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Devouring   /dɪvˈaʊərɪŋ/   Listen
Devouring

adjective
1.
(often followed by 'for') ardently or excessively desirous.  Synonyms: avid, esurient, greedy.  "An avid ambition to succeed" , "Fierce devouring affection" , "The esurient eyes of an avid curiosity" , "Greedy for fame"



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"Devouring" Quotes from Famous Books



... the opposite side of the hearth, was a little boy and girl, quite naked to the waist from whence hung a little dirty tunic to their bare knees. A tin pan of raw potatoes lay between them, which they were slicing off with a great knife, and greedily devouring, as if they ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... succeeded in capturing his prey, and has satisfied his appetite by devouring a portion of its carcass, he leaves the remainder for a second meal, and his early return to a second banquet is almost a matter of certainty. Where such a remnant of a bygone feast is found, the capture of the Cougar ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson

... to his eager eyes, having no words to say, overcome by the joy that surged through him like a mighty rush of waters. In the moment's glorious certainty he rested until she stirred nervously under his devouring look, and spoke. ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... back from her face. She spoke little, but her dark eyes were fixed with devouring eagerness upon the door by which she knew Pierre would come in. Her aunt supported her head upon her shoulder, while Heloise knelt at her knee and fanned her with sisterly tenderness, whispering words of sisterly sympathy ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... have to fag them," answered East, without looking up from an early number of "Pickwick," which was just coming out, and which he was luxuriously devouring, stretched on ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... 'Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in Thy holy hill?' And there is another shape into which the question is cast by the fervent and somewhat gloomy imagination of one of the prophets, who puts it thus: 'Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who shall dwell with the everlasting burnings?' There never was a more disastrous misapplication of Scripture than the popular idea that these two last questions suggest the possibility of a creature being exposed to the torments of future punishment. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to have made a hearty meal of its flesh, indeed it had been the subject of conversation all day and they had even gone so far as to divide it, frequently asking me what part I preferred, but when we came to the spot—oh! lamentable! it had already fallen a prey to the devouring appetites of some more fortunate hunters who had only left sufficient evidence that such a thing had once existed, and we had merely the consolation of realising an old proverb. One of our men however caught a fish which, with the assistance of some weed scraped from the rocks (tripe de roche) ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... strikingly corroborate those of Mr. Weir. Three green lizards (Lacerta viridis) which he kept for several years, were very voracious, eating all kinds of food, from a lemon cheesecake to a spider, and devouring flies, caterpillars, and humble bees; yet there were some caterpillars and moths which they would seize only to drop immediately. Among these the principal were the caterpillar of the Magpie moth (Abraxas ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... about a third that number of dogs which had strayed in through the open doorway. When an attendant (in shirt-sleeves) proceeded to walk round and sprinkle the rough boards with resin, the dancers fairly yelled with delight, for a hungry cur closely followed him, greedily devouring the stuff as it fell! But although in those days the Yukon gold-digger was as tough a customer as ever rocked a cradle in the wildest days of Colorado, there was a rough and friendly bonhomie amongst the inhabitants of Circle City which is now lacking ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... Christianity, when first piercing the atmosphere circumjacent to any oracle; and, in fact, to their gross appreciations, Christian truth was like the scavenger bird in Eastern climates, or the stork in Holland, which signalizes its presence by devouring all the native brood of vermin, or nuisances, as fast as they reproduce themselves under local distemperatures of climate ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... came over her later on when she was sitting at the table with Mr. Schmielke, with Zientek on the other side, and her husband opposite to her. She did not want to eat anything; when she saw how Mr. Tiralla was devouring his food she lost her appetite. All at once she felt she had had enough of it all; the dance nauseated her as well as the food. For to-morrow she would again be alone with her husband at Starydwor. The more court the men paid her that evening the more she abhorred him. There was nobody ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... spreading blaze. The burning oil flowed out over the water and flamed up across every avenue of escape. From out the black clouds of smoke, great sheets of flame burst through, rolled heavenward, and leaped down again like some devouring demon. ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis

... yet in all your Campe Who dares step forth and call me ravisher? No, Fraunce: know Pembroke is an Englishman Highly deriv'd, yet higher in my thoughts; And for to register mine acts in brasse, Which all-devouring time shall ne're race out, Have I through all the Courts of Christendome In knightly tryall prov'd my vertue sound, Raisd England's fame aloft; and shall I now In her next continent, her neighbour Realme, Fraunce, on whose bosome I may stand and see That blessed soyle that bred and fostred ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... and this is the most common mode of parasitism, attack the insect in its larva state; others, in the pupa state, and still others in the perfect, or imago state. Dr. Leidy has shown that the wood-devouring species of beetle, Passalus cornutus, and some Myriopods, or "thousand legs," are, in some cases, tenanted by myriads of microscopic plants and worms which luxuriate in the alimentary canal, while the "caterpillar-fungus" attacks sickly caterpillars, filling out their bodies, and sending ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... from the blackened heap, I discovered a human skeleton, and knew it to be Nuflo's. In his day he had been a great armadillo-hunter, and these quaint carrion-eaters had no doubt revenged themselves by devouring his flesh when they found him dead—killed ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... turn, but she also knew that nurse always favoured Gillian and snubbed her. She had a devouring longing to be with her dear Fly, and a certain sense that she was the preferred one. Must another pleasure be sacrificed to that very naughty Dolores, whose misdemeanours had deprived them of the visit to Rotherwood. ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge

... characteristic is the little wallet, and staff, and great jaws; the devouring of all that you give them, or storing it up, or the abusing unseasonably all whom they meet, or displaying their shoulder as a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... mild. A young prince! Yes, that is true. What freedom of manner, what grace! What fine disregard for the common throng gazing at him! Triumphant even with women! That woman, famous throughout Europe, is simply devouring him with those black eyes ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... supply of meat. On reaching the spot, however, where the huge monster lay, we found that others had been before us. The tusks were gone, and a portion of the flesh. Innumerable birds of prey, also, were tearing away at it, or seated on the surrounding trees devouring the pieces they had carried off, while several hyenas, already gorged, crept sulkily away, doubting whether they should attack us or not. The spectacle was almost ghastly, and it showed how soon a mountain of flesh might disappear in that region. Chickango was greatly ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... feet high, thick-set, square-built, with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, and broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the small-pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth were white; his eyes had that calm, devouring expression which people attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, was not without certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish hair was said to be silver and gold ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... thinking over it their imagination had not pictured to them so uncomfortable a workshop as this. When they had returned to the light, the owner of the place took them through the crushing-mill attached, showed them the stone or mulloch, as it was thrust into the jaws of the devouring animal, and then brought them in triumph round to the place where the gold was eliminated from the debris of mud and water. The gold did not seem to them to be very much; but still there it was. 'Two ounces to the ton, my boys!' said ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... than to the enemy. While of such material were the company, the fare before them was no less varied: here some rubicund squire was deep in amalgamating the contents of a venison pasty with some of Sneyd's oldest claret; his neighbor, less ambitious, and less erudite in such matters, was devouring rashers of bacon, with liberal potations of potteen; some pale-cheeked scion of the law, with all the dust of the Four Courts in his throat, was sipping his humble beverage of black tea beside four sturdy cattle-dealers from Ballinasloe, who were discussing hot ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... He leaned forward, devouring the hero with his eyes, trying to pierce the bronzed skin, to read the record. From his seat upon the stage John, also, stared at the illustrious guest. John was frightfully nervous, but looking at the veteran he forgot ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell

... pounds. Cat-fish have been taken in the Mississippi weighing more than a hundred and fifty pounds.] The eagles, or fish-hawks, now and then dropped a newly caught fish, of which they gladly took possession; and once they found a purveyor in an otter which they saw by the bank, devouring some object of an appearance so wonderful that Du Gay cried out that he had a devil between his paws. They scared him from his prey, which proved to be a spade-fish, or, as Hennepin correctly describes it, a species of sturgeon, with a ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... for nearly two hours. Suddenly I heard my sisters on the stairs, when I thrust the book into my bosom, and the two other volumes which lay near into my pockets, and hurried out of the house to my beloved woods. Here I remained all day beneath the trees, bewildered, bewitched, devouring the contents of these delicious volumes, and only returned to the house when it was too dark to peruse ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and shrivelled a life raft. Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting everywhere out ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... in various ways: some are philosophers, like (a secure fastening, and a vowel) and (a breakfast eatable). Some, again, are poets, like (painful results of a devouring element) and (expressive sounds, and true value). There are essayists like (hardened metal, and a vowel) and (young and tender meat); and others, like (a kind of swallow), who are of less amiable character. These stand side by side with writers of novels, like (some ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... is small wonder that such a one becomes known early in life as a "book worm." As a little child he takes readily to reading and won't take to much else. Because we all learn quickly what we like, he is soon devouring books for older heads. "Why won't he run and play like other children?" wails Mother, and "That boy ought to be made to join the ball team," scolds Father; but "that boy" continues to keep his nose ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict

... are seized with this fierce longing for battle, murder, and sudden death. The name means bear-shirt and has been connected with the old were-wolf tradition, the myth that certain people were able to change into man-devouring wolves with a wolfish mad desire to rend ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... hideous that I can in no way describe them except to remind the reader of the swarming life which the solar microscope brings before his eyes in a drop of water—things transparent, supple, agile, chasing each other, devouring each other—forms like nought ever beheld by the naked eye. As the shapes were without symmetry, so their movements were without order. In their very vagrancies there was no sport; they came round me and ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton

... deservedly has nature with the bounties of heaven and earth endued thee! Thy ever fruitful womb not closed with ice nor dissolved by the raging star; where Ceres and Bacchus are perpetual twins: thy woods are not the harbor of devouring beasts, nor thy continual verdure the ambush of serpents, but the food of innumerable herds and flocks presenting thee, their shepherdess, with distended dugs or golden fleeces. The wings of thy night involve thee not in the horror of darkness, but have still some white feather; and thy day is (that ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... treeless regions it is not known. It prefers heavy "timber," where there are huge logs and hollow trees in plenty. It requires the neighbourhood of water, and in connection with this may be mentioned a curious habit it has, that of plunging all its food into the water before devouring it. It will be remembered that the otter has a similar habit. It is from this peculiarity that the raccoon derives its specific name of Lotor (washer). It does not always moisten its morsel thus, but ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... rural districts of the vermin which is devouring them!"—"Everybody knows," says Isnard, "that the priest is as cowardly as he is vindictive... Let these pestiferous fellows be sent back to Roman and Italian lazarettos.. What religion is that which, in its nature, is unsocial ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... is full of Egyptian local colour, a group of pyramids occurring twice. On the wall are subsidiary scenes, such as Joseph before Pharaoh, the incident of Benjamin's sack with the cup in it, and the scene of the lean kine devouring the fat, which they are doing with tremendous spirit, all beginning ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... return to the village and bury the body there; so they made preparations to return, and as they traveled along, they would each evening erect several poles upon which the body was placed to prevent the wild beasts from devouring it. When the dead boy was thus hanging upon the poles, the adopted child—who was the Sun Spirit—would play about the camp and amuse himself, and finally told his adopted father he pitied him, and his mother, for their sorrow. The adopted son said he could bring ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman

... on the edge of the vortex, untouched, unafraid, beyond it all since that awful devouring flame had flared and gone out. She even wondered if it had killed her, so terribly aloof was she, so totally distinct from the pandemonium that raged around her. It had the vividness and the curious lack of all physical feeling of a nightmare. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... He always had a court about him; equerries, and secretaries, and doctors, and odd and amusing men whom they found out for him, and who were well pleased to find themselves in his beautiful and magnificent Princedown, wandering in woods and parks and pleasaunces, devouring his choice entrees, and quaffing his curious wines. Sometimes he dined with them, sometimes a few dined with him, sometimes he was not seen for weeks; but whether he were visible or not, he was the subject of constant thought ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... Connie. "To the end," darted through Ronald's mind; and just then both children heard an unmistakable and awful roar. Was it the roar of human voices or the roar of something else—a devouring and awful element? Connie turned white. Now, if ever, was ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... bodies of their slaughtered brethren. They found them mere headless trunks; and the wounds with which they were covered showed how bravely they had fought. Their hearts, too, had been torn out and carried off; a proof of their signal valor; for in devouring the heart of a foe renowned for bravery, or who has distinguished himself in battle, the Indian victor thinks he appropriates to himself ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... might render more important services to the country in the streets of Mexico than in this inglorious war with bloody insects! A retreat was therefore sounded, and the country of the Pintos was evacuated. Thereupon rushed forth the little garrison from the clutches of the devouring insects, and issued a heroic proclamation, which was enough to frighten ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... as to be amazing, and they had never been seen before by any of the present inhabitants of the Shoals. They are plovers of some kind, I should judge, but I do not know." On the 16th she wrote again: "All sorts of strange things were cast up by the storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they could find; always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fighting all the time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did not shoot them after the first day, a fact which gives ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... retard their death—by the needle. How a human being can consent to live on this profit, stolen from poverty, is beyond my imagination. These men, when known, will be regarded as hyenas and jackals. They are like the wild beasts which follow herds of cattle for the purpose of devouring those that are injured or those that have fallen ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."[*] Want and misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. It prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground—broken meats which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse—and, should these meagre resources fail, even the most ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... dining-room beyond. Here a group of grimy-clothed tables seemed to have alighted in sudden confusion, reminding one of a flock of pigeons huddled together in fear of the vultures soon to descend on them with greedy, all-devouring appetites. ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... for no man of honour or honesty can in way of resistance or requital deign to use it, but must infallibly without repugnance be borne down thereby. By it the vile practiser achieveth the greatest mischief that can be. His words are, as the psalmist saith of Doeg, devouring words: "Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue:" and, "A man," saith the wise man, "that beareth false witness against his neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow;" that is, he is a complicated ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... here, lady, for the rest of the recital is very shocking; but I have been requested to tell all, and must do so. It was something over an hour before we, with some four or five others, who had accompanied us, returned, when, oh, horror! what were our feelings on beholding a pack of hungry wolves devouring the body of Mr. Hadley! We lighted torches and drove them away, but nothing remained of the dead man but his bones! God grant that I may never witness another ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... as a source of profit. No—the mill-town would not grow beautiful as it grew larger—rather, in obedience to the grim law of industrial prosperity, it would soon lose its one lingering grace and spread out in unmitigated ugliness, devouring green fields and shaded slopes like some insect-plague consuming the land. The conditions were familiar enough to Amherst; and their apparent inevitableness mocked the hopes he had based on ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... them, fascinating little fellows. He's a cabinetmaker, Miss Bassett,—a producer of antiques, and a good one; and about the gentlest human being you ever saw. He talks about existing law as though it were some kind of devil,—a monster, devouring the world's poor. But he won't let his wife spank the children,—wouldn't, even when one of them kicked a hole in my hat! I supposed that of course there would be dynamite lying round in tomato cans; and when I shook ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... between them and the fifth, if they had to work after evening chapel, had to sit behind desks around the house class-room facing the centre, in which as a rule the fifth form boys were lazily cooking and devouring their suppers. Certain parts of those repasts, like sausages, we would import ready cooked from the "Tuck Shop," and hence they only needed warming up. Breakfast in Big School was no comfort to one, and personally I seldom attended it. But at dinner and tea one had to appear, and remain till ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... was the indignant comment of Mr. Walker Boggs, as he proceeded to add to his rotundity by devouring the hearty breakfast that the waiter had just brought him. "I am left like a marooned sailor on the sea of life. The only occupation that could have entertained me is gone. It is no time to enter business again, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... her language, our Church will lose unspeakably much, and, finally, for the most part, even her very existence under her [Lutheran] name. 2. We know the days of the great apostasy in Europe. . . . Also this devouring monster could be counteracted by a well-arranged Evangelisches Magazin." (544.) In 1813 the Magazin contained a series of articles urging the Reformed and Lutherans to stand together against all attempts at introducing English. The English language, it is said, ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... the step of man had ceased from passing, repaired to the first gate of the palace, before which he beheld two monstrous lions, their eyes flaming like the mouth of a lighted oven. He cast before each half a lamb, and while they were devouring it passed on. By the same stratagem he arrived safely into the eighth court: at the gate of which lay the forty slaves sunk in profound sleep. He entered cautiously, and beheld the princess in a magnificent hall, reposing on a splendid ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... a race of princes who proclaimed themselves the heirs of Charlemagne, and a factious younger branch that was eager to bury the Constable de Bourbon's treason under the throne; obliged too, to fight down a heresy on the verge of devouring the monarchy, without friends, and aware of treachery in the chiefs of the Catholic party and of republicanism in the Calvinists, Catherine used the most dangerous but the surest of political weapons—Craft. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... sail with. Another thing, some books he had sent home for, a year or more ago, came to hand at this time, and gave him a fresh pretext for delay. There were eight or nine volumes to unpack and cut the pages of. He ran from one to another, sipping, devouring. Finally he cast anchor in a collected edition of his old chief's writings on obstetrics—slipped in, this, as a gift from the sender, a college chum—and over it, his feet on the table, his dead pipe in the corner ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... annually at London; beheading with them is less infamous than hanging; they give the wall as the place of honour; hawking is the general sport of the gentry; they are more polite in eating than the French, devouring less bread, but more meat, which they roast in perfection; they put a great deal of sugar in their drink; their beds are covered with tapestry, even those of farmers; they are often molested with the scurvy, said to have first crept into England with the Norman Conquest; their houses are commonly ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... crocodiles which have long been the terror of the people whose native land they inhabit; the alligators, which patronise America exclusively; and the gavials of India. They are said to act as orderlies, in the rivers they frequent, devouring all the putrid matter that would else infect the atmosphere. Here too are those curious snakes which are equally thick at either end—a peculiarity which has earned for them the appellation of double-headed, and the supposed power of walking indifferently forwards ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... alone. Mic-co had been summoned away by an Indian servant. A soft light gleamed in the corner of the court in a shower of vines. Its light was a little like the soft rays of the Venetian lamp that had shone in the Sherrill garden, but Carl ruthlessly put the memory aside. It had grown once into a devouring flame of evil portent. It must not ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple

... and spicy compound that nature ever fashioned," he exultingly replied, holding her off, devouring her with his eyes. "I plainly foresee that you can fill the poorest little home with ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... held the bow and the lance, who were cruel and would show no mercy, whose voice roared like the sea, who rode upon horses, every man in array as if to battle—they are the carcasses even of the mighty men of war that came against Jacob in the day of his deliverance, and the smoke is that of the devouring fires that have consumed them. And those wild hills that surround you are not a sanctuary planked with cedar and plated with silver; nor are ye ministering priests at the altar, with censers and with torches; ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Comte were overrun, and, with Lorraine, permanently annexed to the French monarchy; and although, by the peace of Nimeguen, part of his acquisitions in Flanders was abandoned, enough was retained by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had so ardently desired, and render their situation to the last degree precarious, in the neighbourhood of so formidable a power. The heroic William, indeed, had not struggled in vain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... wood-fire which crackled and flickered so beautifully while our madam wrote about her cattle and pigs and Jim and Silvy, but in truth we cannot envy our ancestors the care of those fires. With three yawning, devouring fireplaces constantly to be fed, and an additional one for each of the guest-rooms so often occupied during the winter—for this was the visiting season—there was no lack of business for Ralph, a white man; and his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... and stayed near the cities. With the change of climate, however, came a change in their taste for insects. They made their home in the country as well as the cities, and became seed and vegetable eaters, devouring the young buds on vines and trees, grass-seed, oats, ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... light, because she spake ill of the sun, and what she lost was given to her opponent.[170] The evil intentions thou didst harbor against thy companion shall be punished in the same way. Instead of thy devouring her, she shall devour thee." The mouse: "O Lord of the world! Shall my whole kind be destroyed?" God: "I will take care that a remnant of thee is spared." In her rage the mouse bit the cat, and the cat in turn threw herself ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... audience craves, offended with the throng, That she of all the rest neglected was so long; Alledging for herself, when, through the Saxons' pride, The godlike race of Brute to Severn's setting side Were cruelly inforc'd, her mountains did relieve Those whom devouring war else every where did grieve. And when all Wales beside (by fortune or by might) Unto her ancient foe resign'd her ancient right, A constant maiden still she only did remain, The last her genuine laws which ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... I say. To your stump and wait—and learn how restful a thing it is to sit down by faith. For the town sprayer is a vain thing. The roof of green is riddled. The rafters overhead reach out as naked as in December. Ruin looks through. On sweep the devouring hosts in spite of arsenate of lead and "wilt" disease and Calasoma beetles. Nothing will avail; nothing but a new woodlot planted with saplings that the caterpillars do not eat. Sit still my soul, and ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... looked in at the Club on my way. There I found Deloraine devouring a hearty tea and looking the ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... They were like a devouring fire, but more violent than ever. Very late into the evening the Dauphin sent to the King for permission to receive the communion early the next morning, without ceremony and without display, at the mass performed in his chamber. Nobody heard of this, that evening; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... things he has been in all his enterprises. It was these qualities that enabled him to make that astounding railway which brought Cairo almost into touch with the Khalifa, who, with his predecessor, the Mahdi, and with his tragically potent ally, the hungry and all-devouring desert, had beaten back so many other attempts to reach and to ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... an early symptom, and one that will never deceive. A young man had been bitten by one of his dogs; I was requested to meet a medical gentleman on the subject: I was a little behind my time; as I entered the room I found the dog eagerly devouring a pan of sopped bread. "There is no madness here," said the gentleman. He had scarcely spoken, when in a moment the dog quitted the sop, and, with a furious bark sprung against the wall as if he would seize some imaginary object that ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... economical with my stock of reading lest it should be finished before the next arrival, and leave me utterly destitute. I went over the periodicals, the Athenaeum, for instance, with great deliberation, going through every number three times; the first time devouring the more interesting articles; the second, the whole of the remainder; and the third, reading all the advertisements from beginning to end. If four months (two steamers) passed without a fresh parcel, I felt discouraged in the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... relations into favour. Relations are like scorpions or even more noxious. Asked which was the worse of his two recurring maladies, gout or colic, he replied: "When the gout attacks me I feel as if I were between the jaws of a lion devouring me, mouthful by mouthful; when the colic visits me, I would willingly exchange it ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... steed who glories in that tremendous gallop which affects the spectator with fear. Indeed, we never can separate our conception of Dryden's vigorous and vaulting style from the image of a noble horse, devouring the dust of the field, clearing obstacles at a bound, taking up long leagues as a little thing, and the very strength and speed of whose motion give it at a distance the appearance of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... devote ourselves from now on, Bob, to perfecting a new line of attack," he went on to say. "Every member of the Harmony squad was there in the front row, and simply devouring our methods of assault. Depend on it, they will expect to profit from what ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... mouths, breaking up the hard pieces in their hands while waiting for their teeth to do its hasty work. Humanity at its noblest, in Grant's instantly ordering food, and in its most animal phase of necessity, in the hungry rebels devouring sustenance, were ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... our Age admonishes whatsoever thinking or writing man it has: Oh, speak to me some wise intelligible speech; your wise meaning in the shortest and clearest way; behold I am dying for want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring fact: speak, if you have any wisdom! As to song so called, and your fiddling talent,—even if you have one, much more if you have none,—we will talk of that a couple of centuries hence, when things are calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome; but only when Troy is taken: alas, while ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... and surveying the place, he perceived that they proceeded from a large house to which the devouring flames had already communicated. Don Alonso boldly rushed forward; his pity required no stimulus, but yet it was considerably heightened, when as he approached the building, the cries of affliction were clearly distinguishable in the Spanish tongue. He darted with velocity ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... good man, this Cabrion is a funny fellow—a jester—pay no attention to his jokes. I advise you now, in a friendly manner, to laugh at them, for really there is cause.' 'To laugh!' cried I; 'to laugh! but grief is devouring me—my existence is imbittered by those scoundrels—they pester me—they will cause me to lose my reason—I demand that they be locked up—exiled, at least from my street.' At these words the commissary smiled, and obligingly showed me the door. I understood ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... among the farmers, which had resulted from a long period of drought, and one forlorn picture was fairly burned into my mind. A number of starved hogs—collateral for a promissory note—were huddled into an open pen. Their backs were humped in a curious, camel-like fashion, and they were devouring one of their own number, the latest victim of absolute starvation or possibly merely the one least able to defend himself against their voracious hunger. The farmer's wife looked on indifferently, a picture of despair as she stood in the door ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... the idea of transubstantiation; he revolted at the idea that the eternal God could be in a wafer. He revolted at the idea that you could make the Trinity out of dough—bake God in an oven as you would a biscuit. I should think he would have revolted. The idea of a man devouring the creator of the universe by swallowing a piece of bread. And yet that is just as sensible as any of it. Those who, when smitten on one cheek turn the other, threatened to kill this man. He fled from his native land and was a vagabond in nearly every nation of Europe. He declared that he fought ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... beasts of Daniel's visions do not represent animals like themselves, or a multitude of such animals, but something of analagous disposition. The analogy between a wild, ferocious beast, stamping upon or devouring everything within its reach, and a cruel, persecuting, tyrannical government is apparent. A horn does not signify a horn, but some great power, such as a dynasty of kings or rulers; and what the horn is to the animal in manifesting ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... are far off, what I have done, and you that are near, know My strength. The sinners in Sion are afraid, trembling hath seized upon the hypocrites. Which of you can dwell with devouring fire? which of you shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh in justices, and speaketh truth, that casteth away avarice by oppression, and shaketh his hands from all bribes, that stoppeth his ears lest he hear ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... subtle motives in the soul of man. It is prolific of disguises. It is not merely under the mask which we may put on before other people, but it glides through various transformations of self-deceit; like the evil genius in the fairy tale, now dwindling to a mere seed, now bursting into a devouring fire. When, with an honest purpose, we probe it and pluck at it, still we may detect it in the lowest socket of the heart. Often it is most vital when we feel most sure that it is vanquished. It delights in the garb of humility, and finds its food ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... above us; the shells of the enemy were shrieking over our heads. There was a continuous crash of musketry that sounded like a fierce, devouring flame passing through dry thorns, yet above all this babel of horrid sounds could be heard the shouts and yells of the combatants and the shrieks and groans of wounded and dying men. Then remember that I saw but a little section, a few yards in width, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... the companionway that led to the platform, I saw a cabin 2 meters long in which Conseil and Ned Land, enraptured with their meal, were busy devouring it to the last crumb. Then a door opened into the galley, 3 meters long and located between the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... wrapped in the folds of her kimono, J. Elfreda sat drinking chocolate and devouring cakes as though her very existence depended ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... the estuary is changed for white sandstone, with occasionally black oxide of manganese, the fish are of delicious flavour; among others, the pacoo, near the Falls or Rapids, which is flat, twenty inches long, and weighs four pounds; it feeds on the seed of the arum arborescens, in devouring which the Indians shoot it with their arrows: of similar genus are the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various

... furtively, all with the air of persons who wished to be thought passing by. Their silence and their keen looks had in some way an air of menace. Looking back after I had turned in towards the gates, I found them devouring me with their eyes. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... really of a nature different from that of Brahman. For the material causes operative in the production of palaces and other material things are the bodies of the gods, and not their intelligent Selfs. And the web of the spider is produced from its saliva which, owing to the spider's devouring small insects, acquires a certain degree of consistency. And the female crane conceives from hearing the sound of thunder. And the lotus flower indeed derives from its indwelling intelligent principle the impulse of movement, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... was greedily devouring the contents of the letter. She stood beside the light over her dressing-table; her heart was pounding furiously, her eyes ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... Prognostications. As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution," etc.,—an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his "Prognostications," and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between "broken spectacles" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... when the morning breeze sprung up, and now the flames extended in every direction, gaining rapidly upon the spot where the remaining Texans had stood at bay. So fiercely and abruptly did the flames rush upon them, that all simultaneously, men and horses, darted into the water for shelter against the devouring element. Many were drowned in the whirlpools, and those who succeeded in reaching the opposite shore were too miserable and weak to think of anything, except of regaining, if ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... rocks, with shifting splendor and that mellow thundering music which so saddens while it delights. Solitude, verily, was stretched out asleep in the sun upon the length of sandy beach and beetling promontory; and I sat and gazed now over the boundless waters, now into the devouring abysses opened by the bending crests of the billows, and anon into the gloomy depths of the forest or the serene and measureless openings of the sky. What grandeur in every line transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing ruin to the ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... provided, but he was so fully engaged that he did not notice that the young man on his daughter's right, had slipped away to another seat. Wyck came down and seeing the vacant chair, took possession of it, much to the amusement of all around. While old Goody was engaged in devouring a large helping of curry, and was in the act of raising his cup to wash down an extra large mouthful, he suddenly caught sight of Wyck talking to his daughter. His amazement, his rage and his greediness acting altogether at the same moment, brought about a calamity. He tried to swallow his food; ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... more: the knight no longer sallies forth in ponderous armour, mounted upon "a steed as invulnerable as himself[1]."—The damsel no longer depends upon the prowess of his mighty arm to maintain the glory of her charms, or the purity of her fame; grim barons, and castles guarded by monsters and all-devouring dragons, are no more; and from being the champions and masters of the fair sex, we are now become their friends and companions. We have not surely been losers by this change; the fading glories of romance have vanished, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... had just put the final touches on early that morning—there was a sound such as never had been heard before by human ears, an indescribable sound, terrifying and mysterious. Also, there was a fierce, devouring verditer blue light, and this came from the plates and studs you see, but so great was its strength that it got out of control and leaped about the room like a live thing. For some moments, while ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... incurable misery: the Nessus'-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner he had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of 'fourpence-halfpenny ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... whereon we stand is Apian land, Styled so of old from the great healer's name; For Apis, coming from Naupactus' shore Beyond the strait, child of Apollo's self And like him seer and healer, cleansed this land From man-devouring monsters, whom the earth, Stained with pollution of old bloodshedding, Brought forth in malice, beasts of ravening jaws, A grisly throng of serpents manifold. And healings of their hurt, by knife and charm, Apis devised, unblamed of ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... at the door of the tent, and I presume that by this time he is sitting in my chair picking his teeth, after devouring the bread! That sure is some highwayman, that mule, yet I feel that I'm going ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... the robbers were quite as polite as they had been at dinner. They gobbled up every thing within their reach, devouring it greedily, as though they feared that somebody might get more than his share, and the boys, having learned by experience, that, when one sojourns among Romans, it is a good plan to do as Romans do, snatched what they liked best, and ran ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon

... they are not interfered with for the first few days. This was discovered at Goodwood years ago by the fact that, on two or three occasions, one Celestial lady, who had been given greater attention than she considered necessary, revenged herself by devouring her own family of puppies! One thing seems from experience to be especially advisable—as far as can be arranged, to breed in the spring rather than autumn. The puppies need all the open air and exercise that is possible, and where rickety specimens ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... haste, in vain they cry To their celestial beasts for aid; In vain their guilty king they upbraid, In vain on Moses he, and Moses' God, does call, With a repentance true too late: They're compassed round with a devouring fate That draws, like a strong net, the mighty ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... then there had come his talk with his aunt, which had wrought him up into a mood of vague excitement. Just at that moment Maud had come in his way; then friendship had followed; and then he had been seized with this devouring passion which had devastated his heart. He had known all the time that he was too late; and even so he had gone to work the wrong way: it was his infernal diplomacy, his trick of playing with other lives, of yielding to emotional ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson

... some of them were in her arms, some of them fell on her shoulders, and one of them towered over her head. Smothered in gowns, she bounced out of the room like a walking milliner's shop. I have to thank the wretched old creature for a moment of genuine amusement, at a time of devouring anxiety. The meanest insect, they say, has its use in this world—and ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... favourite food, Luce," said Basil; "now I think they are fonder of dogs than anything else. I have often known them to come where they had heard the yelping of a dog as if for the purpose of devouring it. I have seen one seize a large dog that was swimming across the Bayou Boeuf, and drag him under, as quick as a trout would have taken a fly. The ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... been a part of all that he had seen. He had bowed beneath the sceptre of Uranus, he had witnessed his fall, and marked the ocean crimson with his blood. He remembered hoary Saturn a brisk active Deity, pushing his way to the throne of Heaven, and devouring in a trice the stone that now resists his fangs for millenniums. He had heard the shields of the Corybantes clash around the infant Zeus; he described to Elenko how one day the sea had frothed and boiled, and undraped ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... ago there was no proper fire police to protect the Metropolis against what is commonly called the "all-devouring element." There was, it is true, a force of 300 parochial engines set on foot by Acts which were passed between the years 1768-74—Acts which are still in existence—but these engines are under the superintendence of the beadles and parish engineers, who are not the most active of men or nimble of ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.

... Adam had more reason for a piously thankful feeling towards the Past, a piously valiant towards the Future. What king or man had seen himself delivered from such strangling imbroglios of destruction, such devouring rages of a hostile world? And the ruin worked by them lay monstrous and appalling all round. Friedrich is now Fifty-one gone; unusually old for his age; feels himself an old man, broken with years and toils; and here lies his Kingdom in haggard slashed ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... slowness—for he knows the curiosity of the Charmer to be always devouring—Eugene makes a pretence of getting out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper with difficulty, long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written on it in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... over the stream, ready to abandon to it for ever the first blossom of her spring and her whole life. A man whose fate it has been to be the witness of such a passion, has lived through bitter moments if he has loved himself and not been loved. I shall for ever remember that devouring attention, that tender gaiety, that innocent self-oblivion, that glance, still a child's and already a woman's, that happy, as it were flowering smile that never left the half-parted lips and glowing cheeks.... All that Liza had vaguely foreshadowed ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the Arabic ghûl (in English usually ghowl or ghoul), the vampire, man-devouring demon, which corresponds to the bhût and pret, the malignant ghosts of the Hindus. It may be noted here that the Persian ghol is the loup-garou of Europe, the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... their steeds blowing back their horses' manes, and the fresh air from the sea bringing a feeling of hope to their hearts, that they would yet be able to overtake the pirates, and rescue their comrades in distress. Their horses' feet were devouring the miles. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... with such wonder when we turn the pages of the realist. There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget; but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... count the stars And number hail down-pouring, Tell the osiers of the Thames, Or Goodwin sands devouring, Than the thick-showered kisses here Which now thy tired lips must bear. Such a harvest never was So rich and full of pleasure, But 'tis spent as soon as reaped, So trustless ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... probable that he acknowledged Ur-lumma of Gis-ukh as his suzerain. His son and successor Entemena restored the prestige of Lagash. Gis-ukh was subdued and a priest named Illi was made its governor. A tripod of silver dedicated by Entemena to his god is now in the Louvre. A frieze of lions devouring ibexes and deer, and incised with great artistic skill, runs round the neck, while the eagle crest of Lagash adorns the globular part. The vase is a proof of the high degree of excellence to which the goldsmith's art had already attained. A vase of calcite, also dedicated by Entemena, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... dem, dup, nang, shait, ksaw in place of iai, e.g. dem-wan, to come after; dup-teh, to practise; nang-wad, to go on searching; shait pang, to be always ill; ksaw-bam, to be in the habit of devouring. There are two verbs for "to be," long, implying existence absolutely, and don, implying limited existence, and also meaning "to have." There is only one form of conjugation for all verbs. Tense and mood ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... deceased for his burying place, without any covering. There were particular persons set apart for this office of embalming, each sex performing it for those of their own. During the process they watched the bodies very carefully to prevent the ravens from devouring them, the relations of the deceased bringing them victuals and waiting on them during ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... which is in such direct and tough antagonism with the feverish socialism of the French artisan. His love was for the soil—a love deep-rooted as the oaks that grew in it. Of Paris he had a dim, vague dread, as of a superb beast continually draining and devouring. Of all forms of government he was alike ignorant. So long as he tilled his little angle of land in peace, so long as the sun ripened his fruits and corn, so long as famine was away from his door and his neighbours dwelt in good-fellowship with him, so long he was happy, and cared not whether ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... Great Mother has been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not uncommon to find, even in English ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... my room all day; and have just concluded a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been devouring, with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know not how to express, "The Life of Robert Schumann", by his pupil, von Wasielewski. This pupil, I am sure, did not fully comprehend his great master. I think the key to Schumann's whole ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... things—whose whole mind was absorbed in the question of what he could have heard about the trial, about his father, about the new and strange future before him—gazed at him with eyes that seemed hollowed out all round with devouring anxiety. "What is it?" she said, "what is it? For God's sake tell me! ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... of fair feathers, very much delighted, enjoyed himself in those woods accompanied by his mother. Of grand achievements, and deeply reverenced by all rangers of the skies, he gratified his mother by devouring the snakes. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... amazement of Nick, as he sat up and rubbed his eyes, on discovering an unknown negro, seated on a log, with a tin plate on his knees, and devouring one of the ducks that had been placed in the primitive oven ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... next exploit is the invasion of the kingdom of departed spirits and his terrific battle with the sovereign Yama. The poet in his description of these regions with the detested river with waves of blood, the dire lamentations, the cries for a drop of water, the devouring worm, all the tortures of the guilty and the somewhat insipid pleasures of the just, reminds one of the scenes in the under world so vividly described by Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Yama is defeated (Sect. XXVI.) by the giant, not so much by his superior power as because at the ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... had also to be stopped lest it come snapping and devouring within the grove. It is no easy matter to check a prairie fire against a prairie gale when every human aid is summoned. It is desperate work to try to check one when to the fires of nature are added the furious blaze of hostile arms, every rifle sighted by savage, vengeful ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... mouth the pressure of divine lips, was exquisite and maddening. Before this woman, full of enigmas, all else faded away in his mind. The remembrance of Dea struggled in the shadows with weak cries. There is an antique bas-relief representing the Sphinx devouring a Cupid. The wings of the sweet celestial are bleeding between the fierce, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... seeking mind, this unspoiled child in whose face the world was being reflected as in a magical mirror. He loved her with frank affection—a pure passion that was more intimate than fraternal love and more exalted, in a sense, than the selfish, devouring passion of the suitor. It would have been difficult for him to say what his relationship to her at the moment was. It was more than friendship, more than brotherly care, and yet it was definably less ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... open and the morning wind came in to lift the long curtains and to stir the great bowl of flowers on the table. Oliver, hungrily devouring chicken and rolls and bacon and sausages and hot waffles with maple sirup, was saying little but was listening earnestly to the jokes and laughter of Cousin Jasper. After a day and night of anxiety, depression, struggle, ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... over the springy heather to where she sat. She turned when the rustling his footsteps made through the bracken was near enough to arrest her attention, and looked up at him as he came. Then she rose slowly and stood waiting for him. He came up to her without a word, and seized both her hands, devouring her face with his eyes. Something he saw there repelled him. Slowly he let her hands fall, still looking at her silently. "You are not glad to see me, and I have counted the hours," he said, at last, in a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... one can," the great critic said. "Your book is good, but it excited jealousy, and your struggle will be hard and long. Genius is a cruel disease. Every writer carries a canker in his heart, a devouring monster, like the tapeworm in the stomach, which destroys all feeling as it arises in him. Which is the stronger? The man or the disease? One has need be a great man, truly, to keep the balance between genius and character. The talent grows, the heart withers. Unless a man is a giant, unless ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... rains before it is everlastingly too late. There are birds enough to sing for every one, butterflies enough to go around, and so many flowers we can't always keep the cattle and horses from tramping down and even devouring beautiful ones, like Daniel thought the lions would devour him—but they didn't. Wouldn't it be a good idea, O Lord, for You to shut the cows' mouths and save the cowslips also; they may not be worth as much as a man, but ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... chosen crest of our family, a bear, as ye observe, and rampant; because a good herald will depict every animal in its noblest posture; as a horse SALIENT, a greyhound CURRANT, and, as may be inferred, a ravenous animal IN ACTU FEROCIORI, or in a voracious, lacerating, and devouring posture. Now, sir, we hold this most honourable achievement by the wappen-brief, or concession of arms, of Frederick Redbeard, Emperor of Germany, to my predecessor, Godmund Bradwardine, it being the crest of a gigantic Dane, whom he slew in the lists in the Holy Land, on a quarrel touching ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... wholly impossible on this side of the Atlantic, and even in most of the public libraries of Europe, to find anything more than a small fraction of the innumerable obscure publications which the neglect of grocers and trunkmakers has spared to be ransacked by the all-devouring genius of Homoeopathy. I have endeavored to verify such passages as my own library afforded me the means of doing. For some I have looked in vain, for want, as I am willing to believe, of more exact references. But this I am able to affirm, that, out of the very small number which I have ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the second letter, dated December 3, 6 P.M.: "I have your letter of November 27, and I see that your little head is much excited. I remember the line: 'A woman's wish is a devouring flame,' and I must calm you. I wrote to you that I was in Poland, that when we should have got into winter-quarters you might come; so you must wait a few days. The greater one becomes, the less will one must have; one depends on events and circumstances. You may go to Frankfort or ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... extraordinary features of the reign of terror, to realize that in some directions it was accomplishing a useful purpose. If the Revolution had been maintained so long, in the face of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pressure, it was only by a policy of devouring flames and demented angels. And meanwhile, whatever might be the value or the fate of republican institutions, unconsciously the great social revolution had become an accomplished fact. In the short space ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... they beheld Rhiannon sitting beside the horse block. And when they were opposite to her. "Chieftain," said she, "go not further thus, I will bear every one of you into the palace, and this is my penance for slaying my own son and devouring him." "Oh fair lady," said Teirnyon, "think not that I will be one to be carried upon thy back." "Neither will I," said the boy. "Truly, my soul," said Teirnyon, "we will not go." {35} So they went forward ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... known even to those who had observed him long. He passed for a mere official drudge; and he had all the industry, the minute accuracy, the formality, the tediousness, which belong to the character. But he had other qualities which had not yet shown themselves, devouring ambition, dauntless courage, self-confidence amounting to presumption, and a temper which could not endure opposition. He was not disposed to be anybody's tool; and he had no attachment, political or personal, to Bute. The two men ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... come, thought Eleanor, and as well now as ever; and she assented. Mr. Carlisle led her in. Nobody was in waiting but Mrs. Powle; and she waited with devouring anxiety. The Squire and Julia she had carefully ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner



Words linked to "Devouring" :   wishful, all-devouring, desirous



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