Quotes & Sayings About Mercenary

Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus' response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control. — Richard Rohr

There can be no freedom in the large sense of the word, no harmonious development, so long as mercenary and commercial considerations play an important part in the determination of personal conduct. — Emma Goldman

Cosca smiled up at the dragon, hands on hips. 'It certainly is a remarkable curiosity. A magnificent relic. But against what is already boiling across the plains? The legion of the dumb? The merchants and farmers and makers of trifles and filers of papers? The infinite tide of greedy little people?' He waved his hat towards the dragon. 'Such things as this are worthless as a cow against a swarm of ants. There will be no place in the world to come for the magical, the mysterious, the strange. They will come to your sacred places and build . . . tailors' shops. And dry-goods emporia. And lawyers' offices. They will make of them bland copies of everywhere else.' The old mercenary scratched thoughtfully at his rashy neck. 'You can wish it were not so. I wish it were not so. But it is so. I tire of lost causes. The time of men like me is passing. The time of men like you?' He wiped a little blood from under his fingernails. 'So long passed it might as well have never been. — Joe Abercrombie

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool. — Paul McCartney

I do not say that all lawyers are bad, but I do maintain that the general tendency is bad: standing up in a court for whichever side has paid you, affecting warmth and conviction, and doing everything you can to win the case, whatever your private opinion may be, will soon dull any fine sense of honour. The mercenary soldier is not a valued creature, but at least he risks his life, whereas these men merely risk their next fee. — Patrick O'Brian

Once you start thinking about it in a mercenary frame of mind, then you're finished. You're a joke, because there are too many mercenaries out there already. — Tommy Shaw

Cultivated people should be superior to any consideration so sordid as a mercenary interest. — Moliere

He sells his loyalties to the highest bidder. Shouldn't even a mercenary have morals? That's the textbook definition of a whore! — Nadia Scrieva

Let not the tie be mercenary, though the service is measured in money. Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ashe, Kiever, Peters; that was a progression in quality, in authority, which to Leamas was axiomatic of the hierarchy of an intelligence network. It was also, he suspected, a progression in ideology. Ashe, the mercenary, Kiever the fellow traveler, and now Peters, for whom the end and the means were identical. — John Le Carre

The passions seldom give good advice but to the interested and mercenary. Resentment generally suggests bad measures. Second thoughts and good nature will rarely, very rarely, approve the first hints of anger. — Horace Walpole

A tragi-comedy, telling of an impoverished minister's desperate attempts to gain money by any means, beginning with a mercenary marriage and ending with sorcery. I should think it might be received very well. I believe I shall call it, ' Tis Pity She's a Corpse. — Susanna Clarke

In a culture where the possibility of wealth and the acquisition of things is so defining of success, we end up pursuing things that, even if we are successful, can never deliver what we envisioned they would. The reason riches become such a snare is because we end up evaluating life in mercenary terms and being seen by others in such terms, and life is just not so. — Ravi Zacharias

New York is the city of privilege. Here is the seat of the Invisible Power represented by the allied forces of finance and industry. This Invisible Government is reactionary, sinister, unscrupulous, mercenary, and sordid. It is wanting in national ideals and devoid of conscience ... This kind of government must be scourged and destroyed. — William Jennings Bryan

There are people we treat wrong and later we're prepared to treat other people right. Perhaps this sounds mercenary, but I feel grateful for these trial relationships, and I would like to think it all evens out - surely, unknowingly, I have served as practice for other people. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Your lawyer is your true mercenary. Under his code honor consists in making the best possible fight in exchange for the biggest possible fee. He is frankly for sale to the highest bidder. — David Graham Phillips

Dinin nodded. "Ten years ago," he began, wondering why he was telling all this to Jarlaxle, "I watched as Zaknafein was sacrificed to the Spider Queen. Rarely has any house in all of Menzoberranzan seen a greater waste." "The weapon master of House Do'Urden had a mighty reputation," the mercenary put in. "Well earned, do not doubt," replied Dinin. — R.A. Salvatore

You really turning mercenary on your favorite older brother? (Dev)
No. I would never do that to Alain. (Aimee)
Ouch! Bearswan got 'tude. (Dev) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Cotter leaned forward. "Where do you get off being such a bossy bitch?"
I looked him dead in the eyes. "I was born a bossy birch, so you can either roll with it or get rolled over. — Rachel Bach

There were times when she was honestly afraid of him. He could kill, had killed for her on a number of occasions, seemingly without a moment's hesitation or an ounce of regret. He was mercenary, brutal, charming, devious, and yes, any other woman would think he was sexy as hell. Not her.
Not her. Oh hell, yes, her. The way he moved, as if he understood his body better than any man had a right to and knew just how to use it for a woman's maximum pleasure. The way his gray eyes slid over her, coolly caressing. It meant nothing, it was part of his stock in trade, and yet she felt it slide over her skin like a physical touch. — Anne Stuart

My lover is dead.
And they think I killed him.
I'm running rogue.
Hell bent on both revenge and redemption. Whatever it takes, I'm going to finish a job that began nine months ago. An unauthorized assignment that turned horribly, devastatingly wrong. My miscalculation.
My fault.
My heart left shattered into incomplete pieces which will never wholly fit back together again.
But first I have to outsmart my former organization and the hired killer they've sent after me; a ghost from my past who knows my every move, who's been inside my head, my heart, my dreams and memories: Jaxson.
I'm the traitor, Kylie. The rogue mercenary, Jaxon's newest assignment. And this is our love story. — Michele Mannon

a South American mercenary who served as Inspector General of the Turkish forces in Armenia, reported that the Governor-General of the province had ordered the local authorities in Adil Javus 'to exterminate all Armenian males of twelve years of age and over'. — Niall Ferguson

Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers. — Alma Gluck

Many men who do creditable things refuse to let it be known. This is a mistake. While we all admire modesty, nevertheless there is a great national need to do everything possible to bring home to the rank and file of the people that all employers and all wealthy men are not grinding, mercenary, selfish skinflints, but that many of them take delight in doing helpful things for others ... Shortcomings of employers are constantly paraded. Why not let the public become acquainted with the better side which most present-day employers possess? — B.C. Forbes

Being a mercenary, though ... Hey, we just go wherever there's a mixture of money and trouble, and everyone in the galaxy is a potential customer.
Even the people you're paid to shoot at?
Well, yeah. There are customers we serve, and customers we service.
-Captain Kevyn Andreyasn & General Tagon — Howard Tayler

I spent a great deal of time with Che Guevara while I was in Havana. I believe he was far less a mercenary than he was a freedom fighter. — Maureen O'Hara

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery. — Leo Tolstoy

The truth is that banks are the last feudal kingdoms, their rulers omnipotent, divine warlords. Their key lieutenants are 'ronin' (wandering mercenary samurai) who roam financial markets ready to ally themselves to any warlord for a share of plunder. This is not the place to apply the latest management theory. — Satyajit Das

Ranger is one of the few civilians in Trenton with a permit to carry concealed. He owns office buildings in Boston, has a daughter in Florida by a failed marriage, has worked worldwide as a mercenary, and has a moral code that isn't entirely in sync with our legal system. I have no idea who the heck he is . . . but I like him. — Janet Evanovich

It sounds mercenary and it smacks of rats leaving the sinking ship. But get real, when everyone is bailing out, you don't want to be the last man standing. — Robbie Fowler

I wandered the earth a mercenary, daring the gods to kill me but surviving because part of me was already dead. — Barry Eisler

It's an interesting thing that we have not copyrighted our ideas about liberty or tried to charge others to use them, or even to credit us when they do so. We've given these ideas away freely. To what end? We have not calculated the benefit to ourselves much. Some have said that we do what we do for purely selfish or mercenary reasons, that we fought in Iraq, for example, because of our oil interests. Such views are not only deeply cynical but also fail to account for much else that we do. Are we being self-serving in what we've done in Africa to combat AIDS? Are we being self-serving in sending ships and supplies to disaster areas around the world? Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas. — Eric Metaxas

"A child!" said Edith, looking at her. "When was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight." — Charles Dickens

Hi. I'm here to enlist.
You can't. You aren't human.
You see, little fella, we don't do sociological stuff like "interspeciated workplaces." We're a crack company of space mercenaries. We do "hurting people" and "breaking things."
Sounds like my kind of fun.
-Schlock & Lieutenant Der Trihs — Howard Tayler

Of all sorts of flattery, that which comes from a solemn character and stands before a sermon is the worst-complexioned. Such commendation is a satire upon the author, makes the text look mercenary, and disables the discourse from doing service. — Jeremy Collier

(He) was in love with the idea of revolution. Men like that, even when they turn their backs on their party and their comrades, can never let go of the idea: it's the secret god that rules their hearts. It is what makes them come alive; they revel in the danger, the exquisite pain. It is to them what childbirth is to a woman, or war to a mercenary. — Amitav Ghosh

Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness. — Steven Pressfield

A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair. — Mahatma Gandhi

But I think what we're coming to grips with is the fact that we actually have a mercenary Army, and it doesn't have a nice ring to it. We call it 'volunteers', but we're basically paying people to serve their country. And if you're going to pay people and have a mercenary Army, you're going to have to pay the market rate. And so the bounties are going up - more money for tuition, higher enlistment bonuses - and I think it's appropriate. — Eleanor Clift

I wanted a footman with twinkly eyes like Father Christmas, not the eyes of a Viking mercenary. Footmen are supposed to be clean-shaven and pleasant-looking, and have nice names like Peter or George. But mine is scowly and growly, and his name is Drago and he has a black beard. — Lisa Kleypas

Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort. — Louis MacNeice

Now you're just being silly. He's a mercenary- he's not going to go about penning love letters, and really, what would he write? 'Anna ... love you ... grrr?' Olivia to Annalia — Kresley Cole

The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough. — Jonathan Stroud

A true warrior can only serve others, not himself ... When you become a mercenary, you're just a bully with a gun. — Evan Wright

Our country, which is situated in the southeast of the continent, shares a border with three countries: the Union of Eastern Nations to the north, the Principality of Amidonia to the west, and the Turgis Republic to the southwest. Also, across the sea to the south east there is the Kuzuryu Archipelago Union. In addition, to the west of Amidonia, the mercenary state Zem could also be called one of our surrounding countries. Of these, zero are friendly, four our neutral, and one is hostile. — Dojyomaru

The missionary is building the product and building the service because they love the customer, because they love the product, because they love the service. The mercenary is building the product or service so that they can flip the company and make money. — Jeff Bezos

I went out to the desert where Cleopatra camped out with her mercenary army. It's a desolate outpost. Nothing has changed since her day. You realize how far she had to travel. Not only is it a good 150 miles against the current, you can't take a ship. — Stacy Schiff

A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. — C.S. Lewis

Some came for sheer love of adventure and wanted no reward beyond that; some wanted fame or its counterfeit, publicity; some were mercenary and thought primarily in terms of what they were going to get out of it; and lastly there was that small group, the like of which gives character to any expedition of merit -- not necessarily scientists at all, but men who could understand the lure, if not the love, of knowledge for its own sake; men who came not for position or money but who found full reward for their effort in the pursuit of an ideal. — Lawrence McKinley Gould

I no longer believed that Valentino would continue to build anything at all. Instead, he would merely leave behind the empire of hope that he had constructed in each of our minds. Leonardo's empire boasted cities more perfect than Plato or Augustine could have imagined. My empire of hope was an Italy defended by citizen soldiers rather than mercenary thugs, free of tyranny and foreign armies, with justice for all regardless of rank or wealth. But I feared I had come to Cesenatico only to wander among its ruins. — Michael Ennis

The first rule of being a mercenary? Find out what the client wants, then convince him that, a) you can get it for him, and, b) you're the ONLY one who can get it for him. Second rule? Lie. Often. The truth rarely serves you well in this business
-Cadeon Woede, mercenary, second in line to the throne of the rage demons, a.k.a. Cade the Kingmaker — Kresley Cole

That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest? — Henry David Thoreau

We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object. — C.S. Lewis

Now she was a killer, a mercenary. And that was all. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor. — Eric Hoffer

You have to remember, Kanai, she said at length, that as a young man Nirmal was in love with the idea of revolution. Men like that, even when they turn their backs on their party and their comrades, can never let go of the idea: it's the secret god that rules their hearts. It is what makes them come alive; they revel in the danger, the exquisite pain. It is to them what childbirth is to a woman, or war to mercenary. — Amitav Ghosh

It's one thing to study war
and another to live the warrior's life.
- Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C. — Steven Pressfield

I don't remember this earlier,' said Tuck.
'No?' said Robin in a neutral voice, and Tuck was too busy to pursue it, but merely bound it up and told him it was time for him, too, to try to sleep. Robin never had to tell anyone of his meeting, weaponless and with an armful of dead branches to break up for firewood, with one of Guy's men. The next day, when the burying began, no one questioned the body of another mercenary. — Robin McKinley

I'm like this mercenary actor going from show to show - people love to hire me, but then don't want me around much. — Sebastian Roche

Frank thought. Each time he became someone else's spy it got easier. The ideological virgin usually finds his first time an excruciating experience, just as an amateur hiker, used to the straight-and-narrow freeway of nine-to-five reliability, looks askance at the boulder-strewn path of mercenary betrayal, winding on up into the clouds and down into terrible moraines. But after the first time, the pain and intimacy and guilt becomes a habit subject to check listed procedures; and to the professional, the politically promiscuous soul, all that matters is the craft itself, the right skitter and stab and swing of the hips, so that in the end you can laugh at the inevitability of your own violent death. Frank was now almost at that stage. — William T. Vollmann

Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations. — Joseph Pulitzer

And is it all about the pay?"
"Hence the term mercenary." He chucked her under the chin. "Try to keep up, halfling. — Kresley Cole

You didn't think you'd find a Science-savvy mercenary team in the empire without a few eccentricities, did you? Amaranthe asked. — Lindsay Buroker

The Bible constantly warns against a merely mercenary relationship with God - a friendship of convenience or self-interest. We should not love God simply because doing so will produce many consolations in our life. We must enter a true relationship, were we fall in love not with His benefits, but with Him. — Robert Barron

When I was a screenwriter, I was doing it for mercenary reasons. — James Frey

Very well. What do you do as a mercenary?"
"I specialize in usurping thrones. They call me the kingmaker." Bragging now? — Kresley Cole

To secure his king's trust, his family's future, and perhaps even his own happiness, he needed to convince her he was more than a mercenary -- in fact, a man who would stand by her side. — Sandra Jones

You wear your armor even to dinner, Lady Wilhelmina?"
"Of course I wear armor. I am sitting with a pirate, a mercenary, an adventurer, and a bounder. If a shot is not fired tonight, I daresay that your reputations are nothing but lies. — Meljean Brook

Just realize that the Mechanics do not exist and are not worthy of your attention.
Unless they threaten you, and then you must kill them, Mage Alain. Mechanics are as merciless as they are mercenary. If any appear dangerous, kill them ...
What if he had remembered that advice during the bandit attack, when the Mechanic had pointed her weapon at his face? He could have killed her then. He could have tried at least. Then, when she was dead, the bandits would have found Alain and killed him, too.
Clearly the advice of his elders was lacking in some respects. — Jack Campbell

So you're a fellow mercenary, then."
"Does this mean you'll afford me some professional courtesy?"
"Don't ask for that. All it means is that you might get to face the person who kills you ... But only if it's convenient. — Howard Tayler

For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class — Hans Koning

What was it with evildoers trying to hire my boyfriend as a mercenary? — Becca Fitzpatrick

These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914. — A.E. Housman

That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members. Such a sentiment, which had rendered the legions of the republic almost invincible, could make but a very feeble impression on the mercenary servants of a despotic prince; and it became necessary to supply that defect by other motives, of a different, but not less forcible nature; honour and religion. — Edward Gibbon

Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. — C.S. Lewis

America having changed to benefit them, their accounts suddenly cleared, they reverted to the only actions that still seemed mercenary in this topsy-turvy landscape: They rode the countryside like desperadoes, helping people. — Alden Bell

Idle Jeffrey, when asking his cousin for money: "I fear I have not a mercenary tendency."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer and his cousin, Plantagenet Palliser: "Men must have mercenary tendencies or they would not have bred. The man who plows, so he may live, does so because, luckily, he has mercenary tendencies."

Jeffrey: "Just so, but you see I am less lucky than the plowman."

Palliser: "There is no vulgar error so vulgar, that is to say common or erroneous, as that by which men have been taught to say that mercenary tendencies are bad. The desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combines with honesty, and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope

You can call me mercenary, or call me madam, but, as I always tell my customers - just call me anytime! — Xaviera Hollander

We either need an overwhelming force advantage, or we need more information."
"Reinforcements cut into our bounty, remember?"
"It's unanimous. We need more information. — Howard Tayler

She could and had faced an armed laser in the hands of a mad mutant
mercenary with less fear than she faced such unswerving emotion ... — J.D. Robb

By the end of the nineteenth century, the stereotype of the ugly American - voracious, preachy, mercenary, and bombastically chauvinist - was firmly in place in Europe. — Simon Schama

Every poem is about a brave hero named Kregi," she said. "Every single one. He always has a steed, and we have to hear about the steed and the three different kinds of swords he carried and the color of the scarf he wore tied to his wrist and all the poor monsters he slew and then how he was a gentle man and true. For a mercenary, Tolya is disturbingly maudlin. — Leigh Bardugo

You snuck across my yard like a trained mercenary. Dressed in a black getup without so much as a pebble misplaced under your shoe or a crinkled leaf to make a sound. Had the lay of the land within seconds too I bet. Took down a man who outweighs you by fifty pounds as if you done it before. You hardly flinched when I set my gun on you. Now you're sittin' there all hunched around yourself like a rabbit in the grass. Definitely runnin' I just hope it's not from the law. — Jocelyn Adams

The ( Catholic ) church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any war as just since it supported General Franco 's invasion of Spain to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the thirties, on the side of Hitler . — Christopher Hitchens

Three classes inhabited the city (Alexandria in Egypt): first the Aegyptian or native stock of people, who were quick-tempered and not inclined to civil life; and secondly the mercenary class, who were severe and numerous and intractable ... ; and, third, the tribe of the Alexandrians, who also were not distinctly inclined to civil life, and for the same reasons, but still they were better than those others, for even though they were a mixed people, still they were Greeks by origin and mindful of the customs common to the Greeks. — Strabo

Are you done briefing the company yet?"
"We, um ... Haven't gotten through the introductions yet."
"Allow me: Time-traveling Kevyn Andreyasn, this is the mercenary company "Tagon's Toughs."
"Company, this is the time-traveling Kevyn Andreyasn, who will have become your captain thirty-two hours from now, as of seven weeks ago.
Now, quick. Let's go save the galaxy while they're confused. — Howard Tayler

Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth. — George Washington

If there are atheists, who is to be blamed if not the mercenary tyrants of souls who, in revolting us against their swindles, compel some feeble spirits to deny the God whom these monsters dishonour? — Voltaire

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will in time produce a people as base as itself. — Joseph Pulitzer

Temple grimaced, and twitched, and fidgeted with a frayed sleeve. 'What can we do, though?' 'Only follow our consciences.' Temple rounded on him angrily. 'For a mercenary you talk a lot about conscience!' 'Why concern yourself unless yours bothers you?' 'As far as I can tell, you're still taking Cosca's money!' 'If I stopped, would you?' Temple opened his mouth, then soundlessly shut it and scowled off at the horizon, picking at his sleeve, and picking, and picking. — Joe Abercrombie

The Howeitat spread out along the cliffs to return the peasants' fire. This manner of going displeased Auda, the old lion, who raged that a mercenary village folk should dare to resist their secular masters, the Abu Tayi. So he jerked his halter, cantered his mare down the path, and rode out plain to view beneath the easternmost houses of the village. There he reined in, and shook a hand at them, booming in his wonderful voice: 'Dogs, do you not know Auda?' When they realized it was that implacable son of war their hearts failed them, and an hour later Sherif Nasir in the town-house was sipping tea with his guest the Turkish Governor, trying to console him for the sudden change of fortune. — T.E. Lawrence

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay. — A.E. Housman

All ceremony depends on symbol; and all symbols have been vulgarized and made stale by the commercial conditions of our time...Of all these faded and falsified symbols, the most melancholy example is the ancient symbol of the flame. In every civilized age and country, it has been a natural thing to talk of some great festival on which "the town was illuminated." There is no meaning nowadays in saying the town was illuminated...The whole town is illuminated already, but not for noble things. It is illuminated solely to insist on the immense importance of trivial and material things, blazoned from motives entirely mercenary...It has not destroyed the difference between light and darkness, but it has allowed the lesser light to put out the greater...Our streets are in a permanent dazzle, and our minds in a permanent darkness. — G.K. Chesterton

What is a whore?"
Unsurprisingly, that hadn't been one of the words we had shared over the last span of days. For half a moment I considered lying, but there was no way I could manage it. "He says your mother is a person men pay money to have sex with."
Tempi turned back to the mercenary and nodded graciously. "You are very kind. I thank you. — Patrick Rothfuss

The requisitions of the income tax have added greatly to the attractions of mercenary crime. — Rex Stout

If we cannot persuade our friends by reasons we must be content "and not bring a mercenary army to our aid" (He meant passions.) — C.S. Lewis

My name is Parker Black. I sometimes work as BlackDawn. My employer is Titan, and my training is from both the Marines and MIT." "I know." "But you don't know what that means. I will kill to protect you. I will hunt what follows you," he said through clenched teeth. "I will seek out anything that has its sights on you, and I will destroy it. I'm not a muscle hound with a hard-on for electronics. I'm a mercenary for the good guys, an analyst of life-and-death situations, and I will, I swear to Christ, maim, harm, and kill anything that wants what I care about. — Cristin Harber

Amazon may be the most beguiling company that ever existed, and it is just getting started. It is both missionary and mercenary ... That has always been a potent combination. — Brad Stone

Players aren't quite as mercenary as people make them out to be. Some of them are but some aren't. — David Gill

It is immoral to hold an opinion in order to curry another's favor; mercenary, servile, and against the dignity of human liberty to yield and submit; supremely stupid to believe as a matter of habit; irrational to decide according to the majority opinion, as if the number of sages exceeded the infinite number of fools. — Giordano Bruno