"Usurer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... landlord should be allowed to eat up the failing tenant for rent. That was once the teaching of Christianity, and I do not know enough of the history or spiritual development of the Catholic Church to tell when she became what she now appears to be—the champion of the rent-exacting landlord and the usurer against Socialism. It is the present teaching of Socialism. If usury obtains at all under the Socialist State, if inexorable repayments are to be made in certain cases, it will, I conceive, be a ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... time the enthusiastic usurer had said his say and had his audience, and was straightway pushed on one side. Then my usurer, not knowing me, though indeed I knew him, or not liking the looks of me, as indeed his looks were distasteful to me, for I think a man's money greed is ever written ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a devil. The devils went forth in a troop to ensnare souls on earth. Lucifer left the minstrel in charge of the infernal regions, promising, if he let no souls escape, to treat him on the return with a fat monk roasted, or a usurer dressed with hot sauce. But while the fiends were away St. Peter came, in disguise, and allured the minstrel to play at dice, and to stake the souls which were in torture under his care. Peter won, and carried them off in triumph. The devils, coming back and finding the fires all out and hell ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... like these the clutch of the usurer was relaxed and the general well-being promoted, measures were taken to crown the work by a stable system of finance. It will be recalled that two years before the Emperor had saved the public credit by the direct expenditure ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... practitioners in the law, Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap. They, in common with Huckaback, had an intense desire to share in his anticipated good fortune, and determined to do so according to their opportunities. The excellent Huckaback (a model of an usurer on a small scale) had promptly and adroitly seized hold of the very first opportunity that presented itself, for securing a little return hereafter for the ten shillings, with which he had so generously parted when he could so ill afford it; while Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap were racking their ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... Secchi tells us a similar tale: A merchant of Venice, having been informed by private letter that Drake had taken and plundered St. Domingo, sent word to Sampson Ceneda, a Jewish usurer. Ceneda would not believe it, and bet a pound of flesh it was not true. When the report was confirmed the pope told Secchi he might lawfully claim his bet if he chose, only he must draw no blood, nor take either more or less than an exact pound, on the penalty of being hanged.—Gregorio ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Mutual Friend, there is an odd thing about which I cannot make up my mind; I do not know whether it is unconscious observation or fiendish irony. But it is this. In Our Mutual Friend is an old patriarch named Aaron, who is a saintly Jew made to do the dirty work of an abominable Christian usurer. In an artistic sense I think the patriarch Aaron as much of a humbug as the patriarch Casby. In a moral sense there is no doubt at all that Dickens introduced the Jew with a philanthropic idea of doing justice to Judaism, which he was told he had affronted by the great gargoyle of Fagin. If this ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... legs are dress'd th' outlandish way, So fine too, that they their own shadows woo, While he walks in the sad and pilgrim shoe; I'm mad at Fate, and angry ev'n to sin, To see deserts and learning clad so thin; To think how th' earthly usurer can brood Upon his bags, and weigh the precious food With palsied hands, as if his soul did fear The scales could rob him of what he laid there. Like devils that on hid treasures sit, or those Whose ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... affixed on those who do not contribute to the common stock proportionately to their abilities and the opportunities they have of gain, and this is the source of their uninterrupted happiness; fully this means they have no griping usurer to grind them, no lordly possessor to trample on them, nor any envyings to torment them; they have no settled habitations, but, like the Scythian of old, remove from place to place, as often as their convenience or pleasure requires it, which render ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... a moment's picture of Matilda's laying the pearl before a pawnbroker and asking for a fraction of its worth, a mere thousand or two; and of the hard-eyed usurer glancing at it, announcing that the pearl was spoof, and ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... promptitude in money matters which reminded her of her own beloved Poppar. "Of course it's all right!" She cast a casual glance over the cheque, and broke into a surprised laugh. "It isn't, though! You've paid me too much! I guess I'm not a usurer, to want interest for a single night. It was only two ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... usurer, "I'll charge you twelve per cent. I do love a good interest. There is no Antonio about me. I'll lend no money gratis and bring down the rate of ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... and expense. Their relationship had become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband in behalf of her sons. The strategic contest had gone on so long that it had almost crowded out the memory of a closer relationship. This exchange of confidences ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... a usurer in your dreams, foretells that you will be treated with coldness by your associates, and your business will decline to ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... past, vague and dim, arising in the deserted chapel, the memory of those two ladies, the one all piety, the other all idealism, aristocratic and dreamy, drove Febrer to distraction. To think that soon the rude hands of the usurer would profane so much that was old and venerable! He could not stay to witness it! ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... least impatience. "Now look here—usurer, viper, blanketed thief, honorable sir, you know I'm in ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Men whose minds are much enslaved to earthly affairs all the week cannot disengage or break the chain of their thoughts so suddenly as to apply to a discourse that is wholly foreign to what they have most at heart. Tell a usurer of charity, and mercy, and restitution—you talk to the deaf; his heart and soul, with all his senses, are got among his bags, or he is gravely asleep and dreaming of a mortgage. Tell a man of business, that the cares of ...
— Three Sermons, Three Prayer • Jonathan Swift
... angels that carried away the lamb's body of the day before; she had seen its little white bones down at the foot of the knoll. The present watcher, a stoop-shouldered, big, rusty-black bird, was quite indifferent to human presence; he sat on his post like a usurer on his high stool, calculating and immovable. Janet knew what was in his mind. She drew the lamb a little closer and tucked her skirt in around it. Again she fell to contemplating the prairie—and the sky. The birds ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... the subject of your conversation,' she said at last. 'The Marquis of Blair was endeavouring to impose usurer's terms upon you, while you, nobly scorning such mercenary considerations, had perhaps resolved to leave us ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... feed his family, once run short of seed, he has a very hard battle to fight with the soil before he is able to get that debt cleared off, should his neighbours be too poor to assist him, as he must then have recourse to the usurer. For although, through his greater efforts and improved cultivation, he may produce much more paddy than his land had done before, yet he is seldom able to save enough for seed from the moiety of the produce which his appetite restricted to live upon, as the ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... comfort still. But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, For thou art covetous and he is kind. He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, And sue a friend came debtor for my sake; So him I lose through my unkind abuse. Him have I lost; thou hast both him and me; He pays the whole, and yet am I ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... not unvalued object of my love, Flaccus, the darling of Antenor's hearth, Forego Pierian songs, the sisters' dances: No girl among them ever gave a dime. Phoebus is nought; Minerva has the cash, Is shrewd, is only usurer to the gods. What's there in Bacchus' ivy? The black tree Of Pallas bends with mottled leaves and weight. On Helicon there's only water, wreaths, The divine lyres, and profitless applause. Why do you dream ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... not some old usurer be drunk overnight with a bag of money, and leave it behind him on a stall? For God's sake, Syn, let's rise to-morrow by break of day, and see. I protest, la, if I had as much money as an alderman, I would scatter ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... exchange for things needful for life or comfort. If money could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor; and as the enterprise would not then have to support a double burden—to wit, the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his back—but would have to maintain only the former usurer—that is, the present employer—its success would be more certain; the general prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and there would be therefore more enterprises, more demand for labor, and ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Dorothy was perfectly composed, yet anxious to speed the affair. "You must know," said she, "that my husband's birthday approaches, and I wish to surprise him with a gift. It is therefore necessary that I raise some money without troubling him. How much—abominable usurer!—could you advance me upon ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... with what the father and the fiance of Fanny had expected; for there was, when the four men were seated, a pause which the Baron was the first to break. He began in his measured tones, in a voice which handles words as the weight of a usurer weighs gold ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... late guest startled the room, a fat, flabby, middle-aged man whose nose would have roused the provisional hostility of those who have convinced themselves that Jews are not as other men. His nose did not definitely brand him as a usurer and a murderer of Christ, but it was suspicious. His clothes hung loose, and might have been anybody's clothes. He advanced with brisk assurance to the table, bowed, somewhat too effusively, to several people, and sat down ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the cup of pleasure to its dregs, And now, grown old, must pay the penalty In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness; The widow, who, but newly desolate, Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone; The spendthrift and the sordid usurer, Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold; The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight Of wassail inclination dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time from intemperance; And she who had forgot ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... London. Touching books he was easy enough to deal with, but a Shylock as regards jewels and money lent. With his bookish clients he passed for a dull shopkeeper who knew little about literature; but in the underground establishment he was spoken of, by those who came to pawn, as a usurer of the worst. In an underhand way he did ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... "The old usurer is at home, I know," muttered Stephano to himself; for the moment he had knocked a gleam of light, peeping through a crevice in an upper casement, had suddenly disappeared. He now rapped more loudly at the door with the handle of his ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... afford them a pension—Levinsteins have been pocketing several thousands of that country's cash. Levinsteins' are dye-makers, and in 1914-15 they made a profit of L80,000 on a capital of L90,000: a profit large enough to make the mouth of the deceased usurer Kirkwood dry with envy. But, while our legislature passed laws to restrain the usurer in his exactions, the "war profiteer" has no restriction placed on him. His workmen can, in certain cases, be fined or sent to prison if they absent themselves from work, and hundreds ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... his way. Brutus took the opportunity of helping himself to some of the plunder in his uncle's absence. At a later time he had large sums out at interest in Cyprus and partly in other persons' names. He was a merciless usurer. (Cicero, Ad Attic., v. 18 and 21; vi. 21; and the Life ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... why I moved away from that place? You'll find it out some day. The man is a usurer and ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the trick you played on Camilla?" he said to me. "I have a better scheme than that. Listen. As I was buying some provisions at a cook-shop, a man entered in a great rage and began abusing a certain Samuel Simon, a converted Jew and a cruel usurer. He had ruined many merchants at Xeloa, and all the towns-people would like to see him ruined in turn. Then, my dear Gil Blas, I remembered your clever trick, and brought these clothes so that we might visit this Jew dressed up as the officers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... love of money he combined boorish manners. Lies [of the distilled kind chiefly] had so become a habit with him, that he had altogether lost notion of employing truth in speech. It was the soul of a usurer, inhabiting now the body of a war-captain, now transmigrating into that of a huckster. False oaths, and the abominablest basenesses, cost him nothing, so his object might be reached. He was miserly with his own, but lavish with his Master's ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... incurred in afforestation, roads, etc.—but who to-day are compelled to live very poorly, from hand to mouth, the remainder having been taken from them by the State, the landlord, the priest, and the usurer. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... ground. In this Close the palace was afterwards built. The wise custom of Normandy was mooted on the spot where the law of Moses had once been taught; and, by a strange, perhaps an ominous, fatality, the judge held the scales of justice, where whilome the usurer had poised his balance. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... that, it had already alienated our sympathy: how can we put ourselves in tune with a soul which is not in tune with itself? In Moliere's L'Avare we have a scene bordering upon drama. It is the one in which the borrower and the usurer, who have never seen each other, meet face to face and find that they are son and father. Here we should be in the thick of a drama, if only greed and fatherly affection, conflicting with each other in the soul ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the Bank of England, Mr. Benfield has thrown in the borough of Cricklade to reinforce the county representation. Not content with this, in order to station a steady phalanx for all future reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amidst his charitable toils for the relief of India, did not forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native country. For her, he did not disdain to stoop to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this House,—to furnish it, not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to borrow money is perhaps the worst. If of a friend, he ceases to be one the moment you feel that you are bound to him by the heavy clog of obligation. If of a usurer, the interest, in this country, soon doubles the original sum, and you owe an increasing debt, which in time ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... by. Then Cato aunswered in fewe woordes. Quid hominem occidere. What saie you to be a murderer? Soche a thyng saieth he, is [Fol. xxxvij.v] Usurie. A brief sentence againste Usurers, but wittely pro- nounced from the mouth of a godlie, sage, noble, and descrite persone, whiche sentence let the Usurer, ioigne to his Usury retourned, and repeate at the retourne thereof, this sentence [Sidenote: The sentence of Cato a dis- comfort to v- surers.] of Cato, I haue murthered. This one sentence will discou- rage any Usurer, knowyng hymself a murtherer. Though moche more maie ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... by the delays of the court. He received a hint from some of the hangers-on of the Chancellor that a present of one hundred pounds would expedite matters. The poor man had not the sum required. However, having found out an usurer who accommodated him with it at high interest, he carried it to York House. The Chancellor took the money, and his dependants assured the suitor that all would go right. Aubrey was, however, disappointed; for, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... study the effects of the mode in which Captain Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He gives them to other persons, whom he employs for his own behoof—growers of champagne, jockeys, footmen, jewelers, builders, painters, musicians, and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... single-handed against our march, we do not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not see Louis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen." Again she paused a moment, and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous for the rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayle desired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys are always aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... incidents of which the issue is life or death, happiness or misery, to men and women perfectly unknown to them, and to whom they are unknown. Attorneys of all possible grades, law clerks of every conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very certainly, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... do it, Sir Giles—I will do it," cried the old usurer, eagerly; "but you must prove to me first that you ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of the Dutch war, while another, not far from him, on a bench, announced in lugubrious accents the number of those who had died on the previous day of the pestilence. There, at the very font, was a usurer paying over a sum of money to a gallant—it was Sir Paul Parravicin—who was sealing a bond for thrice the amount of the loan. There, a party of choristers, attended by a troop of boys, were pursuing another gallant, who had ventured into the cathedral booted and spurred, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ship, it's a Leviathan!" remarked with a devout sigh the pock-marked and stooping Trofim Zubov, cathedral-warden and principal usurer in town. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... accepting his liability—changing his mind about the signature and discharging the amount claimed! If the continuance of the prosecution had depended on either payer or payee, this would have been the end of it. What the creditor—a usurer—wanted was his money, not revenge. Indeed, Thornton would never have been made the subject of a criminal indictment at his instance, except to put pressure on Isaac Runciman for payment for his ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... it diminishes his energy; if he takes the food provided by a Sudra, it dims his Brahmanic lustre; and if he takes the food provided by a goldsmith or a woman who has neither husband nor children it lessens the period of his life. The food provided by a usurer is equivalent to dirt, while that provided by a woman living by prostitution is equivalent to semen. The food also provided by persons that tolerate the unchastity of their wives, and by persons that are ruled by their spouses, is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... heart to be as angry as perhaps I should be with the Hebrew tyrant. The whole game of business is beggar my neighbour; and though perhaps that game looks uglier when played at such close quarters and on so small a scale, it is none the more intrinsically inhumane for that. The village usurer is not so sad a feature of humanity and human progress as the millionaire manufacturer, fattening on the toil and loss of thousands, and yet declaiming from the platform against the greed and dishonesty of landlords. If it were fair for Cobden to buy up land from ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was highly amused at the idea of his being seventeen criminals, and he would sit first in one cell and then in another, trying to look like a ferocious pirate, a hard-hearted usurer, or a mean-spirited chicken thief, and laughing heartily at his failures. But, after a time, he began to tire of this, and to have a strong desire to see what sort of a tunnel the Prince's miners and rock-splitters were making ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton
... 1795, being removed or stolen on the erection of the present building. Gresham was not only a mercer and merchant adventurer, but a banker—a term which in those days of 10 or 12 per cent. interest meant also, "a usurer, a pawnbroker, a money scrivener, a goldsmith, and a dealer in bullion" (Burgon). After his knighthood, Gresham seems to have thought it undignified to reside at his shop, so left it to his apprentice, and removed to Bishopsgate, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... a legal term for a particular kind of conveyance, often used in Spain as a usurer's device, and best explained by an example. A house-owner wishes to raise money by giving a mortgage on his house. But if he is in straits, the lender may refuse to accept the mortgage as security, and demand a bill of sale of it, which contains a clause providing ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... twice two. That rascal Mukhum Dass was bound to die violently sooner or later. He was notoriously the worst usurer and title-jumper on this side of India. He charged me once a total of eighty-five per cent. for a small loan—and legally, too; kept within ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... decided to appeal to Glady he had hesitated between him and a usurer named Caffie, whom he did not know personally, but whom he had heard spoken of as a rascal who was interested in all sorts of affairs, preferring the bad to the good—of successions, marriages, interdictions, extortions; and if he ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... knew her of whom I speak. The other was not my wife. When I met her I was already married in Ireland—years before. A horrible forced marriage. My dear, when I was twenty-five I was confronted with this alternative: a debtor's prison or Miss Strang, an ugly and gouty old maid, sister of the usurer who had lent me five hundred pounds to pay for my medical studies. I preferred the prison; but after weeks and months I came to the end of my courage, and I married Miss Strang, who brought me for dowry—my note of hand. You ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... he must have lost his senses!" said the usurer. "My dear young fellow, I speak to you of millions, of thirty thousand francs yearly, and ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... pleasantly to the tripping presence at my elbow, "is that these countrymen of yours who shirk to climb a flight of steps, and have palms as soft as rose petals, these wide ways paved with stones as hard as a usurer's heart." ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... N. lending &c. v.; loan, advance, accommodation, feneration|; mortgage, second mortgage, home loan &c. (security) 771; investment; note, bond, commercial paper. mont de piete[Fr], pawnshop, my uncle's. lender, pawnbroker, money lender; usurer, loan shark. loaner V[item loaned][coll.]. lend, advance, accommodate with; lend on security; loan; pawn &c. (security) 771. intrust, invest; place out to interest, put out to interest. let, demise, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the baron, but had not the strength to rise, she was so overcome by emotion. At length she said to the usurer: "Would you have the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... mortgage was in the hands of a money shark, for even little villages boast their loan offices, where some usurer expects to get ten per cent. on his money, and will not hesitate to foreclose if it ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... everywhere; but still the plain truth remains, that mouth and purse must be filled. If, hitherto, you have supposed me a visionary, be undeceived. I am no one-ideaed one, either; no more than the seers before me. Was not Seneca a usurer? Bacon a courtier? and Swedenborg, though with one eye on the invisible, did he not keep the other on the main chance? Along with whatever else it may be given me to be, I am a man of serviceable knowledge, and a man of the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of Money, that Twelve Holland Ships shall block up the River, or he shall be forced to cast himself upon a House of Commons, and to take Money upon their Terms, which will sure be as easie, as those of an Usurer to an Heir in want. These are part of the projects now afoot: and how Loyal and conscionable they are, let all indifferent ...
— His Majesties Declaration Defended • John Dryden
... spend Upon thy self thy beauty's legacy? Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, And being frank she lends to those are free: Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse The bounteous largess given thee to give? Profitless usurer, why dost thou use So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live? For having traffic with thy self alone, Thou of thy self thy sweet self dost deceive: Then how when nature calls thee to be gone, What acceptable audit canst ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... annum, payable by the day! A tiller of land to pay six hundred per cent to discharge the demands of government! What exhaustless fund of opulence could supply this destructive resource of wretchedness and misery? Accordingly, the husbandman ground to powder between the usurer below and the oppressor above, the whole crop of the country was forced at once to market; and the market glutted, overcharged, and suffocated, the price of grain fell to the fifth part of its usual value. The crop was then gone, but the debt remained. An universal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Jose heatedly, "the Church has fought truth desperately ever since the Master's day! It has fawned at the feet of emperor and plutocrat, and licked the bloody hand of the usurer who tossed her a pittance of his foul gains! In the great world-battles for reform, for the rights of man, for freedom from the slavery of man to man or to drink and drugs, she has come up only as the smoke has cleared away, but always in time ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... traitor," continued he who acted the part of leader of the motley crowd; "you have sold your birthright—you have betrayed our interests. What punishment is fit for such a usurer?" ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... Usurer, for money lent, Making out his cent per cent - Widow plump or maiden rare, Deaf and dumb to suitor's prayer - Tax collectors, whom in vain You implore to "call again" - Cautious voter, whom you find Slow in making ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... her pockets for her keys, and passed on into the adjoining room. The young man, left standing there alone, pricked up his ears and began to make various inductions. He heard this female usurer open her drawer. "It must be the top one," was his conclusion. "I know now that she carries her keys in her right pocket—they are all hung on a steel ring—one of them is three times as large as the rest, and has the wards toothed; that cannot be the key of her drawer—then she ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... NOT boast! You shall have a hundred thousand, this very day. Ptitsin, get the money, you gay usurer! Take what you like for it, but get it by the evening! I'll show that I'm in earnest!" cried Rogojin, working himself up ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... love! Talk not of love. Love has no thought of self! Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold The loathsome prostitution of a hand Without a heart? Love sacrifices all things To bless the thing it loves! He knows not love. Father, his love is hate—his hope revenge! My tears, my anguish, my remorse for falsehood— These are the joys ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The usurer's grasp released the forfeit land; The slanderer faltered at the witness-stand, And all men took his ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... true when one considers nowadays the delicate and important functions of the world of banking and finance. The old-fashioned money-changer and the usurer of earlier periods were regarded as the very antithesis of men engaged in honorable mercantile life, and especially of those who possess a social spirit and the desire to be useful members of the ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... much is reported and little is known. The common rumour declared that he was the son of a blacksmith—as it declared Wolsey to be the son of a butcher. He is said to have tried various trades, among others those of man-at-arms in the mercenary troop of an Italian nobleman, wool-merchant and usurer at Antwerp, usurer and petty attorney in England. On all these points the evidence is scanty and inconclusive. About 1520, he found his way into Wolsey's entourage, and was a member of the 1523 parliament. ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... little Isaac with Newton. If we apply the words "little Dicky" to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a spendthrift, but he adopted the equally dangerous course of hoarding up all his savings, until it became a passion with him. After a while he retired from business, but the passion clung to him with all the tenacity of a long established habit, and he became a usurer. He was known to all the young profligates, the bad young men who throng our city, and became as necessary to them as the poor avaricious Jew was in former days to the spendthrifts and gamesters in London. He told me frightful stories, my children, of tyranny and fraud, of ruined young men ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... advantages; but it is not honourable. Our forefathers accordingly ordained, and inscribed it among their laws, that the thief should be bound to pay twofold, but the man who takes interest fourfold, compensation; whence we may infer how much worse a citizen they deemed the usurer than the thief." There is no great difference, he elsewhere considers, between a money-lender and a murderer; and it must be allowed that his acts did not fall short of his words—when governor of Sardinia, by his rigorous administration of the law he drove the Roman bankers ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of plate to pawn upon usury; and that he did so oft, till no more could be sent. After the same manner went his wives' jewels of gold, rings, bracelets, chains, and other their rarities, under the thraldom of the usurer's gripes: 'till non plus was written upon the boxes at home." In the 11th chapter, he anticipates the dreadful lot of being brought "to the stepping out of doors (his house being sold). He, and his, with bottles and wallets furnished, to become wanderers ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... [usurer's chain] I know not whether the chain was, in our authour's time, the common ornament of wealthy citizens, or whether he satirically uses usurer ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... of which this village is the commercial center are falling victims to their inherited indolence and dullness in the materialistic latter-day race and struggle, and are dropping one by one into the grip of the usurer—getting hopelessly in debt—and are losing their high place and retiring to second and lower. The Boer's farm does not go to another Boer when he loses it, but to a foreigner. Some have fallen so low that they sell ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hastened the ruin of the interdicted. The grand skinflint, the master usurer of the time, Jean V, duke of Brittany, refused to publish the edict in his states, but, underhandedly, notified all those of his subjects who dealt with Gilles. No one now dared to buy the Marshal's domains for fear of incurring the wrath of the king, so Jean V remained the sole purchaser and fixed ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... scorn to deceive him. And yet," he added, with a conscious blush, "you may accuse me of deception in this instance. He has not asked me the sum I owe—and Heaven knows I could not go and thrust my bills in his face. I thought perhaps there was some usurer, whom you had heard of, who could let me have the money. They are debts of honor, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the degradation of marriage with the child of the most fortunate usurer in Charles II.'s London. But the Hon. Francis North was placed comfortably beneath the prejudices of his order and time of life. He was of noble birth, but quite ready to marry into a plebeian family; he was young, but ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it, but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had any,—and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,—while she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court. One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary never loved bankers, and had ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... great Market, which so many of his clients, male and female, attended, was the determining cause of Cerizet's early hours. The Sieur Cadenet, the wine-merchant, in view of the custom which he owed to the usurer, had let him the two rooms for the low price of eighty francs a year, and had given him a lease for twelve years, which Cerizet alone had a right to break, without paying indemnity, at three months' notice. Cadenet always carried in a bottle of excellent ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the usurer takes another way, Nature herself and in her follower Disdains he, for elsewhere ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... shall practise usury at a rate of more than one-twelfth[52] ... [if he do,] a usurer shall be condemned ...
— The Twelve Tables • Anonymous
... Usurer would, to whom he has mortgag'd the best part of his Estate, would forbear a Day after the promis'd Payment of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow, When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries: No broker's usurer's, or lawyer's gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams. Tut, these are so innate and popular, That drunken custom would not shame to laugh, In scorn, at him, that should but dare to tax 'em: And yet, ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... proprietors in whom there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and decoration, one of the men who regard their position as Paris house-owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral species, these people hold a middle place between the miser and the usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are all faithful to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of moving a cupboard or a door, of opening the most indispensable air-hole, their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear like a frightened horse. When the wind blows down a ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... simple: so much is expenditure; if there is any return, that is clear gain; if there is no return, that is not a loss. I gave it for the sake of giving. No one registers his benefits in a ledger, or, like an exacting usurer, presses to the day and hour for repayment. An honourable man never thinks of such matters, unless reminded by someone returning a favour; otherwise they assume the form of ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... while experiencing them, because he knew they could not last out the thirty days, nor half the thirty, and took modest comfort in a will strong enough to meet all present demands, well knowing there was one exigency yet to arise, one old usurer still to be settled with who had not yet brought ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... an Irish usurer or money-lender? Your correspondent at page 332. requests information respecting Roger Outlaw. Sir William Betham, in a note to the "Proceedings against Dame Alice Ugteler," the famous pseudo-Kilkenny witch, remarks that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... storm and fury. He tears in pieces whatever comes near him, and, kneeling down, invokes curses on himself. His next attack is on others—on every one whom he imagines to have been instrumental in his ruin. The eager joy of the winning gamester, the attention of the usurer, and the profound reverie of the highwayman, are all strongly ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... Miser, and hoarded his gold; N was a Nobleman, gallant and bold; O was an Oysterman, who went about town; P was a Parson, and wore a black gown; Q was a Quack, with a wonderful pill; R was a Robber, who wanted to kill; S was a Sailor, who spent all he got; T was a Tinker, and mended a pot; U was an Usurer, a miserable elf; V was a Vintner, who drank all himself; W was a Watchman, who guarded the door; X was Expensive, and so became poor; Y was a Youth, that did not love school; Z was a Zany, a ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... little variety, once met a beggar with whom he exchanged garments. Soon after, meeting four other mendicants, Robin joined them, and having gotten into a quarrel with them had the satisfaction of routing all four. A little later he met an usurer, whom he gradually induced to reveal the fact that he had never lost his money because he always carried his fortune in the thick soles of his shoes. Of course Robin immediately compelled the usurer to remove his foot-gear, and sent ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... relieved, and highly rewarded for their good service they have formerly done; if able, they shall be enforced to work. [653]"For I see no reason" (as [654]he said) "why an epicure or idle drone, a rich glutton, a usurer, should live at ease, and do nothing, live in honour, in all manner of pleasures, and oppress others, when as in the meantime a poor labourer, a smith, a carpenter, an husbandman that hath spent his time in continual labour, as an ass to carry burdens, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and wrongs of human equity are very different from right and wrong in the sight of God. In the sight of God no landlord has a RIGHT to his rent, no usurer has a RIGHT to his interest. A man is not justified in drawing the profits from an advantageous agreement nor free to spend the profits of a speculation as he will. God takes no heed of savings nor of abstinence. ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... to mend, now my bill was near due, So I wrote to my friend, and just asked to renew; He replied he was sorry he couldn’t, because The bill had passed into a usurer’s claws. Oh dear, lackaday, oh, “But perhaps he’ll renew it,” ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... The next an Usurer, Old fat Guts he came grunting; The Devil left all care, For joy he fell a Jumping—To see ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... my life," said their prisoner, "and I will give you good money to the sum of one hundred pieces. It is all my savings, which I promised to give into the hands of a wicked usurer ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... make him a neighbour of the novelist. [Footnote: Lord Thurlow was accustomed to find a later likeness to Fielding's hero in his protege, the poet Crabbe.] Another tradition connects Mr. Peter Pounce with the scrivener and usurer Peter Walter, whom Pope had satirised, and whom Hogarth is thought to have introduced into Plate i. of Marriage a-la-Mode. His sister lived at Salisbury; and he himself had an estate at Stalbridge Park, which was close to East Stour. From references to Walter in the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... if my thunderbolt not always rattles, Remember, reader! you have had before, The worst of tempests and the best of battles, That e'er were brewed from elements or gore, Besides the most sublime of—Heaven knows what else; An usurer could scarce expect much more— But my best canto—save one on astronomy— Will turn upon ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Israelites loaded themselves down with goods and jewels and money, it was not to gratify love of riches, or, as any usurer might say, because they coveted their neighbors' possessions. In the first place they could look upon their plunder as wages due to them from those they had long served, and, secondly, they were entitled to retaliate ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the wine of Sillery crowned our glasses again and again with its silvery foam. The surgeon was easily managed; but at the second glass which I offered to my neighbor the lawyer, he told me with the frigid politeness of a usurer that he ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... Whispered to us of peace in the plaintive breeze, Whispered of old dead faiths that the day had shattered, Youth the penny that bought delight of the moon; That was the urge that we knew and the language that mattered That was the debt that we paid to the usurer June. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... weird case to me," said T. X., as he came back to the table, "can't you see the unusual features yourself, Lexman! It isn't unusual for you to owe money and it isn't unusual for the usurer to demand the return of that money, but in this case he is asking for it before it was due, and further than that he was demanding it with threats. It is not the practice of the average money lender to go after his clients with ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... experiment in the depicting of professional life would, even from the financial standpoint, be workable; and I would even go so far as to suggest that a play could be written in which there did not appear one single lord, general, Member of Parliament, baronet, professional beauty, usurer (upon a large scale at least) or ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... the Usurer, in Love with his Cook-Maid; he peeped several times over the Precipice, but his Heart misgiving him, he went back, and married ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... it. I'm sick of waiting. And it isn't fair to a girl—that's my view. Two years now; an engagement that lasts more than two years isn't likely to come to much good. You'll think my behaviour pretty cool, on one point. I don't forget, you old usurer, that I owe you something ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... in Chinatown, belonging to a fat Chinese usurer, Willy for very little money came into possession of a quantity of Japanese prints. These were the next things he showed Frederick. There were most of Hiroshige's views of Lake Biwa; there were the thirty-six views of Fujiyama by Hokusai. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of relief and significance went round the circle. The fame of Eli or "Skinner" Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... which unlocked the treasure houses of souls, and brought its own soul to each body. All came to life except one man, who, as God explained to the prophet, was excluded from the resurrection because he was a usurer. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... found it out, called it a lark? Do you think a great fortune will all of a sudden change such a chap as that into an honest man? No, what's ill got is ill spent, and old Giffrey Jenkins's money 'ill never turn to good account. He that grinds the poor, and goes against scripture as a usurer, 'ill never find his son do well. Howel shall never have my consent to marry Netta, and there's an end ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... as the wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse; but he, as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "A Hindu usurer of Simla," replied the Colonel. "His daughter stole it from her father together with many other things, and took them to her lover, with whom ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... it would be to buy up a part of Alphonse's liabilities and let them fall into the hands of a grasping usurer. But it would be a great injustice to suppose that Charles for a moment contemplated doing such a thing himself. It was only an idea he was fond of dwelling upon; he was, as it were, in love with ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed. The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter day. The politician would be contented to loose three years of his life, could he place things ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... that is to say, a fortune for our part of the world. Very likely he may have a couple of score thousand francs by now. But if I were to give you a thousand guesses, you would never find out how he made the money. He is a usurer, and his scheme of usury is so profoundly and so cleverly based upon the requirements of the whole canton, that I should merely waste my time if I were to take it upon myself to undeceive them as to the benefits which they reap, in their own opinion, from their dealings with Taboureau. When this ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... fanatical lovers of Equality or Death conspire fourteen years afterwards with a Legitimist aristocracy to bring back Louis XVIII. And that same aristocracy, lording it to-day in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, has done worse—has been merchant, usurer, pastry-cook, farmer, and shepherd. So in France systems political and moral have started from one point and reached another diametrically opposed; and men have expressed one kind of opinion and acted on another. There has been no consistency in national policy, nor in the conduct of individuals. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... greeved it fell besides his bag: many hold temporalities tithes and glebes, unlawfull, because they are loth to forgo them: If Jezebel proclaime a Fast, let Naboth looke to his vine-yard; If the Usurer & Trades-man frequent Sermons, let the buyer & borrower look to themselves. It is too common a thing to make zeale a lure & stale, to draw customers; a bait of fraud, a net to entrap; with malicious Doegs, to make it a stalking horse for revenge against the Priest, thereby to discharge ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... compared to France, was set up to public auction! They set up (Mr. Hastings set up) the whole nobility, gentry, and freeholders to the highest bidder. No preference was given to the ancient proprietors. They must bid against every usurer, every temporary adventurer, every jobber and schemer, every servant of every European,—or they were obliged to content themselves, in lieu of their extensive domains, with their house, and such a pension as the state auctioneers ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the king himself procured for his old "torconnier" a young orphan in whom he took an interest. Louis XI. called Maitre Cornelius familiarly by that obsolete term, which, under the reign of Saint-Louis, meant a usurer, a collector of imposts, a man who pressed others by violent means. The epithet, "tortionnaire," which remains to this day in our legal phraseology, explains the old word torconnier, which we often find spelt "tortionneur." The poor young orphan devoted himself carefully to the affairs of ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... says: "And so the poor woman was beheaded; such was the end of her unbridled desires; and he who would fain see her painted to the life, let him go to the Church of the Monastero Maggiore, and there will he behold her portrait." The Contessa di Cellant was the only child of a rich usurer who lived at Casal Monferrato. Her mother was a Greek; and she was a girl of such exquisite beauty that, in spite of her low origin, she became the wife of the noble Ermes Visconti in her sixteenth year. He took her to live with him at Milan, where she frequented the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... did, with wonderous care, Against his rebels prosecute the war, While he secure in your protection slept; For him you took, but for yourself you kept. Thus, as some fawning usurer does feed, With present sums, the unwary spendthrift's need, You sold your kindness at a boundless rate, And then o'erpaid the debt from his estate; Which, mouldering piecemeal, in your hands did fall, Till now at last you ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the moralist—there we find Seneca, a usurer of seven millions, writing on moderate desires on a table of gold. SALLUST, who so eloquently declaims against the licentiousness of the age, was repeatedly accused in the senate of public and habitual debaucheries; and when this inveigher against the spoilers of provinces attained to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... journals. Emile de Girardin had welcomed him to the columns of La Mode, which he had founded in 1829, under the patronage of the Duchesse de Berry, and he contributed sketches to it regularly: El Verdugo, The Usurer, a Study of a Woman (signed "By the author of the Physiology of Marriage"), Farewell, The Latest Fashion in Words, A New Theory of Breakfasting, The Crossing of the Beresina, and Chateau Life, an essay against the publication ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... the viands be, They well content my Prue and me: Or pea or bean, or wort or beet, Whatever comes, Content makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement; Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night: We eat our own, and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of other's meat. We bless our fortunes, ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... throbs with its tides of joy and sorrow. Speculation, that glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features of the usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the banker's bureau during the eclipse of ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... working in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to the aged people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the famed daughter of Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurer in "old town" by the bridge, who had enslaved a wife ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... friends, the years flit by And after them at headlong pace The evanescent fashions fly In motley and amusing chase. The world is ever altering! Farthingales, patches, were the thing, And courtier, fop, and usurer Would once in powdered wig appear; Time was, the poet's tender quill In hopes of everlasting fame A finished madrigal would frame Or couplets more ingenious still; Time was, a valiant general might Serve who ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... British life been corrupted by the fictions of loyalty to an uninspiring and alien Court, of national piety in an official Church, of freedom in a politician-rigged State, of justice in an economic system where the advertiser, the sweater and usurer had a hundred advantages over the producer and artisan, to maintain itself now steadily at any high pitch of heroic endeavour. It had bought its comfort with the demoralisation of its servants. It had no completely honest organs; its spirit was clogged ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... length been compelled, my dear friend, to resort to a measure which till now we had so happily avoided. Our remittances have failed to arrive—failed, for the first time, in this pressing emergency, and we have been obliged to have recourse to a usurer, as the prince is willing to pay handsomely to keep the affair secret. The worst of this disagreeable occurrence is, that it retards our departure. On this affair the prince and I have had an explanation. The whole transaction had been ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... undoubtedly, to pay your debts," says the old gentleman;" but sure, on such an occasion, any man but the rankest usurer would be contented to stay a little while for his money; and it will be only a little while I am convinced; for, if you deposit this sum in the great man's hands, I make no doubt but you will succeed immediately in getting your commission; and then I will help you to a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... usurer or trader gets hold of the poor wretch, hailing either from Corinth, or Patrae, or Athens, till he gets set on to by them all, and torn to bits, and cut into mince-meat as it were for his interest. For as a person who is fallen into the mire must either get up out of it or remain in it, and if ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... far between, devoid of thought or coherency, except those of a purely physical nature. In my dreams something was always falling suddenly and heavily, and at times my nurse seemed to punish me for my unkind treatment of her in the daytime and return at an usurer's rate of interest my kickings and pinchings. I would wake with a start or struggle frantically to escape from my tormentor. I was very fond of bananas, and one night I dreamed that I found a long string of them in the dining-room, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... well recall it—is taking a very long time to make up her mind to prefer you to Monsieur de Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love—to the fact that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and, although these transactions ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Toby Vanderwiller had accepted help from Gedney Raffer. It was a pitifully small sum Raffer would advance upon the little farm; but it was sufficient to put Toby in the usurer's power. This was the story Nan learned regarding Toby. And Uncle Henry believed that Toby, with his old-time knowledge of land-boundaries, could tell, if he would, which was right in the present contention between Mr. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... you cannot love that cold, dried-up, taciturn little usurer on wine casks and land, who would leave any man in the lurch for twenty-five centimes on a renewal. Oh, I have fully recognized Monsieur de la Baudraye's similarity to a Parisian bill-discounter; their nature is identical.—At eight-and-twenty, handsome, well conducted, and childless—I ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... its contents being sometimes worth a million of dollars. People live up to every cent of their incomes, and often beyond them. It is no uncommon occurrence for a fine mansion, its furniture, pictures, and even the jewels of its occupants, to be pledged to some usurer for the means with which to carry on this life of luxury. Each person strives to outdo his or her acquaintances. Those who have studied the matter find no slight cause for alarm in the rapid spread of extravagance among all classes of the city people, for the evil ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Revelations." The "moderate" Udall, after publishing a dialogue (in which an Anglican bishop called Diotrephes is represented, among other things, as planning measures against the Puritans in consort with a papist and an usurer), further composed a Demonstration of Discipline in which, writing, according to Mr. Arber, "without any satire or invective," he calls the bishops merely qua bishops, "the wretched fathers of a filthy mother," with abundant ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... deprived of my money and in a disagreeable manner. When I wrote you a courteous letter, asking how much time you needed, you saw fit to answer with an uncourteous note—and treated me as if I were a usurer, a plunderer of widows and children—altho' I was really the one plundered, and you belonged to the plunderer's party. But as I was more judicious, I contented myself with answering your note courteously, but to the ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... IOhan the usurer 28 A tant preste Hath lente so moche Quil ne scet le nombre That he knoweth not the nombre Del auoir quil a Of the good that he hath tout maisement assemble. Alle euyll gadred to gedyr. 32 Il preste la liure He leneth the pounde ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton
... besides. Debts contracted at play cannot remain unpaid for more than a couple of days. It was absolutely indispensable that I should procure these thousand florins somehow. I would not ask my husband for them and that was very foolish of me. I got the amount at last from a wretched usurer at an enormous rate of interest. When the amount plus interest became due again, I was still more afraid to tell my husband, and so kept on giving fresh bills, with the result that the amount of my indebtedness grew and grew as the years rolled on, till ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... of life both delightful and lasting, that neither would the people long endure their governors, nor the servant his master, nor the master his footman, nor the scholar his tutor, nor one friend another, nor the wife her husband, nor the usurer the borrower, nor a soldier his commander, nor one companion another, unless all of them had their interchangeable failings, one while flattering, other while prudently conniving, and generally sweetening one another with ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... own privileges," said De Bracy. "Yet, I would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer's money bags, than on the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... what the old thief has told you. She told you Papa Ravinet was a dangerous, ill-reputed man, who carried on in the dark all kind of suspicious trades. She told you the old scamp was a usurer, who knew no law, and kept no promise; whose only principle was profit; who dealt in every thing with everybody, selling to-day old iron in junk-shops, and to-morrow cashmere shawls to fashionable ladies; and who lent ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of men struggle to the joys above; some tumble headlong; a demon picks off others with a pitchfork and sets them aside to burn or boil. An enormous dog eats a woman's hand; in life she had thrown to dogs what she should have given to the poor. A usurer painted without eyes, for usurers could not weep, sits among flames; devils drive pitchforks into his head, moneybags hang round his neck, he counts and swallows red hot coins. Other hapless souls, condemned to walk ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... dine With Robin, saving carriers, posts and folk That ride with food to serve the market towns Or any, indeed, that serve their fellow men. Fifth, you shall never do the poor man wrong, Nor spare a priest or usurer. You shall take The waste wealth of the rich to help the poor, The baron's gold to stock the widow's cupboard, The naked ye shall clothe, the hungry feed, And lastly shall defend with all your power All that are trampled under by the world, The old, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... who affects the saint—the prude!" said Crevel. "I tell you what, Hulot, do you go back to your wife; your money matters are not looking well; I have heard talk of certain notes of hand given to a low usurer whose special line of business is lending to these sluts, a man named Vauvinet. For my part, I am cured of your 'real ladies.' And, after all, at our time of life what do we want of these swindling hussies, who, to be honest, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... drunken usurer, stumpy and fat, choleric, a coward, and a bully. He fancies money will buy everything and every one.—Beaumont and Fletcher, Rule a Wife and Have a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... marriage came nearer I felt the ignominy the more. I used to think that the very portraits on the walls looked at me askance because I was going to marry the usurer's son. I was sure the old servants were not the same, any more than the old friends; but, oddly enough, Maureen had forgiven me, had held me to her breast and cried over me. I felt that she knew the marriage would kill me, she only of them all. Every ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan |
