Quotes About Usury

The word must have been in the beginning a magic symbol, which the usury of time wore out. The mission of the poet should be to restore to the word, at least in a partial way, its primitive and now secret force. All verse should have two obligations: to communicate a precise instance and to touch us physically, as the presence of the sea does.

Whenever human activity is directed exclusively to the service of the instinct for self-preservation it is called theft or usury, robbery or burglary etc

The ban on "usury" was a signal example of the Church's resistance to commercial innovation. Banking and credit were crucial to the development of larger-scale commercial enterprises. By restricting the availability of credit, the Church retarded growth.

Pleasure never comes sincere to man; but lent by heaven upon hard usury.

Man was lost if he went to a usurer, for the interest ran faster than a tiger upon him.

Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.

Usury was seen above all as an assault on Christian charity, on Jesus's injunction to treat the poor as they would treat the Christ himself, giving without expectation of return and allowing the borrower to decide on recompense (Luke 6:34

Back then, being a pawnbroker-merchant was one of the only career options available to Jews. Thanks to a papal decree centuries earlier, usury laws forbade Christians from lending for profit. So Jews took over the moneylending trades, becoming pawnbrokers, small trade merchants, and wizards of finance.

The invention of money opened a new field to human avarice by giving rise to usury and the practice of lending money at interest while the owner passes a life of idleness.

Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.

The need for loans often was so great and so widespread that Italian banks opened branches all across the Continent. Although many bishops, monastic orders and even the Roman hierarchy ignored the ban on usury, opposition to interest lingered. As late as the Second Lateran Council in 1139, the Church 'declared the unrepentant usurer condemned by the Old and New Testaments alike and, therefore, unworthy of ecclesiastical consolations and Christian burial'.

Wilson then goes on to provide a new definition of interest: 'Usurye is also saide to be the price of tyme, or of the delaying or forbearing of moneye.' Interest has been described in many ways over the years – it's often referred to as the 'price of money'. But Wilson knew better. Interest, he said, is the price of time. There is no better definition. In

I never saw Claben bawled out for his performance, his extortions, yet he was a louse, the worst vile stingy hyena when it came to usury and dishonesty! A skunk when it came to lend and lease! Never a day's, a penny's grace...the worst tyrant about extensions...he'd fleece them to zero!...he'd finish off even the most decrepit woebegone wrecks...he'd suck them beyond the bone!...and he'd insult them besides into the bargain!

The mathematics of biological reproduction is logically identical with the mathematics of usury. Money earns interest, animals have babies. In

Mine is no rhetorician's fame, No petty usury I claim; Nor am I skilled to face the foe: 'Tis Thou, O Christ, alone I know. Yea, I have learnt to wait on Thee With heart and lips of purity, Humbly my knees in prayer to bend, And tears with songs of praise to blend.

Since there must be borrowing and lending, and men are so hard of heart as they will not lend freely, usury must be permitted.

If it be objected that this doth in a sort authorize usury, which before, was in some places but permissive; the answer is, that it is better to mitigate usury, by declaration, than to suffer it to rage, by connivance.

Putting an end to usurious rates is not going to be as simple as asking banks to lay down internal guidelines, policies and procedures.

And this term usury [Ï"ó?oÏ'], which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of making money this is the most unnatural.

The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

Usurious rates of return are deceitful sirens that sing but to lure the unwary upon the rocks of loss and remorse.

Therefore, be not swayed by the fantastic plans of impractical men who think they see ways to force thy gold to make earnings unusually large. Such plans are the creations of dreamers unskilled in the safe and dependable laws of trade. Be conservative in what thou expect it to earn that thou mayest keep and enjoy thy treasure. To hire it out with a promise of usurious returns is to invite loss.

When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison, and death. Because order serves the good of the community, the individual must be sacrificed for the common good. Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages, after Dietrich von Nieheim in De modis uniendiae reformandi ecclesiam, 1410

Banking!" Mathis was saying. "What is it but usury? Bankers are money lenders, usurers. But because they lend other people's money or money that does not exist, they have a pretty name. They are still usurers. Once, usury was a mortal sin and an abomination, and to be a usurer was to be a criminal for whom there was a prison cell. To-day the usurers are the gods of the earth and the only mortal sin is to be poor.