COVETOUSNESS • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Covetousness

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noun

Covetousness n.

Strong desire. (R.) "When workmen strive to do better than well, They do confound their skill in covetousness."

A strong or inordinate desire of obtaining and possessing some supposed good; excessive desire for riches or money; in a bad sense. "Covetousness, by a greed of getting more, deprivess itself of the true end of getting."

Synonyms: Avarice; cupidity; eagerness.

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Etymology of 'Covetousness'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Covetousness" Quotes from Famous Books

... a Woman can marry, and be maintain'd suitably to her Quality, and she refuses a Man upon no other Score, than that his Fortune, or his Estate, are not equal to her unreasonable Desires, the Passion she acts from is Covetousness. ...

— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville

... sacrament with these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his past life: "Lord God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I pray you to have mercy on my soul; and as I truly made the conquest of Sicily more to serve the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I pray you to pardon ...

— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... recorded of the period. Among The subjects discussed the following are the most important: (a) The true nature of prayer and the follies and hypocrisies of the Pharisees, Lu. ch. 11; (b) The danger of hypocrisy, of denying Christ, of covetousness and of the judgments of Christ, Lu. ch. 12; (c) The need and nature of repentance, the proper use of the Sabbath, the number that shall be saved and the fate of Jerusalem, Lu. ch. 13; (d) The law of conduct in ...

— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... society from the earlier ages, will find that there could be no other result than a repudiation of solid learning and an alliance with art. We have only to compare the poverty and plainness of the first disciples with the extravagance reached in a few generations. Cyprian complains of the covetousness, pride, luxury, and worldly-mindedness of Christians, even of the clergy and confessors. Some made no scruple to contract matrimony with heathens. Clement of Alexandria bitterly inveighs against "the vices of an opulent and luxurious Christian community—splendid dresses, gold ...

— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... and she had inevitably been bound up in all the thoughts that made him shrink from an issue disappointing to her brother. This process had not gone on unconsciously in Deronda: he was conscious of it as we are of some covetousness that it would be better to nullify by encouraging other thoughts than to give it the insistency of confession even to ourselves: but the jealous fire had leaped out at Hans's pretensions, and when his mother accused him of being in love with a Jewess any evasion suddenly seemed an infidelity. ...

— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

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