When you come down to brass tacks – if we may be allowed the expression – everybody is governed by selfishness.

[T]he fugitive had been cajoled by a certain knight of the post, who undertook to manage the thousand pounds in such a manner, as would, in a very little time, make him perfectly independent […].

Mr Barretto informed us he had shipped two hundred and forty pipes of Madeira [which] not only impeded the ship's progress by making her too deep in the water, but greatly increased her motion.

'Wrecked his body and his mind, no use to hisself or his family or nobody, just a leech on society'.