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Bribe   /braɪb/   Listen
Bribe

verb
(past & past part. bribed; pres. part. bribing)
1.
Make illegal payments to in exchange for favors or influence.  Synonyms: buy, corrupt, grease one's palms.



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"Bribe" Quotes from Famous Books



... speak with all freedom, convinced Crewe that his attempt to gain an interview was quite hopeless. She gave him much information concerning her mistress—none of it false, but all misleading—and in the end had to resist an offer of gold coins, pressed upon her as a bribe for her good word ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... rich man will bribe the beggar to vote as he dictates," replied Anaxagoras; "and thus his power of doing evil ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child

... in, between free and slave-state men, see vol. i.; rival constitutions of; admission of, under Lecompton Constitution, urged by Buchanan; opposed by Douglas; attempt of Congress to bribe into acceptance of Lecompton Constitution; rejects offer; ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse

... the Presbyterian form of church-government and discipline, and introduce prelacy into Scotland: for which purpose he was by him sent as commissioner to both the general assemblies 1608 and 1610. He brought some English doctors to persuade, a strong guard to intimidate the faithful, and money to bribe those of a contrary disposition; which he distributed to these mercenary creatures for their votes. He so far succeeded, as to get a new set of bishops erected, and then returned to England, where, with the wages of iniquity, he built a sumptuous palace at Berwick. When ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... day was the Red Lyon, which was opened in 1637 by Nicholas Upshall, the Quaker, who later was hanged for trying to bribe a jailer to pass some food into the jail to two ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... noblest presents and applauses, into his own tent; where he privately admonished him "to court the friendship of the Romans rather by attention to them as a body, than by practicing on individuals;[27] to bribe no one, as what belonged to many could not without danger be bought from a few; and adding that, if he would but trust to his own merits, glory and regal power would spontaneously fall to his lot; but, should he proceed too rashly, he would only, by ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... world has vanished, and he is alone with God? There lies the body in which he used to live, whose poor necessities first made money of value to him, but with which itself and its fictitious value are both left behind. He cannot now even try to bribe God with a cheque. The angels will not bow down to him because his property, as set forth in his will, takes five or six figures to express its amount It makes no difference to them that he has ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... gates were closed. How should he get past them, and past the customs officials? His stock of money would not furnish the high bribe that they would demand for letting him through at night and without a passport. Besides they might ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich

... British, but asserts his independence with a great deal of firmness and vigor, and is an ever-present source of anxiety. He receives a subsidy of $600,000 from the British government, which is practically a bribe to induce him not to make friends with Russia, and yet there are continual reports concerning Russian intrigues in that direction. He declines to receive an English envoy and will not permit any Englishmen ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... precaution works very well so far as the common herd are concerned, but every hour through the day little knots of priestly men in the flowing new garments and spotless turbans representing their Noo Roos purchases, or the lamb's-wool cylinder and semi-European garb of the official, bribe, coerce, or command the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... I will try and take him in some fruit, tomorrow. If they won't let me in, I will watch outside the gates and, when one of the guard comes out, will take him aside; and I have no doubt that, for a small bribe, he will carry in the fruit and give it to the trooper. I wonder that they put them into that hut with the ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... the voice of friendship and love? How little do we realise the sufferings of others! Even your brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the hangman, and to erect the infamous gallows, would hesitate to inflict so horrible a doom: not, I am well aware, from virtue, not from philanthropy, but with the fear before it of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but her heart sickened with a sense of the truth of his phrase. "It's only a very small part payment. You can at least know that the bribe they offer is large." ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... patient of fifty-six who suffered from palpitation when shut in a railway carriage or in a small room. She could only travel by rail or go into a small room so long as the doors were not locked, and on the railroad she had to bribe the guard to leave the doors unlocked. The attacks were purely mental, for the woman could be deceived into believing that the door to a railroad carriage was unlocked, and then the attack would immediately subside. Suckling also mentions a young woman brought to him at Queen's ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... over the card, and read, "Mr. George Blackwell, Lincoln's Inn." His brow grew dark—he let the card fall on the ground, put his foot on it with a quiet scorn, and muttered to himself, "The lawyer shall not bribe me out of my curse!" He turned to the total of the bill—not heavy, for poor Catherine had regularly defrayed the expense of her scanty maintenance and humble lodging—paid the money, and, as the landlady wrote ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... same story," he said. "Someone who works in the building is responsible for this thing, or else is able to bribe one or more of your employees to act for them. But we won't get very far looking for the guilty person, with several hundred people to watch and no clues whatever to go on. Suppose we go back to your office, and I will tell you what I had in mind about ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks

... come to depend very much upon Alec. At last he had rung the bell, knowing that Mrs Leslie was out, and that it would be answered by a dirty girl in nailed shoes turned down at the heel; she would be open to a bribe. Nor did she need much persuasion besides. Off she ran with his empty bottle, to get it filled at the grocer's over ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... you think you could bribe me with your gifts to tolerate your vileness? I have brought about your downfall and death, Dr. Bird. I, Feodrovna Androvitch! Now will I avenge my brother's death ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... with troops of men from all parts of the country,—and those, too, the driving-wheels, the business-men of each section,—and one can hardly suggest for an apprehensive man a more searching culture. Besides, we must remember the high social possibilities of a million of men. The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... in the tributary Megara and Euboea, and the Spartans again appeared in the field as the allies of the insurgents. The position of Athens was critical. Pericles wisely declined to fight against all his enemies at once. A bribe of ten talents sent the Spartans home, and the insurgents were then thoroughly subdued. The thirty years' peace with Sparta (445) left him free to carry out his schemes for ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... Leonidas; not when on duty. No, sir. If I did, there be some who would say I was taking a bribe." ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... million livres; and, soon after, the post of first gentleman of the bedchamber, and that cost him nearly a quarter of a million; and, soon after that, a multitude of broad estates and high offices at immense prices. Leonora also was not idle; among her many gains was the bribe of three hundred thousand livres to screen certain financiers under trial ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... said he, "what do I see? Is such cruelty possible? But I hear that the justice is not above a bribe, and we must at any cost obtain your release. I am going at once to pawn my own boots and cloak, and everything about me that I can spare, and if you have anything to add, this is no time ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... that stab religion and throw their poison all through our literature; the men who use the power of wealth to sanction iniquity, and bribe justice, and make truth and honor bow to their ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... well did both the women know the nature of that errand, though none had been present but the young lover and the enraged father. There could be no manner of doubt but that, incited to it by Cuthbert's tale, he had come to make a definite offer of marriage, and doubtless had tried to bribe the avaricious old man by some tempting offer of gold or land. But whatever had been the terms in which the proposal was couched, anger had proved a stronger passion with Nicholas than greed. Philip had been driven from the house with a fury that threatened actual violence, ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... ride their matches. The best gamesters, before they laid their money, always inquired which horse little Joey was to ride; and the bets were rather proportioned by the rider than by the horse himself; especially after he had scornfully refused a considerable bribe to play booty on such an occasion. This extremely raised his character, and so pleased the Lady Booby, that she desired to have him (being now seventeen years of age) ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... slice of hung beef that lined the wallet depending from his shoulder, (neither of which were often refused,) enter upon some new and strange exploit, of which he was as usual the hero. Efforced in a degree to make some return for the bribe offered to his patience, Gerald would lend—all he could—his ear to the tale; but long before the completion he would give such evidence of his distraction as utterly to disconcert the narrator, and cause him finally to have recourse to one ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... become more catholic and cosmopolitan than any other. Let us be brave and strong enough to trust in humanity; strong natures are inevitable patriots. The time, the age, what is that, but a few prominent persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe possible for any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants saviors and religions; society is servile from want of will; but there is a Destiny by which the human race is guided, the race never dying, the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... "Your bribe was not enough, good woman, unless there is money in this bed." Thrusting his bayonet through the ticking and ripping it for some distance, he took a malicious satisfaction in scattering its contents about ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper

... people, or some of them, want a slice of the profit. That's what's the matter. I don't like to pay a bribe, but in a military time like this, and while Cairo is under martial law, I suppose I must submit to conditions as they are. I'm no theorist or moralist. I'm fairly honest, I think, but I'm a practical business ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... He could do nothing, then, nothing to keep the blow from falling on the two dear ones at home. He thought of trying to bribe the German guards, and felt for his pocket-book, but it was gone; some careful Boche had managed to relieve him of it while he had been unconscious. And he was helpless, a log—while over in England Norah and his father were, perhaps, already mourning him as dead. His thoughts travelled ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... was sent away a convict for seven years. I have returned what you see me. Now, Mr Nickleby,' said the man, with a strange mixture of humility and sense of power, 'what help and assistance will you give me; what bribe, to speak out plainly? My expectations are not monstrous, but I must live, and to live I must eat and drink. Money is on your side, and hunger and thirst on mine. You may drive an ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... "I cannot approach Num, he is too far away; if I could reach him I should not beseech thee (the familiar spirit), but should go myself; but I cannot". For this precise reason, people who have developed the belief in accessible affable spirits go to them, with a spell to constrain, or a gift to bribe, and neglect, in some cases almost forget, their Maker. But He is worshipped by low savages, who do not propitiate ghosts and who have no gods in wells and trees, close at hand. It seems an obvious inference that the greater God is ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... through famine, if their gaolers, Captain Jaques and Major Gilpin, had not raised money upon their own credit, and supplied them with an occasional relief. And therefore, when they talk of his peculation, of his taking but a bribe here and a bribe there, see the consequences of his system of peculation, see the consequences of a usurpation which extinguishes the natural authority of the country, see the consequences of a clandestine correspondence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke

... have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power. Seen him, encumber'd with the venal tribe, Smile without art and win without a bribe. ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... her side and told the story,—how Philip Funk tried to bribe him, how he called him names,—how, having got his lessons, he made a picture of the master. "Here it is, mother." He took his slate from his little green bag. The picture had not been effaced. His mother looked at ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... confesses that his own acts amounted to corruption and were worthy of condemnation. Now, corruption strictly interpreted would imply the deliberate sale of justice, and this Bacon explicitly denies, affirming that he never "had bribe or reward in his eye or thought when he pronounced any sentence or order." When we analyse the specific charges against him, with his answers to them, we find many that are really of little weight. The twenty-eighth and last, that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... Colonel Harrington," he said forcibly. "Are you aware that you are offering a bribe to a bonded representative ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... and ugly ones for the very same vices in other people. David will flare up into generous and sincere indignation about the man that stole the poor man's ewe lamb, but he has not the ghost of a notion that he has been doing the very same thing himself. And so we bribe our consciences as well as neglect them, and they need to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to bribe the gypsy, and since they had parted company at the door of the tent, Olive had not seen her at all. It now began to seem strange to her, and she had decided to look ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller

... travel found them camped in the last fringe of cottonwood that fronted the glacial slopes, their number augmented now by a native from a Russian village with an unpronounceable name, who, at the price of an extortionate bribe, had agreed to pilot them through. For three days they lay idle, the taut walls of their tent thrumming to an incessant fusillade of ice particles that whirled down ahead of the blast, while Emerson fumed to ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... since supplied the tonic for a continent? It was said of Mr. Hooker, that he was "a person who, while doing his Master's work, would put a king in his pocket"; and it was so with them all: they would pocket anything but a bribe to themselves or an insult to God or their profession. They flinched from no reproof that was needed: "Sharp rebukes make sound Christians" was a proverb among them. They sometimes lost their tempers, and sometimes their parishes, but never their independence. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... libertine, whose extravagances and dissipations were the talk of every club, who had no wit, nor talents, not even constancy (for had he not taken the first opportunity to throw her off?) to recommend him—only a great title and a fortune wherewith to bribe her! For shame, for shame! Her engagement to this man was a blot upon her—the rupture only a just punishment and humiliation. Poor unhappy girl! let her take care of her wretched brother's abandoned children, give up the world, and amend ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... no adequate notion of the terrors of such an election; it was a scene of fun and malice, spirit and baseness, alternately. Englishmen seemed hardly men; whilst they one hour blustered, the next they took the bribe, and were civil. Fox went down to Westminster in a carriage with Colonel North, Lord North's son, behind as a footman, and the well-known Colonel Hanger—one of the reprobate associates of George IV. (when prince regent), and long remembered on ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... than go to law; or else five or six respectable men are called upon to form a sort of amateur jury, and to settle the matter. In criminal cases, if the prosecutor is powerful, he has it all his own way; if the prisoner can bribe high, he is apt to get off. All the appealing to my compassion was quite en regle. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... act my lord, bribe a little more openly, if you please, or the audience will lose that joke, and it is one of the strongest in ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... land policy sprung from the whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so crisply ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... said, very slowly and evenly. "We're also going to need every bit of stock you've accumulated, major. We're going to have to buy your way into the columns of the fracas buff magazine. We're going to have to bribe my colleagues, the Telly camera crews, to keep you on lens when you're looking good, and, more important still, off it when you're not. We're going to have to spend every credit ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... distaste for his job. But it had to be done, the girl must not find him tight with his money: that she would hold her tongue was beyond expectation, but if well tipped at least she might not invent lies. It went against the grain of his temper to bribe one of Bernard's maids, but fate was not now consulting his likes or dislikes. He thrust his hand into his pocket—"Look after your ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... said he, "and by the route I intended him to take; he's gone by the iron-ladder, as I hoped he would. What on earth should we have done with him? My poor, dear Bunny, I thought you'd take a bribe! But it's really more convincing as it is, and just as well for Lord Ernest to be convinced ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe or some other sinister view could have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters and the sanctity of their lives; ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... idea now, it would seem, occurred to the murderers that perhaps, after all, their action had not been altogether lawful. They accordingly resolved to bribe the local authority, who had already viewed the scene of the affair, to hush it up. For this purpose they made a collection, and handed him the proceeds, twenty-one roubles ninety copecks. To their astonishment he did not accept the money, but ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... thyself, Bekie," she answered. "Thy cousin John and I have no need of it. Neither doth he require a bribe to make him willing to take me for his wife. To speak truth, we loved each other long ere I set eyes on thee, and 'twas but the King, my father, who would have none of him. Perchance by now ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling, and from henceforth measure my feelings by your own. Unless my love for you were very great how could I so contentedly give up my home and all my friends—a home I loved so much that I have often thought nothing could bribe me to renounce it for any great length of time together, and friends with whom I have been so long accustomed to share all the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow? Yet these have lost their weight, and though I cannot always think of them without a sigh, yet the anticipation of ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... more than a snub-cushion—holds any amount of them as easily as pins. Besides he goes to afternoon bores, like Teas and At Homes and Days, for which free and untrammelled men can only be obtained by subterfuge and trick or some extraordinary bribe. To a young man like Bobbie Lawsher afternoon affairs are a sort of happy hunting ground, a social grab bag, where he can never be sure there isn't a dinner invitation, or one for the opera, or a luncheon, to be secured if ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch

... roped arena, and at the same time he will clamour for larger armies and larger navies, for more destructive war machines, which, with a single discharge, will disrupt and rip to pieces more human beings than have died in the whole history of prize-fighting. He will bribe a city council for a franchise or a state legislature for a commercial privilege; but he has never been known, in all his sleep-walking history, to bribe any legislative body in order to achieve any moral end, such as, for instance, abolition ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... angrily. "You talk in vain. What to me is life, or aught that life can give? If I have so long endured the burden of it, it has been so that I might draw from it this hour. Do you think there is any bribe you could offer would turn me ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... had dared accuse a fellow-creature of a crime in reality committed by himself, and reckless as he was, he had shrunk in guilt and shame before her accusation, which was indeed the accusation of the dying, and avowing himself the real perpetrator of the sin, offered her a large bribe for secrecy, which, as might be expected, the widow indignantly refused. It was easy to perceive, his arts had worked on the old woman, Mary's grandmother, to believe him her friend and Arthur her foe; the poor old creature's failing intellect assisted his plans, while the reports ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar

... which, in kindergarten fashion, they should all unite in trimming. Emma and Frances immediately offered to string pop-corn and cranberries, and went to work with great ardor, having at the same time to bribe the General to attend to his own affairs, with wonderful stories of Santa Claus, and the toys he had in store ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard

... How gladly would man turn away from his false rapacious divinities to the godlike human heart, that so often would yield pardon before it was asked, and for the thousandth time that would give without a bribe! In strict propriety, as my reader knows, the classical Latin word for a prayer is votum; it was a case of contract; of mercantile contract; of that contract which the Roman law expressed by the formula—Do ut des. Vainly you came ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... her son for her dingy supper table she was willing to put up with Elizabeth or any other girl. But certainly Nannie invited her very often. "I'll come in to-night, if you'll invite Elizabeth," Blair would bribe her. And Nannie, like Mrs. Maitland herself, would have invited anybody to gain an hour ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... to her granddaughter, Aurora, with such a motto." "My dear, she has had it, she told me, some months in her pocket secretly, for the purpose you mention, but she cannot ever satisfy herself that Aurora has got the spirit of real industry in her, and to bribe her to earn the thimble is not her object, so you see it has accidentally fallen to ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... one looks down over precipices of red rock with the prickly pear clinging to their clefts and ledges, or across a rift of sea to the huge bare front of the Testa del Cane with gigantic euphorbias, cactus, and orange-gardens fringing its base. A bribe administered to Talleyrand is said to have saved the political existence of Monaco at the Congress of Vienna: but it is far more wonderful that, after all the annexations of late years, it should still remain ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... irreproachable in his conduct and the least open to suspicion of vagabondage, is not sure of not being shut up in the depot, as his freedom depends on a policeman who is constantly liable to be deceived by a false denunciation or corrupted by a bribe. I have seen in the depot at Rennes several husbands arrested solely through the denunciation of their wives, and as many women through that of their husbands; several children by the first wife at the solicitation of their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the hostile factions would have been sufficiently violent, if it had been left to itself. But it was studiously exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still continued to bribe and flatter both the court and the opposition. He exhorted Charles to be firm: he exhorted James to raise a civil war in Scotland: he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch, and to rely with confidence on the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... but thought so? what are they that think it? I never robb'd the soldiers of their pay, Nor ever had one penny bribe from France. So help me God, as I have watch'd the night, Ay, night by night, in studying good for England! That doit that e'er I wrested from the king, Or any groat I hoarded to my use, Be brought against ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... inward light which glows through his dark countenance, and, we might almost say, glorifies his figure, in spite of the soil and haggardness of long imprisonment,—in spite of the heavy shadow that must fall on him, while death is walking by his side. What bribe could Satan offer, rich enough to tempt and overcome this mail? Alas! it may have been in the very strength of his high and searching intellect, that the Tempter found the weakness which betrayed him. He yearned for knowledge he went groping onward ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was not left a single bed-pan for this battalion of bed-ridden, suffering humanity, nor any well men to nurse the sick. There was not even left any to cook food for them. Those left by the 9th Infantry had to bribe marauding, pilfering Cubans, with a part of their rations, to carry food to the camp of the 13th, where there were a few less ill, ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... near the lieutenant. "And, now that the matter is all settled, if you will call at the Sparling advance car this afternoon, at five o'clock, I shall be happy to furnish you with tickets for yourself and family. That is not a bribe, because we have got the matter all ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... whom you can't esteem, tied for ever to you, to be the father of Ethel's children, and the lord and master of her life and actions? The proudest woman in the world consents to bend herself to this ignominy, and own that a coronet is a bribe sufficient for her honour! What is the end of a Christian life, Ethel; a girl's pure nurture?—it can't be this! Last week, as we walked in the garden here, and heard the nuns singing in their chapel, you said how hard it was that poor ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... and half-breds. Thorough-bred Arabs, especially mares, were too dear for our stable, and would have made us an object of suspicion. In the East, where there are official hands not clean of bribes, an Arab mare is a a favourite bribe, and I had many such offers before I had been at Damascus long; but I refused them all. Richard always gave me entire command of the stable, and so it was my domain. Living in solitude as I did very much, I discovered how companionable horses could be. There was no ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... power in his hands. Unluckily the rajah had a brother who was a very bad man; and this brother thought that if he could win the young treasurer over to himself he might by this means manage to steal little by little any of the king's treasure which he needed. Then, with plenty of money, he could bribe the soldiers and some of the rajah's counsellors, head a rebellion, dethrone and kill his brother, and reign himself instead. He was too wary, of course, to tell Ram Singh of all these wicked plans; but he began by flattering him whenever he saw him, and at last offered ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... were of great use, but they were often evaded; for, by giving a present to the king of an island, the sailors could bribe him to force his people to express their willingness before the missionary. The trembling men were brought forward, and, under the fear of their chief's revenge, declared their perfect readiness to sail. Sometimes the Government agents on board the vessels were bribed ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... the root of all evil;' and when that feeling is uppermost, one can never tell what a man will do. The bribe of a good farm, obtained for nothing, or for an insignificant price, is sufficient to upset the morality of even ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... witness could no longer be received; and the professing members of it, who were placed in circumstances such as to enable them to become aware of its corruptions, and whom their interest or their simplicity did not bribe or beguile into silence, gradually separated themselves into two vast multitudes of adverse energy, one tending to Reformation, and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... answered the fishwife. "The bribe you offer is great. As for me, it matters little what you make of me. You are likely to give me qualities I do ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston

... will do still better," replied Vauquelas. "I will bribe the judges of the Revolutionary Tribunal, and they ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... It was a bribe of kings; it was an act, paltry and contemptible, that was demanded of me in return. Still I did not speak. It was not that I was in confusion or in any doubt. I was merely sad—greatly and suddenly sad, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... accompanied the conqueror of the Bulgarians in his campaigns, she had fought in his battles; a gigantic foe, in act to strike him from behind, had fallen by her arrow; she had warded the poison-cup from his lips, and the assassin's dagger from his heart; she had rejected enormous wealth offered as a bribe for treachery, and lived only for the Emperor. 'And now,' she cried, 'his love for me is cold, and he deserts me for another. Who she is I cannot find, else on her it were, not on him, that my vengeance should alight. Oh, Euprepia, I would tear her eyes from her head, were they beautiful ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... I was being accused of accepting a money bribe from Pete. And I really got into it with the faculty advisor. That's not good." He dropped ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... occurs, for whom did Calhoun speak when he approached Governor Walker, offering him the bribe of the Presidency and assuring him that the Administration had changed its mind? That was before, or certainly not long after, the probable receipt of this letter in Kansas, for the Governor left the Territory (November 16) about one week after the adjournment of the ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... through blood they seized province after province of the empire, destroying and massacring often in mere wantonness. The emperor Justinian was frequently compelled to purchase peace with them and to bribe them to alliance. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... names never appeared in the transaction; if ever you took the stock at all, you took it in other people's names. Now you see, you had to know one of two things; namely, you either knew that the idea of all this preposterous generosity was to bribe you into future legislative friendship, or you didn't know it. That is to say, you had to be either a knave or a—well, a fool —there was no middle ground. You are not a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... singly by a generous resolution to restore the crown to its alleged rightful heir,[105] or by some less honourable and more selfish feeling;[106] whether by any offence taken against Henry, or, as it is alleged, by the vast bribe offered to them by the crown of France; or whether by more than one of these motives combined, must remain a matter of conjecture. We cannot, perhaps, be certified of the means by which Henry became acquainted with the plot, nor if, as we are told, he was informed of it by the Earl of March himself, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... I want to be that girl for as long a run as you can force. After the first few weeks you won't have to bribe folks to come—it'll take hold, after they have got rid of bad tastes in their mouths and have found out what we're up to! Don't count the cost, Camden. This is a ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock

... discovered, so strongly guarded that neither force nor stratagem seemed available. The jailers were the creatures of Danton and Robespierre, and any attempt to bribe them would have been dangerous in the extreme. Victor proposed that, as he as well as Harry was well provided with funds, for he had brought to Paris all the money which the steward of the estates had collected, they should recruit a band among the ruffians of the city, and make ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... that the sailor-fellow has been tampering with my Kitty, and offered a bribe, to find where to direct to you. Next time he comes, I will have him laid hold of; and if I can get nothing out of him, will have him drawn through one of our deepest fishponds. His attempt to corrupt a servant of mine will ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... for its Venetian colour, and criticised in other respects. In fact, Mr. Page believes that he has discovered Titian's secret—and, what is more, he will tell it to you in love, and indeed to anybody else in charity. So I don't say that to bribe you. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... interests of the Regent, and hinted at the benefit likely to accrue to himself from his compliance with her wishes, "I never condescend to bargain. Decisions of real weight should be formed frankly and disinterestedly. I have no wish to capitulate with my sovereign. Offer me no bribe, for I should consider it only as an insult. Any service which I can render to the Queen has been already amply recompensed, and I should be unworthy alike of the name I bear and of the offices I hold did I place my ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... contention about his pelt, made worse havoc among the herds than ever, and compelled several peasants to move their dairies to other parts of the mountains, where the pastures were poorer, but where they would be free from his depredations. If the $1,750 in the bank had been meant as a bribe or a stipend for good behavior, such as was formerly paid to Italian brigands, it certainly could not have been more demoralizing in its effect; for all agreed that, since Lars Moe's death, Bruin misbehaved ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... seen him bring his cow the day before; now no one had seen him come but Kara insisted that the cow had been changed and went to summon the village headman and the villagers to decide the matter: but the thief managed to give a bribe of one hundred rupees to the headman and one hundred rupees to the villagers and made them promise to decide in his favour; so when they met together they told Kara that he must take the cow which he had found tied up ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... votes. Shakespeare indeed has said that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; but there are some things which are not roses, and which are counted to smell a great deal sweeter being called by any other name than their own. Thus, to deal again with bribes, call a bribe 'palm oil,' or a 'pot de vin,' and how much of its ugliness disappears. Far more moral words are the English 'sharper' and 'blackleg' than the French 'chevalier d'industrie': [Footnote: For the rise ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... poor people of the only treasure they had brought with them from the old-land,—their Catholic Faith. Presbyterian ministers were seen to celebrate among them "bogus masses"; schismatic emissaries tried to bribe them with "Moscovite money"; fake bishops were imposing sacrilegious hands on out-laws and perverts; traitors from among their ranks, like Judas, bartered away their faith for a few pieces of silver; a subsidized press,—"The Canadian Farmer" and "The Ranok"—was ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... silence. So Dick Carson might be going to be so unexpectedly obliging as to die after all. If he had known how to pray he would have done it, beseeched whatever gods there were to let the thing come to an end at last, offered any bribe within his power if they would set him free from his bondage by disposing ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... leave me in peace in the suburb I am inhabiting, what bribe must I offer thee, oh, little beings more contemptible than ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... their position, quite forgot the injunction. Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen, one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to the musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind. Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth. But they took no notice, and fearing she might lose her ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... being the case. Few young bachelors can keep a house in order, but no bachelor young or old can do so under such a doom as that of Maurice Cumming. Every shilling that Maurice Cumming could collect was spent in bribing negroes to work for him. But bribe as he would the negroes would not work. "No, massa: me pain here; me no workee to-day," and Sambo would lay his fat hand on his ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope

... no doubt, you permit access to the letters of your foreign ministers, by persons only of the most perfect trust. It is in the European system to bribe the clerks high, in order to obtain copies of interesting papers. I am sure you are equally attentive to the conveyance of your letters to us, as you know that all are opened that pass through any post-office of Europe. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... he, her ransomer, in a dungeon stayed. His death they mourned above ten thousand slain, While Persia held him—yes, their tears were vain, But not in vain his noble sacrifice! The king released him: Rome grudged not the price; No Persian bribe could tempt him from his home. When Decius cried—'Fight once again for Rome!' Again he fights—he leads—all others hope resign; But from despair's deep breast he plucks a star benign, This—hope's fair fruit, contentment, ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... said to have wrought for him, in a very few years, a degree of success and fame, at which both the eulogists of Murray and the friends of English grammar may hang their heads. As to a "compromise" with any critic or reviewer whom he cannot bribe, it is enough to say of that, it is morally impossible. Nor was it necessary for such an author to throw the gauntlet, to prove himself not lacking in "self-confidence." He can show his "moral courage," ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... nothing less than a yoke of oxen. With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon; for who would rob another of such a coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force, or accept as a bribe, a thing which it was not easy to hide, nor a credit to have, nor indeed of any use to cut in pieces? For when it was just red hot, they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it, and made it almost incapable of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... woman from thy breast: Be stout in woe, be stark in weal; Do good for Good is good to do: Spurn bribe of Heaven and threat ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... of bribery in the city of Dur-gurgurri, he at once ordered the governor of the district in which Dur-gurgurri lay to investigate the charge and send to Babylon those who were proved to be guilty, that they might be punished. He also ordered that the bribe should be confiscated and despatched to Babylon under seal, a wise provision which must have tended to discourage those who were inclined to tamper with the course of justice, while at the same time it enriched the state. It is probable that ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... own whim his only bribe, Our Bard pursued his old A. B. C. 70 Contented if he could subscribe In fullest sense his name Estse; ('Tis Punic Greek for 'he hath stood!') Whate'er the men, the cause was good; And therefore with a right good will, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... drawing-room attack, and at this sort of thing the ordinary Britisher cuts but a sorry figure. Hence the field was also pretty clear for them, and they made full use of their opportunities. With a judicious word over a cup of tea an editor who refuses a bribe finds his or her talents a glut on the market. A joke around a samovar reduces the rank of a particularly Russophile general. The glorious time they are having reaches its climax when you hear the polite condolences to the victims ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward

... Reade. "Dick Prescott, with a bribe like that before us, we're bound to win! We couldn't do ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock

... Bubbles would hardly allow the good-natured Sir Lyon and Bill Donnington to finish their cigarettes before she shooed them out to cut down some ivy. Varick looked annoyed when he heard that the decorations in the church were not yet finished. "Can't we bribe some of the servants to go down and do them?" he asked. "It seems a shame that you and Donnington should have to go off there again in the ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... the Court at which he resided, to discover and flatter every weakness of the prince, and of the favourite who governed the prince, and of the lacquey who governed the favourite. He was to compliment the mistress and bribe the confessor, to panegyrise or supplicate, to laugh or weep, to accommodate himself to every caprice, to lull every suspicion, to treasure every hint, to be everything, to observe everything, to endure everything. High as the art of political intrigue had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... formula, have you? Pure Food Law scared you out of the dope, eh? Well, even at that it's the same old bunk. What about your testimonials? Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... we might have found Rienzi's successor worse than the Tribune himself. Montreal," he added, with a slight emphasis and a curled lip, "is a gentleman, and a Frenchman. This Pepin, who is his delegate, we must bribe, or ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of the "Arabian Nights," where, at p. 227, the hero marries the King's youngest daughter and the King in dying leaves him heir to his throne, a bequest which is disputed by the husbands of the two elder daughters. The young queen is brought to bed of a son, and her sisters bribe the midwife to declare that she has given birth to a dog and throw the infant at the gate of one of the royal palaces. The same occurs when a second son is born. But at the third lying-in of the princess her husband takes care ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... whistle. There was an avid hunger on Lablet's lean face. No more potent bribe could have been devised to entice him. But Raf, ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... "have to resort to all sorts of subterfuges. I know women who bribe the tradespeople to make their bills larger than they should be and give them the difference in cash. I know men who seem to think they do their wives a favour by paying for the food they themselves eat, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... to get in alongst with them, to make one of the party at dinner. But the innkeeper and his men, getting the hint, by force prevented him from entering, although he attempted it again and again, both by telling lies and offering a bribe. Finding he could not prevail, he set to exciting the mob at the door to acts of violence; in which he had like to have succeeded. The landlord had no other shift, at last, but to send privately for two officers, and have him carried to the guard-house; and the hilarity and joy ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... fight when it does. In such an hour, to a stout young fellow like the hero of my anecdote, the smell of incense must seem horribly stale and the muslin flowers and gilt candlesticks to figure no great bribe. And it wouldn't have helped him much to think that not so very far away, just beyond the Forum, in the Corso, there was sport for the million, and for nothing. I doubt on the other hand whether my young priest had thought of this. He had made himself a temple out of the very elements of his innocence, ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... high and holy principle. He will esteem it treason to his country to let go his own rectitude of soul. Temptation to sacrifice his uprightness to interest will only make him more resolute. The persuasion of example will be as vain as an open bribe. The question he will ask in each case is,—not what will custom or public opinion allow, but—what ought I to do. He will pursue this course of fidelity, alike to himself and to the trusts which he is called to execute, because he accounts the obligations ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... for more distant sale, but employs it in the purchase and improvement of uncultivated land. From artificer he becomes planter; and neither the large wages nor the easy subsistence which that country affords to artificers, can bribe him rather to work for other people than for himself. He feels that an artificer is the servant of his customers, from whom he derives his subsistence; but that a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... the Elector, "unless we could forthwith follow up our threat by action, and send out our regiments to declare war! No, sirs, if you try in vain to bribe with fair words, then we must resort to money! Money is also a weapon, and, if report speak truly, an effective one among the Polish lords, their King himself respecting it. In extremity, therefore, if you can not go forward at all, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... own Weapon, dissimulation? for the other French Dutchess, since I perceive our Author is unacquainted with her Character, I will give it him; she is one who loves her ease to that degree, that no advantages of Fortune can bribe her into business. Let her but have wherewithall to make Merry adays, and to play at Cards anights, and I dare answer for her, that she will take as little care to disturb their business, as she takes in the management of ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden

... time of Popery), sure he would hide some single money in Westminster Hall that his spirit might haunt there. Only with this I will pitch him over the bar and leave him: that his fingers itch after a bribe ever since ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... presumptuous in their youth; for they made war on the gods, and piled Ossa on Olympus, and Pelion on Ossa, that they might scale the sky. But they perished in their impiety, shot down by the bolts of Apollo's golden bow. Last came Eriphyle, the false wife, who sold her husband's life for a glittering bribe. ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... Jerusalem.(592) And it is no paradox to say that the Prophet's sincerity in giving such advice is sealed by his heroic refusal to accept it for himself and resolution to share to the end what sufferings the obstinacy of her lords was to bring on the city. Nor, be it observed, did he bribe his fellow citizens to desert to the enemy by any rich promise. He plainly told them that this would leave a man nothing but bare life—his ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... P. See Sir ROBERT!—hum— And never laugh—for all my life to come? Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of Social Pleasure, ill-exchang'd for Pow'r; Seen him, uncumber'd with the Venal tribe, Smile without Art, and win without a Bribe. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... a desperate pass with the lad. He had thought very fast, and he had determined that no bribe and no threat should extort a word of information from him. His cheeks grew hot and flushed, his eyes burned, and he straightened himself in his chair as if he expected death or torture, and was prepared to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... and openly treating with those commissioners, Talleyrand, lately an exile in America, but now Secretary of Foreign Affairs to the French Government, entered into intrigue with them, through several unaccredited and unofficial agents, of which the object was to induce them to promise a round bribe to the directors and a large sum of money to fill the exhausted French treasury, by way of purchasing forbearance. As Pickney and Marshall appeared less pliable than Gerry, Talleyrand finally obliged them to leave, after which he attempted, though still without success, to extract money, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... have no difficulty in arranging for your manumission. It has already been favorably reported on the recommendation of the authorities of Nuceria. We had only to slip a small bribe or two to expedite matters. But when we sent off a dependable agent, armed with all the necessary papers, to set you free from your captivity on the Imperial estate, and provide you with plenty of cash to make everything smooth for your disappearance, he ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... the bribe that was offered him for silence on the subject of the deer, while Richard, without in the least waiting for the termination of his cousins speech, ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... frightened. It was quite clear that either good feeling or some indefinite fear of being implicated in the killing of the deer caused them to regard this big bribe as something they could not meddle with; and at length, after a pause of a second or two, the spokesman said with great hesitation, "Well, miss, you've kep' your word; but me and my mate—well, if so be as it's the same to you—'d rather have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... who is who, It might puzzle you to tell; Still you "think it right"! Ah, well! This philosophy peripatetic Strikes a chord that's sympathetic In the breast of secular scribe; Nothing, it is true, would bribe Him to play the pious prig, But—he heaves a sigh that's big Murmuring, enviously I fear,— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various

... may God condemn me if I break my oath! Trenck shall be free! that is the mission of my life. Now, friend, come to my help; all that I am and have I offer up. I have gold, I have diamonds, I gave an estate given me by my father. I will sell all to liberate him; we will, if necessary, bribe the whole garrison. But now, before all other things, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... subject and to recommend that provision be made by law for the punishment not only of those who shall accept bribes, but also of those who shall either promise, give, or offer to give to any of those officers or clerks a bribe or reward touching or relating to any matter of their official action ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... to somebody whom he does not really believe in; when we see him yielding to forces which he does not himself respect; when living is more to him than living well; when there is a threat which can make him cringe, or a bribe that can make his tongue speak false—then we feel that the manhood has gone out of him, and we cannot help looking on his fall with sorrow and with shame. The penalty which follows moral cowardice is nowhere more clearly stated than in these severe ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... yelp reassured him, and he went back to investigate. A whiff of warm air ascended to his nostrils, and there, curled up under the snow in a snug ball, lay Billee. He whined placatingly, squirmed and wriggled to show his good will and intentions, and even ventured, as a bribe for peace, to lick Buck's face ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... your badge to-day, you must tell me how you got them." I turned slowly round. She was holding a single rose in her fingers, and looking from it to him, as if to see if it would match his olive skin and his Karkee shooting-coat. He could not resist the bribe. ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... thousand and some odd dollars," observed Bob. "It's a nice tidy bribe; and if I were any sort of a bribe taker at all, I'd surely feel proud and grateful. Only I'm not. So you might just as well have made it a million, and then I'd have felt still more ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... proof of the terms on which we were, and also of how much he was valued as a play-fellow, that one of his sons when about four years old tried to bribe him with sixpence to come and play in working hours. We all knew the sacredness of working-time, but that any one should ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... "Encyclopedie," wrote the Preliminary Discourse, and contributed largely to its columns, editing the mathematical portion of it; trained to quiet and frugality, was indifferent to wealth and honour, and a very saint of science; no earthly bribe could tear him away from his chosen path of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... dirty linen and in the pockets of my clothes. The officer, who was an old soldier, seemed to be prepared for precautionary measures of this sort, and drew forth the corpora delicta skilfully from all the folds of my little trunk. I tried to bribe him with a tip, which he actually accepted, and I was all the more indignant when, in spite of this, he denounced me to the authorities. I was made to pay a heavy fine, but received permission to buy back the cigars. This I furiously declined to do. With the receipt of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... Italian lawsuit should ever end, or indeed, why it should ever begin. They might, and probably would, remain incarcerated for life, pending the commencement of a trial which could only be set in motion by the judge himself—a most improbable conjuncture—or, failing that, by an extravagant bribe to his official superior, the President of the Court of Cassation. How were poor Apostles to find the necessary sixty or seventy francs ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... do his best Chilled by a ribald jeer. Great men in the Senate sate, Sage and hero, side by side, Building for their sons the State, Which they shall rule with pride. They forbore to break the chain Which bound the dusky tribe, Checked by the owners' fierce disdain, Lured by 'Union' as the bribe. Destiny sat by, and said, 'Pang for pang your seed shall pay, Hide in false peace your coward head, I bring round the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... merely this sinister meaning. Once inaugurated they suggest further ideas, and from the beginning they had happier associations. The sacrifice was incidental to a feast, and the plenty it was to render safe existed already. What was a bribe, offered in the spirit of barter, to see if the envious power could not be mollified by something less than the total ruin of his victims, could easily become a genial distribution of what custom assigned to each: so much to the chief, so much to the god, so much to the husbandman. There ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... some years later, when the Bishops of France sent certain ambassadors to the Pope, they were not received, but were treated with indignity, kept waiting outside the palace three days, and finally sent home without audience or answer because they had omitted to bribe Crescenzio. ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... sufficient to re-purchase the rich spoils of Death? and whence might any bribe be fetched? For all the glowing wealth and beauty of this big round world must show as a new-minted farthing beside his treasure chests, as one slight shining unimportant coin which—even this also!—belongs to earth, but has been overlooked by him ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... English language is different from, and better than, the American language, and that there is something—I haven't yet found out exactly what—in English life that Americans will never get. Why,' he added, 'in the United States we still bribe our judges and our newspapers. And we talk of the eighteenth century as though it was the beginning of the world. Yes, I shall transfer my securities to London. I shall build a house in Park Lane, and I shall buy some immemorial country seat with a history ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... pale and cowed, tried to offer a bribe, but the policeman stopped him at once and warned them that anything they said would be used against them ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis

... Fool, be advis'd, and conceal both the Ring and the Story, for your Reputation's sake; don't let People know what despis'd Cullies we English are: to be cheated and abus'd by one Whore, and another rather bribe thee than be kind to thee, is an Infamy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... evil influences over them, lure them into quicksands, and play other devilish tricks and cantrips. Some roads are quite shunned and deserted at night, for no other reason than that a ghost is supposed to haunt the place. The most tempting bribe would not make a native walk alone over that ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... thought passed through his disquieted mind, "And in New York I might win the hand and heart of this beautiful girl." But every quality of his soul frowned so darkly on this thought, which held out Lottie Marsden as a bribe, that it soon skulked away. His mind reverted to the main difficulty, and he said, "Surely, Miss Marsden, I did not preach such a religion ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... does it mean?" I cried. "Does Monsieur Talleyrand want Mr. Livingston to offer him a bribe? And were the two millions of dollars given to Mr. ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... too much for him. The sentinel accepted the bribe, and, devouring it, returned with the bribers on tiptoe to the hut, where they gazed in silent ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... relieved. He had told Roger that he was to listen for the cry of an owl outside, twice repeated; and that upon hearing this, he would know that his friends were without. Roger listened anxiously for the password from his new guard; but as it did not come, he concluded that Cuitcatl had not been able to bribe him, and that he must himself ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... employed to track and rob me of what I carried, why should he have made me a present of these rare and precious diamonds? Would the bribe for which he used his skill reach anything like the sum he could obtain by selling the stones? I was almost sure it would not; and therefore, having the diamonds, it would have been far more to his advantage to keep them than to stuff ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... delicate matters of honour was a favourite umpire amongst his coevals. Though so frankly ambitious, no one could accuse him of attempting to climb on the shoulders of patrons. There was nothing servile in his nature; and, though he was perfectly prepared to bribe electors if necessary, no money could have bought himself. His one master-passion was the desire of power. He sneered at patriotism as a worn-out prejudice, at philanthropy as a sentimental catch-word. He did not want to serve his country, but to rule it. He did not want to raise mankind, but to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... knowing—never did know, though I fancy he thought it was a case of horse-stealing. Anyway, my promises and the drink made him my ally at once. Only human nature for him to side with me against the Police. As you know, Sergeant, you can get more definite results from that class of man by a drink bribe than by all the threats and ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... not taken the opportunity to find out something about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were placed in the 'tween decks, which is not ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... had killed the mad dog spread among the tribes, and Mr. Damon had but to announce that the "lightning shooter," as Tom was called, was a friend of the drug concern to bring about the desired results. Mr. Damon, by paying a sort of bribe, disguised under the name "tax," secured the help of Peruvian officials so he had no trouble ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... men like Basil Shuiski who knew too much—greedy, ambitious men, who might turn their knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious to the pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a messenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he would yield up the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... Is it but thought so? What are they that thinke it? I neuer rob'd the Souldiers of their pay, Nor euer had one penny Bribe from France. So helpe me God, as I haue watcht the Night, I, Night by Night, in studying good for England. That Doyt that ere I wrested from the King, Or any Groat I hoorded to my vse, Be brought against me at my Tryall day. No: many a Pound ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... bribe me with? A marriage with my cousin's son? Why, he has deserted my mother's cause. I had rather wed a falconer than that prince. You will have me no longer called bastard? Why, I had rather be called bastard than the acknowledged child of such a royal ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford



Words linked to "Bribe" :   hush money, offence, soap, offense, bribable, payment, payola, buy off, kickback, pay off, criminal offense, sop, pay, law-breaking, criminal offence, crime



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