Mercenary Best Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vertue flies from the heart of a Mercenary man. — George Herbert

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

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

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

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

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

Essentially, the mercenary sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures to fit the needs of his way of life. The — Glen Cook

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

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

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