicians rapacious, And Parthians with back-bended bow pugnacious; Sabeans incense-bringing, men of Thrace, Italian, Spaniard, Gaul, and that rough race Of Britons, rigid as their native colds; With all the rest the circling sun beholds! But clouds, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... prisoners—or asked a large ransom? This last suggestion threw them into a cold perspiration of fear. The wealthiest were seized with the worst panic and saw themselves forced, if they valued their lives, to empty bags of gold into the rapacious hands of this soldier. They racked their brains for plausible lies to dissemble their riches, to pass themselves off as poor—very poor. Loiseau pulled off his watch-chain and hid it in his pocket. As night fell their apprehensions increased. The lamp was lighted, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... favour our land with the alternate benefits of rain and warmth of the Sun; and that our hopes of a plentiful harvest may not be disappointed by devouring insects, or any other calamity:—To prosper our trade and fishery, and the labor of our hands:—To protect our navigation from the rapacious hands of invaders and robbers on the seas, and graciously to open a door of deliverance to our fellow-citizens in cruel captivity in a land of Barbarians:—To continue and confirm our civil and religious liberties; and for that great purpose to bless and direct our great University, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... when looking at the tomb of Becket at Canterbury, wished that the jewels with which it was loaded had been given to the poor; "for," said he, "those who have heaped up all this mass of treasure will one day be plundered, and fall a prey to rapacious tyrants in power." His prediction was literally fulfilled twenty years after it was uttered. Sir Walter Raleigh regarded omens, and from these predicted truly. Tacitus foresaw the calamities which long desolated Europe on the fall of the Roman empire, and wrote concerning the future events ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... She was a slender young Hebrew, handsome in an impudent, Tenderloin sort of way, with a small head, reddish-brown almond eyes, a trifle tilted, a rapacious mouth, and a ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... of the Equitable Life exposed conditions far worse than I had indicated to the public, and it seemed probable that the usual whitewashing process would be utilized to conceal the guilt of the rapacious criminals who had been untrue to the most sacred trust that can be imposed on man. Since that time, however, the Governor of the State of New York has appointed a committee to investigate the affairs of the Big Three corporations, and the resulting disclosures ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the rapacity of their landlords—on whom were poured the full phials of Anti-corn-law wrath. The following are some of the scalding drops let fall upon their devoted heads—"Monster of impiety!" "inhuman fiend!" "heartless brutes!" "rapacious harpies!" "relentless demons!" "plunderers of the people!" "merciless footpads!" "murderers!" "swindlers!" "insatiable!" "insolent!" "flesh-mongering!" "scoundrel!" "law-making landlords!" "a bread-taxing oligarchy!"[29] Need we say that the authors of these very choice and elegant expressions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... here my pilgrimage may close! Yet, if this be denied, where'er my bones May lie—or in the city's crowded bounds, Or scatter'd wide o'er the huge sweep of waters, Or left a prey on some deserted shore To the rapacious cormorant,—yet still, (For why should sober reason cast away A thought which soothes the soul?) yet still my spirit Shall wing its way to these my native regions, And hover o'er this spot. Oh, then I'll think Of times when I was seated 'neath ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... and crippled wolves lay as trophies around the bold soldier. In a hollow near the river they found a horse and man partly eaten up, and several cattle that had apparently been hotly pursued and torn to death by the rapacious beasts. They started out in search of the spot from whence the drover had heard the firing in the night. They soon discovered the place; at the foot of a large dead sycamore stump, some twelve feet high lay the carcasses of a dozen or twenty wolves. Each wolf had his ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... being again introduced[573], Dr. Johnson said, that 'a rapacious chief would make a wilderness of his estate.' Mr. Donald M'Queen told us, that the oppression, which then made so much noise, was owing to landlords listening to bad advice in the letting of their lands; that interested and designed[574] people flattered them with golden dreams of much ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... elephants have juiceless brows,(917) Nor can the sweetest pasture stay The charger's long unquiet neigh. Big tears from mules and camels flow Whose staring coats their trouble show, Nor can the leech's art restore Their health and vigour as before. Rapacious birds are fierce and bold: Not single hunters as of old, In banded troops they chase the prey, Or gathering on our temples stay. Through twilight hours with shriek and howl Around the city jackals prowl, And wolves and foul hyaenas wait Athirst for blood at every gate. One sole atonement still ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... inevitable; and even these sacrifices have, in general, been far from cancelling their bonds; so that they not only have ceased to be proprietors, but also still continue debtors to a large amount. Their creditors, in many instances, a set of rapacious, unprincipled dealers, availing themselves of the power which the law would give them over the personal liberty of these, their debtors, immediately took that advantage of their own commanding position, which might have been expected from their characters. ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... but symbolical of what is practised in all countries; as long as the folly, the avarice, the dissipation, the degradation, or the tyranny of the rulers, shall have rendered the treasury so much exhausted or rapacious, as to induce them to burn the harvest, in order the more speedily to collect the price ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... Northern Italians always talk of polenta. She was a true daughter of the isle, and had never left it but once in her life, when she went to Naples. "Naples was beautiful, yes; but one always loves one's own country the best." She was very attentive and good, but at the end was rapacious of more and more buonamano. "Have patience with her, sir," said the blameless Antonino, who witnessed her greediness; "they do not understand certain matters here, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... and that painter's book, Un ete dans le Sahara, quickened the desire of primitive life; he sped away, and for nearly two years lived on the last verge of civilization, sometimes passing beyond it with the Bedouins into the interior, on slave-trading or rapacious expeditions. The frequentation of these simple people calmed the fever of ennui, which had been consuming him. Nature leads us to the remedy that the development of reason inflicts on the animal—man. And for more than a year Mike thought he had solved the problem of life; now he lived in peace—passion ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... moving times in the little colony whose population may by now have been five thousand. Harvey, the Governor, was rapacious; the King at home, autocratic. Meanwhile, signs of change and of unrest were not wanting in Europe. England was hastening toward revolution; in Germany the Thirty Years' War was in mid-career; France and Italy were racked by strife; over the world the peoples ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... she tried to stretch out an arm through Basutoland to the sea.[249] Here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seaward growth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of one strong, rapacious neighbor. A central position teaches always the lesson of vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the Boer equipment in 1899, the military organization of Germany, and the bristling fortresses on the Swiss ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... national respect and confidence than the debasing qualification universally prevalent in this country since the fatal introduction of the system of Dutch finance? Who will pretend it? If a spirit of rapacious coveteousness, desecrating all the humanities of life, has been the besetting sin of England for the last century and a half, since the passing of the Reform Act the altar of Mammon has blazed with triple worship. To acquire, to accumulate, to plunder each other by virtue of philosophic phrases, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... district of Puraniya. All these were petty independent chiefs, whose territories now form Pergunahs in the Subah of Saptari, belonging to Gorkha, or in the adjacent parts of the Company’s territory. The rapacious chief now made an attack on the hill Gidha, but here he was opposed by a devil, (Dano,) who killed a number of his troops, and prevailed, until the holy man Ramanath ordered the god Ramkrishna to cut off the devil’s ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... boast of: so would a vulture, could it speak, with the entrails of its prey upon its rapacious talons. Of this you'll judge from what I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... not to be put by" Above the horizon of the general soul. Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?— The outward reason has the world in store, Regenerates passion with the stress of want, Regenerates knowledge with discovery, Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, Widens dependence, knits the social whole In ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... distinguished seat; A chosen train the monarch's list complete. There unsubmitting Brask's proud genius shone, There Bernheim's might, in many a contest known; There Theodore: a bold ungovern'd soul, Rapacious, fell, and fearless of control: A harlot's favour rais'd him from the dust, To rise the pander of tyrannic lust: Graced with successive gifts, at length he shone With wondering Trollio on the sacred throne. With pleasure's arts, and sophistry's refined, Alike he ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... allotment of the proscribed, has fallen the head of the money trust, a multi-millionaire banker, a financial Magnate known throughout the civilized world as the most rapacious miser on record. This man has repeatedly shown that he has no regard for honesty of purpose, and his moral appreciation is imperceptible. To recount the deeds of cunning, of fraud, of gigantic robbery that he has ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... all aspiration and desire. No doubt they satisfied many women, but they could not satisfy me. They gave me little I did not find in the mere society of the many brilliant and accomplished men with whom I was surrounded. I had a rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who haunted my salon and were constantly to be met elsewhere. European men are instruits. They are interested in every vital subject, intellectual ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... persons? who more a favourite to the most infamous? who, sometimes, appeared a braver champion? who, at other times, a bolder enemy to his country? who more dissolute in his pleasures? who more patient in his toils? who more rapacious in robbing? who more profuse in giving? Above all things, this was remarkable and admirable in him. The arts he had to acquire the good opinion and kindness of all sorts of men, to retain it with great complaisance, to communicate all things ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... promotion and retention in office. Roosevelt lamented bitterly over the injustice and he denounced the waste. Many cases of grievous hardship came to his notice. Widows, whose only means of support for themselves and their little children was their salary, were thrown upon the street in order that rapacious politicians might secure places for their henchmen. Roosevelt might plead, but the politician remained obdurate. What was the tragic lot of a widow and starving children compared with keeping promises with greedy "heelers"? Roosevelt saw that there was ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... prey also invent ingenious combinations to reach a good flier. Most of the great rapacious birds of rapid flight or with powerful talons are so well organised for the chase that they have no need of cunning. To see the prey, to seize it and devour it, are acts accomplished in a moment by the single fact of ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... in the interest of the taxpayers. It made annual, not permanent, grants of money to pay official salaries and then insisted upon electing a treasurer to dole it out. Thus the colonists learned some of the mysteries of public finance, as well as the management of rapacious officials. The legislature also used its power over money grants to force the governor to sign bills which ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. it is still colossal. slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... fees Colman was certainly most rapacious. He spared no effort to increase, in this way, the emoluments of his office. Did an actor on a benefit night advertise any new songs, glees, or other musical performance—Colman was prompt to demand a fee of L2 2s. for every separate production. ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... for novelty—which makes sensuous love equally changeful and rapacious, which makes us seek the same emotion in other bodies which we cast off as fast as they fall—turns life into an infernal succession of disenchantments, spites and scorn; and it is chiefly that hunger for novelty which leaves us a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... principles of grace and rhythm. She occupied the back part of a building of which the front part was an empty shop. The shop had been tenanted by her father, one of whose frequent bankruptcies had happened there; after which his stock of the latest novelties in inexpensive furniture had been seized by rapacious creditors, and Mr Earp had migrated to Birmingham, where he was courting the Official Receiver anew. Ruth had remained solitary and unprotected, with a considerable amount of household goods which had been ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... doubtfully. "Whatever it is," he said slowly, "it is closely allied to the cyanide groups in its rapacious activity. I haven't the slightest idea of its true nature, but it seems to have a powerful affinity for important nerve centers of respiration and muscular coordination, as well as for disorganizing the blood. I should ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... confiding owner—ay, but there was the rub! What a disheartening and disgusting specimen of such new owner had disclosed itself to their anxiously expecting but soon recoiling eyes—always, however, making due allowances for one or two cheering indications, on Mr. Titmouse's part, of a certain rapacious and litigious humor, which might hereafter right pleasantly and profitably occupy their energies! Their professional position, and their interests had long made them sharp observers; but when did ever before low and disgusting qualities force themselves into revolting prominence, as those of Mr. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... dozen yards towards the house, when his attention was excited by a sudden and loud rustling amongst the bushes, and on looking towards the spot, he saw first one and then another raven mount in the air, uttering, at short intervals, the peculiar dull and complaining cry of rapacious birds when frightened from their prey. The creatures evidently meditated another descent, for, instead of betaking themselves to the neighbouring trees, they circled round and round in the air, now higher, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... grateful soil, and enjoys the security and benefit of a long lease. But faint is the hope and scanty is the produce of those harvests which are raised by the reluctant toil of peasants and slaves condemned to a bare subsistance and careless of the interests of a rapacious master. If his granaries are full, his purse is empty, and the want of cities or commerce, the difficulty of finding or reaching a market, obliges him to consume on the spot a part of his useless stock, which cannot be exchanged for merchandise or money.... The entertainment of his ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... are to be accepted on such grounds, I must be allowed to put in a plea, for similar reasons, in favour of the Loup Garou, the Were-Tiger, and all their gruesome family. Wherever there are wild beasts to prey upon the sons of men, there also is found the belief that the worst and most rapacious of the man-eaters are themselves human beings, who have been driven to temporarily assume the form of an animal, by the aid of the Black Art, in order to satisfy their overpowering lust for blood. This belief, which seeks to account ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... fellows, but masters of driving— were made so much fuss of by sprigs of nobility and others that their brutality and rapacious insolence had reached a climax. One, who frequented our inn, and who was called the "bang-up coachman," was a swaggering bully, who not only lashed his horses unmercifully, but in one or two instances had beaten in a barbarous manner individuals who had quarrelled ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... returned a king de jure as well (745 B.C.). His next campaign completed what the first had begun. The subjugation of the plain would have been of little advantage if the highlands had been left in the power of tribes as yet unconquered, and allowed to pour down with impunity bands of rapacious freebooters on the newly liberated provinces: security between the Zab and the Uknu could only be attained by the pacification of Namri, and it was, therefore, to Namri that the sea of war was transferred in 744 ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Directory had found in Napoleon Bonaparte an instrument of power that was stunning Europe by its tremendous blows. That instrument had not yet turned to the reorganization of France herself, and at the time it served the rapacious designs of the Directory. Europe was looted wherever the arms of France prevailed, and the levying of tribute both on public and on private account was the order of the day. Talleyrand was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... have a government impelled solely by faction. When that time arrives, the minister will be the mere tool of the multitude; the faction in the streets will have its mouthpiece in the faction of the legislature. Property will be at the mercy of the idle, the desperate, and the rapacious—Law will be a dead letter—Religion a mockery—Right superseded by violence—and the only title to possession will be the ruffian ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... occupation of land, at any rent, or starvation. The lord of the land was thus enabled to dictate his own terms, and therefore it has been that we have heard of the payment of five, six, eight, and even as much as ten pounds per acre. "Enormous rents, low wages, farms of an enormous extent, let by rapacious and indolent proprietors to monopolizing land-jobbers, to be relet by intermediate oppressors, for five times their value, among the wretched starvers on potatoes and water," led to a constant succession of outrages, followed by Insurrection ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... security of a counting-house, all agreeing they had rather have been tailors, weavers—what not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set these booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book-drudgery, what he has found them. Oh, you know not, may you never know, the miseries of subsisting by authorship! ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... dissociated state it is impossible that men could have long continued. The dangers to which they must have frequently been exposed, by the attacks of fierce and rapacious beasts, by the proedatory attempts of their own species, and by the disputes of contiguous and independent families; these, together with their inability to defend, themselves, on many such occasions, must have incited them to unite. Hence then was society formed ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... its mouth flows through a rich, fertile plain occupied by a progressive, prosperous people. But the Rio de la Plata takes its rise in one of the world's most backward plains, the home of uncivilized Indians, heartless rubber adventurers, and the most rapacious of officials. Not infrequently, the degenerate white men of these regions, yielding to the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight provocation. The ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... churches and halls remote from the scene of conflagration. But in spite of all their caution, much property was carried off by the depredators, and amongst others by Chowles and Judith, who contrived to secure a mass of plate, gold, and jewels, that satisfied even their rapacious souls. While this was passing in the heart of the burning city, vast crowds were streaming out of its gates, and encamping themselves, in pursuance of the royal injunction, in Finsbury Fields and Spitalfields. Others crossed the water to Southwark, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Indian, just as the latter evicted the mound builder—just as the mound builder overcame the people whose monuments of burned brick and cut stone now lie fifty feet below the surface. Only a few centuries have gone by since these happenings; can we number the years hence when rapacious hordes from another land shall drive out the effete descendants of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous Zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. This Mob (a foreigner, by-the-by), is said to have been the most odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant in stature—insolent, rapacious, filthy, had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock. He died, at length, by dint of his own energies, which exhausted him. Nevertheless, he had his uses, as every thing has, however vile, and taught mankind a lesson which to this day it is in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 27th.—To return to what you say of France. Do you not think that a democratic republic, in which every citizen is striving to get all he can for his vote at the expense of the State, necessarily becomes the most rapacious and corrupt form of government? It is this which has raised the budgets of France for 1883 to 122 millions sterling; and if you add the communal expense, to 154 millions. It is this which compels them to persist in ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... this permission is very doubtful, as it not unfrequently happens that the privilege is abused by rapacious men, eager to make the most of their time and collect a fortune, and occasionally it gives rise ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... moment began the full development of the vast and versatile genius of this extraordinary man. Standing amid the terrible, because hostile, fragments of two revolutions, harassed by the rapacious greed of commissioners upon commissioners, who, successively dispatched from France, hid beneath a republican exterior a longing after the spoils; with an army in the field accustomed by five years' experience to ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... and his family undertook to pay him a rent for the land handed over to them. Upon this, along with a nest-egg of three hundred francs per annum, known to no one, the old people would be able to live comfortably. The division made, the family soon became rapacious; Hyacinthe never paid anything, Buteau only a part, and Delhomme, Fanny's husband, alone fulfilled his obligation. Mere Fouan died, and the old man lived alone for a year; after that he went to his daughter Fanny Delhomme, but her unkindness made his life miserable, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... where Fakredeen had the political pleasure of exhibiting his new and powerful ally, a prince, an English prince, the brother perhaps of a queen, unquestionably the owner of a splendid yacht, to the admiring eye of all his, at the same time, credulous and rapacious creditors. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... outskirts is St. Gervais, the church of the monastery to which William the Conqueror was carried, out of the noise and the feverish air of the great city, to die, and which witnessed the strange struggle, in his last moments, between his rapacious passions and his late-awakened remorse. So insecure was the state of society, that, when he whose iron hand had preserved order among his feudal nobles had expired, those about him fled to their strongholds in expectation of a general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... succeeding reign of John, all the rapacious exactions usual to these Norman kings were not only redoubled, but mingled with outrages of ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... vessel plac'd, The land far left, as with their laboring oars The surges move;—exulting Tereus, cry'd, "Victorious,—lo! my utmost wishes borne Safe with me."—Scarce his burning soul defers His hop'd-for joys. His eyes are never turn'd From the lov'd face. Thus Jove's protected bird Rapacious bears, with his sharp talons pierc'd, An hare defenceless to his lofty nest: No flight remains, the spoiler calmly views His prey. Now ended is their voyage, now Weary'd they quit their ship, and joyful touch Their native beach; and now the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... House, all agreeing they had rather have been Taylors, Weavers, what not? rather than the things they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, one clear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know not what a rapacious, dishonest set those booksellers are. Ask even Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by book drudgery, what he has found them. O you know not, may you never know! the miseries of subsisting by authorship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to face him squarely. I did so and mentioned the amount I could dispose of. And I perceived that he was disappointed. He thought it over, his calculating gaze lost in mine, for quite a long time before he came out in a thoughtful tone with the rapacious suggestion: ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... undoubtedly a profligate and rapacious tyrant. In the course of a few months, he alienated his people, and offended a great number of his most powerful chiefs. The war which he undertook against the English, although at the moment unprovoked, must still ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... nation in the spring of 1861 has been increasing. The fitting out of each expedition by water as well as land is but a refinement upon the extortion and immense profits which preceded it. The freedom from punishment by which the first greedy and rapacious horde were suffered to run at large with ill-gotten gains seems to have demoralized too many of those who deal with the Government."— Appendix to The Congressional Globe, Third Session, Thirty-seventh Congress, 1862-63, Part ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... sentence-"'Should my son remain abroad, and you ever be in extremity, commit the box in strict charge to the worthiest Scot you know.' I am in that extremity now. Edward determined on desolation, when he placed English governors throughout our towns; and the rapacious Heselrigge, his representative in Lanark, not backward to execute the despot's will, has just issued an order, for the houses of all the absent chiefs to be searched for records and secret correspondence. Two or three, in the neighborhood have already gone through this ordeal; ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... half of which, perhaps, spent in a House of Correction. They generally have fine eyes and glorious hair, the true physique of the profession, an intoxicating grace, a seductiveness which drives men to folly, an unwholesome, irresistible charm! They conquer like the highwaymen of old. They are rapacious creatures; true birds of prey. I like ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... consummate ability as a soldier and statesman is revealed in the existence of his empire; we find in the Code of Du[vs]an, before such a thing flourished in England, the institution of trial by jury, while Hermann Wendel[17] has pointed out that the peasants were protected from rapacious landowners much more effectively than in the Germany of that age.... We need not try to establish whether the simple Macedonian desired to be under Simeon or Du[vs]an; but even if these two monarchs had, each of them, as far as was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... Harpies as the rapacious goddesses of the storms, residing near the Erinnyes, or the Ocean, before the jaws of hell. If any person was so long absent from home that it was not known what had become of him, and he was supposed to be dead, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... own character was so much consulted by the chancellor, that he made it an inviolable rule, as did also his friend Southampton, never to enter into any connection with the royal mistresses. The king's favorite was Mrs. Palmer, afterwards created duchess of Cleveland; a woman prodigal, rapacious, dissolute, violent, revengeful. She failed not in her turn to undermine Clarendon's credit with his master; and her success was at this time made apparent to the whole world. Secretary Nicholas, the chancellor's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... disgust, and retired to his native village near the river Hudson. Here, collecting about him a few choice spirits like himself, he kept the inhabitants in a continual state of alarm by his plundering and rapacious conduct. Acting, as he pretended, under the orders of the king, the tories durst not oppose him, and the whigs were too few in numbers to resist his foraging excursions with ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... and influence was made by the "Drapier's Letters," in 1724. One Wood, of Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, a man enterprising and rapacious, had, as is said, by a present to the Duchess of Munster, obtained a patent, empowering him to coin one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of halfpence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, in which there was a very inconvenient ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... aggressive attacks of the United States upon Mexico, her insatiable appetite would soon be turned towards the north—towards the dependencies of this Empire—and that the magnificent colonies of the Canadas would soon fall a prey to the assaults of their rapacious neighbour? But such arguments were not used, and it was not thought necessary to involve this country in a war for the support of Mexico, although the Power that was attacking that country lay adjacent to our ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... of Vladimir and his subjects—passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for about 250 years—we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century—the one the written or learned, the other the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... him at least a debt of gratitude for having helped to keep his territory free from the rapacious Tetzel, but who, both now and afterwards, conscientiously held aloof from the contest, gave proof on this occasion of his undiminished kindness and regard for him, in a letter he addressed to Staupitz. He writes as follows:—'As ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... provinces of Erin passed that night on Cul Silinne. The sharp, keen-edged anxiety for Cuchulain came upon Fergus and he warned the men of Erin to be on their guard, because there would come upon them the rapacious lion, and the doom of foes, the vanquisher of multitudes, and the chief of retainers, the mangler of great hosts, the hand that dispenseth [3]treasures,[3] and the flaming [W.502.] torch, even Cuchulain son of Sualtaim.[a] And thus he foreshowed him and chanted a ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... become so fearful a hag; the luxuriant hair is lost, and she takes no pains to conceal her grey baldness, the eye loses its light, the enchanting down of the upper lip turns to a bristly moustache; the features harden, grow coarse and vulgar; and the countenance assumes a rapacious expression, so that she appears a bird of prey; and her strident voice is like the shriek of vultures. It is easily comprehensible that the Spanish stage should have taken the old woman as one of its most constant, characteristic types. But in ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... overstrained fiction and caricature. On the contrary, a walk through those receptacles of human woe, and the little histories of their inmates, will often furnish as many lessons of morality and world-knowledge as will suffice us for life. We may there see the rapacious creditor at the same goal with the unfortunate debtor, whom he has hunted through life, supplicating mercy which he never exercised, and vainly attempting to recant a course of cruelty and persecution, by mixing up his merited sufferings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... Books, accuses him of being 'a wicked old biblioclast who went about the country, from library to library, tearing away title-pages from rare books of all sizes'; and Dr. Dibdin in Bibliomania states that he 'was the most hungry and rapacious of all book and print collectors.' The testimony of Hearne (who knew Bagford well, and who was also amply qualified to judge both of his merits and demerits), however, is very different. He writes: ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... (suck in) 296; draw off; suck the blood of, suck like a leech. retake, resume; recover &c. 775. Adj. taking &c.v.; privative[obs3], prehensile; predaceous, predal[obs3], predatory, predatorial[obs3]; lupine, rapacious, raptorial; ravenous; parasitic. bereft &c. 776. Adv. at one fell swoop. Phr. give an inch and take ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... these two, Silas Rocket, ever rapacious for custom, was left free to see that the games did not detract from the men's drinking powers. He had an eye like a hawk for possible custom. Wherever there was a big pot just won his rasping voice was always at the elbow ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... finding a companion who shared his horror of the wine-shop. The two friends lived together in a fairly comfortable lodging, but their resources were very limited. They were obliged to take into their room a third companion, an old Auvergnat, gloomy and rapacious, who found it possible out of his meagre salary to save something with which to buy a place in his own country. Jean Francois and Savinien were always together. On holidays they together took long walks in ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... one of the Olympian fascinators; he sends neatly folded notes every day to our master's wife, together with faded bouquets and half-eaten apples." Alciphron, iii, 62. The words are put into the mouth of a rapacious parasite who feels that the security of his position in the house ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... the female is in general much more gentle than that of the male. When leading forth her young to collect their food, though so large and apparently so powerful a bird, she gives them very slight protection from the attacks of any rapacious animal which may appear against them. She rather warns them of their danger than offers to defend them; yet she is extremely affectionate to ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... fortunes, but seeking them on no plan; like a flight of locusts, or a swarm of angry wasps smoked out of their nest. They would seek for immediate gratification, and let the future take its course. They would be bloodthirsty and rapacious, and would inflict ruin and misery to any extent; and they would do tenfold more harm to the invaded, than benefit to themselves. They would be powerful to break down; helpless to build up. They would in a day undo the labour and skill, the prosperity of years; but they would not know ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... of a great number of prizes, in consequence of this unexpected attack encourages the former, and has greatly irritated the latter. The States, Zealand excepted, seem disposed to act with vigor against the common enemy. If they persevere, they may finally disappoint their rapacious projects. They depend on the interference of Russia, and I believe with reason, although a day or two ago, the Count de Kaunitz, the Imperial Ambassador here, offered his master's mediation, in conjunction with the ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... We know by a recent incident that the indemnity exacted from China by this country in respect of the Boxer rebellion was not really required for the ostensible purposes for which it was imposed. A large proportion of it lay at the Bank of England unappropriated, and eventually was attached by a rapacious Chancellor of the Exchequer for the purpose of alleviating the burdens of the British taxpayer. China is determined to have no more incidents such as this in the future, and the Russo-Japanese War has given her occasion for serious thought in the matter as well ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... anxiety about their own future, cannot help being interested in observing them. They see a bird of one kind diving and bringing to the surface a fish, which another, of a different species, snatches from it and bears aloft, in its turn to be attacked by a third equally rapacious winged hunter, that, swooping at the robber, makes him forsake his ill-gotten prey, while the prey itself, reluctantly dropped, is dexterously re-caught in its whirling descent long ere it reaches its own element—the whole ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... coolness in time of heat; yes—even tho July 1st has come and gone—drafts to assuage our thirst; the divers stays and supports of our declining years—all these things come in bottles. From the time of its purchase to the moment of its consignment to the barrel in the cellar or the rapacious wagon of the rag-and-bone man the bottle plays a vital part in our lives. And as with most inconspicuous necessities, but little is known of its history. We assume vaguely that it is blown—ever since ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... out that the rascally landlord seized upon every chair and table that ought by rights to have belonged to the widow. The estate to which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors; and the only means of subsistence remaining to the widow and child was a rent-charge of L50 upon my Lord Bagwig's property, who had many turf-dealings with the deceased. And so my dear mother's liberal intentions towards ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unfledged, A monkey with his tail abridged; A thing that walks on spindle legs, With bones as brittle, sir, as eggs; His body, flexible and limber, And headed with a knob of timber; A being frantic and unquiet, And very fond of beef and riot; Rapacious, lustful, rough, and martial, To lies and lying scoundrels partial! By nature form'd with splendid parts To rise in science—shine in arts; Yet so confounded cross and vicious, A mortal foe to all his species! His own best friend, and you must know, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... for the support of the lad in lodging, food, washing, light, fire and the rest. The parents, at this rate, feel that they are not making a bad bargain; they are not undergoing extortion, the State not acting like a rapacious contractor. And better yet, it is often a paternal creditor, distributing, as it does, three or four thousand scholarships. If their son obtains one of these, their annual debt is remitted to them ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... striking back at a commercial society whose lies and shams and hypocrisies he hated; he knew them all; he had practiced them himself. There is good reason to believe that alongside of his one personality, that of a rapacious miser, there lived another personality, that ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... the intrigues of the abbe Troubert ('Le Cure de Tours') absorb us as completely as the career of Caesar himself in Mommsen's famous chapter. The woes of the little orphan subjected to the tyranny of her selfish aunt and uncle ('Pierrette'), the struggles of the rapacious heirs for the Mirouet fortune ('Ursule Mirouet,') a story which gives us one of Balzac's purest women, treats interestingly of mesmerism (and may be read without fear by the young), the siege of Mlle. Cormon's mature affections by her two adroit suitors ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various |
