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Usury   /jˈuʒəri/  /jˈuzəri/   Listen
Usury

noun
1.
An exorbitant or unlawful rate of interest.  Synonym: vigorish.
2.
The act of lending money at an exorbitant rate of interest.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Usury" Quotes from Famous Books



... Pisa, still swing above the pawnbroker's shop in London. And though great families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a surprising fact that the daughter of the mediaeval bankers should have given a monarch to the French in the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Why, this is mere usury! I owe my life to you, and you refuse The acquittance of the interest of the debt, To heap more obligations on me, till I bow ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... the daughter of that Man should be, Who call'd our Wordsworth friend. My thoughts did frame A growing Maiden, who, from day to day Advancing still in stature, and in grace, Would all her lonely Father's griefs efface, And his paternal cares with usury pay. I still retain the phantom, as I can; ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... had ruthlessly fleeced the widow and the orphan. Moreover, he had robbed Florent Guillaume of his scrivenry at the sign of Our Lady. He was used to lend at high interest on sound security. Yet could no man infer he was a usurer, forasmuch as he was a Christian, and it was only the Jews practised usury,—the Jews, and, if you will, the Lombards and ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France

... never suffered to accumulate, when it could be discharged by prompt payment—and it was never forgotten! If the account could not be balanced now, the obligation was treasured up for a time to come—and, when least expected, the debtor came, and paid with usury! ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... stratification of the community into noble and serf, such as was coming into vogue along many parts of the coast at the time of the Spanish conquest, neither has slavery ever gained a foothold with this people. The wealthy often loan rice to the poor, and exact usury of about fifty per cent. Payment is made in service during the period of planting and harvesting, so that the labor problem is, to a large extent, solved for the land-holders. However, they customarily join the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar

... With his bright Tead that flames with many a flake, And many a bachelor to waite on him, In theyr fresh garments trim. Bid her awake therefore, and soone her dight, For lo! the wished day is come at last, That shall, for all the paynes and sorrowes past, Pay to her usury of long delight: And, whylest she doth her dight, Doe ye to her of joy and solace sing, That all the woods may answer, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... establishments, in our eating and drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions: we shall now see it more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself: we shall see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury for posterity. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of her mother; my heart was wholly wrapt up in her; for her sake I felt called upon not so much to obtain a large fortune for her as to increase what I had already got. It is the truth that I lent money at a high rate of interest; but it is a foul calumny to accuse me of deceitful usury. And who are these my accusers? Thoughtless, frivolous people who worry me to death until I lend them money, which they immediately go and squander like a thing of no worth, and then get in a rage if I demand inexorable punctuality in repayment of the money which does not indeed belong to me,—no, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... of time will repay you in after life with a usury of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and the waste of it will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and moral stature, beyond ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... hours of earth bestow With sorrow thou must pay. Though many follow close, yet know, They're loaned but for a day. With sighing in thy laughter's stead Shall come a time of grief, The load of usury bow thy head, With loss of thy belief. Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Hadst thou not smiled upon me, thou, I ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... Apparently she wanted to set up an inn or drinking-shop; the fact that the money was lent to her by her master proves that she must have been engaged in business on her own account. In other contracts we find the slave taking a mortgage and trading in onions and grain or employing his money in usury. In one case a slave borrows as much as 14 manehs 49 shekels, or 138 3s., from a member of the Egibi firm. In another case it is a considerable quantity of grain in addition to 12 shekels of silver that is borrowed from the slave by two other persons, with a promise that the grain shall ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... fatal way, that it depends, first, on keeping the exchangers ignorant of the exchange value of the articles; and, secondly, on taking advantage of the buyer's need and the seller's poverty. It is, therefore, one of the essential, and quite the most fatal, forms of usury; for usury means merely taking an exorbitant[47] sum for the use of anything; and it is no matter whether the exorbitance is on loan or exchange, on rent or on price—the essence of the usury being that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity or necessity, and not as due reward for ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... odium and intermittent persecution, the Jewish financiers who had settled in England after the Norman conquest steadily improved their position down to the reign of Henry III. The personal dependants of the crown, they were well able to afford to share their gains from usury with their protectors. They lived in luxury, built stone houses, set up an organisation of their own, and even purchased lands. Henry III.'s financial embarrassments forced him to rely upon them, and the alliance ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... conspired and planned by able leaders, it is usually seen that it was their care from the very beginning, that arms and ammunition should be at hand when and wherever required; while usury, ambition, or vengeance lavishly provide the money to render the revolution popular: but we had never dreamed of making any preparation, because we diggers had taken up arms solely in self-defence; and as up to Saturday the Council of the Eureka Stockade counted in the majority ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... the Public for allowing merit to an act whose only object is to snatch misfortune and imprudence from the rapacious Relief of usury! and give the minor a chance of inheriting his estate without being undone by coming ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... He will overreach you in a bargain, and think it all right. If your business comes in contact with his, he will use every means in his power to break you down, even to the extent of secretly attacking your credit. He will lend his money on usury, and when he has none to lend, will play the jackal to some money-lion, and get a large share of the spoil for himself. And further, if you differ in faith from him, in his heart will send you to hell with as much pleasure as he would derive from cheating ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... Knight, "to gnaw the bowels of our nobles with usury, and to gull women and boys with gauds and toys—I warrant thee store of ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the noblest Romans of the day, only ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... the devil proposed that Tom should start a loan office in Boston and use Kidd's money in exacting usury. This suited Tom, who promised to screw four per cent. a month out of the unfortunates who might ask his aid, and he was seen to start for town with a bag which his neighbors thought to hold his crop of starveling turnips, but which was really a king's ransom in gold and ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... of hunger, crushed down by taxes. The only reform that has been accomplished is that the men have taken to wearing caps and the women have left off their head-dresses! And the poverty! the drunkenness! the usury!" ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... "Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... Commandment is to do good, to give and lend willingly, to be liberal; the contrary is covetousness, stealing, usury, fraud, and to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther

... who healest all imperfect sight, Thou so content'st me, when thou solv'st my doubt, That ignorance not less than knowledge charms. Yet somewhat turn thee back," I in these words Continu'd, "where thou saidst, that usury Offends celestial Goodness; and this knot Perplex'd unravel." He thus made reply: "Philosophy, to an attentive ear, Clearly points out, not in one part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... Guillen had against the Peyro family is not known. The old folk of the period, two or three who are still alive, always say that these Peyros devoted themselves to usury; and there is some talk of a certain sister of Juan Guillen's, ruined by one of the Peyros, whom they ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... few restraints. After the fashion of his mentor, Carlyle, he is carried away by his humanitarianism and his unreserved acceptance of the doctrine of the equality and brotherhood of man. Hence come his economic heresies in regard to rent and interest, and capital and usury, his denunciations of the division of labor, his Tolstoian impoverishment of himself for the benefit of his fellow-man, and his dictum that the wealth of the nation should be its own, and not accrue to the individual. Hence, also, the wholly ideal state of society he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... back to its Maker, must carry with it a righteousness, to say the very least, equal to that in which it was originally created, or it will be cast out as an unprofitable and wicked servant. All the talents entrusted must be returned; and returned with usury. A modern philosopher and poet represents the suicide as justifying the taking of his own life, upon the ground that he was not asked in the beginning, whether he wanted life. He had no choice whether he would come into existence or not; existence ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... scarcity of money produced high rates of interest. These, on the one hand, facilitated usury, and, on the other, exacted more labor and produce for the privilege of using that money. Staggering under burdensome rates of interest, factory owners, business men in general, farmers operating on a large scale, and landowners with tenants, shunted the load on to the worker. The producing ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... yellow-flowered, His restless head just reaching to the rocks, His bosom tossing with black weeds besmeared, How writhes he twixt the continent and isle! What tyrant with more insolence e'er claimed Dominion? when from the heart of Usury Rose more intense the pale-flamed thirst for gold? And called forsooth DELIVERER! False or fools Who praised the dull-eared miscreant, or who hoped To soothe your folly and disgrace with praise! Hearest thou not the harp's gay simpering air And merriment ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... they hoarded wealth, which the King might seize at his pleasure, though none of his subjects could touch it. The Jew's special capacity—in which Christians were forbidden by the Church to employ themselves through fear of the sin of usury—-was that of money-lender. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... must be supposed to be as perfect as mortal laws can possibly be made. Caveat vendor will be a sound qualification of Caveat emptor in the beautifully codified Utopian law. Whether the Utopian company will be allowed to prefer this class of share to that or to issue debentures, whether indeed usury, that is to say lending money at fixed rates of interest, will be permitted at all in Utopia, one may venture to doubt. But whatever the nature of the shares a man may hold, they will all be sold at his death, and whatever he has not clearly assigned for special educational purposes ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... behind and before, to return with peace to his own soul, that man must needs find honey in this lion, that can plead his innocency and uprightness. All the people curse me, saith Jeremiah, but that without a cause, for I have neither lent nor taken on usury; which it seems was a sin at that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... thou lend money to any of my people with thee that is poor, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor's garment to pledge, thou shalt restore it unto him before the sun goeth down; for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin: wherein shall he sleep? And it shall come ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... laws were broke, tribunes with consuls strove, Sale made of offices, and people's voices 180 Bought by themselves and sold, and every year Frauds and corruption in the Field of Mars; Hence interest and devouring usury sprang, Faith's breach, and hence came war, to most men welcome. Now Caesar overpass'd the snowy Alps; His mind was troubled, and he aim'd at war: And coming to the ford of Rubicon, At night in dreadful vision ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... vicious; and for whose sons he felt almost a father's affection, old Gattrie had but indifferently troubled himself about Desborough, who was fully aware of what he had previously done to detect and expose him, and consequently repaid with usury—an hostility of feeling which, however, had never been brought ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... the ill-gotten gain, mother, it will never prosper; you had better go to bed, and I will do the same. I suppose it would be impossible to sleep with that yellow usury on the floor. I should have Plutus at the head of the imps of darkness about my bed, instead of "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John," that I used to pray to "bless the bed that I ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... merciless clutches of the contrary merchant, who is more frequently than not an Israelite, by advancing supplies of necessary articles at reasonable prices. But the necessities of the planter, if not his greed, often betray him into plundering the negro. The planter himself is generally a victim to usury. He still draws on the city factor to the extent of ten dollars a bale upon his estimated crop. He pays this factor two and one half per cent. commission for the advance, eight per cent. interest for the money, two and one half per cent. more for disposing of the crop when consigned to ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... for renewed promises. He submitted an account of the total sum, and demanded an endorsement. But it was impossible for any one to make head or tail out of this welter of interest, commissions, indemnities, and usury. Herr Carovius himself no longer knew precisely how matters stood; for a consortium of subsequent indorsers had been formed behind his back, and they were exploiting his zeal on behalf of the young Baron ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... peasants in the winter—in a single commune—to be seen awaiting their turn to have their taxes "flogged out." Of course, before this was endured all means had been exhausted for raising the required amount. Usury, that surest road to ruin, and the one offering the least resistance, was the one ordinarily followed. Thus was created that destructive class called Koulaks, or Mir-eaters, who, while they fattened upon the necessities of the peasantry, also demoralized the ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele

... there is neither mite nor cup to give, yet, if done in His name, it is entered in the "book of life" as a "loan to the Lord;" and in that day when "the books are opened," the loan will be paid back with usury. ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... much as we now do prize-fighting. The ideal student was a pale individual who wore out the night with cold towels around his head, and who had a bigger appetite for books than for meat. Docile, unquestioning, knowing no law but his mother's wish; eager to earn her commendation and to repay with usury the immense sacrifices she had made for him, Raymond worked himself to a shadow with study, and at nineteen was a tall, thin, narrow-shouldered young man with sunken cheeks and a preternatural whiteness ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... Endern, who copied out the entire manuscript of the Aurora. These friends frequently encouraged Boehme to break his enforced silence, and he himself was restless and melancholy, feeling that he was "entrusted with a talent which he ought to put to usury and not return to God singly and without improvement, like the lazy servant." "It was with me," he writes, describing his years of silence, "as when a seed is hidden in the earth. It grows up in storm and rough weather, against all reason. In winter time, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... soapy, psalm-singing hypocrite, who combines with Cheatly to supply young heirs with cash at most exorbitant usury. (See ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... reason, notorious enough at the time, why the squadron was not paid even its wages. The Government had provided the means, but those to whom the distribution was entrusted retained the money during their pleasure, employing it for their own advantage in trading speculations or in usury, only applying it to a legitimate purpose when further delay became dangerous to themselves. One great cause of the hatred displayed towards me by these people, was my incessant demands that the ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... which failed in 1827, leaving him still more embarrassed financially, but endowed with a fund of experience which he turned to rich account as a novelist. Henceforth the sordid world of debt, bankruptcy, usury, and speculation had no mystery for him, and he laid it bare in novel after novel, utilizing also the knowledge he had gained of the law, and even pressing into service the technicalities of the printing office [See 'Illusions perdues' (Lost Illusions)]. But now at the age of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... plied, Dwelt one I knew of old, who played at toil, And gave to coquette Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury — A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... to be able to love her, as she loves me. And if I must expiate my old faults, and this infamous doubt which I am ashamed of not being immediately able to cast from me, if I must pay for my unmerited happiness with usury, I hope that I may be given to death as a prey, only provided that I might belong to her, idolize her, believe in her kisses, believe in her beauty and in her love, for one hour, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... for our doctrine and defend our discipline pointing to you? If you go on to be a Puritan, said Shame to Faithful, you will have to ask your neighbour's forgiveness even for petty faults, and you will have to make restitution with usury where you have taken anything from any one, and how will ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... on the soil. From them the ranks of the army were recruited; and, thus doubly oppressed by military service and by the land tax, which had to be paid in coin, the small husbandman was forced to borrow from some richer man in the town. Hence arose usury, and a class of debtors; and the sum of debt must have been increased as well as the number of the debtors by the very means adopted to relieve it. [Sidenote: Fourfold way of dealing with conquered territory.] When Rome conquered a town she confiscated a portion ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... prohibition of loans at interest Efforts to induce the Church to change her position Theological evasions of the rule Attitude of the Reformers toward the taking of interest Struggle in England for recognition of the right to accept interest Invention of a distinction between usury ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... perfection, but even of moral virtue. By some of these unfaithful stewards the riches of the church were lavished in sensual pleasures; by others they were perverted to the purposes of private gain, of fraudulent purchases, and of rapacious usury. [140] But as long as the contributions of the Christian people were free and unconstrained, the abuse of their confidence could not be very frequent, and the general uses to which their liberality was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... votaries of Mammon. They were not behind those who wielded the civil power in fabricating ordinances suited to their avaricious purposes. Theological decisions forthwith appeared, in which the anathema launched by the Church against usury was conveniently construed as not extending to the traffic in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... great disorder? Such a doctrine puts an end to all beneficence, to all gratitude, which are the great bonds of agreement. For if you do good to any one for your own sake, that is not to be considered a kindness, but only usury; nor does any gratitude appear due to the man who has benefited another for ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... in the scale that hung lowest certain jewels belonging to widow women that he had in pledge, a great heap of clippings from pieces he had filched dishonestly, and sundry very fine gold coins which were unique and which he had acquired by usury or fraud, Nicolas Nerli comprehended it was his own life, now come to an end, that St. Michael was at that instant weighing ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... sacrifice their children; the Israelites borrowing of, and robbing the Egyptians, Exod. xii. 35, no warrant for cozenage, stealing, or for borrowing with intent not to pay again: compare Rom. xiii. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 6; Psal. xxxvii. 21; the Israelites taking usury of the Canaanitish strangers, (who were destined to ruin both in their states and persons, Deut. xx. 15-17,) Deut. xxiii. 20, which justifies neither their nor our taking usury of our brethren, Lev. xxv. 36, 37; Deut. xxiii. 19, 20; Neh. v. 7, 10; Psal. xv. 5; Prov. ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... to repay, And usury still watching for its day: Hence perjuries in every wrangling court; And war, the needy bankrupt's ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... which the English Congregationalists had owed to the Baptists for heroic leadership in the work of foreign missions was repaid with generous usury by the Congregationalists to the Baptists of America. From this time forward the American Baptists came more and more to be felt as a salutary force in the religious life of the nation and the world. But against ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... 5:6-11] Then I was very angry when I heard their complaint and these statements. And I took counsel with myself, and contended with the nobles and rulers, and said to them, 'You exact usury each of his brother.' And I held a great assembly against them. And I said to them, 'We ourselves have, according to our ability, redeemed our fellow-countrymen the Jews, who have been sold to the heathen; ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... women to bear hard work. In the first three years of their married life Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him, carrying iron or lead on her back, and leading the miserable horse and cart full of crockery with which her husband plied a disguised usury. Dark-skinned, high-colored, enjoying robust health, and showing when she laughed a brilliant set of teeth, white, long, and broad as almonds, Madame Sauviat had the hips and bosom of a woman made by Nature ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... practically three castes in Rome,—priests, nobles, and beggars,—for there was nothing which in any degree corresponded to a citizen class; such business as there was consisted chiefly in usury, and was altogether in the hands of the Jews. Rome was the lonely and ruined capital of a pestilential desert, and its population was composed ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... would go to his cousin, Philip of the Black Beard, whom he hated; of girls in the plain who wooed him with soft eyes and whom he passed by; of a Jew who lay in a dungeon beneath the Castle because of usury and other things. ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... soldiers, especially of such soldiers as those, should be united with that of their commanders. And I wish, O conscript fathers, that it was lawful for us to dispense rewards to all the citizens; although we will give those which we have promised with the most careful usury. But that remains, as I well hope, to the conquerors, to whom the faith of the senate is pledged; and, as they have adhered to it at a most critical period of the republic, we are bound to take care that they never have cause to repent of their conduct. But it is easy for ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... it is banking; and banking, it is quite true, is usury within legal bounds. There is no question of that here. The operation is simple in the extreme. I sell you a piece of land on the understanding that you will build upon it, and instead of payment you give me a mortgage. I lend you money from ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Amongst them, it is a story almost still remember'd in that country, that he had a particular intimacy with Mr. Combe, an old gentleman noted thereabouts for his wealth and usury: It happen'd, that in a pleasant conversation amongst their common friends, Mr. Combe told Shakespear in a laughing manner, that he fancy'd he intended to write his Epitaph, if he happen'd to out-live him; and since he ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... money-lenders in Madras; but the fact that Coral Merchants' Street is now the habitat of Nattukottai Chetties, who are past-masters in the art of money-lending, suggests that even the Jews were unable to compete with Madras sowcars in the business of usury, and that the Chetties displaced the Jews who used to live in the street. The little Jewish cemetery in crowded Mint Street is an interesting spot. One of the antique tomb-stones has been caught in the branch of a tree and has been lifted high in air, ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow

... bought and sold plate, and foreign gold and silver coins. These we melted and culled. Some were recoined at the Mint, and with the rest we supplied the refiners, plate-workers, and merchants who required the precious metals. Whenever we received money at usury, we gave a bond, and my patron was always able to lend it out again, either to the Government or to others at a still higher rate of usury. At times, the stranger from the country might have supposed that all the gold and silver in England had been collected in ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay, with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... reckon on maintaining my position in Vienna, or my establishment at Penzing. Not only did there seem no prospect of even a temporary nature of earning money, but my debts had mounted up, in the usual style of such usury, to so great a sum, and assumed so threatening an aspect, that, failing some extraordinary relief, my very person was in danger. In this perplexity I addressed myself with perfect frankness—at first only for advice—to ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... among the sons of Israel"; and the prohibition against unnatural sins, according to Lev. 28:22, 23: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind . . . thou shalt not copulate with any beast." To the seventh commandment which prohibits theft, is added the precept forbidding usury, according to Deut. 23:19: "Thou shalt not lend to thy brother money to usury"; and the prohibition against fraud, according to Deut. 25:13: "Thou shalt not have divers weights in thy bag"; and universally all prohibitions relating ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... in these days, when there is so much enterprise, money has become, as it were, a living thing that grows; or at the least a tool that can be used; and therefore, when it is lent, it is right that the borrower should pay a little for it. This is not the same as the usury that Holy Church so rightly condemns: at least, I hold not, though some, I know, differ ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... words, bad wit! O, where dwells faith or truth? Ill usury my favours reap from thee, Usurping Sol, the hate ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... moneylenders. This is a view easily misunderstood. It is quite true that the temples were great landowners, and had steady incomes, and possessed treasuries; but there is no evidence that they lent on usury. It seems rather that these loans without interest (except as a fine for undue retention of the loan) were a kindly accommodation. We know that under certain circumstances a man might appeal to the temple treasury to ransom him from the enemy. He might also borrow in case of necessity ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... in the days of our fathers," her companion reminded her. "Then there was plenty and each man sat under his own vine and fig tree, for by the law of Moses no man was allowed to collect usury, so sayeth ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... over, he came to town to find your father hiding between four walls, unable to stir out for fear of arrest. Willy had no option but to pay the money; and when your father knew that it was so paid, and that the usury had swallowed up the whole of Willy's little capital, then, I say, I saw upon Charles Haughton's once radiant face the saddest expression I ever saw on mortal man's. And sure I am that all the joys your father ever knew as a man of pleasure were not worth the agony ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... this, than on the next, and next. My time is all ta'en up on usury; I never am beforehand with my hours, But every one has work before ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices? And to-day, ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen

... attached to different virtues 44 Military, civic, and intellectual virtues 44 The mediaeval type 45 Modifications introduced by Protestantism 47 Bossuet and Louis XIV. 48 Persecution.—Operations at childbirth.—Usury 50 Every great religion and philosophic system produces or favours a distinct moral type 51 Variations in moral judgments 51 Complexity of moral influences of modern times.—The industrial type 53 Qualified by other influences 54 ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... business, like a merchant. But the thing that he has nearest his heart is his collection of postage-stamps. This is his treasure; and he always speaks of it as though he were going to get a fortune out of it. His companions accuse him of miserliness and usury. I do not know: I like him; he teaches me a great many things; he seems a man to me. Coretti, the son of the wood-merchant, says that he would not give him his postage-stamps to save his mother's life. My ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... up with it, monseigneur; if there be usury, it is I who practice it, and both of us reap the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... antagonistic, but what he does not see is that the interests of labor and capital may both be antagonistic to the interests of monopoly, and that until the latter is destroyed the two former will be continually forced into positions of seeming antagonism. He denounces "rapacious usury," and says that it was "more than once condemned by the Church," conveniently overlooking the fact that the usuria, which was condemned, was not only "rapacious" but was all taking of money for the use of money, all ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... Vice-President. The platform of the party was based upon the prevalent economic and political discontent. Farmers were overmortgaged, laborers were underpaid, and the poor were growing poorer, while the rich were daily growing richer. "The paramount issues," the new party declared, "are the abolition of usury, monopoly, and trusts, and we denounce the Republican and Democratic parties for creating and perpetuating these ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... Modern apologists for usury, knowing that money is unproductive itself, call it a tool for production, and as it can be readily transformed into any tool, they try to avoid the logical conclusion that the taking of interest on money is unjust and oppressive to ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... Pro-Semite. But all of them in a sense admitted that they were puzzled as to what the play was about. The correspondence filled column after column and went on for weeks. And from one end of that correspondence to the other, no human being even so much as mentioned the word "usury." It is exactly as if twenty clever critics were set down to talk for a month about the play of Macbeth, and were all strictly forbidden ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... few and scattered— That from fleeting life we borrow; And we're paying, ever paying, With an usury ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... abstinence from usury, or the non-existence of usury, which is the essential idea of the ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... refraining from meat and professing abhorrence of oaths or of lying. The mystery in which they enveloped themselves won for them the adoring reverence of the Credentes, who formed the great majority of the sect and gave themselves up to every vice, to usury, brigandage, and perjury, and whilst describing marriage as prostitution, condoning incest and all forms of licence.[217] The Credentes, who were probably not fully initiated into the Dualist doctrines of their superiors, looked to them for salvation through the laying-on of hands according to ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... "Fors" for some time his attention was drawn by Mr. W.C. Sillar to the question of "Usury." At first he had seen no crying sin in Interest. He had held that the "rights of capital" were visionary, and that the tools should belong to him that can handle them, in a perfect state of society; but he thought that the existing system was no worse ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood

... lay by a store of savings as a breakwater against want, and make sure of a little fund which may maintain them in old age, secure their self-respect, and add to their personal comfort and social well-being. Thrift is not in any way connected with avarice, usury, greed, or selfishness. It is, in fact, the very reverse ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to usury(21) and, according to the rule established in olden times, had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest paid to them contrary to the law. Asellio lent himself to bend the actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and put into shape ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... reign of Edward VI. religious zeal prohibited all interest. This prohibition, however, like all others of the same kind, is said to have produced no effect, and probably rather increased than diminished the evil of usury. The statute of Henry VIII. was revived by the 13th of Elizabeth, cap. 8. and ten per cent. continued to be the legal rate of interest till the 21st of James I. when it was restricted to eight per cent. It was reduced to six per cent. soon after the Restoration, ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... appeared to him so laden with Angels. But now no one lifts his feet from earth to ascend it; and my Rule is remaining as waste of paper. The walls, which used to be an abbey, have become caves; and the cowls are sacks full of bad meal. But heavy usury is not gathered in so greatly against the pleasure of God, as that fruit which makes the heart of monks so foolish. For whatsoever the Church guards is all for the folk that ask it in God's name, not for one's kindred, or for another more vile. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... though Wolfram von Eschenbach may be thought to have been less fortunate with Willehalm. And though in the lyric, the debt due to both troubadour and trouvere is unmistakable, it is equally unmistakable what mighty usury the minnesingers have paid for the capital they borrowed. The skill both of Northern and Southern Frenchmen is seldom to seek in lyric: we cannot give them too high praise as fashioners of instruments for other men to use. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... existence is left to the ignorant and indolent peasantry. He draws no less gloomy a picture in respect of capital and property. Nine-tenths of Manila, and all important provincial real estate, is mortgaged. Capital is furnished at exorbitant rates of interest, and usury prevails. In the country, no security is accepted save real property, and then only when the lender is satisfied that his debtor will be unable to pay, and that the security ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... giving. No one writes down his gifts in a ledger, or like a grasping creditor demands repayment to the day and hour. A good man never thinks of such matters, unless reminded of them by some one returning his gifts; otherwise they become like debts owing to him. It is a base usury to regard a benefit as an investment. Whatever may have been the result of your former benefits, persevere in bestowing others upon other men; they will be all the better placed in the hands of the ungrateful, whom shame, or a favourable opportunity, or imitation of others ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca

... Montaig," he said, "I know more 'bout this matter 'n you think for. I know 't you ben makin' your brags that you'd fix me in this deal. You allowed that you'd set up usury in the fust place, an' if that didn't work I'd find you was execution proof anyways. That's ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... it is an exclusive metallic currency. Or if there is a process by which the character of the country for generosity and nobleness of feeling may be destroyed by the great increase and neck toleration of usury, it is ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... his overwhelming astonishment it was first made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the patrimony had not been squandered—had been put out to usury rather, bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold—a man living in luxury and holding the respect of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... which both Mr. Macbean and I thought new. It was this: that 'the law against usury is for the protection of creditors as well as of debtors; for if there were no such check, people would be apt, from the temptation of great interest, to lend to desperate persons, by whom they would lose their money. Accordingly there are instances of ladies being ruined, by having injudiciously ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... Kingsley: the July number contains a long article by Henry George. In September a formal report is given of the work of the Democratic Federation. In November Christianity and Socialism are said to be convertible terms, and in January, 1884, the clerical view of usury is set forth in an article on the morality of interest. In March Mr. H.H. Champion explains "surplus value," and in April we find a sympathetic review of the "Historic Basis of Socialism." In April, 1885, appears a ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... borrow, he is often exposed to the impositions of a class of unscrupulous money lenders, who violate the laws against usury, but hope to escape punishment or loss through the ignorance of their customers. The pitiful part of it is that the self-respecting poor often fall into their traps. A family in pecuniary straits for the first time is naturally attracted by the specious advertisements of the chattel-mortgage ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... the shot, my son.' And he struck up 'John Brown's Body' in a fine sweet baritone: 'Dandy Jim of Carolina,' came next; 'Rorin the Bold,' 'Swing low, Sweet Chariot,' and 'The Beautiful Land' followed. The captain was paying his shot with usury, as he had done many a time before; many a meal had he bought with the same currency from the melodious-minded natives, always, as now, ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... he describes his inmost feelings, as well as the events going on around him. The uncle of Atticus, the brother of his mother, whose family tomb we are now examining, left him at his death an enormous fortune, which he had amassed by usury. Atticus added greatly to it by acting as a kind of publisher to the authors of the day—that is, by employing his numerous slaves in copying and multiplying their manuscripts. He kept himself free from all the political factions of the times, and thus managed to preserve ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... to attack it; all that concerns us here is that an opportunity for profit—that is, a potential property interest—was outlawed. In consequence it became impossible for reputable citizens to engage in the business. Usury therefore came to be monopolized by aliens, exempt from the current ethical formulation, who were "protected," for a consideration, by the prince, just as dubious modern property interests may be protected by ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... of money. They therefore instruct their legislators to fix a legal rate of interest, and to fix it low. The abuse which naturally follows on this blind policy is, that the wealth created by the splendid industries of Wilmington is constantly leaving the State to seek investment where usury is not kept down by old-fashioned legislation. Richard Burton, the Anatomist of Melancholy, saw a somewhat similar state of things among the unproductive and ale-tippling scholars with whom he lived at Oxford, but he was keen enough to feel an envy of the livelier ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... wight distressed as thou seest: My father here is king of Arragon. I Amadine his only daughter am, And after him sole heir unto the crown. Now, where as it is my father's will To marry me unto Segasto, one, Whose wealth through father's former usury Is known to be no less than wonderful, We both of custom oftentimes did use, Leaving the court, to walk within the fields For recreation, especially in the spring, In that it yields great store of rare delights: And passing further than our wonted walks, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... Jacob saw it stretch Its topmost round, when it appear'd to him With angels laden. But to mount it now None lifts his foot from earth: and hence my rule Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves; The walls, for abbey rear'd, turned into dens, The cowls to sacks choak'd up with musty meal. Foul usury doth not more lift itself Against God's pleasure, than that fruit which makes The hearts of monks so wanton: for whate'er Is in the church's keeping, all pertains. To such, as sue for heav'n's sweet sake, and not ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... to our ears, being at once publicly notorious and brought before us upon the testimony of many witnesses worthy of credit, that you, the abbot afore-mentioned, have been of long time noted and diffamed, and do yet continue so noted, of simony, of usury, of dilapidation and waste of the goods, revenues, and possessions of the said monastery, and of certain other enormous crimes and excesses hereafter written. In the rule, custody, and administration of the goods, spiritual and temporal, of the said monastery, you are so remiss, so negligent, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... Obadiah, the pious protector of the prophets in hiding, he exacted a high rate of interest on the money needed for their support. As a consequence, at his death he fell pierced between his arms, the arrow going out at his heart, for he had stretched out his arms to receive usury, and had hardened his heart against compassion. (53) In his reign only one event deserves mention, his campaign against Moab, undertaken in alliance with the kings of Judah and Edom, and ending with a splendid victory won by the allied kings. Joram and his people, it need ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... tilted his chair back comfortably against the wall, fishing his quill toothpick from his waistcoat pocket. The two bankers, Phelps and Elder, sat off in a corner behind the dinner-table, where they could finish their discussion of the new usury law and its effect on chattel security loans. The real estate agent, an old man with a smiling, hypocritical face, soon joined them. The coal and lumber dealer and the cattle shipper sat on opposite sides of the hard coal-burner, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... the amount of his property—such as was left after paying the huge fine to Government. Tamiya Yoemon and Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei underwent degradation from the caste. There was no disposition to overlook the offence of usury. Beggary was to be the portion of Yoemon, the destitution of the outcast. For some years the senile old man, the virago of a woman once the wife of Kondo[u] Rokuro[u]bei, were stationed at the Nio[u]mon, to attract ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... ille qui procul negotiis") that Alfius, like many a modern amateur farmer, recruited from town, soon repented that he had ever listened to the alluring call of "back to the land" and after a few weeks of disillusion in the country, returned to town and sought to get his money out again at usury. ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... all an account. The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow-pattern tureen will yield up their barren deposit in many a house. Suffer your daughters, at least, to put their money to the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's coming to pay Him His own with usury." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... buyer should take no more, and the seller offer no less, than the just price of a commodity—a price which would in practice depend on the cost of production. The rule for prices was also the rule for wages: the just wage was the natural complement of the just price. The prohibition of usury and of the taking of interest was another factor in the same circle of ideas. If prices and wages are both to be returns for work done, and returns of an exact equivalence, then, on the assumptions which the canonists made—that ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... and robbery, under the first head he describes a kind of usury, which was practised in the days of Ben Jonson, and I am told in the present, as well as in the times of Maillard. "This," says he, "is called a palliated usury. It is thus. When a person is in want of money, he goes to a treasurer (a kind of banker or merchant), on whom he has an order for 1000 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... mine is a red trade, yet is it better and more honest than some. Better is it to slay a man in fair fight than to suck out his heart's blood in buying and selling and usury after your white fashion. Many a man have I slain, yet is there never a one that I should fear to look in the face again, ay, many are there who once were friends, and whom I should be right glad to snuff with. But there! there! thou hast ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... ever such contempt, such scorn, such repulsion, concentrated in one single ejaculation! It told the woman everything. It told of a failure so complete that hope became an emotion driven forever from her heart. It told her that the usury of life was beyond all belief. It told her that the interest demanded for every pledged moment was without pity, or mercy, or justice. Now she knew how she had pawned, and, oh God, the interest which was ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... him in the details of life was delightful. He filled all the forms of friendship with an unaccustomed charm, and when he expressed his gratitude, it was with that deep emotion which recompenses kindness with usury. He willingly imagined that he felt himself every day dying; he accepted the cares of a friend, hiding from him, lest it should render him unhappy, the little time he expected to profit by them. He possessed great physical courage, and if he did not accept with ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... point of view, this seems to be the only defensible provision, as it would tend to discourage usury, a common evil in money transactions between Europeans and Natives; but because it interfered with Mr. Jabavu's personal aims, that is the only flaw. The cold-blooded evictions and the Draconian principle against living anywhere, except as serfs, are inconsequential because they have not ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... may spring up, and do. Do none spring up in London and elsewhere? But the Government has the power to interfere, and uses that power. These poor people are sufficiently protected by law from their white employers; what they need most is protection for the newcomers against the usury, or swindling, by people of their own race, especially Hindoos of the middle class, who are covetous and ill-disposed, and who use their experience of the island for their own selfish advantage. But that evil also Government ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... one enormous loss on the farmer. This was the withdrawal of tobacco culture, a monopoly of the French State which afforded maximum profits to the cultivator. With regard to the indebtedness of the peasant-owner, my informant said that it certainly existed, but not to any great extent, usury having been prohibited by the local Reichstag a few years before. Again I found myself among French surroundings, French traditions, French speech. Let me add, however, that I heard none of the passionate regrets, recriminations, and wishes that ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... obligation, liability, indebtment[obs3], debit, score. bill; check; account (credit) 805. arrears, deferred payment, deficit, default, insolvency &c. (nonpayment) 808; bad debt. interest; premium; usance[obs3], usury; floating debt, floating capital. debtor, debitor[obs3]; mortgagor; defaulter &c. 808; borrower. V. be in debt &c. adj.; owe; incur a debt, contract a debt &c. n.; run up a bill, run up a score, run up an account; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... got into a Gang; where we play'd at small Game, and stopp'd the small Caravans; thus I gradually lessen'd the wide Disproportion, which there was at first between me and the rest of Mankind: I enjoy'd not only my full Share of the good Things of this Life, but enjoy'd them with Usury. I was look'd upon as a Man of Consequence, and I procur'd this Castle by my military Atchievements. The Satrap of Syria had Thoughts of dispossessing me; but I was then too rich to be any Ways afraid of him; I gave the Satrap a certain Sum of Money, upon Condition that ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... unite with England, and then we shall be the grandest nation in the world. No power in Europe can stand before us. All will be freedom, and civilization, and great ideas, and fine taste in dress. I shall recover the large estates, that would now be mine, but for usury and fraud. And you will be one of the first ladies in the world, as nature has always ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... presents," said the Knight; "I am content to take thy cuff [421] as a loan, but I will repay thee with usury as deep as ever thy prisoner there exacted ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... become a power sufficiently strong to change or modify the corrupt institutions controlled by the powerful classes. The expensive luxury of the nobles was almost incredible. The most distant provinces were ransacked for game, fish, and fowl for the tables of the great. Usury was practiced at a ruinous rate. Every thing was measured by the money standard. Art was prostituted to please degraded tastes. There was no dignity of character; women were degraded; only passing vanities made any impression on egotistical classes; games and festivals ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... obtained by way of barter. Silver is rarely lent out at interest, except between mercantile men in large cities. The legal interest is twelve per cent. but it is commonly extended to eighteen, sometimes even to thirty-six. To avoid the punishment of usury, what is given above twelve per cent. is in the shape of a bonus. "Usury, in China," observes Lord Macartney, "like gaming elsewhere, is a dishonourable mode of getting money; but by a sort of compact between necessity and avarice, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... in renewing their franchise for the next ten years, they were compelled to renew also their million dollars of city bonds. These bonds they then used as collateral. Stone carried all that he could, at enormous usury, I understand, and let some of his banker friends in on the rest; and I suppose the banks paid him a rake-off. The ten-year period is up this fall, and their bonds are naturally retired; but, of course, they ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... it is no longer the cross of Christ. Eighteen-and-a-half centuries of purblind groping for the Kingdom of God finds an idealised Messiah shrined in the modern Pantheon, and yourselves "a chosen generation," leprous with the sin of usury; "a royal priesthood," paralysed with the cant of hireling clergy; "a holy nation," rotten with the luxury of wealth, or embittered by the sting of poverty; "a peculiar people," deformed to Lucifer's own pleasure by the curse of caste; while, in this pandemonium ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... gambled when a child in the nursery, or had tried to gamble, for cakes and toys. He had gambled when at school for coppers, pocket-knives, and marbles. He had gambled when at the University, and had felt the claws of the Children of Usury. He gambled away his nine thousand pounds, or such remainder of it as had not been forestalled, when he came of age. Later on, when in the army, and on home allowance again, for his father would not let him starve, he had kept on gambling; ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... the shadows fear lest ever again they be lured by specious promises to suffer usury at the hands of Yahn, who is overskilled in Law. Only Yahn sits and smiles, watching his hoard increase in preciousness, and hath no pity for the poor shadows whom he hath lured from their quiet to toil ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... such, were never regarded as heretics. But the usury they so widely practiced evidenced an unorthodox doctrine on thievery, which made them liable to be suspected of heresy. Indeed, we find several Popes upbraiding them "for maintaining that usury is not a sin." Some Christians also fell into the same error, and thereby ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... harshly, 'it is easy to say farewell; and as for any hope after that, the devil lends it us at usury, and if we cannot pay on the day of ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... Beethoven, and Darwin, and Plato, and Bach? No; not he. But in warfare and massacre, in rapine and in rape, in black revenge and deadly malice, in slavery, and polygamy, and the debasement of women; and in the pomps, vanities, and greeds of royalty, of clericalism, and of usury and barter—we may easily discern the influence of his ferocious and abominable personality. It is time to have done with this nightmare fetish of a murderous tribe of savages. We have no use for him. We have no criminal so ruthless nor so blood-guilty as he. He is not fit to touch our cities, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... all classes. But it is absolutely necessary for the capitalist to make a distinction between his wife (who is an aristocrat and consults crystal gazers and star gazers in the West End), and vulgar miracles claimed by gipsies or travelling showmen. The Catholic veto upon usury, as defined in dogmatic councils, cuts across all classes. But it is absolutely necessary to the capitalist to distinguish more delicately between two kinds of usury; the kind he finds useful and the kind he does not find useful. The religion of the Servile State must have no dogmas or definitions. ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton

... of usury, this was not bad. We thanked him acidly, offered the Bonds for sale, and, after a little calculation, accepted two hundred and forty-three ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... more merciful. In a statute, however, which was passed in his third year, he forbade Jews practising usury, required them to wear badges of yellow taffety, as a distinguishing mark of their nationality, and demanded from each of them threepence every Easter. Then began the plunder. The king wanted money to build Carnarvon and Conway castles, to be held as fortresses against the Welsh, whom he had ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... the parish of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, where he had been married. He first acted on commission for the Benedictine-Camalduian fathers of the forest of Senart, who had heard of him as a man wholly given to piety; then, giving himself up to usury, he undertook what is known as "business affairs," a profession which, in such hands, could not fail to be lucrative, being aided by his exemplary morals and honest appearance. It was the more easy for him to impose on others, as he could not be accused of any of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... their debtors, which is the usual method of obtaining slaves. Another way is through their wars, whether just or unjust. Those who are driven on their coast by storms are made slaves by the inhabitants of that land. They are so mercenary that they even make slaves of their own brothers, through usury. They do not understand any kind of work, unless it be to do something actually necessary—such as to build their houses, which are made of stakes after their fashion; to fish, according to their method; ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... proposal was for the daughter of a Gray's Inn money-lender. Usury was not a less contemptible vocation in the seventeenth century than it is at the present time; and most young barristers of gentle descent and fair prospects would have preferred any lot to the degradation of marriage with the child ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. To explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... always believed," she began, "that to sell anything for more than its value was something as horrid as—as usury." ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... be bidden to sell his house, and not told wherefore.'—'You shall see stranger things than that,' he answered, 'ere your head be hoarier by twain s'ennight from now.'—'Well! say on,' quoth I.—'Have you,' pursueth he, 'any money lent unto any friend, or set out at usury? You were best to call it in, if you would see it at all.'—'Friend,' said I, 'my money floweth not in so fast that my back lacketh it not so soon as it entereth my purse.'—'The better,' quo' he.—'Good lack!' said I, 'I alway thought it the worse.'—'The worse afore, the better now,' he answered. ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... of ourselves, and listen, in the midst of the silence of midday. And in this so venerable place, where dilapidation and the usury of centuries are revealed on every side—even on the marble columns worn by the constant friction of hands—this voice of gold that rises alone seems as if it were intoning the last lament over the death-pang of Old Islam ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... therefore a very great evil. First of all, there are many things of ancient society not reproved or reprobated by the founders of Christianity, which are inconvenient to, and inconsistent with, our moral sense, and which would violate the laws of modern society. Such are the laws and customs of usury and polygamy. No man in his senses would attempt to establish polygamy in modern society, because it is not prohibited and condemned by the writers of the New Testament. To argue, therefore, that slavery is congenial with the spirit ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... and ships squat, invalids walk about and their doctors take to bed, baths freeze and houses burn, the living perish with thirst and the dead swim about on the surface of the water, thieves watch and magistrates sleep, priests lend at usury and Syrians sing psalms, merchants shoulder arms and soldiers haggle like hucksters, greybeards play at ball and striplings at dice, and eunuchs study the art of war and ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... and diseases of the liver. Then they grumble at the whole world; say that they were not understood, that their time was the time of sacred ideals. While in the family they are despots and not infrequently give money out at usury. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... other classes, most influence on the trade of Central Africa. With the exception of a very few rich Arabs, almost all other traders are subject to the pains and penalties which usury imposes. A trader desirous to make a journey into the interior, whether for slaves or ivory, gum-copal, or orchilla weed, proposes to a Banyan to advance him $5,000, at 50, 60, or 70 per cent. interest. The Banyan is safe enough not to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... requisite which is most perfectly secured from the control of monopoly. The rate of interest for the use of capital is regulated so perfectly by the law of supply and demand, that all the anti-usury laws which have ever been enacted have been able to accomplish but little in enabling the borrower to secure loans at a less rate than that prescribed by competition. The reason for this is plain on consideration. ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... man, unknowing and unknown, For God's refreshing word still gasps and faints; Or happier rather some Elysian zone, Made for the habitation of his saints: Where Nature's love the sweat of labour spares, Nor turns to usury the wealth it lends, Where the rich soil spontaneous harvest bears, And the tall tree with ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... to leave opportunities to procure the commodity, without paying it; the hope of gain will always surmount the fear of punishment. If, when the veteran has served you at the risque of life, you withold his hire; it will be in vain to threaten usury and extortion with imprisonment and fines. If, in your armies, you suffer it to be any man's interest, rather to preserve the life of a horse than a man; be assured, that your own sword is drawn for your enemy: for there will always be some, in whom interest is stronger ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... one of Macartney's friends. But she accepted her riches soberly, and did not fret that they must be so hoarded. If, by moments, as she saw herself, or looked at herself, in the glass, a grain of bitterness surged up in her throat, that all this fair seeming could not be put out to usury—! well, she put it to herself very differently, not at all in words, but in narrowed scrutinising eyes, half-turns of the pretty head, a sigh and lips pressed together. There had been—nay, there was—Lancelot, her darling. That was usufruct; but usury ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... might their law: Decrees are forced from Senate and from Plebs: Consul and Tribune break the laws alike: Bought are the fasces, and the people sell For gain their favour: bribery's fatal curse Corrupts the annual contests of the Field. Then covetous usury rose, and interest Was greedier ever as the seasons came; Faith tottered; thousands saw their gain ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan



Words linked to "Usury" :   rate of interest, lending, usurious, interest rate, loaning



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