"Ravening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the dogs being softened to a certain pliancy, he fed the ravening animals, and then made a meal himself, sitting abstractedly on the up-ended box, his thawed bread in one hand and his chilling tea in the other. Meantime, he wrestled stubbornly with his problem. It was not until he ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the height of heaven, springing in darkness, lost in light; and flying into the centre of that flame should be a white moth—a blind, soft, mad thing with beating, tremulous wings,—that should be Love! Whirled into the very heart of the ravening fire,—crushed, shrivelled out of existence in one wild, rushing rapture—that is what Love must be to me! One cannot prolong passion over fifty years, more or less, of commonplace routine, as marriage would have us do. The very notion is absurd. Love is ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... probably the south of France, Flanders and the Rhine towns, were full of strange Manichean theosophies, pessimistic dualism of God and devil, in which God always got the worst of it, when God did not happen to be the devil himself. The ravening lions, the clawing, tearing griffins, the nightmare brood carved on the capitals, porches, and pulpits of pre-Franciscan churches, are surely not, as orthodox antiquarians assure us, mere fanciful symbols of the Church's vigilance ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... fearlessness of her who left her father's house to follow Naomi's desolate fortunes, came from the fields when he was sent for. Peaceful as was his shepherd's life in general, it was not without its occasional spice of danger, as when a lion and a bear, famished and furious and ravening for their prey, came out of the wintry woods to devour the sheep. Then, as the sacred chronicler tersely and with Homeric brevity tells us, the shepherd "slew both the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... begged her to once more shelter herself temporarily in the tarpaulin, my object being to spare her the sight of the terrible passage of her husband and child over and through that narrow stretch of ravening sea. But, as it happened, there was no need for my solicitude; she cast one glance at the swaying, dangling figure of her husband, and then, with a wild, wailing shriek, flung herself upon her knees, with her hands ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... hotly, for I did not relish her amazement, "you will oblige me by not speaking of these ladies as the 'lamb' and 'the other one.' I might gather from your remarks that I am a sort of ravening wolf, instead of a well-meaning gentleman who is merely exercising the privilege of selecting a wife. But," I said, checking myself, for I was ashamed of my explosion, "I shall be magnanimous enough to believe that you are delighted with my choice, and that I have your ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... of the seven-starred Crown, The spangled stream of Berenice's hair!" And so she twines the fetters with the flowers Around my yielding limbs, and the fierce bird Stoops to his quarry,—then to feed his rage Of ravening hunger I must drain my blood And let the dew-drenched, poison-breeding night Steal all the freshness from my fading cheek, And leave its shadows round my caverned eyes. All for a line in some unheeded scroll; All for a stone that tells ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Ravens ravening by night, poised peregrines by day, provision-merchants for the dispensing of dainty scraps to tickle the ears, to arm the tongues, to explode reputations, those great ladies, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hour of the time and the sweet season were occasion of good hope to me concerning that wild beast with the dappled skin. But not so that the sight which appeared to me of a lion did not give me fear. He seemed to be coming against me, with head high and with ravening hunger, so that it seemed that the air was affrighted at him. And a she-wolf,[2] who with all cravings seemed laden in her meagreness, and already had made many folk to live forlorn,—she caused me so much heaviness, with the fear that came from sight of her, that I lost hope of the height ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... which dwelleth in his terror, I am the divine crocodile, and I seize [my prey] like a ravening beast. I am the great and Mighty Fish which is in the city of Qem-ur. I am the lord to whom bowing and prostrations [are made] ...
— Egyptian Literature
... his fall. Time dragged by wearily, and his bruises pained him. He knew at length that all the world slept,—all but himself and some distant ravening wolf, whose fierce howl ever and anon set the mists to shivering in Poor Valley where he prowled. This blood-curdling sound and his bitter thoughts ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... war suffered horrible tortures, being hung up by their feet and hands in the hope that their friends would ransom them the sooner. Villages were burned down, and wolves howled near the haunts of men, seeking food to appease their ravening hunger. It was said that fierce beasts gnawed through the walls of houses and devoured little children in their cradles. Italy was rent by a conflict which divided one province from another, and even placed inhabitants of the same town on opposite sides ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... "Eat, ravening wolf, so that I may bring you alive to the lord of Spychow." Such were the words of inducement to stimulate Zygfried's appetite. At first Zygfried resolved to starve himself to death; but when be heard ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... taking into account of Smollett's usual irregular and almost irrelevant bonuses, such as the dinner after the fashion of the ancients and the rest. No: Peregrine Pickle can never be thrown to the wolves, even to the most respectable and moral of these animals in the most imposing as well as ravening of attitudes. English ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... had always been his guiding maxim, and for the present, as he took his way down the mountain side—the great crags rising higher and higher to the moon, the black billowy roll of the forest country drawing nearer and nearer, the voices of the wild creatures of the waste, raised weird and ravening on the night, the thunderous boom of the voice of the forest king ever and anon dominating all others—Laurence felt conscious of a wild, exhilarating sense of freedom. There was music in these sounds after the ghastly, ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... all too late. Even if he had yielded in his ravening frenzy—for his beard was like a mad dog's jowl—even if he would have owned that, for the first time in his life, he had found his master; it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... deep in that grave of whose restful quiet she so often sang, and Edward Everett Hale, type of a New England that was old when I was young, has also passed into silence. His name like that of Higginson and Holmes is only a faint memory in the marble splendors of the New Public Library. The ravening years—how they destroy! ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... bold and true Fell as becomes the brave; And whom the arrow spared, the spear Reaped for the ravening grave. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... certain that Colonel Osborne had no premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the intimate friend of his old friend's daughter. There was nothing fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things the company of a pretty clever ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... The buzzards, obedient to their customary habit—not nocturnal—take departure from the spot, and wing their way to their usual roosting place. Different do the coyotes. These stay. Night is the time best suited to their ravening instincts. The darkness may give them a better opportunity to assail that thing of spherical shape, which by shouts, and scowling glances, has so long kept ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... bowsprits to the wandering heavens, Labouring in vain to return, struggling to lock Their far-flung ranks anew, but drifting still To leeward, driven by the ever-increasing storm Straight for the dark North Sea. Hard by there lurched One gorgeous galleon on the ravening shoals, Feeding the white maw of the famished waves With gold and purple webs from kingly looms And spilth of world-wide empires. Howard, still Planning to pluck the Armada plume by plume, Swooped down upon that prey and swiftly engaged Her desperate ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall assign them their natural prey. In the third tapestry the deed has been done, the apple had been eaten. The beasts are ravening in the background. Adam, already clad, is engaged in fastening a picturesque girdle of leaves around the unrepentant Eve,—for all the world like a modern husband fastening his wife's gown,—while she for the first time gathers up ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... triumphal car driven by the devil over the body of liberty, and the decapitated Charles I. The state of the people is emblematized by a bird flying from its cage to be devoured by a hawk; and sheep breaking from the fold to be set on by ravening wolves. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a book of beasts. Who knows what might have come out next? A tiger perhaps. And ravening for its ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... their houses. [73] Sometimes the whole complex conception is wrapped up in the notion of a single dog, the messenger of the god of shades, who comes to summon the departing soul. Sometimes, instead of a dog, we have a great ravening wolf who comes to devour its victim and extinguish the sunlight of life, as that old wolf of the tribe of Fenrir devoured little Red Riding-Hood with her robe of scarlet twilight. [74] Thus we arrive at a true werewolf myth. The storm-wind, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... into the desolation where they now seemed to be content to grind out treasure for their masters, and to starve when those masters did not find it profitable to employ them. It was as if a flock of foolish sheep placed themselves under the protection of a pack of ravening wolves. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... far across the plain Seeing the hosts of Troy charge down on them, And midst them Penthesileia, Ares' child. These seemed like ravening beasts that mid the hills Bring grimly slaughter to the fleecy flocks; And she, as a rushing blast of flame she seemed That maddeneth through the copses summer-scorched, When the wind drives it on; and ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... trouble whatever on that score. His only trouble or anxiety was about himself. He felt as though he was in a position of tremendous danger, and was being tossed about by pitiless waves, which were hemming him in on every side, like ravening beasts of prey. In reality the pitiless waves were scarcely waves at all, the breeze was only moderate, and there was no possible danger; but David did not know this, and so he suffered as much as though ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... boy, we'll hunt to-day The book-worm, ravening beast of prey! Produced by parent Earth, at odds (As Fame reports it) with the gods. Him frantic Hunger wildly drives Against a thousand authors' lives: Through all the fields of Wit he flies; Dreadful his head with clustering eyes, With horns without, and tusks within, And scales ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in the making, for he should be a tiger; but the shape being thought too terrible, it is covered, and he wears the vizor of a man, yet retains the qualities of his former fierceness, currishness, and ravening. Of that red earth of which man was fashioned this piece was the basest, of the rubbish which was left and thrown by came this jailor; his descent is then more ancient, but more ignoble, for he comes of the race of those angels ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... have got a breakfas' notice," interrupted Dr. Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as ravening wolves. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... advanced upon the men (and these ravening for his blood), viewing their lowering faces and brandished steel with his calm, dispassionate gaze and very proud and upright for all his bodily weakness; pausing beside me, he threw up his hand with haughty ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... frontire, f., frontier. fugiti-f, -ve, fleeing, fleeting. fuir, to fly from, shun. fuite, f., flight. funbre, funereal, black, dark. funeste, baneful. fureur, f., fury; en —, furious, raging. furieu-x, -se, furious, ravening. ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... so they went together one green way Till April dying made free the world for May; And on his guide suddenly Love's face turned, And in his blind eyes burned Hard light and heat of laughter; and like flame That opens in a mountain's ravening mouth To blear and sear the sunlight from the south, His mute mouth opened, and his first word came: 'Knowest thou me now by name?' And all his stature waxed immeasurable, As of one shadowing heaven and lightening hell; And statelier stood he than a tower that stands And darkens with its ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... training and inexperience, she feared that if all her kin insisted on her marriage, and gave such reasons as had been urged upon her, she must be married. She was sorely perplexed. Could the Yankees be such ravening wolves as her uncle and cousin represented them to be? Certainly one was not, but then he might be different from the others because he had been to ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... a state distressed: Though brave, yet vanquished; and though great, oppressed. Vice, ravening vulture, on her vitals preyed; Her peers, her prelates, fell corruption swayed: Their rights, for power, the ambitious weakly sold: The wealthy, poorly, for superfluous gold, Hence wasting ills, hence severing factions rose, And gave large entrance to invading foes: Truth, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... man once," said the Enthusiast, thinking of the peril he had just escaped, and darkly shadowing forth its circumstances, "whom a ravening lion sought to destroy, and the heart of the man sunk within him, for, in view of the beast, he forgot that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, but an angel whispered it in his ear, and strengthened him, and he defied the lion, and smote him, and killed the lion. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... History is a nightmare of horrors; we relish it, because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is to man rich in interest. But make real to yourself the vision of every blood-stained page—stand in the presence of the ravening conqueror, the savage tyrant—tread the stones of the dungeon and of the torture-room—feel the fire of the stake—hear the cries of that multitude which no man can number, the victims of calamity, of oppression, of fierce ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... his voyageurs heap their fire that shall blaze till the morning, Ere they lay themselves snugly to rest, with their guns by their side on the blankets, As if there were none to molest but the ravening beasts of ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... then, the Christian man, wherever he may be, must resolve, notwithstanding dangers or threatings, to walk in simplicity as God has commanded. Let him guard as much as he can against the ravening of the wolves, but let it not be with carnal craftiness. Above all, let him place his life in the hands of God. Has he ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... strange land. But the good shepherd will yet gather the dispersed into his arms, and gently lead them through green pastures and by still waters. Our Israel owes you thanks, brethren, for the vigilance wherewith ye watch the walls of Jerusalem, and are quick to spy the lurking wolf and ravening bear. If the watchmen sleep, what shall become of the city? But her strong towers of defence and bulwarks are ye, emulous ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... actually study their lessons on Sunday. I hope you'll never sink that low, Anne. Remember how you were brought up. And be very careful what friends you make. You never know what sort of creatures are in them colleges. Outwardly they may be as whited sepulchers and inwardly as ravening wolves, that's what. You'd better not have anything to say to any young man who isn't from ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... awakened in the night by the ravening of a pack of wolves at the carcass of the slain moose, which lay within twenty rods of the snow camp. They were growling and snapping as they tore the meat from the bones. Solomon rose and ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... the misery of the dog moved her—his restlessness, his whining, the channels that tears had worn under his faithful eyes. She would have liked to take him up in her arms and comfort him; but once when her pity moved her to attempt it, the dog ran at her ravening. The husband cried out: 'Has he hurt you, my Love?' and was for stringing him up. But some compunction stirred in her, and she saved him from the rope, though she made no more ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... "to the thieves and outlaws of these woods, when I supposed such banditti to belong to their bands; I might as justly have confounded the foxes of these brakes with the ravening wolves of France. Tell me, dogs—is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at? Is it too much that two Saxons, myself and the noble Athelstane, should hold land in the country which was once ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... out of a cleft rose a terrible cry, And a form like a demon went ravening by, And I fell in a quake on the moss, and I thought ...
— Sprays of Shamrock • Clinton Scollard
... day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and despair twenty years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss of its deadly charge ravening into a face he hated. He could not be sorry, even now, for that first man he had killed. But in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned house and the future he might have had, the boy himself—lost as Atlantis now—and the girl with the honey-colored ...
— Song in a Minor Key • Catherine Lucille Moore
... will make the first dash, and how many the cow will put out of business before she goes under herself. Don't be offended if I say that you look more capable of portraying woolly white lambs at play than ravening wolves measuring the strength of their quarry. I must confess I was looking for the—er MAN ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch; it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... that subtle questioning of the cruel, predatory side of nature which suggests the general title of the book. In certain cases it is the picture of savage nature ravening for food—for death to preserve life; in others it is the secret symbolism of woods and waters prophesying of evils and misadventures to come. All this does not mean, however, that Mr. Roberts is either pessimistic or morbid—it is nature ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... not, she cast such a chill upon the company that even Georges Coutlass subsided within himself, and, though he ate like a ravening animal, did not talk. Almost the only conversation was between the owner and the native servants, who waited at table abominably and were noisily reprimanded, and argued back. Each reprimand increased their inefficiency ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Carnot shall have snorted away the fumes of the indigested blood of his sovereign. Then, when, sunk on the down of usurped pomp, he shall have sufficiently indulged his meditations with what monarch he shall next glut his ravening maw, he may condescend to signify that it is his pleasure to be awake; and that he is at leisure to receive the proposals of his high and mighty clients for the terms on which he may respite the execution of the sentence he has passed upon them. At the opening of those doors, what a sight it must ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... have disguised it, even if he had tried. The fever of artistic creation was upon him—all the old desires and the old exhausting joys. His genius had been lying idle, like a lion in a thicket, and now it had sprung forth ravening. For months he had not handled a brush; for months his mind had deliberately avoided the question of painting, being content with the observation only of beauty. A week ago, if he had deliberately asked himself whether he would ever paint again, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... foe Than when bonfire and beacon flared mere flame of wood and pitch, From Surrey hills to Skiddaw! Science-dowered, serenely rich, Safe in its snugly sheltered homes, our England lies at ease, Whilst round her cliffs gale-scourged to wrath the tiger-throated seas Thunder in ruthless ravening rage, with rending crash and shock, Through the dull night and blinding drift on leagues of reef and rock. More furious than the Spaniards they, more fierce, persistent foes, These deep-gorged, pallid, foaming waves. Yes, bright the beacon glows, Warmly the lighthouse wafts its blaze of welcome ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... wherein they love their neighbour by expelling him; of their oppression whereby they glory not in Christ's Cross but in crucifying others; of their narrowness who call themselves Hebrews and all others Egyptians; of their sheep's clothing and inward ravening; of their reversals of Gospel maxims and their novelties; he will see that the lash for Cistercians must have fallen a good deal also upon Carthusian shoulders. Then Master Walter was towards being a favourer of Abelard and of his disciple Arnald of Brescia, whose ascetic mind was ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... inventor had exasperated all France; and though tonight's weather kept a third of Paris within doors, there was still a tide of pedestrians fluent on the sidewalk, beyond the flimsy barrier of firs, that would thicken to a ravening mob upon the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Molimo answered, rubbing his chin, "for in such matters even a Matabele generally keeps faith, and you may remember he promised you life for life. However, they are here ravening like lions round the walls, and that is why we carried you up to the top of the hill, that you might be safe ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... prachtvol! ausgezeichnet! wunderbar! wunderschoen! gemuetlich—" A large, tough noodle checked him. While he labored with Teutonic imperturbability to master it Lezard and I exchanged suggestions regarding the proposed annihilation of this fearsome woman who had come ravening among us amid the peaceful and soporific ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... false lewd spirit, maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger-bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, bloody beast, beast of all blasts, the most bestiall acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus spirit!"[4] Whether this objurgation terminates from loss of breath on the part of the conjurer, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... Country has been sacrificed to partisanship. Early love has fallen away, and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has lifted its head among us, and waxes wroth and ravening. There are dissensions at home worse than the guns of our foes. Some that did run well have faltered; some signal-lights have gone shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful glare. But unto this end were we born, and for this cause ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... sisters, they were her own, and the day of their delivery had dawned. This was the only sacred cause; this was the great, the just revolution. It must triumph, it must sweep everything before it; it must exact from the other, the brutal, blood-stained, ravening race, the last particle of expiation! It would be the greatest change the world had seen; it would be a new era for the human family, and the names of those who had helped to show the way and lead the squadrons would be the brightest ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... things no price asked, you might say, but that he would not throw himself out of window! Had the man been wise—But he was not wise. He had, if no big gloomy devil in him among the bright angels that were there, a multitude of ravening tumultuary imps, or little devils very ILL-CHAINED; and was lodged, he and his restless little devils, in a skin far too thin for him ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... March; by the thirteenth of that month he was back in Edinburgh. On the 17th, he wrote to Clarinda: "Your hopes, your fears, your cares, my love, are mine; so don't mind them. I will take you in my hand through the dreary wilds of this world, and scare away the ravening bird or beast that would annoy you." Again, on the 21st: "Will you open, with satisfaction and delight, a letter from a man who loves you, who has loved you, and who will love you, to death, through death, and for ever?... How rich am I to have such a treasure as you!... 'The ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Cloud, as he studied through his almost opaque defenses that indescribably ravening fireball, that esuriently rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the deepest pit of the hottest hell of mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn't seem possible that anything could get any worse than that without exploding. And ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... down quickly to a little thing like the rally and give the signal to feed all the five hundred people, who by that time were nice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey-pit to keep them from getting too brown while the lambs ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... cold!— Her vesture scant, her bonnet crush'd and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold. And there she bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold! And now she sudden darts a ravening look, As one with new hot bread comes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, hapless one forlorn! God help ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... close of the ages, it hath been decreed, Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men, And the world shall be purged with ravening fire." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... once or twice in his lair and then stood up. It was a beautiful day, in striking contrast with the black night of storm, and he knew by the position of the sun that it was within about three hours of its setting. He tested his body, but there was no soreness. He was not conscious of anything but a ravening hunger, and he believed that he knew ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in Hester, "you know dass not a pullite question!" But she was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it for twenty-five cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I told Sidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop unconsciously while she gazed ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... Beyond this river all was unknown to us. We only knew that there lay the Llano Estacado, invested with mysterious terrors—the theme of our childhood's fears—a vast stretch of desert, uninhabited, or only by savages seeking scalps, by wild beasts ravening for blood, by hideous reptiles—serpents breathing poison. But what were all these dangers to that we were leaving behind? Nothing, and this thought inspired ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... had gone, they brought you in here, mon enfant, and laid you on the paillasse where Felicite used to sleep. You looked very white, and stricken down, like one of God's lambs attacked by the ravening wolf. Your eyes were closed and you were blissfully unconscious. I was taken before the governor of the prison, and he told me that you would share the cell with me for a time, and that I was to watch you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... attached to her girdle a dreadful dragon who was known as the Tarasque and is reported to have given his name to the city on whose site (amid the rocks which form the base of the chateau) he had his cavern. The dragon perhaps is the symbol of a ravening paganism dispelled by the eloquence of a sweet evangelist. The bones of the interesting saint, at all events, were found, in the eleventh century, in a cave beneath the spot on which her altar now stands. I know not what had become of the ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... no windows, and the roar of the New York street outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were hung with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on a kind of dais, sat a woman—a woman whose eyes sought his in a steady regard which flashed a thrill through his whole body as he gazed. For she seemed to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... secretes himself in shady places, waiting his opportunity to sting without your knowing how or by whom it was done. In fine, he has been named a "Hypocrite," who comes to you in "sheep's clothing," but is in truth a "ravening wolf." ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... what I dreaded happened. A vast mountain of green water lifted up its bulk and fell upon us in a ravening cataract. I clutched at Masters, but trying to save him and myself handicapped me badly. The strength of that mass of water was terrible. It seemed to snatch at everything with giant hands, and drag all with it. It tossed a hen-coop high, and ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... and he went in, and sat down to meat. And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner. And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... speeding he forgot not of the cloud Where he from glory sprang and burned aloud, But took a little of the day, A little of the colored sky, And of the joy that would not stay He wove a song that cannot die. Then, then — the unfathomable shame; The one last wrong arose from out the flame, The ravening hate that hated not was hurled Bidding the radiant love once more beware, Bringing one more loneliness on the world, And one more blindness in the unseen air. Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... find here? We can follow the whole story of the cross in the first part of this Psalm. His enemies are described, the bulls and the ravening and roaring lion.—"I am poured out like water."—"All my bones are out of joint."—"My heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels." Like fire melteth wax so His heart melted in the fire ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... our presents for the Prince, we set forth inland. But we had marched only a little way, when behold, a dust cloud up flew, and grew until it walled[FN203] the horizon from view. After an hour or so the veil lifted and discovered beneath it fifty horsemen, ravening lions to the sight, in steel armour dight. We observed them straightly and lo! they were cutters off of the highway, wild as wild Arabs. When they saw that we were only four and had with us but the ten camels carrying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... slept between the cliffs, and shook himself and went galloping abroad and overturned the mountains that hid the golden ball, and bit the earth beneath them and hurled their crags about and covered himself with rocks and fallen hills, and went back ravening and growling into the soul of the earth, and there lay down and slept again for a hundred years. And the golden ball rolled free, passing under the shattered earth, and so rolled back to Pegana; and Limpang Tung came home to the onyx step and took ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... led a life of dissipation barely interrupted by a few hours of attendance at the academic classes. From the ill-effects of such surroundings Odo was preserved by an intellectual curiosity that flung him ravening on his studies. It was not that he was of a bookish habit, or that the drudgery of the classes was less irksome to him than to the other pupils; but not even the pedantic methods then prevailing, or the distractions of his new life, could ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to each, yet the poor fellows devoured it with the greed of ravening wolves, and carefully licked their fingers when it was done. The little cabin-boy had three portions allotted to him, because Charlie Brooke and Dick Darvall added their allowance to his without allowing him to ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... thin. Their bodies were covered with gashes, and the mouths of some frothed blood. They did not run as wolves run for meat. They were a sinister and suspicious lot, with a sneaking droop to their haunches, and their cry was not the deep-throated cry of the hunt-pack but a ravening clamour that seemed to have no leadership or cause. Scarcely was the sound of their tongues gone beyond the hearing of Pierrot's ears than one of the thin gray beasts rubbed against the shoulder of another, and the second turned with the swiftness of a snake, ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... get off and stretch our legs,—we stretched them a whole lot more than we intended before the night was out,—for we had to hike about four miles with full pack and then climb a long steep hill. We had nothing to eat all day and we were just like ravening wolves, but after we reached camp we had to wait for the cooks to prepare some "mulligan" (stewed beef) and tea; then we were lined up and bundled into our tents, about ten men in each. Next morning some of us were sent down to unload the transport and the rest were put to work setting things ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... when the hurried word Roused you and sent you swiftly forth to deal A blow for justice? Sure your pulses stirred, And all your being leapt to meet the call Which bade you strike nor spare Where poised in air Murder and ravening flame were ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... an even sameness; the intense cold, the heartless wind which augments tenfold the chill of the temperature, the air thick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by in an endless cloud. A drifting, freezing, shifting eternity of snow, driven by a ravening gale which sweeps the desolate, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... Jean Morel! You had no premonition of this glorious war in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... the paddle from out the hands of the steersman of the canoe wherein were the terrified Palu and the four children, and then, before the man for'ard could bring her head to the wind, she broached to and filled. Like ravening wolves the sharks dashed upon their prey, and ere the people had time to give more than a despairing cry, those hideous jaws and gleaming cruel teeth had sealed their fate. Maddened with fear, the rest of the people threw everything out of the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... his desire, The breath of hostile climates, The ravage of blight and dearth, The old unrest that vexes The heart of the moody earth, The genii swift and radiant Sabreing heaven with flame, He, with a keener weapon, The sword of his wit, overcame. Disease and her ravening offspring, Pain with the thousand teeth, He drave into night primeval, The nethermost worlds beneath, Till the Lord of Death, the undying, Ev'n Asrael the King, No more with Furies for heralds Came armed with scourge and sting, But gentle of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... Duke, I cried out against the horror. But being no more than a boy, I was stricken to silence by the hand of a man-at-arms. Then I saw Hans Pulitz cast loose. I saw him seized by one man—even by the Red Axe—raised high in the air, and flung over the barriers among the ravening and leaping blood-hounds. I heard the hideous noises that followed—the yells of a man fighting for his life in a place of fiends. I shut my ears with my hands, yet could I not shut out that clangor of hell. I shut my eyes, closer than you have shut them for me now. I fled, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... wounds, they reached the end of the ledge and clambered to the top. Here but three or four of the giant crustaceans tried to follow them. These were easily speared from above, and hurled back disabled among their ravening kin. And the whole swarm, apparently forgetting their intended victims as soon as they were out of reach, fell to fighting hideously among themselves over the convulsed bodies of these wounded. The lower portion of the ledge, and the water all about it, was a crawling mass ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... conventional and the realistic, and the art of Sarah Bernhardt, when she plays the part, is balanced with just the same unerring skill. She seems to abandon herself wholly, at times, to her "fureurs"; she tears the words with her teeth, and spits them out of her mouth, like a wild beast ravening upon prey; but there is always dignity, restraint, a certain remoteness of soul, and there is always the verse, and her miraculous rendering of the verse, to keep Racine in the right atmosphere. Of what we call acting there is little, little ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... all the result, the products of the labor of brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream and poured into their laps! The whole of society is in their grip, the whole labor of the world lies at their mercy—and like fierce wolves they rend and destroy, like ravening vultures they devour and tear! The whole power of mankind belongs to them, forever and beyond recall—do what it can, strive as it will, humanity lives for them and dies for them! They own not merely the labor of society, they have bought the governments; and everywhere they use their raped ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... this night ye see. The gods who were the stay of this city have departed from it; nor is aught remaining to which we may bring succor. Yet can we die as brave men in battle. And haply he that counts his life to be lost may yet save it." Then, even as ravening wolves hasten through the mist seeking for prey, so they went through the city, doing dreadful deeds. And for a while the men of Greece ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... well for Grindhusen. He had gone ravening after the girls when he was young, and he still spanked about with his hat on one side, out of habit. But he was quiet and tame enough now, as well he might be—'tis nature's way. But some there are who would not follow nature's way, and be tamed; and how ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... burros, apparently decided they had taken no part in the affair, and bestowed on them a faint, dry smile as he settled himself into his seat. At the bend of the road he had not deigned another look on the men who had been ravening to lynch him. He drove away as carelessly as if he alone were the only human being within miles, and the partners gave a ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... for their sport, and at last blew out his brains; Then Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Raised his right hand up to Heaven, calling Heaven's vengeance down. And he swore a fearful oath, by the name of the Almighty, He would hunt this ravening evil that had scathed and torn him so; He would seize it by the vitals; he would crush it day and night; he Would so pursue its footsteps, so return it blow for blow, That Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown, Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... The little ravening London savage was still snatching and devouring when she turned away. She was too ravenous to give any thanks, even if she had ever been taught politeness—which she had not. She was only a poor little ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... on a slightly raised spot, the levee of a draining canal. The waters of this canal did not run; they crawled, and were full of big, ravening fish and alligators, that held it against ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... much happier; though, according to the theory of us civilized folks, it ought to. They lead an easy life,—easy, in a savage way; though breaking up dog-fights does keep them pretty tolerably busy. To-day (Aug. 7) we had a perfect dog-war. Three or four of the ravening, howling curs assaulted Guard under the very flap of our tent. Donovan caught up a musket, and, running out, pinned one of them down with the bayonet, and held him for some seconds. On letting him up, the dog ran off ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... Blacksmith and the victorious Feridoun, by whom the tyrant was at length dethroned, and imprisoned for ever in the dismal caverns of the mountain Damavend. But ere that deliverance had taken place, and whilst the power of the bloodthirsty tyrant was at its height, the band of ravening slaves whom he had sent forth to purvey victims for his daily sacrifice brought to the vaults of the palace of Istakhar seven sisters so beautiful that they seemed seven houris. These seven maidens ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott |
