"Venal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... isn't the nominal leader," replied Dunkirk. "Roebuck is far too shrewd for that. No, he has put forward as the decoy my colleague, Croffut,—perhaps you know him? If so, I needn't tell you what a vain, shallow, venal fellow he is, with his gift of gab ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... Christian world, it is a most prominent doctrine, everywhere vehemently proclaimed and acted on: that is the meaning of the sacrament of extreme unction, whereby, on submission to the Church and confession to a priest, the venal sins of the dying man are forgiven, purgatory avoided or lessened, and heaven made sure. The ghost of the King of Denmark complains most of the unwarned suddenness of his murder, not of the murder itself, but of its suddenness, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... amiable, moral, and peaceable man has been wantonly and cruelly killed while in the performance of his regular and responsible duties as a teacher of youth; and, notwithstanding the verdict of a corrupt and venal jury, the deliberate judgment of the heart and conscience of this community pronounces that killing to be murder." The committee appointed by the meeting also requested Mr. Wolfe, one of the counsel for the prisoner, to resign his seat in the State Senate, and the Honourable ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... every way the alien is put on the wrong track, and his American experiences are such as would naturally make him lawless and criminal rather than a good citizen. He needs nothing more than protection against corrupting and venal agencies, which find their origin in politics ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... the political conduct of Cleon comes from measurably unreliable sources. Aristoph'anes, the chief of the comic poets, describes him as "a noisy brawler, loud in his criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base flatterer and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... people, incapable of comprehending the Scottish tongue. Their history is so intimately connected with that of Scotland, that we must refer our readers to that heading. Their literature is principally the work of venal Scots."—Stevenson's Handy ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jasper, was (like Durdles in the "unaccountable expedition") stupefied by drugs, and so had no valid evidence against his uncle. Whether science is acquainted with the drugs necessary for such purposes is another question. They are always kept in stock by starving and venal apothecaries in fiction and the drama, and are ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... infested the imperial palace; the youth of Italy trembled at the sound of the trumpet; and the barbarians, who, from fear or affection, were inclined to the cause of Attila, awaited with doubtful and venal faith the event of the war. The patrician passed the Alps at the head of some troops, whose strength and numbers scarcely deserved the name of an army. But on his arrival at Aries, or Lyons, he was confounded by the intelligence that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Tartaree From the Navel to the Knee; That her Father's Gracy-Grace Might give him a Placy-Place. He no longer writes of Mammy Andromache and her Lammy Hanging panging at the Breast Of a Matron most distrest. Now the Venal Poet sings Baby Clouts, and Baby Things, Baby Dolls, and Baby Houses, Little Misses, Little Spouses; Little Play-Things, Little Toys, Little Girls, and Little Boys: As an Actor does his Part, So the Nurses get by Heart Namby Pamby's Little Rhimes, Little Jingle, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... Brasidas; but his merits were debased by mean and sordid vices; and his is one of the cases in which history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been accorded to the successful but venal soldier. But for the purpose for which he was required in Sicily, an abler man could not have been found in Lacedaemon. His country gave him neither men nor money, but she gave him her authority; and the influence of her name and of his own talents was speedily ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... Sale: Portraits of Men; Santa Conversazione. Hampton Court. Madonna and Donors. London. Daphnis and Chloe; Portrait of Lady. Bridgewater House: Holy Family. Milan. Brera: Descent of Holy Spirit; Baptism; S. Dominio presented to the Saviour by Virgin; Madonna and Saints; Venal Love. S. Maria pr. Celso: Madonna and S. Jerome. Munich. Portrait; Man counting Jewels. Paris. Portraits. Rome. Colonna: Holy Family and Saints. Treviso. Madonna and Saints. Duomo: Adoration of Shepherds; Madonna and Saints. Venice. Academy: Fisherman and Doge; Paradise; Storm calmed by S. Mark. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... the Christian cause! Oh ever friendly to a guileless bard, Whose pure ambition sought thy kind regard; How fervently I wish, that verse of mine, Nor vain, nor languid, tho' in life's decline, Might thro' thy heart the cheering glow diffuse, That friendship welcomes from no venal muse, When worth time-honour'd, still as frank as youth, Owns that her words of praise are words of truth! Benign Landaff! to liberal arts a friend! May all those arts thy well-earned fame attend! Grateful for all thy kindness to his sire, My filial sculptor, with Promethean fire, ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... to get its charter renewed from time to time and retain its extraordinary special privileges, the United States Bank systematically debauched politics and such of the press as was venal; and when a critical time came, as it did in 1832-34, when the mass of the people sided with President Jackson in his aim to overthrow the bank, it instructed the whole press at its command to raise the cry of "the fearful consequences of revolution, anarchy ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... aristocracy of birth had come the aristocracy of money. Now one saw the reign of the caliphates of commerce, the despotism of the rue du Sentier, the tyranny of trade, bringing in its train venal narrow ideas, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... he had in prospect a little dinner at Philippe's—not uncheered by the smiles of venal beauty—and had just completed a careful toilette. He was above the small peculations of his order; indeed, had he been inclined to plunder his late masters wardrobe, the absurd disproportion in ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and beautiful. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Les Madeleines Repenties is an admirable piece of rhetoric not seldom reaching eloquence; and it has the not unliterary side-interest of suggesting the question whether its ironic treatment of the general estimate of the author as Historiographer Royal to the venal Venus is genuine irony, or a mere mask for annoyance. The Preface to the dreary Fils Naturel (it must be remembered that Alexander the Younger himself was originally illegitimate and only later legitimated), though rhetorical again, is not dreary at all. It contains ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honour could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty companionship, with the epitaphs, and escutcheons, and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded corner in Westminster Abbey have been, compared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand in beautiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solicitude about the grave, may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility; ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Shop! And what has he for sale? False evidence meant to weight Justice's scale, Eavesdroppings, astute fabrications, The figments of vile keyhole varlets, the fudge Of venal vindictiveness. Faugh! the foul sludge Reeks rank as the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... Freedom lives! Oppression falls—for France has felt her chains, Has burst them too. Who traitor-like stept forth Amid the hall of Jacobins to save 90 Camille Desmoulins, and the venal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was the masses, therefore, who made the mediaeval church. It possessed a corporate organization and hierarchy which was a body of personal interests, in which ambition, cupidity, and love of power were awakened. The church was venal, sensual, gross, and inhuman, because the mores of the age were such. How could the church be other than the age was? Where was it to find inspiration or illumination from without which should make ecclesiastics anything but men of their age? The men of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... lose the support of one of her bravest and most popular captains, she addressed the following letter of recall to lord Willoughby, who had repaired to Spa ostensibly for the recovery of his health; really, perhaps, in resentment of some injury inflicted by a venal and treacherous court, of which his noble nature scorned alike ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... not a villain or a criminal. He was not, according to the standard of many, a dishonest man. But he was not an honest one. He had several weaknesses, the chief among which was venal ambition; and of courage, that quality which makes all other qualities seem just a little tawdry and futile, he had none except in a broad, physical sense. He was not, of course, afraid of the dark, but he was decidedly afraid of James Wintermuth; and when on Monday noon the telephone rang ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... anything be left for the moderns it is hidden underground: the stone, blasted in the little outlier, looked barren. Not the least curious part of this outcrop is the black thread of iron silicate which, broken in places, subtends it to the east: some specimens have geodes yielding brown powder, and venal cavities lined with botryoidal quartz of amethystine tinge. In other parts of the same hills we found, running along the "Mar," single and double lines of this material, which looked uncommonly ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... If he had chosen to exert it in the interests of his shop he could presumably have cleaned those friendly young men out any day. But he never did exert it. Surrounded by wares whose very appearance was a venal solicitation, he never hinted by so much as the turn of a phrase that there was anything about him to be bought. And after what had passed between them, they felt that to hint it themselves—to him—would have been the last indelicacy. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... a fratricidal struggle. To the leaders of the late rebellion it was an object of open contempt, if not indeed of actual aversion. Wolfe Tone, the ablest man by far on the revolutionary side, had never weaned of pouring contempt upon it. In his eyes it was the great opponent of progress, the venal slave which had not only destroyed the chances of a successful outbreak, and whose endeavour had been to keep Ireland under the heel of her tyrant. To him the opposition as little deserved the name of patriot as the veriest place-men. Grattan, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... he sought. The circumstance of his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against any compunctious scruples on his part; his occupation of a spy bespoke him at once daring and venal, and Colonel Villabuena doubted not that he should find him a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... public frequently treat authors as kings do their courtiers; they enrich, and they despise them. What more is needed by the venal souls which are born in courts, or which are worthy to live there? Democratic literature is always infested with a tribe of writers who look upon letters as a mere trade: and for some few great authors who adorn it you may ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the best of constitutions. Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who work them are false and venal. Look, on the other hand, at the Roman Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... equivocal but influential position which she had attained to engage in a vile traffic. She and her paramour amassed a huge fortune by accepting money from the unfortunate prisoners who were threatened with the fate which she had so narrowly escaped, and to which she was again to be exposed. The venal lenity shown by Tallien to aristocrats rendered him an object of suspicion, whilst the marked tendency displayed by Robespierre to mistrust and, finally, to immolate his coadjutors was an ominous indication of the probable course of future events. Robespierre had already destroyed ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... awful Poverty his honest Muse Walks forth Vindictive through a venal land; In vain Corruption sheds her golden dews, In vain Oppression lifts her iron hand; He scorns them both, and arm'd with Truth alone, Bids Lust and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... much by their virtues as their arms. They were now only to be distinguished from the rest of the people by their superior luxuries; and ruled the commonwealth by the weight of an authority gained from riches and mercenary dependents. 19. The venal and the base were attached to them from motives of self-interest; and they who still ventured to be independent, were borne down, and entirely lost in an infamous majority. 20. In short, the empire at this period came under the government of a hateful aristocracy; the tribunes, who were formerly ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... with his inseparable friends, Sir William and Lady Hamilton. The Queen of Naples went with them to Vienna. While they were at Leghorn, upon a report that the French were approaching (for, through the folly of weak courts and the treachery of venal cabinets, they had now recovered their ascendancy in Italy), the people rose tumultuously, and would fain have persuaded Nelson to lead them against the enemy. Public honours, and yet more gratifying testimonials ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... brain, and who found their strength in a national virtue which individualized itself in every citizen. The wind that moans among the columns of the Parthenon, or rustles through the weeds on the palaces of the Caesars, whimpers no truer prophecies than that venal breath which, at a signal from the patron in the White House, bends all one way the obsequious leaves of a partisan ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... introduced by Lord John Russell and Charles Tennyson respectively could scarcely have been thrown out by the same house, but squabbles arose in the cabinet, partly on the comparative guiltiness of the two venal constituencies, but chiefly on the disposal of the seats to be vacated. It was agreed at last that Penryn should be merged in the adjacent hundred, and the majority of the cabinet, represented by Peel, were for dealing in like manner with East Retford. The ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... gave me one hundred and sixty pounds damages, but, as I lost the demurrer with costs, the balance will doubtless be small. But, if the pecuniary result is small, the victory over the pirates and the venal part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... thistle grew, And that our Governor did get his boost Into the forum through that rotten host Which proudly boasts a "Tammany" as its god. And do the people of our Empire State Evolve the doctrine which I loud proclaimed? No! in the dire extremity they laid Restraining hand upon the venal mob, Sternly refusing "what they know they want" But now strong opposition draws the veil, And I behold, to me, the starting fact, That human minds oft vain illusions hug Which time alone hath pow'r that grasp to loose; And only then through friction with the world Will freedom from ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to fame, writes for bread, and for that only. Imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap. His reputation never spreads in a wider circle than that of the trade, who generally value him, not for the fineness of his compositions, ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... inmost nature, which never betray their existence until the outward chord to which they vibrate in response sends its message to stir them. But was she not already pledged to that other,—that cold-blooded, contriving, venal, cynical, selfish, polished, fascinating man of the world, whose artful strategy would pass with nine women out of ten ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... plac'd Their power above their work.—Now, with wide gaze Of much indignant wonder, she surveys To the life-labouring oar assiduous haste A glowing Bard, by every Muse embrac'd.— O, WARTON! chosen Priest of Phoebus' choir! Shall thy rapt song be venal? hymn the THRONE, Whether its edicts just applause inspire, Or PATRIOT VIRTUE view them with a frown? What needs for this the golden-stringed Lyre, The snowy ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... might almost say that she was venal. She had received money for simply committing this crime. She would receive money again for perpetuating it in a more flagrant form. So much down on the awful day of publication; a half-yearly revenue as long as the abominable work endured. There ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... minds of the most respectable men, the prejudice against standing armies was of too long growth and too deep root to be at once removed; and those means by which the Court might, at another time, have secured the help of venal politicians were, at that moment, of less avail than usual. The Triennial Act was beginning to produce its effects. A general election was at hand. Every member who had constituents was desirous to please them; and it was certain that no member would please his ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... downfall had been the most famous rover of them all. After robbing his companions of most of their legitimate proportion of the spoils of Panama, Sir Henry had bought his knighthood at the hands of the venal Charles, paying for it in treasure, into the origin of which, with his usual careless insouciance, his easy-going majesty had not inquired any too carefully. And the old pirate had settled down, if not to live ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... native rulers, then build roads, lay out highways, foster the freedom of trade; let the government heed material interests more than the interests of four orders of friars; let it send out intelligent employees to foster industry; just judges, all well paid, so that they be not venal pilferers, and lay aside all religious pretext. This policy has the advantage in that while it may not lull the instincts of liberty wholly to sleep, yet the day when the mother country loses her colonies she will at least have the gold amassed and not ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his throne—no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of money—suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal Senators—and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius possessed, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... is not venal—that's the truth. Among our four thousand magistrates you might perhaps not find one—you hear me, not one—even among the poorest and most obscure—who would accept a money bribe in order to modify his judgment. That is the glory of our country's magistracy and its special virtue. ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... in pieces, which have been dispersed through Europe as relics. We saw such of them as remain here at the Chapelle. I was allowed, for about the equivalent of an American dollar, to measure the Occidental emperor's leg—they call it his arm. And then, as a makeweight in the bargain, the venal sacristan placed in my hands ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... deranged; so that his large estate was his great misfortune, to enjoy which his enemies had recourse to fraud, and pretended to doubt of the mercy of Heaven in restoring him from the condition of a brute to that of a man. In short, he talked so plausibly that he made the rector appear venal and corrupt, his relations unnatural, and himself so discreet that the chaplain determined to take him immediately to the archbishop, that he might be satisfied ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... between the lines of his speech a cynic could only infer that the Upper House, as at present constituted, is such a useless and superfluous assembly that it does not much matter who gets into it or by what venal ladder ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... that venal Mayor Poundstone!" Bryce retorted, with another snap of his fingers. "I'll rid the city of them at the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... hundreds of miles from succour, by sheer force of character makes felt the weight of British influence in favour of just and cleanly government. And acting thus honourably they were naturally detested by the lower class of venal rulers, whose idea of government was, and is at all times and on all occasions, by persuasion, force, or oppression, to squeeze dry the people committed to their charge. Ready to the hand of a discontented satrap, sighing for the illicit gains of a less austere rule, were the bands ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... own! Merchants are never patriots! and rich men seldom; unless they be landholders! But see, see, there are my clients, descending the steps of the Comitium! By all the Gods! I am too late! their audience is ended! Now, by Themis, the goddess of justice! will they deem me also venal!" ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... superiority of talent, ignores the art of cringing; it is even impossible that merit can lead to fortune in a corrupted and venal country: on the contrary, it becomes a cause of exclusion. Virtue elevates the soul, and can neither fawn nor buy credit, nor flatter vice and incapacity. "If such is the military constitution of a State," says M. Gaubert, in his Treatise of Tactics, "of which the Sovereign ...
— The Campaign of 1760 in Canada - A Narrative Attributed to Chevalier Johnstone • Chevalier Johnstone
... not the greatest mind which marks the greatest soul, and it is not the most successful who are the noblest and best. The shrewd, the mean, and the selfish grow rich, and are prosperous, and are courted and preferred, because there are more who are mean and venal in the world than there are who are generous and good. But it is the generous and good who are the great benefactors of mankind; and yet, if there was no selfishness in human nature, there would be no means of doing ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... was not venal, not corrupt, not a respecter of persons. But there is something bad besides venality, corruption, and personal partiality. The worst of motives is disposition to serve the cause of evil. The country knows, the world will declare, none served ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... pea rifle, grinned faintly. We caught Johnny up on that word—and he was game enough to take it well. Whenever something particularly bad happened to be also Southern, we called it the Chivalry. The word caught hold; so that later it came to be applied as a generic term to the Southern wing of venal politicians that early tried to control the new ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... almost past counting he had been taken up on suspicion; more than once had been arrested on direct charges, and at least twice had been indicted. But because of connections with crooked lawyers and approachable politicians and venal police officials and because also of his own individual canniness, he always had escaped conviction and imprisonment. There was no stink of the stone hoosgow on his correctly tailored garments, and no barber other than one of his own choosing had ever shingled Chappy Marr's ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the few revolutionists who were at Rome. These brave and self-sacrificing youths, many of whom served at their own cost, were addressed as "Signor Soldato" (Signor Soldier) by the passers-by, whilst the venal scribes of the outside revolutionary press did their best to stigmatize them as "the mercenaries of the Pope." Whilst some of these warriors devoted their life, others bestowed their gold. It is honorable to the Catholic people that, in the circumstances, they added the good work ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... longer actively interested in the political situation; he was only disheartened by the hollowness and pretense of office-seeking, and the methods of office-seekers in general. Grieved that Twichell should still pin his faith to any party when all parties were so obviously venal and time-serving, he wrote in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... may make laws but it requires virtue to execute them. The Spanish sovereigns were more humane than their subjects, but the latter were ready with expedients for evading laws whose execution would have hindered their avaricious undertakings in the distant colonies, while venal officials lent their connivance to these violations, instead of administering the laws in the spirit in which their authors had conceived them. The statute books of the worst despotisms are adorned with the wisest and most liberal ordinances. From the irades of the Ottoman Sultans and ukases ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... the fashion at the time, which it's the fashion still, to say had passed away with him. He had been twice at the Foreign Office; that alone was remarkable for a man dying at forty-four. What therefore will the country think when it learns he was venal?" ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... essay? His honored name requires no vain display: By every son of grateful Ida blest, It finds an echo in each youthful breast; A fame beyond the glories of the proud, Or all the plaudits of the venal crowd. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... protection, was ready to acquiesce in the most extravagant opinions; in other words, like trade and commerce every where, too much disposed to make merchandise of its politics. The balance of the non-slaveholding population, if we except a venal pulpit and press, had not even a specious motive, pecuniary or political, moral or social, that should have drawn it into rebellion. It was a part and portion of the great brother-hood of free labor, and could not by any possibility raise up a plausible pretense ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... forbidden to marry, because, being a princess of the first rank, she might be offered and accepted to grace the harem of his brother; a mere prisoner of state, watched by the baleful eye of jealousy, and traduced by the venal tongues of courtiers; dwelling in a torment of uncertainty as to the fate to which his brother's explosive temper and irresponsible power might devote him, hoping for no repose or safety but in his funeral-urn,—he began to grow hard and defiant, and that which, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... adopted by writers on those subjects that the Carthaginians, as being a commercial and a trading nation, were quite an unequal match for the Romans; that in Rome all was virtue, public spirit, and every thing that was great and noble, while at Carthage all was venal, vile, and selfish. A spirit of war and conquest reigned, say they, in one place together with a spirit of glory, in the other a spirit of gain presided over private actions and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... from the beginning. The Spaniards and Flemings participated in the mutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. The unscrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their grasping and venal ambition, enraged and disgusted the haughty Spaniards. This international malignity furnishes one of the keys to a proper understanding of the great revolt in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "house," And only nap "a mouse," Though one before the end of the third bout Is clean "knocked out,"— Such burly, brawny buffetters for hire, Who in ten minutes tire, And clutch the ropes, and turn a Titan back To shun the impending thwack,— Such "Champions" smack as much of trick and pelf As venal JULIA's self. GRAHAM may be a "specialist," no doubt, And "What is a knock-out?" May mystify ingenuous MATTHEWS much; But Truth's Ithuriel touch Applied to pulpy "JEM" and steely "TED," (Of "slightly swollen" head) As well as unsophisticated COBB, (If Truth were "on the job,") Might find ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... "if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'" ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... horror-stricken at the prospect of a return to his light railways and heavy sentences. Hence this attempt to damage his prestige. Unhappy Mr. Balfour! To be protected by one hundred and fifty mounted police, and not to know of it! And the venal English press which conceals the fact, what shall be said of it? Where would England be but ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... life. Our ears have rung with the noisy frothiness of those who have bought their fellow-men as beasts in the market-place, and found their reward in the sycophancy of a degraded constituency, or the patronage of a venal ministry—no matter of what creed, for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... Government. Their papers boast that nearly a million volunteers were tendered. This means mischief. How many will rush forward a year hence to volunteer their services on the plains of the South? Full many ensanguined plains will greet the horrific vision before this time next year; and many a venal wretch coming to possess our land, will occupy till the day of final doom a tract of six feet by two in some desolate and unfrequented swamp. The toad will croak his requiem, and the viper will coil beneath the thistle growing ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Concierges are venal, but Vernon disliked base instruments. He would act boldly. It was always the best way. He would ask to see this Madame Gautier—if Betty were present he must take his chance. It would be interesting to see whether she would commit herself to his plot by ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... window I can see the whole globe spinning round like a crazy whirligig, whipped on by haughty lords in cunning calculation and by venal servants ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... have no herds, no fleecy care, No fields that wave with golden grain, No meadows green, or gardens fair, A damsel's venal heart to gain. Then all in vain my sighs must prove, For I, alas! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... approaching the window, and directing the attention of his companion to the Cove: "'Tis the bark that has so often foiled the efforts of all thy cruisers, and which transports me and my wealth whither I will, without the fetters of arbitrary laws, and the meddling inquiries of venal hirelings. The scud, which floats above the sea, is not freer than that vessel, and scarcely more swift. Well is she named the Water-Witch! for her performances on the wide ocean have been such as seem to exceed all natural means. The froth of the sea does not dance more lightly above the waves, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... miscreants!" he cried, "I spoke to you as men and Christians—as free-born Britons and fellow-citizens; but I perceive you are a pack of venal, infamous scoundrels, and I will treat you accordingly." So saying, he brandished his lance, and riding into the thickest of the concourse, laid about him with such dexterity and effect, that the multitude was immediately dispersed, and he retired without ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... sufficiently partial to soldiers of honor. But alas! they were not permitted the pleasure to contemplate the British in that prepossessing light. On the contrary, compelled to view them as mere 'fighting machines', venal wretches, who for pay and plunder, had degraded the man into the brute, the Briton into the buccaneer, how could ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... attained the object of our wishes, and this bright emblem for which I have so long striven will now finally become mine. I shall be the ruler of this land, and in the unrestricted exercise of royal power I shall behold these millions of venal slaves grovelling at my feet, and whimpering for a glance or a smile. Ah, how sweet is ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... as well from the policy of the measure at this time as from the positive assurances of Wilkinson, who seemed to have the power to force it in his own hands. This continued to be the object of Colonel Burr until he heard of the venal and shameful bargain made by Wilkinson at the Sabine river; this information he received soon after the attempt to arrest him in Frankfort. He then turned his attention altogether towards strengthening himself on the Washita, and waiting a more favourable crisis. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... and iron money was found sufficient for their few wants. But this prohibition of the precious metals only made the Spartans more anxious to obtain them; and even in the times of their greatest glory the Spartans were the most venal of the Greeks, and could rarely resist the temptation ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... native town lying right against the northern wall of Fort St. George was a serious danger. The houses offered convenient cover for any enemies that might attack the Fort; and, moreover, any disaffected or venal townsman was in a position to give the assailants valuable help. The French Governor set himself, therefore, to the deliberate destruction of Black Town. He first destroyed the Town Wall, and then—for a distance of 400 yards from ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... necessary funds. Without his cash, nobody would have paid for the summons, and the pious lawyers, from Sir Hardinge Giffard downwards, who harangued the magistrates, the judge and the jury, would have held their venal tongues, and left poor Religion to defend herself as she could. And who is Sir Henry Tyler? or, rather, who was he? for after emerging into public notoriety by playing the part of a prosecutor, he fell back into his natural obscurity. He remained ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... sought; That by our own right hands it must be wrought, That we must stand unpropp'd, or be laid low. O Dastard whom such foretaste doth not chear! We shall exult, if They who rule the land Be Men who hold its many blessings dear, Wise, upright, valiant; not a venal Band, Who are to judge of danger which they fear, And honour which ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... been blazed by the genius of Galileo and Copernicus. Those who dared to venture into this new territory found institutions and systems of theology arrayed against them, armed with the power of present persecution, more to be feared than threats of future damnation. Public life was venal, the Church simoniacal, and society licentious. In such an age Voltaire ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... fortune! If I had been a young man of fortune I should have been the most unhappy rascal upon earth, for I should have always suspected that every woman liked me for my wealth—I should have had no pleasure in the smiles of an angel—angels, or their mothers, are so venal now-a-days, and so fond of the pomps and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... cheering omen for their start across the Western Ocean, and the invalid Governor found himself a popular man on board, for it was generally understood that but for his insistence upon an immediate trial and sentence, the villain might have played upon some more venal judge and so escaped. At dinner that day Sir Charles gave many anecdotes of the deceased pirate; and so affable was he, and so skilful in adapting his conversation to men of lower degree, that captain, mate, and Governor smoked their long ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to me; she can't be all stone, and my misery might melt a stone." He listened for an answer, he prayed for an answer. There was none. Once in a mad-house, the sanest man is mad, however interested and barefaced the motive of the relative who has brought two of the most venal class upon the earth to sign away his wits behind his back. And once hobbled and strapped, he is a dangerous maniac, for just so many days, weeks, or years, as the hobbles, handcuffs, and jacket happen to be left upon him by inhumanity, economy, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... that purification of legal business which it is hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... express to the world what they had not in their own souls. They deified their light and Wandering affections, and were continually playing off the tremendous jest, alluded to above, of offering the features of some venal beauty to be enshrined in the holiest places. A deficiency of earnestness and absolute truth is generally discoverable in Italian pictures, after the art had become consummate. When you demand what is deepest, these painters ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... astonishment of times following, a charge was suddenly reported from the Committee to the Commons against the Lord Chancellor, not of straining the prerogative, or of conniving at his servants' misdoings, but of being himself a corrupt and venal judge. Two suitors charged him with receiving bribes. Bacon was beginning to feel worried and anxious, and he wrote thus to Buckingham. At length he had begun to see the meaning of all these inquiries, and to what they ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... pretext of unity when the reality of it is gone: nor do we drive those who well know that they are incapable of it to profess an undying sentiment which they cannot really feel: thus it is that as that monstrosity of venal lust is no longer possible, so also it is no longer needed. Don't misunderstand me. You did not seemed shocked when I told you that there were no law-courts to enforce contracts of sentiment or passion; but so curiously ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... cancelled; but the manner in which our generosity has been requited forces us to remember that he was long ago impeached for receiving money from France. How can we be safe while a man proved to be venal has access to the royal ear? Our best laid enterprises have been defeated. Our inmost counsels have been betrayed. And what wonder is it? Can we doubt that, together with this home trade in charters, a profitable foreign trade in secrets is carried on? ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... many Englishmen who think that when they show that Grattan's Parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving Ireland a Parliament now. But then, as they are obliged to admit, Walpole's Parliament was very corrupt, and no one would ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... might one stay the perfect quest In surfeit of succeeding? This were a weak and venal rest— Vast yonder-wealth unheeding. This were to make of Knowing that high goal Which truth declares is Culturing ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... Had long exchanged the corselet for the gown: In peace forgotten the commander's art, And learned to play the politician's part,— To court the suffrage of the crowd, and hear In his own theatre the venal cheer; Idly he rested on his ancient fame, And was the shadow of a mighty name. Like the huge oak which towers above the fields Decked with ancestral spoils and votive shields. Its roots, once mighty, loosened by decay, Hold it no more: weight is its only stay; Its ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... first came before me by a chance of earlier life. In 1845, when Sir Charles Napier had conquered and annexed Sind, despite a fraction (mostly venal) which sought favour with the now defunct "Court of Directors to the Honourable East India Company," the veteran began to consider his conquest with a curious eye. It was reported to him that Karachi, a townlet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... run up; distrain; run up a bill &c (debt) 806; have one's price; liquidate. amount to, come to, mount up to; stand one in. fetch, sell for, cost, bring in, yield, afford. Adj. priced &c v.; to the tune of, ad valorem; dutiable; mercenary, venal. Phr. no penny no paternoster [Lat.]; point d'argent point de Suisse [Fr.], no longer pipe no longer dance, no song no supper, if you dance you have to pay the piper, you get what you pay for, there's no such thing as a free lunch. one may have it ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... doomed; and there now took place between the doctor and the disease, the former relying on Pierrette's youth, one of those struggles which physicians alone comprehend,—the reward of which, in case of success, is never found in the venal pay nor in the patients themselves, but in the gentle satisfaction of conscience, in the invisible ideal palm gathered by true artists from the contentment which fills their soul after accomplishing a noble work. The physician strains ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... not the fetid air, thick and hot with human breath, and reeking with tobacco smoke, of your modern Parnassus—a Parnassus whose crags were reared and shaped by the hands of the stage-carpenter! Your studied dalliance with your venal muses is little to our taste. Your halls are too stifling with carbonic acid gas; for ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... those tchinovniks would be so accessible to lofty motives that they would cease thereafter to be venal and meticulous? I should be laughed at ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... boasting coffers richly stor'd, And plenty smiling on thy board, In grandeur's costly garbs array'd, With servile homage basely paid From summon'd tribes of venal bands, That wanton luxury commands, Let thy untainted mind beware And shun ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... oppressors! Extinguish the mean prejudices of nations, and let your numbers be collected and sent as a free-will offering to the national assembly! But is it possible to forget that your own parliament is venal? Your ministers hypocritical? Your clergy legal oppressors? The reigning family extravagant? The crown of a certain great personage becoming every day too weighty for the head that wears it? Too weighty for the people who gave it? Your taxes partial and excessive? Your representation ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... rough-and-ready style, and when one party had dragged the country into the mire, the other dragged it out again. It was customary for the party that was out of office to say that the party that was in was corrupt and venal—that every man of it was a liar, was a thief, was taking bribes, would soon be kicked out, etc. Then the party that was in had to say that the party that was out should look to its own sins and remember that everyone of its men when they ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... must not talk in this Manner, yet I believe it may be one of those Sins which the Church of Rome holds to be venial, or rather venal. ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... earl, his father, had juggled more than a thousand acres of the Hanyards away from my father by some musty process of law and a venal bench. The reference angered me, and I cried loudly, "You shall not have ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... these were flatteries and adulations, meant to deceive. But nothing was so comical as the sight of numerous grasshoppers which had burst their lungs with chirping. These, he told him, were sonnets, odes, and dedications, addressed by venal poets to great people. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... were not long in collecting to hear news from the west, and learn the fate of their former favorite, Boone, and his family. As Mrs. Boone, in simple and backwood's phrase, related the thrilling story of their adventures, which needed no trick of venal eloquence to convey it to the heart, an abundant tribute of tears from the hearers convinced the bereaved narrator that true sympathy is natural to the human heart. As they shuddered at the dark character ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... represented, and the boroughs were venal. The Irish parliament was, in fact, an Oligarchy, and Edgeworth realised this danger. He, however, wished the reform to be carried on 'through the intervention of parliament,' while the more extreme party insisted ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... district of Tillietudlem was a prize which had never yet fallen to any man's lot without a contest. Tillietudlem was no poor pocket borough to be disposed of, this way or that way, according to the caprice or venal call of some aristocrat. The men of Tillietudlem knew the value of their votes, and would only give them according to their consciences. The way to win these consciences, to overcome the sensitive doubts of a free and independent Tillietudlem elector, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of the European democracy, when contrasted with our antagonistical system of the divine right of the people. It is her policy and her purpose to render our institutions unstable by means of a suborned and venal press, and a band of mercenary, hireling, political and religious monarchical conspirators, parasites and traitors. These her gold can furnish. Her arms having repeatedly failed to subjugate the American democracy, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... nephews, nieces, or cousins to the strict bounds of a natural affection,—that did not exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly face amidst this world of distrust and hate,—so she had tried the resource of venal companions. But the venal companions had never stayed long, either they disliked Miss Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them. Therefore the poor woman had resolved upon bringing up some little girl, whose heart, as she said to herself, would be fresh and uncorrupted, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Excise system triumphed—the barriers of freedom were passed—trial by jury was, in certain cases, either dispensed with, or nullified by well-trained special juries—the public judgment was misled by venal conductors of the public press—patriotism was deemed faction—liberty was held up as another name for rebellion—and, in consequence, FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF FOREIGN WAR have disgraced SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS of our annals, though thirty years of foreign war served in the preceding three hundred years ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... fleshly passion. Is it to the taste of Philip or to a momentary touch of cynicism in Titian himself that we owe the deliberate dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the lowest and most venal form of love? In the Naples version Amor, a fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in the Madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag, the attendant of Danae, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... been filled by ripe statesmen and tried patriots. All were excluded from competition except those who had great experience in public affairs, and who had commended themselves to the people by wisdom, virtue, and high services. Such men had no need of hired biographers and venal letter-writers to inform the people who they were. They needed no interpreters of letters to the public, cunningly devised to mystify what they pretended to elucidate. National conventions, Mr. Toombs contended, were ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... an old fighter, grown a bit lazy, no diplomatist (the stories of his being venal, I take it, were simply abominable calumnies), unable to get anything out of the Cuban authorities but promises and lofty protestations, had made up his mind, under direct pressure from home, to take matters into his own ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... President of the United States is the most honorable office a man can hold, and our elected candidates (except when they have the splendid self-abnegating courage of a Cleveland!) wade to Washington through a perfect bog of venal promises. We prate of our democratic institutions, and forget that free trade is one of the first proofs of a free people, and that protected industries are the feudalism of manufacture. We sneer at the corruption ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... bringing fresh shame on me." She wrote him letters of tearful protest. They were ignored. She protested by word of mouth. Ludwig, in unbrotherly fashion, told her to "mind her own business." Caroline's next move was to take clerical counsel. "These creatures are always venal," said the Jesuits. "They only care for cash." An emissary was accordingly despatched to the Barerstrasse mansion, to convey an offer. Unfortunately, however, he had not advanced beyond "Gnaedige Frau, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... sympathize with you in all that you have suffered, and we consider the persecution with which you have been pursued by a venal Court and an imperious and uncharitable priesthood, as an illustrious proof of your personal merit, and a lasting reproach to that Government from the grasp of whose tyranny you ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... if her people are to become the vassals of a great moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed upon her gilded altar,—such a country may furnish venal orators and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. That muse will "never bow the knee in mammon's fane." No, the patriots of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and her bards must hang their ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... victorious leader and patriot, is almost thrown into the shade by the noble magnanimity and Christian heroism of the man in the hour of defeat and death. It is impossible now to obliterate the darkest page of Scottish history, which we owe to the vindictive cruelty of the Covenanters—a party venal in principle, pusillanimous in action, and more than dastardly in their revenge; but we can peruse it with the less disgust, since that very savage spirit which planned the woful scenes connected with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... and disfranchised the borough. As it is, it is probable the matter will be taken up and the borough disfranchised. The right of voting is as bad as possible in the freemen, who are the lowest rabble of the town and, as it appears, a parcel of venal wretches. Here comes the difficulty of Reform, for how is it possible to reform ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... many of whom resold the stock at a premium of twenty to twenty-five per cent. before the first payment had been made. Thus, the distribution of stock became a public scandal, deplored in the messages of the Governor and assailed by the press. "The unclean drippings of venal legislation," the New York Evening Post called it. But no remedy was applied. The Governor, in spite of his regrets, signed every charter the Legislature granted, and the commissioners, as if ignorant of the provisions to secure a fair ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... stronger sex have equal rights, and that the same pride reigns in my breast, which I see kindling in your eyes, my lord and king! My obedience to you, my husband and my ruler, shall be that of a slave, but I can never stoop to sue for the favor, or obey the orders of a venal servant, the most ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... alas! we fall to rise no more. Not one poor trembler, only, fear betrays, Who hopes, yet almost dreads to meet your praise; But all our Dramatis Personae wait, In fond suspense this crisis of their fate. No venal views our progress can retard, Your generous plaudits are our sole reward; For these, each Hero all his power displays, [ii] Each timid Heroine shrinks before your gaze: Surely the last will some protection find? [iii] None, to the softer sex, can prove unkind: While Youth and Beauty ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... skinning the public—they are at the head of the bar. They are made judges. They are promoted to supreme courts. A damn nice howdy-do we're coming to when the quacks run a whole profession. And Tom Van Dorn is a quack—a hair-splitting, owl-eyed, venal quack—who doles out the bread pills of injustice, and the strychnine stimulants of injustice and the deadening laudanum of injustice, and falls back on the body of the decisions to uphold him in his quackery. Justice ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... this sum by all expedients, how pernicious soever to the public, or dangerous to royal authority. He put to sale the revenues and manors of the crown; the offices of greatest trust and power, even those of forester and sheriff, which anciently were so important [c], became venal; the dignity of chief justiciary, in whose hands was lodged the whole execution of the laws, was sold to Hugh de Puzas, Bishop of Durham, for a thousand marks; the same prelate bought the earldom of Northumberland for life [d]; many of the champions of the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... of the National Assembly. He could not even understand what was meant by the charges against them of having overturned the laws, the justice, and the revenues of their country. What were their laws? the arbitrary mandates of capricious despotism. What their justice? the partial adjudications of venal magistrates. What their revenues? national bankruptcy. This he thought the fundamental error of his Right Honorable Friend's argument, that he accused the National Assembly of creating the evils, which they had found existing in full deformity at the first hour of their meeting. The public creditor ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... after another—shoes which he could not wear, a sword which he could not use, a coat which must exhibit him a monkey—he grovelled before me and would have kissed my foot, but that I shrank from him in disgust. "Horrible, venal Venetian," I said, "thou hast shown me one more degraded than I." He was out of sight with his bundle of treasures before I could finish my reproof, and I busied myself with my ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the master, he was treated to various applications of the lash, and restricted allowances of his miserable rations. His slavery was the most abject, his misery the most consummate, and his degradation the most venal and depraved: he was the image of the man without the mental spark; the human being in semblance, but ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... A dismal experience made him cynical. No boon was it to him to be clear-sighted, and see only selfishness and flattery round about him. What could Walpole tell him about his Lords and Commons, but that they were all venal? Did not his clergy, his courtiers, bring him the same story? Dealing with men and women in his rude, sceptical way, he comes to doubt about honour, male and female, about patriotism, about religion. "He is wild, but he fights like a man," George I, the taciturn, said of his son and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... stigmatizes them with the epithet of miscreants; and treats the whole of their labors as mere cant and slang; I suppose it must mean compared with its own dignified and masterly pages. The majesty of the people is truly a monstrous Deity in the eye of venal and sell-created consequence. It is merely for repeating some of the sentiments expressed at these meetings, that the editor of the Journal is assailed as the ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector
... penetrating glance. Without great vision or imagination, he knew criminals as did few other men; could reason from cause to effect within certain channels, unerringly. He was heartless, ruthless—some said venal. But he caught and convicted felons, solved the problems of his office by a dogged perseverance that ignored defeat. For, with a mind essentially tricky, he anticipated tricksters—unless their ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... grand conception of his subject he belonged more to the future than to the present Accordingly he was not exempt from a certain ill-humour and personal bitterness, which frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the historian to that of the reviewer. Polybius is not an attractive author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... subsidiary British troops. For some time the history of the gaekwars was very much the same as that of most territorial houses in India: an occasional able minister, more rarely an able prince; but, on the other hand, a long dreary list of incompetent heads, venal advisers and taskmasters oppressive to the people. At last a fierce family feud came to a climax. In 1873 an English committee of inquiry was appointed to investigate various complaints of oppression against the gaekwar, Malhar ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... maritime Share Literal Sun Solar Star Astral, sideral, stellar Sunday Dominical Spring Vernal Summer Estival Seed Seminal Ship Naval, nautical Shell Testaceous Sleep Soporiferous Strength Robust Sweat Sudorific Step Gradual Sole Venal Two Second Treaty Federal Trifle Nugatory Tax Fiscal Time Temporal, chronical Town Oppidan Thanks Gratuitous Theft Furtive Threat Minatory Treachery Insidious Thing Real Throat Jugular, gutteral Taste Insipid Thought Pensive Thigh Femoral Tooth Dental Tear ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... reply. Next, footing slow, comes the tutelary deity of Alma Mater, and in one sad cry mourns the promise of a life so soon cut short. Lastly, 'The Pilot of the Galilean lake,' with denunciation of the corrupt hirelings of a venal age, laments the loss of the church in the death of Lycidas. As his solemn figure passes by, the gracious fantasies of pastoral landscape ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... breeds corruption inevitably. Venal men aspiring to place, avow themselves the friends of the Secretary, and if through such avowals they secure appointments, the offices will ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... anarchy, from slavery, and from religious persecution. If any thing yet remains to heighten such a picture, let it be added, that every office in the government is not only actually, but professedly, venal,—the pachalics, the vizierates, the cadiships, and whatsoever other denomination may denote the depositary of power. In the whole world, Sir, there is no such oppression felt as by the Christian Greeks. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... may have been self-seeking and made the most of my position, as was afterwards urged against me. I may have been extortionate and venal, and I may have taken regal bribes to expedite affairs. But always was I loyal and devoted to the King. Never once had I been bribed to aught that ran counter to his interests; never until now, when at a stroke I had sold my honour and pledged ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... cringe to Europe! Band it all in one, Stilt its decrepit strength, renew its age, Wipe out its debts, contract a loan to wage Its venal battles,—and, by yon bright sun, Our God is false, and liberty undone, If slaves have power to win your heritage! Look on your country, God's appointed stage, Where man's vast mind its boundless course shall run: For that it was your ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... an important man, contradict him. If possible, insult him. But such a rule is one of the privileges of youth. I no longer live by rules. Yet there is one way in which you may possibly be insultable. It can be plausibly held that you are a venal ruffian, pouring forth great quantities of immediately saleable stuff, but altogether declining to lay up for yourself treasures in heaven. It may be that you cannot afford to do otherwise. Therefore I am quite ready to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit, little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out of her sphere, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... not slow to follow the same course; and two circumstances contributed to make that course easy. One was the great length of coast line on both the Atlantic and Pacific slopes over which a surveillance had to be exercised, making it difficult to catch the interlopers. The other was the venal connivance of the governors of the ports, who often tolerated and even encouraged the traffic on the plea that the colonists demanded it.[36] The subterfuges adopted by the interlopers were very simple. When ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... obloquy of France, I must conclude, in the list of those once popular, the ci-devant Duke of Orleans. But it was an unnatural popularity, unaided by a single talent, or a single virtue, supported only by the venal efforts of those who were almost his equals in vice, though not in wealth, and who found a grateful exercise for their abilities in at once profiting by the weak ambition of a bad man, and corrupting the public ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... divine And wrote the judgment-sign, And Babylon fell!—So now, in that his place Of Tudor-Stuart pride, The golden gallery wide, 'Mid venal beauty's lavish-arm'd embrace, And hills of gambler-gold, a godless King Moved through ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... treatment. The butcher and baker are not expected to feed the hungry unless the hungry can pay; but a doctor who allows a fellow-creature to suffer or perish without aid is regarded as a monster. Even if we must dismiss hospital service as really venal, the fact remains that most doctors do a good deal of gratuitous work in private practice all through their careers. And in his paid work the doctor is on a different footing to the tradesman. Although the articles he sells, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... doth not appertain, as well, To altered caitiff on the drop; No wit that would not likewise pass For wisdom in the famished ass Who breaks his neck a weed to crop, When tethered in the luscious grass. And now, thank God, his hateful name Shall never rescued be from shame, Though seas of venal ink be shed; No sophistry shall reconcile With sympathy for Erin's Isle, Or sorrow for her patriot dead, The weeping of this crocodile. Life's incongruity is past, And dirt to dirt is seen at last, The worm of worm afoul ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... not only no personage so important or exalted—for of that I do not complain—but no person so humble, harmless, and retired as to escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by the venal crew to gratify the idle curiosity or still less excusable malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic life—to hunt them down and drag them forth as a laughing stock to the vulgar, has become in our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Europe was dissolved; the chain of our alliances was broken; all the wheels of Government at home and abroad were stopped. The king's turnspit was a member of Parliament.[1] This office and numbers of others exactly like it, existed solely because the House of Commons was crowded with venal men. The post of royal scullion meant a vote that could be relied upon under every circumstance and in all emergencies. And each incumbent of such an office felt his honour and interests concerned in the defence ...
— Burke • John Morley
... known his will to the most sacred personage of the nation, in order that no rash resolution of the people, or senate, or judge might be executed. And this response, given in an audible voice, was final and supreme, and not like the Grecian oracles, venal and mendacious. This oracle of the Hebrew God "was a wise provision to preserve a continual sense of the principal design of their constitution—to keep the Hebrews from idolatry, and to the worship of the only true God as their immediate protector; and that their security and prosperity ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... other column is the enormous army of young women who, outside of the marriage relation altogether, lead a professional sex life, venal, furtive, ignoble, and debasing; an army which has existed since the beginning of time but which every postponement of the age of marriage causes to increase in relative numbers and to gain new strength for poisoning ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... science—for which Spain achieved an honourable renown in the last century, and may cite with pride her Varela, Musquiz, Gabarrus, Ulloa, Jovellanos, &c., was little cultivated or encouraged in that decay of the Spanish monarchy which commenced with the reign of the idiotic Carlos IV., and his venal minister Godoy, and in the wars and revolutions which followed the accession, and ended not with the death of Fernando his son, the late monarch—was almost lost sight of; though Canga Arguelles, lately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... you pant for glory, If you sigh to live in story, If you burn with patriot zeal; Seize this bright, auspicious hour, Chase those venal tools of power, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time his franchises would have to be renewed. As in the past they had made it necessary for him to work against them through bribery and perjury, so in ensuing struggles they might render it more and more difficult for him or his agents to suborn the men elected to office. The subservient and venal councilmen whom he now controlled might be replaced by men who, if no more honest, would be more loyal to the enemy, thus blocking the extension of his franchises. Yet upon a renewal period of at least twenty and preferably ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... land-robbery was connived at by the officials for a "CONSIDERATION;" old title-deeds were exchanged for new on the application of the holder, and the seals of the venal authorities rendered them valid, at the same time that hundreds of acres were fraudulently transferred from the state. When the intention of a British occupation was made public, a general rush was made for obtaining ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... aversion to decisive measures, and well-known horror of civil war, made him the worst of colleagues for the only policy his tool could wield with effect; and the great demagogue himself, when obliged to discard the mask of democratic hypocrisy that still partly hid the subtle and venal traitor of his party, would have lost, like Strafford, many of the elements of his potency; and despoiled, especially, of the miraculous resources of his eloquence, must have contented himself with that lucid, common-sense, consecutive daring, and power ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... fate intended Sir Oliver by Lionel was to be fulfilled; and it was to be shared by Master Leigh himself, which had not been at all in that venal fellow's reckoning. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... appear to Nadir to be ripe for his seizing the crown of Persia. The officers of his army and some venal nobles of the court earnestly requested that he, who was alone worthy to wear the diadem, would place it upon his head; but he rejected their entreaties, from pretended respect for the blood of the Suffavean kings. The son of Tamasp, an infant only eight months old, was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... benevolently-meditative Vauvenargues. Nevertheless, they are seen in warm relation of friendship to each other, and the letters exhibit their characteristics. Mirabeau shamelessly pours out the catalogue of his shifting and venal loves, in confidences which Vauvenargues invariably receives with discretion, unupbraiding, but not volunteering any like confidence in his turn. A single example must be quoted: Mirabeau, wishing to get rid of a mistress of whom he is tired, but who is still devoted to him, writes ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Titanic, spending his money to subsidize tottering democratic papers, using his summer journeyings to try to attach not abilities in the countries he passed through, and his stay at the waters to draw up a great speech, with which he toured on his return. And now a new cry! The cowardly venal Press must be swept away. "As true as you are here, hanging on my lips, eager and transported, as true as my soul trembles with the purest enthusiasm in pouring itself wholly into yours, so truly does the certainty penetrate me that a day will come when we shall launch ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... me back the reverberating words! How the lime trees rocked to the final crack of the whip over the unhappy Grafton! "The learned dullness of declamation will be silent; and even the venal Muse, though happiest in ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey |
