"Mercenary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what to me seemed like wealth. I recalled the fact that my father had paid Ted exactly half this amount, and had found him quite willing to stay with us for half that again, or even for occasional tobacco money. Perhaps there was a mercenary vein in me at the time. I think it likely. The talk of my fellow orphans was largely of wages, and materialism dominated the atmosphere in which I lived. I know this refusal of twenty-five shillings a week and 'all found' struck me as tolerably reckless; splendid, in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... all say that the State Department is merely captious, and they pay less and less attention to it and care less and less for American opinion—if only they can continue to get munitions. We are reducing English regard to this purely mercenary basis.... ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... respect—for that she now desired greatly. She saw him as he was, a big man, a strong man, a man whose respect was to be prized. Beside him she felt herself small and ordinary. That was all right, but she was determined he should not believe her insignificant, shallow, unworthy, mercenary. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... received baptism. Since Winckelmann turned renegade, and became a Roman Catholic merely that the expenses of his tour to Rome and his maintenance there might be paid, there have surely been few more mercenary converts. Tin-tun-ling was not satisfied with being christened into the Church, he was also married in Catholic rites, and here his misfortunes fairly began, and he entered on the path which has led ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth, while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished—as, in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will distinguish—war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible. The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and insults to women ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... you have finished your Dictionary, I suppose you will labour your present work con amore for your reputation." "No Sir," said Johnson, "nothing excites a man to write but necessity."' Walpole then relates the anecdote of the clergyman, and speaks of Johnson as 'the mercenary.' Walpole's sinecure offices thirty-nine years before this time brought him in 'near, 2000 a year.' In 1782 he wrote that his office of Usher of the Exchequer was worth 1800 a year. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... story of love for love, and how it came to naught. In it there shall be no marrying from mercenary motives; the manoeuvering mother-in-law is suppressed; Nature takes her course; and in the climax I strive to prove how sad a thing it is that men ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... to practice upon the fidelity of the garrison; and such was the Beg's influence that the Moghul portion of the Imperial troops joined him immediately, and left the unfortunate Emperor to be protected exclusively by unbelievers, under the general direction of the Gosain leader, Himmat Bahadur. This mercenary, not perhaps having his heart in the cause, terrified by the threats of the Pathan, and (it is possible) tampered with by traitors about the emperor's person, soon withdrew; and the confederate chiefs at once crossed the river, and took possession ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... the bounty of the community, is agreeable to the intentions of legislature, or the ideas of humanity, is a doubt. For in some parishes the unfortunate paupers have the additional misery of being sold to a mercenary wretch to starve upon twelve pence a head. It is matter of surprise that the magistrate should wink at this cruelty; but it is matter of pleasure, that no accusation comes within the verge of my historical ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... well as any of the fine Ladies how to make the most of myself and of my Man too. A Woman knows how to be mercenary, though she hath never been in a Court or at an Assembly. We have it in our Natures, Papa. If I allow Captain Macheath some trifling Liberties, I have this Watch and other visible Marks of his Favour to shew for it. A Girl who cannot ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... upon the foe. Napoleon offered to these bands the same reward which he had promised to the peasants. But to a man, they refused the gold. They had imbibed the spirit of their chief, his enthusiasm, and his proud superiority to all mercenary motives. "We are not toiling for money," said they, "but for your approval, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... consideration the propriety of at once fixing the Chilian Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work; and having finished all you gave ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... to the fact, which is brought to light by this relation, that the slave-holders have not only to contend with the honest and open-handed means which the abolitionists most righteously employ,[A] to facilitate the escape of slaves, but with the mercenary acts of members of their own community, who live by the manufacture and ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge
... Southwest. He had before noticed the apparent incongruity of the handwriting and the text, and it was possible that for the purposes of disguise the poet might have employed an amanuensis. But how could he reconcile the incongruity of the mercenary and slangy purport of the missive itself with the mental habit of its author? Was it possible that these inconsistent qualities existed in the one individual? He smiled grimly as he thought of his visitor Bowers and his friend Jack. ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... troubles. A prisoner in the hands of his subjects, an exile among the enemies of Persia, he recovered his liberty by prostituting the honor of his wife, and regained his kingdom with the dangerous and mercenary aid of the Barbarians, who had slain his father. His nobles were suspicious that Kobad never forgave the authors of his expulsion, or even those of his restoration. The people was deluded and inflamed by the fanaticism of Mazdak, [38] who asserted the community of women, [39] and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... B.C. an eclipse of the Moon was seen in Mysia, according to Polybius.[123] The date of September 1 has been assigned for this eclipse which is said to have so greatly alarmed some Gaulish Mercenary troops in the service of Attalus, King of Pergamos, that he had to get rid of them as soon as he could—make terms with them to ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... of Prince Kaunitz. Not personally known to him, he viewed in me a crawling insect. I thought somewhat more proudly; my actions were upright, and so should my body be. I quitted the apartment, and was congratulated by the mercenary Swiss porter on my good fortune of having obtained ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... down in his own heart knew that his motives were not unmixed. He could not accuse himself of being outrageously mercenary, yet he was ashamed to be forced to acknowledge even to himself that the desire of gain was present to his mind. His debts were enormous. He entertained in a manner and after a style far in excess of his modest ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... enough that marriage was not always the blissful transformation it had been for her. There were unhappy marriages. There were such things in the world as unfaithful husbands and brutal drunken husbands, who had to be divorced. And equally, too, there were cold-blooded, designing, mercenary wives. (In the back of her mind was the unacknowledged notion that these people existed generally in novels. She knew, of course, that those characters must have real prototypes somewhere. Only, it hadn't occurred to her to identify them with ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... brought six thousand five hundred horse, three thousand foot, and four cannon of moderate size. His arrival did not, however, prove an occasion of unmingled satisfaction. The reiters, serving from purely mercenary motives, demanded the immediate payment of one hundred thousand crowns, promised as a first instalment on account of their wages, and were resolved to go no farther without receiving it. The Prince ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... will not calmly, nor cowardly suffer those who have no claims but their impudence, to storm their fortress and to capture them. They will defend it in all lawful ways.-Bishop and Wolcott, and a thousand other mercenary hirelings may attempt to subdue or terrify them—a proud and haughty leader who under the guise of patriotism, is attempting to undermine the happiness of the best regulated and freest State in the Union, with a thousand ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... heart was given to politics: and, in an age when heavy clouds were gathering over the independence and the civil grandeur of his country, he had a disinterested anxiety for drawing off the lightning of the approaching storms by pacific counsels. Compared, therefore, with the common mercenary orators of the Athenian forum—who made a regular trade of promoting mischief, by inflaming the pride, jealousy, vengeance, or the martial instincts of a 'fierce democracy,' and, generally speaking, with no views, high or low, sound or unsound, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... together. My father treated me with careless kindness; my mother scarcely noticed me, though she had no children except me; other cares completely absorbed her. My father, a man still young and very handsome, had married her from mercenary considerations; she was ten years older than he. My mother led a melancholy life; she was for ever agitated, jealous and angry, but not in my father's presence; she was very much afraid of him, and he was severe, cold, and distant in ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... fellow like that. Baron indeed! He's only a foreign mercenary; and here is your poor father sent out of the country, while my lord has apartments set aside for him in the Palace, and he's petted and pampered, and now at last he goes off in one of the King's carriages with ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... is a motive for the crime, and a very strong one. First, we will presume that you are in love with the wife of the man who is murdered. Secondly, supposing that you are mercenary, quite a considerable amount of money will come to you in case you marry Brenton's widow. Next, some one at that table poisoned him. It was not Mrs. Brenton, who poured out the cup of coffee. The cup of coffee was placed before Brenton, and my opinion ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... us take the lesson that that house, too, may be desecrated. There may be, as there were in the original Temple, the externals of worship, and yet, eating out the reality of these, there may be an inward mercenary spirit. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... duke started in his chair with a look of pain; but Pollyooly's deep blue eyes shone suddenly like bright stars, and she smiled a heavenly smile. It was not that she was mercenary. But it was the chief aim of her life to raise a wall of gold (it could not be too thick or too high) between ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... before that you were mercenary and suspicious, and I don't know what else besides? What has Jacob been doing to 'aggravate' you lately, that you should be down ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... the meditated retreat of Bourbon became impossible, and the city was taken by assault. His favorite mottoes were, Kriegsrath mit der That, "Plan and Action," and Viel Feinde, viel Ehre, "The more foes, the greater honor." He was the only man who could influence the mercenary lancers, who were as terrible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hypochondriac, and made no secret of the fact that she regarded him as her especial property. Nothing is so flattering to the vanity as the preference of a child, that naive, spontaneous affection to which it is impossible to impute mercenary motives. And Joel had responded by becoming Celia's abject slave. He ignored the other children for the most part, seldom betraying, unless perhaps by an impatient gesture or a frown, that he was aware of their existence. But his eyes were always ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... in company with delegates from New York, Newark, and Paterson, the Trades' Union held a special meeting and resolved to stand by the "Boston House Wrights" who, "in imitation of the noble and decided stand taken by their Revolutionary Fathers, have determined to throw off the shackles of more mercenary tyrants than theirs." Many societies voted varying sums of money in aid ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... acquisition of additional knowledge by purchasing it from individual Mid[-e]. It is customary with Mid[-e] priests to exact payment for every individual remedy or secret that may be imparted to another who may desire such information. This practice is not entirely based upon mercenary motives, but it is firmly believed that when a secret or remedy has been paid, for it can not be imparted for nothing, as then its virtue would be impaired, if not entirely destroyed, by the manid[-o] or guardian ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... a thing was to happen," remarked Bea, with a little mercenary expectation, "Congreve Hall would be Olive's; just think of it, girls, how grand! and Cousin Roger is immensely wealthy, and there would be no end of splendid things;" and Bea sighed a little, as she spoke, for she was not going to ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... and Zozimus, and banished out of the West by the emperor Honorius, for Pelagianism. Theodosius obliged them to leave Constantinople, notwithstanding the protection of the bishop. Nestorius and his mercenary priests broached also new errors from the pulpit, teaching two distinct persons in Christ, that of God, and that of man, only joined by a moral union, by which he said the Godhead dwelt in the humanity merely as in its temple. Hence he denied the Incarnation, or that God was made man: and said ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... judgment of that art nothing but your commendation of my trifle[344] can give me any occasion to call in question. I do not doubt but you will look over this poem with another eye, and reward it in a different manner, from a mercenary bookseller, who counts the lines he is to purchase[345], and considers nothing but the bulk. I cannot help taking notice, that, besides what the authour may hope for on account of his abilities, he has likewise another claim to your regard, as he lies at present under very ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... seem, Be lost and forfeit to his own esteem? Will he, who may with heroes claim a place, Belie that fame, and to himself be base? Think how august and godlike you did look, When my defence, unbribed, you undertook; But, when an act so brave you disavow, How little, and how mercenary now! ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... talking of our young pupil and your daughter; I object still more strongly to your insinuation that my desire to see them married (provided always that they are sincerely attached to each other) springs from a mercenary motive." ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Even if she cares—and I don't think she realises yet that she does—her sense of duty to the boys, and other things, will hold her back, and your title and possessions will tell against you. Jean is the least mercenary of creatures Ask her before you leave, and if she refuses you appear to accept her refusal. Don't say you will try again and that sort of thing: it gives a girl a caged feeling. Go away for a while and make no ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... service, and therefore these representations were judged necessary to spur them up to their duty and withal show the Ministry that the people would not behave so tamely as did their mean spirited mercenary representatives, who, perceiving they would lose all their interest and scarce dare venture to return home if they did not follow the instructions given them, made most humble applications to the Ministry, ...
— The Jacobite Rebellions (1689-1746) - (Bell's Scottish History Source Books.) • James Pringle Thomson
... thought of it since. But perhaps the moon, which was shining again as it had shone that night on the old market-place, had helped to recall it, or perhaps it satisfied him with a sense of appropriateness. For it was not a dismal, monotonous product of mercenary dryness to which the words were set, but the characteristic music of devotion by which the spirit of prayer is made audible when words fail, as they always do, to express it in all its force and fervour. The Boy listened a while with parted lips. It was a new experience for him, and he was deeply ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... doing?" Daisy asked, and he replied: "Making a fool of a boy, for mercenary purposes of your own. I have seen it ever since we left Liverpool and I tell you I will not allow it, and if you persist in luring Allen to your side on all occasions, and throw over him the glamour of your charms, the family ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... himself an entire page and a half is devoted to an elaborate peroration in one huge sentence, denouncing him in such terms as "pettifogging," "littleness," "pique," "secret and envenomed blows," "slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn," "trammels of servility," "lies," "garbage," etc. etc. The Duke of Wellington he always speaks of as a brainless noodle, forgetting apparently that the description does not make his idol's defeat more creditable to the vanquished. As for the character of Gifford, and the earlier "Letter ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... messengers. It was not till April 23rd that he left Rouen, and the stay for the next day was at Evreux, where he had a most untoward experience. It chanced that a company of English sailors, who appear to have been serving as a mercenary troop of artillery in the French army, heard of the Chancellor's arrival. The drunken crowd got out of hand, and vague memories of the naval pay of which they had been bilked prompted them to take vengeance for old arrears upon the luckless Chancellor, whom they deemed responsible ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... Hesitation" (inspired by the Shaw Monument in Boston, the work of Saint-Gaudens), "The Brute," "The Daguerreotype," and "On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines." In this last poem throb and surge the mingled emotions of pride and shame which the best minds in the country felt at the time—shame at our mercenary course, and pride in the fine behavior of our soldiers. It is true we made some pretense of indemnifying Spain by paying her twenty million dollars, which was much like the course of a boy who throws another boy down and forcibly ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... half-humorous bitterness in his voice that Margaret noted silently. So (she thought) he had hoped for a moment that at the last Frederick R. Woods had relented toward him. It grieved her, in a dull fashion, to see him so mercenary. It grieved her—though she would have denied it emphatically—to see him so disappointed. Since he wanted the money so much, she would have liked for him to have had it, worthless as he was, for the sake of the boy ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... face. Next time I come to attend to your wounds, O Prince, I trust that they will be in front, and not behind. One word more, if you will be advised by me you will not threaten that Captain whom you call a Gentile and a mercenary, lest you should learn that it is not always well to be a coward, of ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... wishing me better health and a safe journey back to Toronto. No sooner had they left than I began to breathe more freely the air of liberty. I felt like a prisoner when liberated from his shackled bonds. I was no longer a mercenary. I was indeed exalted above the ranks, and felt myself once more as a man:—And wherefore, may I ask? Let ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... increased ardour,—"never, till I receive from your own lips the answer which is to make me the happiest or the most miserable of mankind. Hear me, adorable girl! You know not the extent of my devotion. No mercenary consideration influences me. Love—admiration for your matchless beauty alone sways me. Let your father—if he chooses, leave all his wealth to his adopted son. I care not. Possessed of you, I shall have a treasure such ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... its proportions as it was vast in its extent, and brought to every purpose the same forces of character and preternatural energy of intelligence; but Soult had no love for civil duties, but little capacity for them, and he accepted place as a gratification of vanity or a means of success in mercenary aims. We see in all his private and political life "the soilure of his revolutionary origin,"—proofs that he loved money and power far more than he loved honor, and himself far more ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... in the heart, you see, Serena. There is not a more mercenary race under the sun than the clergy. They all marry for money. I can mention quite a dozen; his own uncle at the head of them. Now, you cannot suppose that he married Mrs Jonathan Prothero for anything but her fortune and ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... backers of the Fair showed no mercenary temper. The architects, too, worked with public spirit and zeal which money never could have elicited. Notwithstanding the World's Fair was not financially a "success," this was rather to the credit of its unstinted magnificence ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... hospital was almost always full of patients; his school had begun to come back to him again, for the gratitude of his warm-hearted Galician people, in return for his many services to their sick and suffering, sufficed to overcome their fear of the Polish priest, whose unpriestly habits and whose mercenary spirit were fast turning against him even the most loyal of his people. In the expressive words of old Portnoff, who, it is to be feared, had little religion in his soul, was summed up the general opinion: ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... hand, that when the infantry in a state become more valuable than the cavalry, the power of the aristocracy is diminished, and equal rights can no longer be withheld from the people. The employment of mercenary soldiers in modern times renders these observations no longer applicable; but in the military states of antiquity, where the citizens themselves served as soldiers, there are innumerable examples of this mutual connection ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... a simpleton, and will remain a simpleton, gentlemen. What I have imagined on a big scale, he accomplishes on a small one in his petty, mercenary manner. It went to my heart when I saw him fidgeting about the machine, as if it were nothing more than a willow-pipe, and meanwhile the farm goes to ruin. Oh, gentlemen! you see me here a cripple, but ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... who still held Egypt. During the conflict between the Mamelukes and the sultan Selim I., he considered it more prudent to transfer himself to Tunis. The incessant conflicts among the Berber princes of northern Africa gave him employment as a mercenary, which he varied by piratical raids on the trade of the Christians. At Tunis he was joined by Khizr, who took, or was endowed with, the name of Khair-ed-Din. Isaak soon followed his brothers. Arouj and Khair-ed-Din joined the exiled Moors of Granada in raids on the Spanish coast. They also ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the legislation initiated or supported by women in every country where women vote—and you will see one unbroken line of social service. Not self-interest—not mercenary profit—not competition; but one steady upward pressure; the visible purpose to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... here should be hasty marriages, mercenary marriages, marriages entered into unwillingly after pregnancy had occurred, as well as marriages where coercion was a factor for ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... and demanded immense sums as the purchase of peace. Neither tyrant nor common wealth maintained a force sufficient to resist them; and if other northern mercenaries were engaged to oppose them, it was only to recruit the standards of the freebooters with deserters. Mercenary fought not mercenary—nor German, German: and greater pay, and more unbridled rapine, made the tents of the "Companies" far more attractive than the regulated stipends of a city, or the dull fortress and impoverished coffers of a chief. Werner, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... humanity. It had the effect which he no doubt intended it should, and that was to secure the same treatment for his soldiers when captured, that the civilized world acknowledged due to prisoners of war. He was in no sense mercenary. He expended nine-tenths of his fortune for his country's freedom, and when voted a million dollars by Congress he promptly declined it. He was always magnanimous, even to his bitterest enemies. He died comparatively poor. His remains sleep ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... reasonable to explain the motives of the present publication, and must rely for credit on the good nature of my readers. The project is not a mercenary one. Nobody relies for subsistence on its success, nor does the editor put anything but his reputation at stake. At the same time, he cannot but be desirous of an ample subscription, not merely because pecuniary profit is acceptable, but because this is the best ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... soul to the devil, I doubt not," said Luke, fiercely stamping the ground. "Let us be gone. We need not his mercenary aid. We will do ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Jacob) in this play, above the genius which generally appears in the other works of this author; but he has perverted the characters of Ovid, in making Daphne, the chaste favourite of Diana, a whore, and a jilt; and fair Syrene to lose her reputation, in the unknown ignominy of an envious, mercenary, infamous ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... late in history that with the discovery of the possibilities of coal there was a great boom in the demand for industrial machinery. At the same time there were thrown up the most marvelous advances in physics and chemistry. Recurring War became not the clashes of mercenary armies, but the catapulting of whole nations at each other. New destructive devices out of the laboratories were raised into the commandants of the course of history. Then science ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... a manor in Surrey, properly Fulke's. Hall, and so called from Fulke de Breaute, the notorious mercenary follower of King John. The manor house was afterwards known as Copped or Copt Hall. Sir Samuel Morland obtained a lease of the place, and King Charles made him Master of Mechanics, and here "he (Morland), anno 1667, built a fine room," says ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be genuine,—that feeling that she could not be to him what she had been to others? It must have been abundantly clear to her that had she chosen to accept from him what he had offered her, she might have amply satisfied any mercenary views, the most exorbitant. Therefore her views and her feelings ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... opportunities offered to him, rather then by communicating it to others, make himself obnoxious to their discovery. But if he should communicate to others, 'tis more probable he would communicate it to meaner, and more Mercenary persons, as Apothecaries and Nurses, at a smaller rate and with more security, then reveal such secrets to Physicians, Men of Honour, and Honesty. Furthermore, if any mans life be suspected to be taken away with Poyson, and by opening the ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... indolent or mercenary creature, No one more cordially detested the life of dependence than he. He always thought that his father had discharged all the duties of that relation in nourishing his childhood and giving him a good education. Whatever has been since bestowed, he considered as ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... once. It was very hard of heart, to my mind, I remember. It was an old servant even then; and I felt as though it ought to show some sorrow; as though it wanted sympathy with us in our distress, and were a dull, heartless, mercenary creature. Ah! how soon I learnt to know that in its ceaseless going on, and in its being checked or stayed by nothing, lay its greatest kindness, and the only balm for grief and wounded peace ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... hounds that pass in full cry. So, when we talk of "the attitude of England," we have a tolerably defined idea, made up of the collective aspect of the unsympathetic Government, of the mendacious and insolent press, of the mercenary trading allies of the Rebels, of the hostile armaments which have sailed from British ports, of the undisguised enmity of many of her colonists, neighbors of the North as well as neighbors of the South; all of which shape themselves into an image having very much ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... cruel to you and to Edith that I should cause pain to your cousin, and make him think me insincere and mercenary?" ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... fault itself which biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize the baseness of his avarice, nor the mercenary soldier the enormity of war. Nor can a defective faculty assist in realizing the defect. The color-blind cannot appreciate painting, the thief cannot appreciate integrity, the brutal wife-beater cannot appreciate love, and a Napoleon cannot ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of his cigar towards the fire. It fell short in the grate. He picked it up and rammed it deep into the burning coals. He looked a poor, old, pitiful child, uttering embittered heresies. "All women are mercenary; all of them except my wife and daughters. ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... young lady, growing stronger, in proportion to the difficulty of gaining her father's assent, he, subsequently, offered five or six horses for her. But even this munificent price was rejected by the mercenary father. Black Hawk now gave up the negociation, not a little surprised, at the high value which the white ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... ability, and fidelity could not be suspected. On the next day (January 25) the Governor devoted a despatch to Lord Hillsborough to remarks upon the press, and especially the "Boston Gazette" and Edes and Gill—"They may be said to be no more than mercenary printers," are the Governor's words,—"but they have been and still are the trumpeters of sedition, and have been made the apparent instruments of raising that flame in America which has given so much trouble and is still likely to give more to Great Britain and her Colonies"; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... little or no reward; and there being no political rank that a man of refinement would care for, men must live for money, or live altogether for another state of being. But I have told you, at the same time, Martha, that, notwithstanding all this, I believe the American a less mercenary being, in the ordinary sense of the word, than the European; that two men might be bought, for instance, in any European country, for one here. This last I suppose to be the result of the facility of making a living, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... in dirty stalls, its ragged half-naked worshippers, its holy cesspool known as "The Well of Knowledge," its hideous, leprosy-smitten beggars, its numerous emblems of its lustful god Krishna, and its mercenary priests, {208} is a good illustration. And the famous Monkey Temple (dedicated like the Kalighat to Mother Kali) I found no more attractive. This temple is open to the sky and the most loathsome collection of dirty monkeys that I have ever ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... this dungeon, here within this same dungeon will she lie to the resurrection, and in that case her prison-doors have already closed upon her for ever. The man, who perhaps had some rough kindness in his nature, though tainted by the mercenary feelings too inevitably belonging to his situation, seemed to guess at the character of my ruminations by the change of my countenance, for he expressed some pity for my being 'in so much trouble;' and it seemed ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... or him. Still, as she knew her mother was not overscrupulous, and any stick was good enough wherewith to beat Claverhouse, she would like to know, if only to gratify a woman's curiosity, whether Claverhouse was really going to marry this kinswoman of his, and, in passing, whether he was the mercenary adventurer of her ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery—which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honourable fame—was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... greatest variety of strongly developed and contradictory qualities? For example, if it was Mildred's latent courage rescued her from Siddall, was it not her strong tendency to vacillation that saved her from a loveless and mercenary marriage to Stanley Baird? Perhaps the deep underlying truth is that all unusual people have in common the character that centers a powerful aversion to stagnation; thus, now by their strong qualities, now by their weaknesses, they ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Louise Lambert, a girl for whom he had never had a spark of affection. Louise was good-looking, it was true, but could he sacrifice his happiness; could he ever cut himself adrift from Dorise for mercenary motives—in order to get back what was surely by right ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... is no need of specifying particulars in this class of uses. The catalogue is endless, and the examples so obvious, that I shall leave them to the reader's reflection, with the general remark, that this mercenary benefit is one which has respect to a farther good. A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... The mercenary, meanwhile, stood blandly smiling at the party, showing at least a fine array of teeth, and wearing the patient, attentive air of one who realizes himself to be under discussion, yet does not understand what is ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... always mercenary, though they have that reputation with some. I should like, by the way, to find out who ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... attractions had won her heart and her allegiance, and that she, and not himself, was the victim. He had tried to use her in the accomplishment of outside purposes; to make a tool of her in carrying forward his mercenary or knavish ends. Other men had striven to hide their unlovely affairs from her, but the new lover had exposed his, and claimed her assistance in carrying them forward. This was a degradation that she could not submit to. It did not natter her, or minister ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... that a reflection on their former struggles must show them in what point of light the Americans are to be considered. The United Colonies ask no aid or alliances. Let Britain court every, even the most petty and mercenary power in Europe, the United Colonies only ask for what nature surely entitles all men to, a free and uninterrupted commerce and exchange of the superfluities of one country for those of another; and the first power in Europe, which takes advantage of the present favorable ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... this belief rest upon the fact that he seems never to have been estranged in faith from the Roman Catholic Church, but he objected only to certain political and mercenary abuses. The first retraction is written in his style and it certainly contains nothing he could not have signed in Dapitan. In fact, Father Obach says that when he wanted to marry Josefina on her first arrival there, Rizal prepared a practically ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... tattered clothing, their wan forms, here prostrate, there half-raised, were bathed in a steady red glow. High above them, at the windows of the tall houses, now tenanted in every floor by the dead, appeared a few figures (the mercenary guardians of the dying within) bending forward to look out upon the palace opposite—their haggard faces showing pale in the clear moonlight. Sometimes their voices were heard calling in mockery to the mass of people below to break ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... technique. I tried an appeal for instruction. Often an opponent will come over to your side if you just confess, honestly, that he is a better man than you are, and you need his help. What was the road I must take to achieve the same understanding he had achieved? His eyes glittered at that, and a mercenary expression underlay the tone ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... he fixed me with a cold and glittering eye, searching with the chill of space till my financial status stood before him shivering and ashamed. I communed with myself: By his brow he is a thinker, but his intellect has been prostituted to a mercenary exaction of toll from misery. His nerve centres of judgment and will have not been employed in solving the problems of life, but in maintaining his own solvency by the insolvency of others. He trades upon sorrow and draws a livelihood from misfortune. He transmutes ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... Tigress, as has been said, was a mercenary and rapacious man, caring no more for a bleeding country than does a bird of prey for a bleeding dove. So long as he obtained the gold of his impoverished countrymen, and eluded the grasp of the blockading fleet that so vigilantly ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... vital force, when they are free to enter and to work in the various departments of the arts. It is the commonest error to think of art as if it stood outside the other activities of life. Under the cloak of art much self-amusement and vulgar self-display tries to justify itself, and many mercenary interests are concerned in stinting its vitality. All living and valuable art is really communal. It must fit into its right place with all phases of human activities, and to do this it must have somewhere in it ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Previously to that time, I am afraid I had counted a little more than was becoming on the ease of my own circumstances, and Lucy's comparative poverty. Not that I had ever supposed her to be in the least mercenary—this I knew to be utterly, totally false—but because the good town of Manhattan, even in 1803, was tant soit peu addicted to dollars, and Lucy's charms would not be likely to attract so many suitors, in the modest setting of a poor country clergyman's means, as in the ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Fitzgerald, who knew that of all men her husband was usually most free from mercenary feelings and an over-anxiety as to increased wealth, either for himself or for his children; "and I think it would be such a comfort to you. Herbert, you see, is so fond of county business, and so little anxious for what young men generally ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... me a letter, which I destroyed at the time; and which, if I had it now, I should forbear from copying into these pages. Let it be enough for me to relate here, that he never forgave the action by which she thwarted him in his mercenary designs upon me and upon my family; that he diverted from himself the suspicion and disgust of his wife's surviving relatives (whose hostility he had some pecuniary reasons to fear), by accusing his daughter, as he had declared he would accuse her, of having been the real ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... as a book destined to last; he always respected his work, and the care given to it bore no relation to the price it was to fetch. He often expressed a wish that he might labor like the monks in the Middle Ages, without being disturbed by mercenary considerations; that simple shelter, food, and raiment should be provided for himself and for those dependent upon him—he did not foresee any other wants—so that he might devote the whole of his mental energy to subjects worthy of it. But I used to answer ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... afterward her father married again, and through misdirected kindness involved her in a lawsuit, in which she plead her own case and won it; but she left the property with her father, declaring that she cared nothing for it, but only for justice, and that her inheritance might not fall into mercenary hands. She subsequently traveled in Poland, Russia, the Germanic States, Holland, Belgium, France, and England; during which time she witnessed and took part in some interesting and important affairs. While in Berlin she had an interview with the King ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... back to a primitive decision since the war commenced. The decision is the same for both men and nations. They can choose the world or achieve their own souls. They can cast mercenary lots for the raiment of a crucified righteousness or take up their martyrdom as disciples. Those men and nations who have been disciples together can scarcely fail to remain friends when the tragedy is ended. What the fool says in his heart ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... was anxious, but for the good of the great country through which writings on such, important subjects were to be circulated, that they might have the benefit of his labors and best knowledge. Such arguments on the stupid and mercenary tempers of those addressed fell harmless as on a buffalo's hide might a gold-tipped arrow. The book, they thought, answered THEIR purpose sufficiently, for IT SELLS. Other purpose for a book they ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... once the Lombard republics, and had poisoned their vigorous life. The Ezzelinos, Carraras, Gonzagas, Scalas, had crushed the spirit of liberty in the neighborhood of Venice. All this had been accomplished by means of mercenary adventurers, guided only by the love of plunder; while those two luxurious and stately republics—the one an oligarchy, the other a democracy—looked on from their marble palaces, enjoying the refreshing bloodshowers in which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of a legion, which was stationed in Capernaum. If we look at all the features of his character which come out in the story, we get a very lovable picture of a much more tender heart than might have been supposed to beat under the armour of a mercenary soldier set to overawe a sullen people. 'He loveth our nation,' say the elders of the Jews,—not certainly because of their amiability, but because of the revelation which they possessed. Like a great many others ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... A mercenary man. It is painful to see how rapidly the old simple spirit is dying out in rural districts. Twenty years ago a fisherman would have been charmed to do a little job ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... no deep and double subterfuge in all this. De Stancy took no particular interest in his ancestral portraits; but he was enamoured of Paula to weakness. Perhaps the composition of his love would hardly bear looking into, but it was recklessly frank and not quite mercenary. His photographic scheme was nothing worse than a lover's not too scrupulous contrivance. After the refusal of his request to copy her picture he fumed and fretted at the prospect of Somerset's return before any impression had been made ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... system of the United States was at first a bad one, in tended to secure immediate revenue from the sale of immense pieces at auction, on long credit, at very few points, the land to find its way into the hands of actual settlers only through mercenary speculators. The honest pioneer was therefore at the mercy of these land-sharks, greedy and unpatriotic in ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... shot one of his keen little glances in Austin's direction. "Why, no, not at all, as nearly as I can," he said. "My brother, Austin, made a most unfortunate match; his wife was a mean, mercenary, greedy woman, as hard as nails, and as tough as leather—but handsome, oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I assure you. I have often been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in her real colors. She married, ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... can have no personal knowledge of the proceedings of the people in my employment at such a time. But I wish to assure you very earnestly, that they are all old servants, well acquainted with my principles and wishes, and that they are under the strongest injunction to avoid any approach to mercenary dealing; and to behave to all comers equally with as much consideration and politeness as they know I should myself display. The recent death of a much-regretted friend of mine, who managed this business for ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... circles, thinking but of accumulation by day, and of ostentatious expenditure by night. I have often heard, that their general voice, had it been raised, would have been hostile to the policy that has prevailed. But it was not raised; and now, when too late, and these mercenary and selfish beings are driven to some action by the loss of their accustomed gains, a large and violent party is forming among them, who loudly condemn the conduct of the Queen and her ministers, and advocate immediate submission to whatever terms Aurelian may impose. This party however, powerful ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... Philo Gubb said. "A fellow can tie a knot, or he can un-tie it, can't he? He can hitch a horse, or he can un-hitch it. And if a man can burgle, he can un-burgle. A mercenary burglar would naturally burgle things out of a house after he had burgled himself in, but a generous-hearted burglar would just as naturally un-burgle things into a house and then un-burgle himself out. That ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... not wait to hear what Zoe might say in reply, but starting up in a fury of indignation, "I would have you to understand, Miss Rosie Travilla," she said, "that I am not the mercenary creature you appear to believe me. I would scorn to apologize in order to secure a gift from Mr. Dinsmore or anybody else; and if he gives me one, I shall not ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... side of the story: The prime purpose of the privateer was to make money for its owners, its officers, and its crew. The whole design and spirit of the calling was mercenary. It inflicted damage on the enemy, but only incidentally to earning dividends for its participants. If Government cruisers had captured twenty-five hundred British vessels, those vessels would have been lost to the enemy ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... play; Correct your cravats, foretops, lock behind: The dress and breeding of the play ne'er mind; For the coarse dauber of the coming scenes To follow life and nature only means, Displays you as you are, makes his fine woman A mercenary jilt and true to no man, Shows men of wit and pleasure of the age Are as dull rogues ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... little Murphys in regular succession; and it had grown to be one of the legendary privileges of the school to furnish the babies with names and baptismal presents. Mrs. Murphy was not entirely mercenary in her yearly request. She appreciated the artistic quality of the names that the girls provided. They had a distinction, that she herself, with her lack of literary training, would never have been able to give. The choosing ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... less perilous position. As the best men of the crew had been sent away to capture the brig, the crews of the two boats were made up of the riff-raff of the crew. Many of them were Englishmen, mere mercenary sailors, who had shipped on the Richard, secretly intending to desert at the first opportunity. Therefore, when night fell, as they were still in the boats trying to pull the "Richard's" head around, they cut the ropes and made off for ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... City Hall clock near by struck eleven. The time had come for returning to their mercenary guardian. Phil shook the sleeping form of Giacomo. The little boy stirred in his sleep, and murmured, "Madre." He had been dreaming of his mother and his far-off Italian home. He woke to the harsh realities of life, four thousand miles away from ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... successor to Miss Overmore remained: it was composed frankly of the fact, of which Mrs. Beale granted the full absurdity, that she was too awfully fond of her stepdaughter to bring herself to see her in vulgar and mercenary hands. The note of this particular danger emboldened Maisie to put in a word for Mrs. Wix, the modest measure of whose avidity she had taken from the first; but Mrs. Beale disposed afresh and effectually of a candidate who would be sure to act in some horrible and insidious way for ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... growing strength enabled him to dismiss this unpopular aid, but he steadily professed the same gratitude and reverence to his adopted father; and till the death of Maurice, the peace and alliance of the two empires were faithfully maintained. [18] Yet the mercenary friendship of the Roman prince had been purchased with costly and important gifts; the strong cities of Martyropolis and Dara [1811] were restored, and the Persarmenians became the willing subjects of an empire, whose eastern ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... me still more now by the proofs of his application to military and political science. He would talk very learnedly of the disposition of armies in the field, of the advantages and disadvantages of the use of mercenary troops, and the best way to defend and the best way to assault a well-walled citadel, so that you would think, to listen to him, that he was some gray old generalissimo steeped in experience, and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the boy, Italian in origin and feeling, had almost no education. Throughout his wonderful career he was coarse, sullen, and greedy; nevertheless, as a soldier he was an inspired genius, ranked by many as the peer of Napoleon. Having served France for several years as an Italian mercenary, he resigned in 1789, settled in his native town of Nice, and married; but the stir of arms was irresistible and three years later he volunteered under the tricolor. His comrades at once elected him an officer, and in about a year he was head of a battalion, or colonel in our style. In the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... spirit sank within her, and she bitterly felt the impoverishment of the always scanty means, which deprived her of the power of laying out sums of money on those rites which were universally deemed needful for the repose of souls snatched away in battle. It was a mercenary age among the clergy, and besides, it was the depth of a northern winter, and the funeral rites of the Lady of Whitburn would have been poor and maimed indeed if a whole band of black Benedictine monks had not arrived from Wearmouth, saying they ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was, we may believe, made from no unworthy or mercenary motive, but because he thought that such an indemnity was his due. Some years after (in 1809) the chair of zooelogy, newly formed by the Faculte des Sciences in Paris, was offered to him. Desirable as the salary ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... happen to us Greeks; he was always our friend, and favored us whenever he could, while his son is our avowed enemy and will do his utmost to expel us from the country. If his father had allowed, and he himself had not felt so strongly the importance and value of our mercenary troops, he would have turned us hateful foreigners out long ago. Naukratis and its temples are odious to him. When Amasis is dead our town will hail Cambyses' army with delight, for I have had experience already, in my native town Miletus, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... elation. His was not a mercenary nature, and he had all along thought his comrade too sanguine, though he ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... may know why I have gone to the dogs. She pretended to care greatly for all this, and to be willing to make any sacrifice in return; she had a magnificent chance, for she was being forced into a mercenary marriage with a man she detested. She led me to believe that she would give this up, and break short off, and keep herself free and sacred and pure for me. This was a great honor, and you may believe that I valued it. It turned my head, and I lived only to see my happiness come to pass. She ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... stated above that one of the abuses which came into large practice from the middle period of the Tokugawa Bakufu was the adoption of children of ignoble birth into samurai families in consideration of monetary payments by their parents. This mercenary custom was strictly interdicted by the Matsudaira regent, who justly saw in it a danger to the solidity of the military class. But it does not appear that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... said the maiden, frowning. "Were kindness not looking from thy face, I should think thee a mercenary ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... developing its resources under the protection and the control of its master, while still keeping alive its pride by a great display of luxury. The failure of the Ghent revolt marked the decline of the communal militias, which were no longer able to resist the well disciplined ducal mercenary army. The defeat of Gavere (1453) sealed the fate of citizen armies, just as the Battle of the Golden Spurs (1302) had revealed ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... utilitarianism should become universal, the sad consequence of it to our civilization would be incalculable. Fancy what would become of the virtue of patriotism if officers and men had no higher ambition than to make money! As a patriotic army is the strongest defence of a nation's rights, so a mercenary army is a dreadful danger to a people's liberty, a ready tool in the hand of a tyrant; as heroism with consequent glory is the noble attribute of a patriot, so a mercenary spirit is a stigma on the career of any public officer. ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... a moment when the increasing and unmanageable deficit brought national bankruptcy and confusion to the very door of the state, a course of angry and mercenary pamphleteering on Finance, while connecting him with discontented men of wealth and influence, willing, jointly with the police, to hire or use his ready pen, forced on him education in another important, if unattractive, department of the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... government. We had infused into our laws, our language, and our institutions new vigor for conquest and for human enlightenment. Venality, that dogs great efforts, undoubtedly there was. But the high tide of the conflict showed no mercenary taint. On both sides it was urged from the highest motives of patriotism and of honor and in defense of the popular principle. That principle with us means local self-government and representative union. The rebel yell was because they thought local government in peril. The ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various
... is the most glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now, if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up every other mercenary possession. Its ownership betokened not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the year of Grace 1830 a new order of things was inaugurated. But with all this, a vastly different state of affairs existed then from that now prevailing. No one could accuse the preachers of those days of mercenary motives, for they were poorly paid, and carried their worldly possessions on their backs. Their labour was arduous and unremitting. They travelled great distances on foot and on horseback, at all ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... groom. Men who felt that the nation had desperate need of their services; men who voluntarily undertook the risks and perils of a soldier's life, not from any hope of preferment, not from love of adventure or mercenary advancement, but from true patriotism—a sacrifice to meet the nation's call in the hour of her need. But that day soon passed. The tide turned, and clash of arms ceased upon our own frontiers and within ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... domestic concern, and was held to foreshadow a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The angry taunts were soon returned. The ruling classes in Great Britain made the discovery that the war was a struggle between chivalrous gentlemen and mercenary counterhoppers and cherished the hope that the failure of the North would discredit, the world over, the democracy which was making uncomfortable claims in England itself. The English trading classes resented the shortage of ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... monarchs, as we do when Nero is condemned by the Senate to be punished more majorum; nor, when that monster was obliged to fly with his wife Sporus, and to drink puddle, were men affected in the same manner as when the venerable Galba, with all his faults and errors, was murdered by a revolted mercenary soldiery. With such things before our eyes, our feelings contradict our theories; and when this is the case, the feelings are true, and the theory is false. What I contend for is, that, in commending the destruction of an absolute monarchy, all the circumstances ought not ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... soldier, sternly. 'Inform me immediately: Are you a mercenary of the tyrant of England, or a friend to liberty? your life depends ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Miss Matilda, "and why not, Lady Griffin? There is no reason you should break your tea-cup, because Algernon asks a harmless question. HE is not mercenary; he is all candor, innocence, generosity! He is himself blessed with a sufficient portion of the world's goods to be content; and often and often has he told me he hoped the woman of his choice might come to him without a penny, that ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... camp-followers, and then, concentrating our forces and keeping a close watch on the enemy, contrive to snatch the victory. But we must avoid borrowing foreign soldiers to help us." He then quotes from Wei Liao Tzu, ch. 3: "The nominal strength of mercenary troops may be 100,000, but their real value will be not more ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... (Jackeymo) many little delicate attentions—had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's Italian nature,—a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to the account of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Seacole: 'I have witnessed her devotion and her courage; I have already borne testimony to her services to all who needed them. She is the first who has redeemed the name of 'sutler' from the suspicion of worthlessness, mercenary business and plunder; and I trust that England will not forget one who nursed her sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some other illustrious dead.' England seems to have forgotten her, but it is hoped that this account of her life may ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the North of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... the thousand. It is all very pretty for a visitor to tell us that the charm of Cornwall is its primaeval calm, that it seems to sleep an enchanted sleep, and so on; but we who inhabit her wish (and not altogether from mercenary motives) to see her something better than a museum of a dead past. I temporised therefore with those who suggested that Cornwall might yet enrich herself by turning her natural beauty to account: yet even so I had the sense to ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... influences. In the temple of old the swallow found a nest for herself where she might lay her young; but this is the first time we ever knew of the conference of such honors on the Felis domestica. It could not have been anything mercenary that took the old cat into the pulpit, for "poor as a church mouse" has become proverbial. Nothing but lofty aspirations could have taken her there, and a desire that her young should have advantages of high birth. If in the "Historical Society" ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the Cardinal made some impediment to Arran's appointment as Governor, "alleging that the King be his Testament nominat four Regentis: bot the same on no wise could be verefeit nor provin."—(Hist. p. 169.) Buchanan further confirms this by asserting, that Beaton "having bribed Henry Balfour, a mercenary priest, he, with his assistance, forged a false Will for the King," &c.—(Hist. lib. xv. 1.) This Henry Balfour is the Priest or Chaplain who is mentioned at ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... crime in me, that I stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings's birth. The imputation has no foundation. Can it be believed that any man could be so absurd as to attack a man's birth, when he is accusing his actions? No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth. But, my Lords, I was a good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings's life ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... learn more quickly. The result was that I could not be contented with the small salary of my government office. I had to keep up appearances with my companions. So, I drifted into gambling, into sharp tricks—then became a mercenary soldier, an officer, in the continuous revolutions of the southeastern part of Europe. I sank deeper and at last, in one serious escapade, I managed to have myself reported dead, so as to quiet the heartaches of my mother, who believed I was killed on the battlefield. There is the miserable ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... alarms; whilst a good man enjoys an uninterrupted peace and serenity of mind, which excels the other not only in duration, but in sense of pleasure too. As for the other sort of converse, that which consists in expression of itself to others, Pindar says very well, that it was not mercenary in old time, nor indeed is it so now; but by the baseness and ambition of a few it is made use of to serve their poor secular interests. For if the poets represent Venus herself as much offended with those who make a trade and traffic of the passion of love, how much ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch |
