What is "cupidity"

Usage examples of "cupidity".

Because I know you need money I will allow my cupidity to knock the price down to twenty-five ducats.

All bar between the marriage of Earnscliff and Isabella was now removed, and the settlements which Ratcliffe produced on the part of Sir Edward Mauley, might have satisfied the cupidity of Ellieslaw himself.

In such a case the latter soon become so reduced that they can no longer satisfy the cupidity of the former, and spoliation ceases for want of sustenance.

At Treves the persecution was encouraged by the cupidity of the magistrates who profited by confiscation of the property of those sentenced.

It appeared, by parts of sentences and broken remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron, whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese laws, a rumor was rife among these truculent travellers, that Balthazar, the headsman, or executioner, of the powerful and aristocratical canton of Berne, was about to be smuggled into their company by the cupidity of the former, contrary, not only to what was due to the feelings and rights of men of more creditable callings, but, as it was vehemently and plausibly insisted, to the very safety of those who were about to trust their fortunes to the vicissitudes of the elements.

The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the gaze of the robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity.

He did not bother to go looking for the odious matron, or even worry about whether she would find him again, for he knew that his portrayal of the beatified Simple Simon infected with cupidity and dazzled by the potentialities of his own newly discovered acumen was as polished as it had ever been in the days when he used to exploit it more frequently, and he was confident that an angler like Mr Eade could be relied on not to let such an obviously well-hooked fish escape the gaff.

And I thought that from Cannes, where one poses, to Monaco, where one gambles, people come to this spot of the earth for hardly any other purpose than to get embroiled or to throw away money on chance games, displaying under this delicious sky and in this garden of roses and oranges all base vanities and foolish pretensions and vile lusts, showing up the human mind such as it is, servile, ignorant, arrogant and full of cupidity.

Yet it appears no paradox at all, but perfectly reasonable, the moment one recollects how easily higher excitements hold lower cupidities in check.

Although a literary artist, Tolstoy was one of those primitive oaks of men to whom the superfluities and insincerities, the cupidities, complications, and cruelties of our polite civilization are profoundly unsatisfying, and for whom the eternal veracities lie with more natural and animal things.

The sun’s wan eye had thawed not only the harbour ice but also the heretofore frozen hatreds and cupidities of all those gathered there.

The confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this race in our America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English history of the same colored man in Asia, and of the brethren of their own color in Ireland, and wherever else Anglo-mercantile cupidity can find a two-penny interest in deluging the earth with human blood.

He disburdened himself of it, like the poor man, who, weighed down by a too heavy burden, casts it to the earth without caring where it falls, nor how much it may tempt the cupidity of the passers-by.

The fortunes, liberties and lives of every individual in easy circumstances are thus legally surrendered to the despotism, cupidity and hostility of the levelers in office.

She advised Henry to ease off on his trading lest he arouse the cupidity of the hunters at Patamoke.