"Avidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... FREIHERR VON (1757-1807), Prussian soldier and military writer, and brother of General Count F.W. Buelow, entered the Prussian army in 1773. Routine work proved distasteful to him, and he read with avidity the works of the chevalier Folard and other theoretical writers on war, and of Rousseau. After sixteen years' service he left Prussia, and endeavoured without success to obtain a commission in the Austrian army. He then returned to Prussia, and for some time managed a theatrical company. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Atanekerdluk—a flora rich in species and wonderfully preserved in type—and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period—one so remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may be ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... proffered terms of amnesty, and may be deemed fit objects of example; that the friends to peace and good government were not in need of that aid and countenance which they ought always to receive, and, I trust, ever will receive, against the vicious and turbulent, I should have caught with avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... shortly these: Mike had, among the other gossip of the place, heard frequent tales of the immense wealth and great parsimony of the doctor, and of his anxiety to amass money on all occasions, and the avidity with which even the smallest trifle was added to his gains. He accordingly resolved to amuse himself at the expense of this trait, and proceeded thus. Boring a hole in a halfpenny, he attached a long string to it, and having dropped it on the doctor's ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... happened. And yet it was plain that it was still in their thoughts, from the joy with which they resumed their lives, the pleasant life from day to day, which is never truly valued until it is endangered. As usual when danger is past, they gulped it down with renewed avidity. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... first portioned out; but from the impatience of some of the women to get at the liver, a general scramble took place for it, and it was snatched in pieces, and, without the slightest process of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... pa's room, Des," said the girl. He shook the carving-knife at her, at which gesture she said "Pooh!" and applied herself to the roast mutton with avidity. They all ate largely, especially the girl, whose wide mouth was filled with splendid teeth. Mrs. Somers made a motion with her glass for Murphy to bring her the wine, and pouring a teaspoonful, held it to her mouth, as if she were practicing drinking ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... are seldom read except by children and maiden Gy-ei. The most interesting works of a purely literary character are those of explorations and travels into other regions of this nether world, which are generally written by young emigrants, and are read with great avidity by the relations and friends they ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,—Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... house for the improvement of my daughter, but even distinguished with particular marks of confidence and favour, little thinking he had either inclination or capacity to debauch the sentiments of my child. I was rejoiced beyond measure to see with what alacrity she received his lessons, with what avidity she listened to his discourse, which was always equally moral, instructing, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... corrupt the citizens in order to gain them over to their masters, to the great prejudice of the republic and fomenting of the parties, &c. And should they only diffuse among a nation, formerly plain, frugal, and virtuous, a taste for luxury, avidity for money, and the manners of courts, these would be more than sufficient for wise and provident rulers to dismiss them."—Book IV. ch. v. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... long-benighted beings. They had never dreamed of a God of love; their only notion of a superior power was one which inspired them with awe and terror. I have frequently observed that the unsophisticated minds of savages grasp the simple and glorious truths of the gospel with an avidity and a power of comprehension which would be surprising to those who have been accustomed week after week and year after year to set the same truths before those to whom they are familiar. As I heard Mr Bent and Vihala ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... innumerable means of hearing news of his Majesty; but I am persuaded that, had she received each day one hundred letters from those near the Emperor, she would have read and reread them with the same avidity. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... letter further reveals that our early colonists cherished their worldly possessions fully as fondly as their descendants, who pursue with avidity the chase after the dollar. And when it came to the question of the slave's spiritual welfare, or the master's temporal prosperity, the master did not hesitate to show which he considered of the most importance. For, as Mr. Taylor writes, when it was rumored in 1719 that the General ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... deposited me and my suite, consisting of a black servant, named "Mac," and a little girl, in safety in the midst of my many packages, not altogether satisfied with my prospects; for the rain was falling heavily and steadily, and the Gatun porters were possessing themselves of my luggage with that same avidity which distinguishes their brethren on the pier of Calais or the quays of Pera. There are two species of individuals whom I have found alike wherever my travels have carried me—the reader can guess ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... laying snares and traps, they are seldom without large supplies of game and flesh of wild animals of all kinds. They keep the dried bodies of a variety of birds for medical purposes; mongoose, squirrels and flying-foxes they eat with avidity as articles of luxury. Spirituous liquors and intoxicating drugs are indulged in to a large extent, and chiefs of clans assume the title of Bhangi or drinkers of hemp (bhang) as a mark of honour.... In lying, thieving ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and scratching her chin with the pencil. "Is it not for sale?" he asked. And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her. She simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go. "I haven't made a mistake—pas insulte, no?" her interlocutor continued. "Don't ...
— The American • Henry James
... throwing out a hook baited with fame. An ambitious youth let go all he had and seized the baited hook with singular avidity. It inspired him with inward hope, and he became so engaged in thinking of his golden future that he followed whither the gentle drawing led him, until he also reached the questionable ground of the World. There he became still further entangled until he was ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... of her asking him a question of this kind that he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. "You are always snatching at information," he said; "you will never consent to have ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... accord with Peck's; nor, for want of knowing his mother, can we guess why king Richard was more secret on the birth of this son (if Peck's Richard Plantagenet was truly so) than on those of his other natural children. Perhaps the truest remark that can be made on this whole story is, that the avidity with which our historians swallowed one gross ill-concocted legend, prevented them from desiring or daring to sift a single part of it. If crumbs of truth are mingled with it, at least they are now undistinguishable in such a mass of ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... and of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Vaucanson was still more remarkable. It was of the size of life, and so perfect an imitation of the living animal that all the spectators were deceived. It executed, says Brewster, all the natural movements and gestures, it ate and drank with avidity, performed all the quick motions of the head and throat which are peculiar to the duck, and like it muddled the water which it drank with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking in the most natural manner. In the anatomical structure the artist exhibited the highest skill. Every bone ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in his poems that he grows old "daily learning something new." Or again in my own case, it was only when an old man that I became acquainted with Greek literature, which in fact I absorbed with such avidity—in my yearning to quench, as it were, a long-continued thirst—that I became acquainted with the very facts which you see me now using as precedents. When I heard what Socrates had done about the lyre I should have liked for my part ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the indoor nor the outdoor splendor, nor all the personal comforts they enjoyed, made this favored band of colored people forgetful of the brethren they had left in bondage. Every word about John Brown was sought for and read with avidity. When he was first taken captive, Chloe said: "The angel that let Peter out o' prison ha'n't growed old an' hard o' hearing. If we prays loud enough, he'll go and open the doors for ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Rebel camp ground. Traces of their occupancy were found not only in their depredations in the neighborhood destructive of railroad bridges, but also in letters and wall-paper envelopes adorned with the lantern-jawed phiz of Jefferson Davis. The latter were sought after with avidity as soon as ranks were broken and tents pitched; the more eagerly perhaps for the reason that during the greater part of their previous month of service they had been frequently within sound of rebel cannon, although but once under their fire. During the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... and ultimately to the entire person. They were devoid of shame, and yielded to this inspection without the slightest manifestation of offended modesty. At first they were indifferent to cooked food, and would chase and catch and eat the grasshoppers and lizards with the avidity of wild turkeys, and seemed, as those fowls, to relish these ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... too few men of sense and respectability among them. They had no good committee men; not enough to bear down the current of vice and folly. We dread the contagion of bad example. Some of our men soon resorted to their detestable gambling tables; and pursued their old vices with astonishing avidity. We seriously expostulated with our companions, on their returning to the pernicious practice of gambling, after they had had the virtue of refraining on board the Crown Prince; and our advice induced nearly all of them to renounce the destructive practice. I had read, but never saw convincing ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... gratified, if our book is not bought up with quite so much avidity by those high-bred epicures, who are unhappily so much more nice than wise, that they cannot eat any thing dressed by an English cook; and vote it barbarously unrefined and intolerably ungenteel, to endure the sight of the best bill ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... 1847 to 1853, Sir James Brooke was very popular in England. The story of his first occupation of Sarawak, published in his journals, and the cruizes of her Majesty's ships in those eastern seas—the Dido and the Samarang—were read with avidity, and furnished the English public with a romance which had all the charm of novelty. However difficult and inconvenient it might be for the English Government to recognize a native State under an English rajah, who was at the same time a subject of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... hold a distinguished place in connection with those valuable institutions. He is the son of a private banker in Huddersfield. When at school he was presented, as a prize, with a copy of Dr. Franklin's Essays and Letters. He perused the book with avidity. It implanted in his mind the germs of many useful thoughts, and exercised a powerful influence in giving a practical character to his life. Huddersfield is a busy manufacturing town. Although workmen were well paid for their labour, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... wonder in Waddy next morning, and much argument. Neighbours discussed the sensation with avidity. Mrs. Sloan, uncombed and in early morning deshabille, with an apron thrown over her head, carried the news to Mrs. Justin's back fence, and Mrs. Justin ran with it to the back fence of Mrs. McKnight, and Mrs. McKnight spread the tidings as far as the house ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... binary compounds as a class with the quaternary compounds as a class. The molecules constituting oxides (whether alkaline or acid or neutral) chlorides, sulphurets, &c. are relatively small; and, combining with great avidity, form stable compounds. On the other hand, the molecules constituting nitrogenous bodies are relatively vast and are chemically inert; and such combinations as their simpler types enter into, cannot withstand disturbing forces. Now a like difference is seen if we contrast with one another ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... their production. While they were thus employed the postman's knock was heard, and a letter was brought in from the far-away Australian exiles. The period at which these monthly missives arrived were moments of intense anxiety, and the letter was seized upon with eager avidity. It was from Gertrude to her mother, as all these letters were; but in such a production they had a joint property, and it was hardly possible to say who first mastered ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... part, was not yet alive to her position. She saw she had lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity to her next interview with Mr Bloomfield; but she had no idea that she was imprisoned, for she knew of the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Philosophy of the Unconditioned," which I came upon, by chance, in an odd volume of the Edinburgh Review. The latter was certainly strange reading for a boy, and I could not possibly have understood a great deal of it;[37] nevertheless I devoured it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind the strong conviction that, on even the most solemn and important of questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders real ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... told him all her tale, and, telling it, seemed to relieve her mind while her tired body rested. Dick listened with earnest avidity. He lost not the slightest change in her expression as she spoke. He was shocked when he heard of her father; he was grieved when he imagined how she must have felt when the news came to her; he was angry ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of surpassing my seniors, and the hope of exposing their ignorance, stimulated me to inquiry, and roused me to application. The books which I had reported lost to my father, were handed out from the bottom of my chest, and read with avidity: many others I borrowed from the officers, whom I must do the justice to say, not only lent them with cheerfulness, but offered me the use of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... saw-grass, grows plentifully in places, and is sometimes used as food for cattle when grass is scarce. In its natural state it is inaccessible to cattle because of its hard and thorny exterior. To make it available it is cut down and quartered with a hoe, when the hungry cattle eat it with avidity. Where the plant grows thickly one man can cut enough in one day to feed several ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... was disturbed to note that there began to appear in various publications—especially M——'s, which was flourishing greatly for the moment—stories which while exhibiting much of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy ending, had been impressed on him—by whom? To my sincere ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... good as his word, and the account appeared. The press throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that helped to fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into the truth of the account, or after the character of the original authority. It was in print, and that struck the great majority of the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the hostile preparations were concerted with the dark and perfidious artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The people of Thessalonica were treacherously invited, in the name of their sovereign, to the games of the Circus; and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements, that every consideration of fear, or suspicion, was disregarded by the numerous spectators. As soon as the assembly was complete, the soldiers, who had secretly been posted round the Circus, received the signal, not of the races, but of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... tray with an enormous jug of hot water and a glass followed Lady Nottingham, for she was one of those people who seem to keep permanently young by always doing the latest thing. Just now there was a revival of hot-water drinking, and with avidity (as if it tasted nice) ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... took up the idea with avidity. Coffee houses increased in number. The demand outstripped the supply. In the seraglio itself special officers (kahvedjibachi) were commissioned to prepare the coffee drink for the sultan. Coffee was ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... inquiry (already too long) by any reflections on the avidity with which this passage of the MS. has been seized, and made the groundwork of charges against Henry of "unfilial conduct," "unnatural rebellion" towards his father, and "the unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," with other hard words and harder surmises; because we ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... is covered with trees, some of which are of enormous size; and between them, the underwood springs up so thick, that the swamp is, in many parts, absolutely impervious. It abounds also with cane-reeds, and with long rich grass, on which cattle feed with great avidity, and become fat in a short time. In the interior of the swamp, large herds of wild cattle are found; the offspring, probably, of animals which have at different times been lost, or turned out to feed. Bears, wolves, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... meantime been preparing some venison steaks, which, with some cakes from the oven, were devoured by the Indian with the same avidity with which he had swallowed the broth. But although the food considerably revived him, he still showed evident signs of exhaustion; so Rachel, placing a buffalo robe in the corner of the room, invited him to lie down and rest. He staggered ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... the country got tired of its long fit of sulks; trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened—a current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... done this than the watchers saw him start upright again. He was undoubtedly devouring the thrilling news item on the front page with "avidity"—-at least, that was what Jim Pettigrew would have called it, had he been at his favorite job of "writing up" the doings of Scranton society for ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... markets for retail trade, they are not very nice in the quality or condition of their fish; and enormous conger eels, which would be instantly rejected by the middling, or even lower classes in England, are, at Dieppe, bought with avidity and relished with glee. A few francs will procure a dish of fish large enough for a dozen people. The quays are constantly crowded, but there seems to be more of bustle than of business. The town is certainly picturesque, notwithstanding the houses are very little more than a century ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be any proof of sincerity, the man was savage as a Sioux. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly stupid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing but small change; for that he had a great avidity. In the course of time he proved to be a chicken-stealer, and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from the first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an ingenious, theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only stock-in-trade to beg withal. The choice of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry, and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor door; the avidity ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Those who saw him every day never ventured to believe that they quite ever understood him, so various and so peculiar were the aspects he exhibited even here at home. Those who attempted to study him were as much perplexed as charmed. The avidity with which a cheap book, easily read, professing to give personal recollections of such a man, would be seized upon by the mass of reading people, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is repeatedly affirmed, the New Testament touches but lightly upon the duties of self-regard. To be occupied constantly with the thought of one's self is a symptom of morbid egoism rather than of healthy personality. The avidity of self-improvement and even zeal for religion may become a refined form of selfishness. We must be willing at times to renounce our personal comfort, to restrain our zest for intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment, to be content to be less ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... returned with a fresh trayful; and Toad, pitching into the toast with avidity, his spirits quite restored to their usual level, told her about the boat-house, and the fish-pond, and the old walled kitchen-garden; and about the pig-styes and the stables, and the pigeon-house and the hen-house; and about the dairy, and the wash-house, and the china-cupboards, and the linen-presses ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... smallest particle, which produces a most exhilarating effect; in less then ten minutes he tastes again and again, always increasing the quantity; and in half an hour he has a gum-stick of condensed snow, which he masticates with avidity, and replaces with assiduity the moment that it has melted away. But his thirst is not allayed in the slightest degree; he is as hot as ever, and still perspires; his mouth is in flames, and he is driven to the necessity of quenching them with snow, which adds fuel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... the spirit of the life in which she moved; so that she no longer shocked any one's religious feelings by acts forbidden by the Puritan idea of Sunday, or failed in any of the exterior proprieties of religious life. She also read and studied with avidity the English Bible, which came to her with the novelty of a wholly new book in a new language; nor was she without a certain artistic appreciation of the austere precision and gravity of the religious life by which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... making the plans to scale before the teacher in manual training would allow him to take up the work of construction. The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. Under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. He secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his interest in arithmetic ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... cattle can trample them, and spread them so that they will be but a few inches in depth. If piled in heaps they will quickly heat; but even then, if not too much decayed, cattle will eat them with avidity. Cabbages are hardy plants, and loose heads will stand a good deal of freezing and thawing without serious injury. They are not generally injured with the thermometer 16 deg. below freezing. The waste, after the seed ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... appearance not revealing the undeveloped depths of his nature. He made the acquaintance of some of the students at Yale College, and of the Rev. E. W. Dwight. These friends becoming interested in his welfare, offered to teach him. He accepted their aid with avidity, and made wonderful progress, at the same time becoming more and more lovable ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... of the dry (we cannot call them high) grounds: the swamps, with which this coast abounds, are still more fruitful, and abundantly compensate the avidity and barrenness of the soil around them. They bear rice in such plenty, especially the marsh about New Orleans, "That the inhabitants reap the greatest advantage from it, and reckon it the manna of the land." [Footnote: Dumont, I. 15.] It was such marshes on the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... three-sided in form, with sharp angles, similar in shape to beech-mast, whence the name from the Ger. Buchweizen, beechwheat. Buckwheat is grown in Great Britain only to supply food for pheasants and to feed poultry, which devour the seeds with avidity. In the northern countries of Europe, however, the seeds are employed as human food, chiefly in the form of cakes, which when baked thin have an agreeable taste, with a darkish somewhat violet colour. The meal of buckwheat is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... hung to her belt, kept that for himself and, stretching his arm across the straw, gave the bowl to Zackrist, who had watched it with the longing, ravenous eyes of a starving wolf, and seized it with rabid avidity. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... plan. Many powerful impressions and arguments, instinctive, critical, or moral, combine to teach that in the wreck of matter the spirit emerges, deathless, from the closing waves of decay. The confirmation of that truth becomes irresistible when we see how reason and conscience, with delighted avidity, seize upon its adaptedness alike to the brightest features and the darkest defects of the present life, whose imperfect symmetries and segments are harmoniously filled out by the adjusting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... bellicose disposition on the part of the cactuses is a tolerably easy one to guess. Fodder is rare in the desert. The starving herbivores that find themselves from time to time belated on the confines of such thirsty regions would seize with avidity upon any succulent plant which offered them food and drink at once in their last extremity. Fancy the joy with which a lost caravan, dying of hunger and thirst in the byways of Sahara, would hail a great bed of melons, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shrill-voiced, fire at any hour, night or day. Aeroplanes rarely go up at night; and when no aeroplanes are up, Archibald has no interest in the war. But he is alert at the first flush of dawn, on the look-out for game with the avidity of a pointer dog; for aviators are ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and eaten saturated with the pot liquor. Pot liquor is a favourite soup. I have known cottagers actually apply at farmers' kitchens not only for the pot liquor in which meat has been soddened, but for the water in which potatoes have been boiled—potato liquor—and sup it up with avidity. And this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a relish. They never buy anything but bacon; never butchers' meat. Philanthropic ladies, to my knowledge, have demonstrated over and over ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honore held a glass of water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and as nature was not to be thwarted of her purpose by big guns and tarry sailors, the little fellow came along in due course. We are anxious that he may live, for it is wonderful what tricks and antics sailors can train a lamb to, not the least being the avidity with which, after a few lessons, he makes his number at the grog tub at the sound of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... his eyes fixed as in a trance, looked like a little black silhouette against a scarlet background. His mouth opened in intense delight, and his eyes were perfectly round. He seemed to be drinking in the heat and the light with the greatest avidity, while outside the snow had begun to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... his education, the examples set before him, the ideas with which he has been inspired in early life, been suitable to make him contract this habit of repressing his desires? Have not all these things rather contributed to induce him to seek with avidity, to make him actually desire those objects which you say he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... life and death of their own subjects, the principal families of the city and country cantons took advantage of these circumstances to open fountains of wealth for themselves. The desire of the kings to enlist valiant Swiss favored the avidity of the council lords, as did the wish of the young men to get booty. In spite of the positive prohibition of the magistrates, thousands of young men often enlisted in foreign service, where most of them perished miserably, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... article, I must not deprive myself of the pleasure of congratulating you heartily on another. Since October 1802 no article on foreign affairs has been so apropos as your Cuban one of last October. Here it has been read with avidity and universal satisfaction, and I believe it will do much to guide influential opinion in England at this crisis. I hope to see you return to the subject in January. Remember that your January number, as far as the instruction of M.P.s is concerned, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... would have perished had not a superannuated buffalo bull that had just come from the Cimarron River, where he had gone to quench his thirst, suddenly appeared, to be immediately killed and the contents of his stomach swallowed with avidity. It is recorded that one of those who partook of the nauseous liquid said afterward, "nothing had ever passed his lips which gave him such exquisite delight as his first draught of that ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from their reading. Into the most remote places the paper goes and is received with avidity. The appeal is to human interest and is based upon the entire hierarchy of instincts. No agency more successfully socializes. It affords a mental connection with distant places that is a good antidote for the physical loneliness in the country, which many living there experience. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... with the growth of civilization—poverty—civilized poverty. Oh, 'tis a frightful thing, this well-born, well-bred poverty! There is a pauper state, which, loathsome as it is to look upon, yet brings with it a callousness to endure all inflictions, and a recklessness that can seize with avidity whatever coarse fragments of pleasure the day or the hour may afford. But this poverty applies itself to nerves strung for the subtlest happiness. No torpor here; no moments of rash and unscrupulous gratification—unreflected on, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... fact which astonished them. Although he had returned with avidity to all the devotional habits in which he had been trained, yet he always expressed himself unfit to receive the Holy Communion, and delayed to make that formal confession of his sins, which the religious habits of the age imposed ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... historians; but as they did not pretend to think them weighty, nor to approve them in repeating them, it must not be imputed to me either, that I have any intention of authorizing. For instance, what I have related of the manes, or lares; of the evocation of souls after the death of the body; of the avidity of these souls to suck the blood of the immolated animals, of the shape of the soul separated from the body, of the inquietude of souls which have no rest until their bodies are under ground; of those superstitious statues of wax which are devoted ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... convicts particularly happy in fertility of invention and exaggerated descriptions; hence, large fresh-water rivers, valuable ores, and quarries of limestone, chalk, and marble were daily proclaimed soon after we had landed. At first we hearkened with avidity to such accounts, but perpetual disappointments taught us to listen with caution, and to believe ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity. "And if she dies without doing anything, what becomes of ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... From the earliest times there are many such records. Borellus cites an instance, and there are many others, of pregnant women eating excrement with apparent relish. Tulpius, Sennert, Langius, van Swieten, a Castro, and several others report depraved appetites. Several writers have seen avidity for human flesh in such females. Fournier knew a woman with an appetite for the blood of her husband. She gently cut him while he lay asleep by her side and sucked blood from the wounds—a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the sight of a beautiful male model of a young Turk smoking, with his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and he read with avidity the Arabian Nights and other Oriental tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc. He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled in female ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... often sacrificed at the shrine of vanity: and while the noble distinctions of cultivated intellect and solid piety are neglected, the ostentatious decoration of exterior polish is sought with useless and guilty avidity. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... and tell yourselves, 'All is well in Him.' Beware of pursuing even the public good with overmuch violence and avidity, for fear something of cruelty mar your integrity. Rather should your desire of universal loving-kindness have the unction of a prayer and the soft fervour ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... interrupted the negro, seizing at once, with the avidity of ignorance, on the little oversight of his adversary, in confounding the outer harbour of Newport with the wilder anchorage below, and with the usual indifference of all similar people to the more material matter of whether the objection was at all germain to the point in controversy; ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Spaniards increased, of course, the drama of the situation. At the period of their advent Huasca was obtaining the worst of the struggle, and, seeing the possibility of salvation in the arrival of the newcomers, he sent to these beseeching their help. It can be imagined with what avidity Pizarro seized upon this pretext to enter into the domestic affairs of the nation. Atahualpa unconsciously helped to play the fate of the unfortunate Inca race still further into the hands of the Spaniards. Learning of the warlike might of the white man, he also sent ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... sight to see some of the famishing cattle rushing after the men who were employed in thus supplying the poor animals with the means of sustaining life. The cattle ate the boughs and the bark with the greatest avidity, and the bushman's axe as it felled the she-oak was music to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... love of women. Tachibana Hiromi was one of the leading literati of his era. He rendered into most academical terms the Emperor's intentions towards Mototsune. From time immemorial it has always been a canon of Japanese etiquette not to receive anything with avidity. Mototsune declined the rescript; the Emperor directed Hiromi to re-write it. Thus far the procedure had been normal. But Hiromi's second draft ran thus: "You have toiled for the welfare of the country. You have aided me in accordance with the late sovereign's will. You ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... pearls of equal value to those I had given Grace, but she refused to receive them; and now, she asked for these very pearls, which, intrinsically, were not half the value of the sum I had informed Mr. Hardinge Grace had requested me to expend in purchasing a memorial. This avidity to possess these pearls—for so it struck me—was difficult to account for, Grace having owned divers other ornaments that were more costly, and which she had much oftener worn. I confess, I had thought of attempting to persuade Lucy to receive my own necklace as the memorial of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... complete explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin merchant and the procurer,[12] ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... The first sole and complete translation was furnished recently by Mr. John Payne, whose "Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night" is dedicated to Captain Burton. Mr. Payne printed 500 copies for private circulation, a mere drop in the ocean. His edition was instantly absorbed, clutched with avidity, and is unprocurable—unless, as has happened several times, a stray copy finds its way into the market, and is snatched up at a fancy price. It so happened that Mr. Payne and Captain Burton applied themselves to the same task quite unconscious of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Prince away to be kept a prisoner until the day for the celebration. The room to which he was conducted was comfortable, and he soon had a plenteous supper laid out before him, of which he partook with great avidity. Having finished his meal, he sat down to reflect upon his condition, but feeling very sleepy, and remembering that he would have a whole day of leisure, to-morrow, for such reflections, he concluded to go to bed. Before doing so, however, he wished to make all secure ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... similar occasions had often been the cause of signal victories. On purpose to recall his troops to their duty, Carvajal ordered a false alarm to be sounded, which occasioned the return of the greater part of his men; but so strong was their avidity for spoil that most part of the night was spent before they all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... better for me to return to them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might mean to her whose witness I had ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people, living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were unwilling to lay it down after once commencing it. The first story,—"The Two Voices, or the Shadow and the Shadowless,"—is a sweet thing, as is also the one entitled, "The Diamond Fountain." Indeed, the whole number, and there are ten, will be read with avidity. Their moral is as pure as their style ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... hardships against every human ill, had yet never experienced or been habituated to prosperity. Accordingly, excess of good fortune and unrestrained indulgence were the ruin of men whom no severity of distress had subdued; and so much the more completely, in proportion to the avidity with which they plunged into pleasures to which they were unaccustomed. For sleep, wine, feasting, women, baths, and ease, which custom rendered more seductive day by day, so completely unnerved both mind and body, that from henceforth their past victories ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... excessive fear which prevails among us of offending public opinion. It is shown in the very extravagances of our costume and decoration, in our lavish expenditures upon house and equipage. It is shown in the avidity with which every new work is bought and read which pretends to lay down the laws that govern the behavior of circles supposed to be, par excellence, polite. It is shown in the fact, that, next to calling a man a liar, the most offensive and stinging of all ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... to his darlings he thought a woman the worst, and had therefore seized with avidity the chance of making that room a hidden one, the possibility of which he had spied almost the moment he first ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... court together. Competitors would improve their volleying, and the double, instead of being the dreary, monotonous affair it is now, especially for the base-liner, would be varied and instructive. I am sure referees would welcome the change with avidity. The much-dreaded, interminable ladies' double event would be a thing of the past. If we played the double with the new formation, perhaps we should succeed in re-establishing the event at Wimbledon! But it is very difficult to ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... was passed to each then, swallowed with avidity, and then Wilton sighed as he helped to secure the tompion ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... question, and one most difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would that evening have the honor of appearing before the ladies and gentlemen of ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... chapters in the subsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me in some of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As his subsequent volumes successively made their appearance, I read them with avidity, but, when he reached the subject of Social Science, with varying feelings. The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. But the fifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm; which the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... the concentration of these interests in so great a degree, in and around Boston, renders the capital of the State an eligible site for such an undertaking. Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them, we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance of its preeminent utility and success. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... beyond, rising in superb splendour from a pearly haze, the innumerable towers of Manhattan floated and gleamed before my eyes. Irresistibly there came to me a memory of Turner's Venetian masterpieces, and I knew that even that great magician would have seized upon the scene before me with avidity, would have delighted in the fairy-like threads of the bridges, the poetic groupings of the vast buildings, and the innumerable fenestrations of the campanili. One by one half-forgotten fragments of Byron came back to me as I looked out ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the present be truce or peace, it will allow time to mature the conditions of the alliance between France and the two empires, always supposed to be on the carpet. It is thought to be obstructed by the avidity of the Emperor, who would swallow a good part of Turkey, Silesia, Bavaria, and the rights of the Germanic body. To the two or three first articles, France might consent, receiving in gratification a well rounded portion of the Austrian ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... themselves with avidity into the new pastime, and still in existence are the little cards which they had printed in jest announcing that this new profession was "Carried on at Cannon Hall and Grosvenor Square." Mrs Stanhope apparently viewed the occupation with equanimity, save when it became the recreation ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... really be amusing were it not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity by Suburbia. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... to restore the golden age upon earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... sometimes said: "There are some who amass riches with as much avidity as if they were to live forever; others are as careless about their possessions as if they were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Boston and previously cited. The New York Times became Russell's most vicious critic, labelling him "Bull Run Russell," a name which stuck, and beginning its first article on his sins "The terrible epistle has been read with quite as much avidity as an average President's message. We scarcely exaggerate the fact when we say, the first and foremost thought on the minds of a very large portion of our people after the repulse at Bull's Run was, what will Russell ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... day after day in the paper, this golden domesday-book, the lists of rich people who ate terrapin together, or danced together in lace frills and white cravats afterwards, and to read it with avidity, is what might be done in some world of satire. But in a hard-working, sensible, Yankee world! You might say that nobody does read it, but the column of the newspaper which is devoted to this narrative, contrasted with the few paragraphs ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... seized the occasion with inartistic avidity. She had hardly addressed us as yet. At the sound of the magic passport, she pricked up her ears, and turned to me suddenly. "Burma?" she said, as if to conceal the true reason for her change of front. "Burma? I had a cousin there once. He was ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... food of earth-worms, while certain other leaves are eaten by them, but not with avidity. When these two kinds of leaves are given to worms, they will carefully select the favorite food and will ignore the other, thus unmistakably evincing conscious choice. Their avoidance of light is probably the result of conscious ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Everywhere they were seen eating, those intruders—in the restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns, the stalls, and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh, fish, game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment hitherto unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were disappointed. Superficial observers did not know what to think of this menagerie without bounds ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with its myths and mythology. He told me that he had so far defined seven hundred different spirits and was not sure that he had got to the end of them. The publication of Mr. Barton's research is awaited with some avidity by the Americans living in the Province, as enabling them to have a better control of the people through their ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... called the father of the madrigal (despite the fact that madrigals were written before he was born), became chapel master of St. Mark's, Venice, in 1527. He seized with avidity the suggestion offered by the existence of two organs in the cathedral and wrote great works "for two choruses of four voices each, so that the choruses could answer each other across the church. He paid much less attention to rigid canonic style ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... its natural longing for a personal existence after the bodily death, certainly seized upon the belief in Resurrection with avidity. It had its roots partly in the individual consciousness, partly in the communal. For the Resurrection was closely connected with such hopes as those expressed in Ezekiel's vision of the re-animation of Israel's dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii.). Thus popular theology adopted many ideas based on ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... privately prepared on their questions; but the teacher desired Lord John Russell to write down any number of questions which he wished to have given to the toys to solve, from his own mind. Lord John wrote down two or three problems, and I was amused at the zeal and avidity with which the boys seized upon and mastered them. Young England was evidently wide awake, and the prime minister himself was not to catch them, napping. The little fellows' eyes-glistened as they rattled off their solutions. As I know nothing about mathematics, I was all the more ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... burning brands. To tend and drive oxen, plough, sow, plant Indian corn and pumpkins, and raise potatoe-hills, are among some of the young emigrant's accomplishments. His relaxations are but comparatively few, but they are seized with a relish and avidity that give ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... prominent eyes had followed these preparations for his comfort with avidity, but now, the handsome character of his surroundings being fully disclosed to him, he was filled with uncontrollable envy. Silently he filled his glass, by no means stinting the amount of alcohol, gulped down half the contents of the tumbler, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St. Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for ingenuity. The unimaginative "Anglaise" proved better than the Parisienne's fears: she sat literally ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Proserpine's Fete Champetre, is one of the most unjustifiable performances he ever read. The severity with which certain characters are handled is quite shocking: and as there are many descriptions in it too warmly coloured for female delicacy, the shameful avidity with which this piece is bought by all people of fashion is a reproach on the taste of the times, and a disgrace to the delicacy of the age." Here you see the two strongest inducements are held forth; first, that nobody ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... well as the terms of the agreement made with them, by the kind consent of Colonel Rigby were now entered in the Consular Office books, as a security to both parties, and a precaution against disputes on the way. Any one who saw the grateful avidity with which they took the money, and the warmth with which they pledged themselves to serve me faithfully through all dangers and difficulties, would, had he had no dealings with such men before, have thought that I had ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... remains of their theory? Two possibilities. First, the murderer may have done the deed without entering. If so, it is clear that he must have made use of the partly-opened window. This seems so likely that they will seize upon it with avidity. At first they will suggest that the assassin reached in at the window and struck his victim as he sat by it. This, they will urge, accounts for our not finding the weapon, and they will be so sure that this is the correct solution of the problem that I shall probably have to point out to them ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous self-dialogue with Charon. "Happily," said this philosopher, "on retiring from the world I found my taste for reading return, even with greater avidity." We find GIBBON, after the close of his History, returning with an appetite as keen to "a full repast on Homer and Aristophanes, and involving himself in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pay her compliments, while his soul sickened at the avidity with which she swallowed them. He asked himself if it would not be better to put an end to this impossible state of things by telling her he was in love with Anne. But when he glanced at the little fragile figure beside ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowed by an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows, pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently, with appalling avidity, veiled ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing) was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity. These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Castilian tongue. Before setting out for Rome he had so applied himself to the worn little grammar which the proprietor of the bookstall in Seville had loaned him, that he was able to make translations with comparative fluency. In the seminary he plunged into it with avidity; and when he returned from his journey with the Papal Legate he began in earnest his translation of the Testament. This, like so much of the boy's work and writing, was done secretly and in spare moments. And his zeal ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... very fat deer. No sooner had he laid his spoil on the floor of his cabin, than the mysterious females, exclaiming, "Behold! what a fine, fat animal!" immediately ran up, and pulled off pieces of the whitest fat, which they ate with great avidity. As this is esteemed the choicest part of the animal, and is generally, by Indian courtesy, left to the share of the master of the lodge, such conduct appeared very strange to the hunter. Supposing, however, that ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the finest of all the types," he said presently, "One can grasp that man's character so thoroughly! There is no pity in him,—no sentiment—there is merely an insatiable avidity to break open the great treasure-house of Life by fair means or foul! It is very terrible—but ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterward, I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk, I had counted forty-eight more;—when I arrived at the rag. There ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Dr. Johnson's avidity for a variety of books. Improbability of a Highland tradition. Dr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... enthusiasm, the absurdities of folly, and the blunders of ignorance; the contrast of characters and the clash of opinions, the scandalous anecdotes of the day, related with sprightly malice, and listened to with equally malicious avidity,—all these, in my days of health and happiness, had power to surprise, or amuse, or provoke me. I could mingle then in the conflict of minds; and hear my part with smiles in the social circle; though the next moment, perhaps, I might contemn myself and others: ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Squire Headlong caught with avidity at this suggestion; and, as he had always a store of gunpowder in the house, for the accommodation of himself and his shooting visitors, and for the supply of a small battery of cannon, which he kept for his ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... account of the prejudice which ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority of the kingdom was vested.[**] The opposition made to the intended resumption prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the indignities to which the king was willing to submit, in order to gratify the avidity of his foreign favorites. About the same time he published in England the sentence of excommunication, pronounced against the emperor Frederic, his brother-in-law;[***] and said in excuse, that, being the pope's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Campbell—a puff which illustrates almost better than anything else Defoe's extraordinary ingenuity in putting a respectable face upon the most disreputable materials—he had another proof of the avidity with which people run to hear marvels. He followed up this clue with A System of Magic, or a History of the Black Art; The Secrets of the Invisible World disclosed, or a Universal History of Apparitions; and a humorous History of the Devil, in which last work he subjected Paradise Lost, to ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... misconstrue the tone adopted by the English press and the English public in the province, if they do not find some means of resisting the heavy blow and great discouragement which is aimed at them.' Such passages were read with avidity in the colony, and construed to mean that sympathy would be extended from influential quarters at home to those who sought to annul the obnoxious decision of the local Legislature, whatever might be the means to which they resorted for the attainment of that end. It may be ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... approach and re-enter our foul and disgusting place of confinement. The pieces of turf which we carried on board were sought for by our fellow prisoners, with the greatest avidity, every fragment being passed by them from hand to hand, and its smell inhaled as if it had been a fragrant rose. * * * The first of the crew of the Chance to die was a lad named Palmer, about twelve years of age, and the youngest ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sense that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic relief. She went very far, keeping in the lonely places, unveiling her face to the splendid light, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... to the crowns of the Empire and of Poland. The first project was destined to be soon abandoned. It was reserved neither for Charles nor Philip to divert the succession in Germany from the numerous offspring of Maximilian; yet it is instructive to observe the unprincipled avidity with which the prize was sought by both. Each was willing to effect its purchase by abjuring what were supposed his most cherished principles. Philip of Spain, whose mission was to extirpate heresy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with each other to come at the troughs. Excessive thirst made many of them furious; others, being too weak to contend for the water, endeavoured to quench their thirst by devouring the black mud from the gutters near the wells, which they did with great avidity, though it was commonly fatal ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... above him and below. He was going along this path without looking back, without a thought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him on his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled along that path, the darkness closed ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... his speech, yet the extreme quiet of Lucy's manner reassured him; and when he perceived that she resumed, though languidly, her wonted avocations, he felt but little doubt of her soon overcoming the remembrance of what he hoped was but a girlish and fleeting fancy. He yielded, with avidity, to her proposal to return to Warlock; and in the same week as that in which Lucy had received her lover's mysterious letter, the father and daughter commenced ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... demoralizing mode of amusement to our country! Degrading to the greatest degree, it is nevertheless pursued with avidity by all classes of people; and large bets are often depending on these brutal exercises. Gentlemen, noblemen, and even ladies, are, on such occasions, mixed with the most degraded part of the community. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... Payne for fifteen guineas. [Bibl. Farm. No. 5993.] The opinion Dr. Farmer entertained of their rarity may be given in his own words: "The Two Tomes, which Tom Rawlinson would have called justa volumina, are almost annihilated. Mr. Ames, who searched after books of this sort with the utmost avidity, most certainly had not seen them, when he published his Typographical Antiquities, as appears from his blunders about them: and possibly I myself might have remained in the same predicament, had I not been favoured with a copy by my generous friend, Mr. Lort." Essay on the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years, being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy. His dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not the annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the psychology of the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both political and intellectual, and took keen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... time young Watson heard her sing a spell was thrown round his fancy which led to all the rest. The same might be said of her, for when her husband, then a stranger, poured forth, in one of their evening meetings, the great rich volume of his voice, she ceased to sing that she might listen with avidity. It was not long after that before Kern mustered courage to ask "Miss Buggone, mout I hab de pleasure ob 'companyin' you home?" Not many months elapsed before he accompanied her home to stay, with ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... MISS WILLOUGHBY will not be comforted, and there is a coldness between them for the rest of the day. MISS SUSAN is not so abashed as she ought to be. She returns, and partakes with avidity ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... a strange race between the prophet and Susannah for the acquisition of knowledge. They learned out of all sorts of lesson-books, not on any sound principle of work, but with avidity. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall |
