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Ravening   Listen
Ravening

adjective
1.
Living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey.  Synonyms: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, vulturine, vulturous.  "The rapacious wolf" , "Raptorial birds" , "Ravening wolves" , "A vulturine taste for offal"
2.
Excessively greedy and grasping.  Synonyms: rapacious, voracious.  "Ravening creditors" , "Paying taxes to voracious governments"
3.
Devouring or craving food in great quantities.  Synonyms: edacious, esurient, rapacious, ravenous, voracious, wolfish.  "A rapacious appetite" , "Ravenous as wolves" , "Voracious sharks"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ravening" Quotes from Famous Books



... flashes the mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care—take any trouble? Would such a ravening world be ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... when the face slipped from me like a fading light, I called out eagerly that love was a phantom; for her God of love had left me to the blind gods that crush, to the storm and the dark and the ravening wolves. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... earth, with the red fire flashing before her, Brimo the wild witch-huntress, while her mad hounds howled around. She had one head like a horse's, and another like a ravening hound's, and another like a hissing snake's, and a sword in either hand. And she leapt into the ditch with her hounds, and they ate and drank their fill, while Jason and Orpheus trembled, and Medeia hid her eyes. And at last the witch-queen ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... the which shall be accomplished when the raging Manchegan lion and the white Tobosan dove shall be linked together, having first humbled their haughty necks to the gentle yoke of matrimony. And from this marvellous union shall come forth to the light of the world brave whelps that shall rival the ravening claws of their valiant father; and this shall come to pass ere the pursuer of the flying nymph shall in his swift natural course have twice visited the starry signs. And thou, O most noble and obedient squire that ever bore sword at side, beard on face, or nose to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... 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 came we into the world. When shall greatness ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... where there is no wood to burn. Just now you were boasting of your resemblance to Alcibiades, but that very gift which distinguished him, and made him dear to the Athenians—I mean his beauty—is hardly possible in connection with your doctrines, which would turn men into ravening beasts. He who would be beautiful must before all things be able to control himself and to be moderate—as I learnt in Rome before I ever saw Athens, and have remembered well. A Titan may perhaps have thought and talked as you do, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the pastoral poem which is misliked? for perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over. Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometime out of Melibeus's mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords, or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest? Sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, it can include the whole considerations ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded imagery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and feed from vases of crystal; the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption; for the mazes of interwoven ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... 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

... mule. In his hand was a rusty chain, and at the end of the chain the delighted Penrod perceived the source of the special smell he was tracing—a large raccoon. Duke, who had shown not the slightest interest in the rats, set up a frantic barking and simulated a ravening assault upon the strange animal. It was only a bit of acting, however, for Duke was an old dog, had suffered much, and desired no unnecessary sorrow, wherefore he confined his demonstrations to alarums and excursions, and presently sat down at a distance and expressed himself by intermittent ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... them till they disappeared in the distance. "Yes, brigands though they be," thought I, "there is something fine, something heroic in the spirit of their unrelenting vengeance." The sleuth-hound never sought the lair of his victim with a more ravening appetite for blood than they track the retreating columns of the enemy. Hovering around the line of march, they sometimes swoop down in masses, and carry off a part of the baggage, or the wounded. The wearied soldier, overcome by heat ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... judgment, for no one could be on occasion more severe, or unsparing, or denunciatory than he. "Woe unto you, hypocrites," he says to some of the respectable church-leaders of his time. "Beware of false prophets," he says in this passage, "for they are inwardly ravening wolves." No, Jesus certainly was not a soft-spoken person or one likely to plead for gentle judgments so as to get kindness in return. What he is in fact laying down in this passage is a much profounder principle,—the principle of the recoil of judgments. Your judgments ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody

... "if we show thee our tribes, we fear for thee and these who are with thee, for their name is legion and they are various in form and fashion, figure and favour. Some of us are heads sans bodies and others bodies sans heads, and others again are in the likeness of wild beasts and ravening lions. However, if this be thy will, there is no help but we first show thee those of us who are like unto wild beasts. But, O our lord, what wouldst thou of us at this present?" Quoth Hasan, "I would have you carry me forthwith to the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... red hen. She had cut a hole, and jumped out of the bag, to be sure; but here she was, "all alone by herself" once more, and the foxes—Want and Cruelty—ravening after her all through the great, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... yet the world was young, Within the woodland's shady heart had flung The green earth open, and a dark ravine, Through which a streamlet purled o'er mossy-green, Gigantic boulders, formed the chosen lair For ravening beasts that through the forest fare. At night or morn the deer were wont to seek The freshening nectar of the crystal creek; At night or morn the pard, with stealthy tread, Crept softly out upon the boughs o'erhead; A wanderer from rocky realms remote, Here laved the mountain bear ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... of conscience, than under the surveillance of village life. In a hundred ways there are increased opportunities for doing evil with impunity. [Footnote: Cf. E. A. Ross, Sin and Society, pp. 32: "The popular symbol for the criminal is a ravening wolf; but alas, few latter day crimes can be dramatized with a wolf and a lamb as the cast! Your up-to-date criminal presses the button of a social mechanism, and at the other end of the land or the year innocent ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... resolved not to be crushed. The sword of the Catholics was drawn for the assault—the sword of the reformers for defense. Civil war was just bursting forth in all its horrors, when the Turks, with an army three hundred thousand strong, like ravening wolves rushed into Hungary. This danger was appalling. The Turks in their bloody march had, as yet, encountered no effectual resistance; though they had experienced temporary checks, their progress had been on the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... that I have done!" he said unsteadily. "I have boasted unworthily, ravening like a brute beast in my triumph over thee, and by my boasting have I shamed thee, thou lily among women. Was I blind, that I could not see that thine is the triumph, over my passion and over me? Thou art another's, O my Lady ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... came: all furious and replete With brandy, malice, pertness, and conceit; Unskill'd in classic lore, through envy blind To all that's beauteous, learned, or refined; For faults alone behold the savage prowl, With reason's offal glut his ravening soul; Pleased with his prey, its inmost blood he drinks, And mumbles, paws, and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... what are you talking about, and what a resolution you are going to take. Just cast a glance on the ins and outs of justice, look at the number of appeals, of stages of jurisdiction; how many embarrassing procedures; how many ravening wolves through whose claws you will have to pass; serjeants, solicitors, counsel, registrars, substitutes, recorders, judges and their clerks. There is not one of these who, for the merest trifle, couldn't ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere (Poquelin)

... remains of the body of the little one sinking through the water and dashed for it. Colin could have shouted with triumph in the hope that vengeance would be served out upon the orcas, but he was not prepared for the next turn in the tragedy. Like a pack of ravening wolves the killers hurled themselves at the mother whale, three of them at one time fastening themselves with a rending grip upon the soft lower lip, others striking viciously with their rows of sharp teeth at her eyes. The issue was not in ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares. And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower Ever in covert ambuscade concealed, But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek, Like roaring lion, whom he may devour, And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak, Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath, And lulled by agony's despairing shriek. For it is he who hath the power of death, Even the devil, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... urged, though conscious of the peril as well as misery of his present position at the court. As the deer, driven by wolves to the precipice's brink, hesitates on making the plunge down—though it give him the only chance of escape from the ravening jaws of his fierce pursuers—so ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... say so, good Master Nowell," replied the rector. "I have done my best, I assure you, to keep my small and widely-scattered flock together, and to save them from the ravening wolves and cunning foxes that infest the country; and if now and then some sheep have gone astray, or a poor lamb, as in the instance of Mary Baldwyn, hath fallen a victim, I am scarcely to blame for the mischance. Rather let me say, sir, that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... hit upon the head, and in places of deeper tenderness, frequently roasted, and frozen yet more often, basted with brine when he had no skin left, scorched with thirst, and devoured by creatures whose appetites grew dainty when his own was ravening. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... 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 such an explosion, ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... of spiritual anaesthetic he must have, if he holds his grief fast tied to his heartstrings. But as grief must be fed with thought, or starve to death, it is the best plan to keep the mind so busy in other ways that it has no time to attend to the wants of that ravening passion. To sit down and passively endure it, is apt to end in putting all the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... no men trained to military operations. It was a city of artisans and tradesmen, and the Spaniards expected scarcely more than a show of resistance from a foe so ignoble. As well might the sheep resist a pack of ravening wolves as the men of the counting-house and workshop resist the best trained soldiers of Europe. But nobly, nay, up to the highest heroic pitch of human nature, did the citizens behave! They had to endure a siege in its most ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... 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 lion ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... bullets and gunpowder or cartridges, but must fight with bow and arrow, lance and war club. It was necessary, too, to defend themselves, as the tremendous cold was driving into the valley more beasts of prey, ravening with hunger. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... deeper and deeper into the base of the cliff, the mountain itself began to disintegrate; block after gigantic block breaking off and crashing down into the flaming, boiling, seething cauldron which was the apex of that ravening beam. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... marksmanship of Vose and his alertness reduced the danger from the fierce grizzly bears and ravening mountain wolves to the minimum, but the red men were an ever present peril. He had served as the target of many a whizzing arrow and stealthy rifle shot, but thus far had emerged with only a few insignificant ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... 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

... amusements, the sports of the woods and waters, even a Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and dipped in tallow, to which they were toled ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... and Samuel over the people, beeing sory with the Emperour, that they know how to write sentences of condemnation) These delight in cruelty, the brand of the Malignant Church; feede their eyes with Massacres, as the Queene-mother. No diet so pleasing to these ravening wolves, as the warme blood of the sheepe. These are they that cry fire and fagot, away with them, not worthy to live, their very mercies are cruelty: especially in their owne cause, they heat the fornace seaven times ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... pass by 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, or howling ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... 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, like the "bad" dog of the ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... of malice and ungraciousness. But give careful heed to my words, nor neglect thou aught of them, or thy destruction is certain-sure. I now will tell thee what to do. In the hall of yonder castle which riseth on that mountain is a fountain sentinelled by four lions fierce and ravening; and they watch and ward the path that leadeth thereto, a pair standing on guard whilst the other two take their turn to rest, and thus no living thing hath power to pass by them. Yet will I make known to thee the means whereby thou mayest win thy wish without any hurt or harm befalling thee from ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... the trail's most indomitable. They could face hardship and danger, the blizzards, the rapids, nature savage and ravening; but when it came to craft, graft and the duplicity of their fellow men ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... thrilled, enthused, given new courage; the message that the Americans had stopped the Germans at Chateau Thierry, electrified Paris. Strong men wept as they realized that the forces of the Great Republic, able and brave, stood between France and the ravening ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... tempest, blinding electric flash, rushing wave, descending spray, creaking timbers, with instinctive ravening of ocean's hungry hordes, are luring, friendly greetings compared to merciless clamor ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... 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

... of the mob, turned back to observe their loaded 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 gasp ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... to 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

... 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. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... whate'er their eyes desire; Gorging themselves upon the stolen flock And leaving desolate the rifled hut Of the defenceless. Solitary ones Hide from their robberies, for forth they go Into the wilderness, their prey to hunt Like ravening beasts. There are, who watch to slay, Rising before the dawn, or wrapp'd in night Roaming with stealthy footstep, as a thief, To smite their victims, while the wounded groan Struck by their fatal shaft. There are, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney

... most 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 and virtues: they express too well the far-spread occult Manichean ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... leader for seven years, and with good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived—as every wolf must live—to hunt, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... but its rough leaves kept it just warm enough, and hardly. Now, I should never have pulled the little darling; it would have seemed a kind of small sacrilege committed on the church of nature, seeing she had but this one; only with my sickly cub at home, I felt justified in ravening like a beast of prey. I even went so far in my greed as to dig up the little plant with my fingers, and bear it, leaves and all, with a lump of earth about it to keep it alive, home to my little woman—a ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... pain so absolutely black in its hideous agony as jealousy. The other mental pains of this life may last longer, but there is none that cuts down deeper, that possesses such a ravening tooth, while it lasts, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... had Mr. Montagu had such a shock. An eternally lost soul, a damned thing staring at paradise, seemed to gaze at him out of the boy's eyes. He thought he was seeing all the sins of the world in them, yet the look was appallingly innocent. He seemed to be discovering those sins in the dark, ravening eyes, but to be feeling them in himself as if the forgotten, ignored innermost of his own life were quaking with guilt under the spell of this staring presence. In the state of horrified sympathy to which it had precipitated him, he morbidly felt almost responsible for the brooding evil ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... to their place of skulls—even to their accursed Golgotha, where the blood of mine only brother was drunken by the ravening flames, and where thirty of our brethren perished because they believed in the God of Abraham, and of ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... children metamorphosed into birds and beasts. Turner has obtained several legends of this sort from the Eskimo of the Ungava district in Labrador. In one of these, wolves are the gaunt and hungry children of a woman who had not wherewithal to feed her numerous progeny, and so they were turned into ravening beasts of prey; in another the raven and the loon were children, whom their father sought to paint, and the loon's spots are evidence of the attempt to this day; in a third the sea-pigeons or guillemots are children who were changed ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... 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; ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... 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, bald wastes ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... ravening kite so swoops and plunders, when Hovering above the shelterd yard, she spies A helpless chicken near unwatchful hen, Who vainly dins the thief with after cries. I cannot reach the mountain-robber's den, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... of the Cistercians; of the desert life 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 ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... story told of two brothers, sons of the same father, who grew up in the same home and were deeply attached to each other. It happened that the older wandered away and fell into the power of an evil magician, who changed him into a ravening wolf. The younger mourned his loss, and treasured in his heart the image of the brother as he had been in the days before the wicked spell fell upon him. Impelled by his longing, he at last went out into the world to find his brother, and if ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... their rations, plain but plentiful at first, at the last only a mouldy crust and a bit of rusty bacon. I have been upon an ambulance-train freighted with human agony delayed for hours by rumors of an enemy in ambush. I have fed men hungry with the ravening hunger of the wounded with scanty rations of musty corn-bread; have seen them drink eagerly of foetid water, dipped from the road-side ditches. Yet they bore it all with supreme patience; fretted and chafed, it is true, but only on account ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... symphonious. Hermes and his Syrinx wooed the shy Euterpe; the maidens went in woven paces: a medley of masques flamed by; and the great god Pan breathed into his pipes. Stannum saw Bacchus pursued by the ravening Maenads; saw Lamia and her ophidian flute; and sorrowfully sped Orpheus searching for his Eurydice. Neptune blew his wreathed horn, the Tritons gambolled in the waves, Cybele clanged her cymbals; and with his music Amphion summoned rocks to Thebes. Jephtha's daughter danced to her ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... vain, for now the savage train Press ravening on his heels: See, prostrate at the baron's feet ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... walls of Joyous Gard, Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea: Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred, Nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be. Dark as death and white as snow the sea-swell scowls and shines, Heaves and yearns and pants for prey, from ravening lip to lip, Strong in rage of rapturous anguish, lines on hurtling lines, Ranks on charging ranks, that break and rend the battling ship. All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night? Not the prow that labours, helpless as a storm-blown ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 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 ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... confounded, and cast behind him his shield of seven bulls' hides. Panic-struck he retired, gazing on all sides like a wild beast, turning to and fro, slowly moving knee after knee. As when dogs and rustic men drive a ravening lion from the stall of oxen, who, keeping watch all night, do not allow him to carry off the fat of their cattle, but he, eager for their flesh, rushes on, but profits nought, for numerous javelins fly against him from daring hands, and blazing torches, at which he trembles, although furious; ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... time, even the clergy should know that the intellect of the Nineteenth Century needs no, guardian. They should cease to regard themselves as shepherds defending flocks of weak, silly and fearful sheep from the claws and teeth of ravening wolves. By this time they should know that the religion of the ignorant and brutal Past no longer satisfies the heart and brain; that the miracles have become contemptible; that the "evidences" have ceased to convince; that the spirit of investigation cannot ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... later, from the gnarled branches of the willow—up into which Stern had fairly flung her, and where he had himself clambered with the beasts ravening at his legs—the two sole survivors of the human race watched the glowering eyes that dotted ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... 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 attempts ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... 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 ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... murderous even of all that call thee God, Most treacherous even that ever called thee Lord; Face loved of little children long ago, Head hated of the priests and rulers then, If thou see this, or hear these hounds of thine Run ravening as the Gadarean swine, Say, was not this thy Passion, to foreknow In death's worst hour ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the wise-wife, and took the cup again; Night-long had she brewed that witch-drink and laboured not in vain. For therein was the creeping venom, and hearts of things that prey On the hidden lives of ocean, and never look on day; And the heart of the ravening wood-wolf and the hunger-blinded beast And the spent slaked heart of the wild-fire the guileful cup increased: But huge words of ancient evil about its rim were scored, The curse and the eyeless craving of the first ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... sprigs, whose ambition it was to ape the dress and manners of the royal pages, 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 dull the flush of his ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... they were lost to the fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters whom they had been torn from; and it was little consolation to these that they had found human mercy and tenderness in the breasts of savages who in all else were like ravening beasts. It was rather an agony added to what they had already suffered to know that somewhere in the trackless forests to the westward there was growing up a child who must forget them. The time came when something must ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... fallen victim to misplaced confidence, and had been craftily lured into this den of ravening wild beasts, why all this confusion and mad skurry? Why had not the traitor first made sure of his victim? Why ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... was so savage and so ravenous as that of these slender and spiritlike beings. With appetites insatiable, ferocity implacable, strength and courage prodigious for their stature, to call them the little wolves of the air is perhaps to wrong the ravening gray pack whose howlings strike terror down the corridors of the winter forest. Mosquitoes and gnats they hunted every moment, devouring them in such countless numbers as to merit the gratitude of every creature that calls ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... 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 ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Curtius did his life, in the bosom of father-land, they passed with fearful rapidity to a state of corruption, by avarice and luxury, equally without example. Never in their character did they belie the legend that their first founder was suckled, not at the breast of woman, but of a ravening she-wolf. They were the tragedians of the world's history, who exhibited many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... yet no Libyan lion I,— No ravening thing to rend another; Lay by your tears, your tremors by,— A husband's better than a brother; Nor shun me, Chloe, wild and shy As some stray fawn that seeks ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... ships; and, after loading the camels with 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 presents, they dashed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... sir? They are only so many ravening savages, ready to breathe out battle and slaughter if ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... against the laughing blue of the sky, a thousand shafts of sunlight pierced through the fan-like tracery, the golden orioles at play darted, chasing each other from bough to bough, the spring bubbled its cool musical notes beside them, and the sense of the blighting heat of the ravening desert round them seemed to accentuate the beauty of the peace and shade in ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... in the glow of his delight, of his rapture and his ravening desire, discovered anew the wonder of herself, and came to a new consciousness of her beauty. She would stand and gaze before her, with her hands upon her breasts, and her head flung back and her eyes closed in ecstasy, so that he might ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... unto them, 'Depart from me, workers of iniquity.' There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when indeed the righteous shall shine as the sun, but the wicked are sent into everlasting fire. For many shall arrive in My name, outwardly, indeed, clothed in sheep-skins, but inwardly being ravening wolves. Ye shall know them from their works, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... ship trails of fire in the sea, crossing and re-crossing each other, and the fire marked the ways of huge blue fishes, swift and terrible; and the Sea-farers prayed that these malignant searchers of the deep might not rise into the air and fall ravening upon them while they slept. In the darkness strange patches and tangles of light, blue and golden and emerald, floated past them, and these they discovered were living creatures to which they could give no names. Often also the sea was alive with fire, which ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... she would say, "I hate to call your friends names, but really he's a perfect scamp, and underneath all his fine manners he is no better than a wolf ravening for ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... another hunger very deep, and ravening; the very body's body crying out with a hunger more frightening, more profound than stomach or throat or even the mind; redder ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... would make them 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 howling, with the blood streaming ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... horrible monster, who is blackened with every crime at which humanity shudders, who had no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, no gleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy picture of his ravening life, was beloved and worshipped as few men have been since the world has stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuine unpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his edifying death,—this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyes ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... excitement. The fact was, he could not 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 ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... the impulse of thy nature," said the hermit, musing. "The brutes ye hunt obey their common instinct—and thou—Yet the ravening wolf and the cunning fox ye follow, and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... 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 Stripes would ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... forget all that and wonder which wolf 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 behind ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... shed, On transient pity's bounty fed, Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale! Beasts of the forest have their savage homes, But He, who should imperial purple wear, Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head! His wretched refuge, dark despair, While ravening wrongs and woes pursue, And distant far the faithful few Who would his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself? 65 Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile? Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold 70 What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well as Good; 75 When ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... hard jaw. Oh, it's terrible. I feel inclined to stretch out my hands and cry to them, 'Do what you will with me, in God's name, only do it quickly; cannot you see that I am worn out? If hatred gives you pleasure, indulge it.' They worry one, Frank, with ravening jaws, as dogs worry a rabbit. Yet they call ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the wolves, O Lord! Then I would be the keen-edged sword; Clean, free from rust, sharpened and sure, The handle grasped, my God, by Thee. To kill the cruel, ravening foe, And save the ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... execrable and ravening birds of night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in the garden; while the autumn sun—for it was in the second week of October—broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil shrubs, and the flowers, which should have died with ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... brood of devils, Tiamat called the stars and powers of the air to her aid, for she "set up" (1) the Viper, (2) the Snake, (3) the god Lakhamu, (4) the Whirlwind, (5) the ravening Dog, (6) the Scorpion-man, (7) the mighty Storm-wind, (8) the Fish-man, and (9) the Horned Beast. These bore (10) the "merciless, invincible weapon," and were under the command of (11) Kingu, whom Tiamat calls "her husband." Thus Tiamat had Eleven mighty Helpers besides the devils spawned ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... tricksters and sharpers, attended by the carrion flock of women who always hover after these wreckers and wastrels, came to Ascalon by scores. It began to appear a question, in time, of what they were to subsist upon, even though they turned to the ravening ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... leg-bail at the beginning, for it is no disgrace to a general to refuse to fight an army of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see the thing through to the end. And see it through he did! why, I tell you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer human beings; they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For near two hours the gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however, we had to knuckle under in the end. And to think that after it was all over they should come and tell us that we had ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... the words of Jesus, who, in His Sermon on the Mount, warned his hearers to "beware of false prophets which come to you in sheeps' clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves," and we reflect how applicable are the words in modern times. Everywhere, one must beware the snares and deceit of the servants of Satan, who, with pleasing outward appearance, entrap their victims. It is a delight and a satisfaction, then, to find real truth and sincerity ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... no ill of all this, as of course he ought to have thought. He was not the ravening lion of fiction—so rarely, if ever, to be met with in real life—going about seeking whom he might devour. He had absolutely no designs on Beatrice's affections, any more than she had on his, and he had forgotten that first ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard

... 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 ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... intervals almost more overwhelming, sink back into darkness and silence. Nor yet is even this all; but, as those incessant references to wolf and tiger made us see humanity 'reeling back into the beast' and ravening against itself, so in the storm we seem to see Nature herself convulsed by the same ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... little attention you can show me will be gratefully received—gratefully. I don't mind admitting to you, young man, for you look pure and uncorrupted, that I am terribly afraid of men. They are wicked, heartless creatures. I feel that I might more safely trust myself with ravening wolves than with men in general, but you are different. You have had ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... beneficent purpose seems for the moment to be excluded from nature, and a blind process, known as Natural Selection, is the deity that slumbers not nor sleeps. Reckless of good and evil, it brings forth at once the mother's tender love for her infant and the horrible teeth of the ravening shark, and to its creative indifference the one is ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... craves, or Hadrian seas. Not Cybele, nor he that haunts Rich Pytho, worse the brain confounds, Not Bacchus, nor the Corybants Clash their loud gongs with fiercer sounds Than savage wrath; nor sword nor spear Appals it, no, nor ocean's frown, Nor ravening fire, nor Jupiter In hideous ruin crashing down. Prometheus, forced, they say, to add To his prime clay some favourite part From every kind, took lion mad, And lodged its gall in man's poor heart. 'Twas wrath that laid Thyestes low; 'Tis wrath that oft destruction calls On cities, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... are not the only heroic sufferers who smile and make no moan, clasping close the hidden fangs ravening on their vitals. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... insomuch that frequently some are found feeding on carrion and weeds,—some starved in the highways, and many times poor children who have lost their parents, or have been deserted by them, are found exposed to and some of them fed upon by ravening wolves and other beasts ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... I observed the characteristics of Coriander's African gorilla with new interest. He performed wonderfully well; it was difficult to realize that the hairy, ravening, agile, and grotesquely-moving beast, from which every visitor shrank back aghast, was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an anticipated bride, very much after the ancient fashion of Laban's kinsman. The cunning rascal had a fashion of leaping at the bars when ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... river knew them, And smoothed his yellow foam, And gently rocked the cradle That bore the fate of Rome. The ravening she-wolf knew them, And licked them o'er and o'er, And gave them of her own fierce milk, Rich with raw flesh and gore. Twenty winters, twenty springs, Since then have rolled away; And to-day the dead are living: The lost ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... heaving high Their giant 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

... night presents 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, justice, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... ravening bird of prey Descending, to his eyry wild Bore, with exulting cries, away The ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... mar. No thing I saw so high and free from blame But worms were at its heart; each noble deed Revealed self-seeking as its primal seed. Love, honor, virtue—each was but a name! Naught marked us off, vile creatures of the dust, From ravening brutes, save on the smiling face A honeyed falseness—in the heart so base A craven weakness and a fiercer lust. Where was a friend had not his friend betrayed A brother guiltless of a brother's death, A wife that hid no poisoned sting ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... tamed with her own hands and 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 ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... disposition this," said he one night, when sitting by the ingle with his drowsy helpmate, watching the sputtering billets devoured, one after another, by the ravening flame: "'Tis an ill-natured disposition that is abroad, I say, that will neither let a man go about his own business, nor grant him a few honest junkets these moonlight nights. I might have throttled a hare or so, or a brace of rabbits; or what dost think, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... 15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... eloquently of their previous sufferings. At first they timidly held back, scarce venturing to believe that their new captors, as they thought them, were in earnest. But when their doubts and fears were removed, they attacked the mapira porridge like ravening wolves. Gradually the human element began to reappear, in the shape of a comment or a smile, and before long the women were chatting together, and a few of the stronger among the young children were making feeble attempts ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... The street was very quiet in the darkness. Far away in the east the red glare glowed. On the wind was still that faint, distant, ravening roar, like the roar of famished wolves; it was the roar ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various

... 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 had almost finished his first pipe that he came to a decision. Then, ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... 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 in this wise Spake ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus

... mountains are fine trees; Chestnuts, plum-trees, there one sees. All the year their forms they show; Stately more and more they grow. Noble turned to ravening thief! What the cause? This ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... fury of their minds I feed, and thence away, As ravening wolves by night and cloud their bellies' lust obey, That bitter-sharp is driving on, the while their whelps at home Dry-jawed await them, so by steel, by crowd of foes we come Into the very death; we hold the city's midmost street, Black ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... that 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 hair and much, much else besides. ...
— Song in a Minor Key • Catherine Lucille Moore

... bleeding from many 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 ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... ever stop it!" asked Sylvia despairingly, seeing wherever she looked nothing but that ravening, fiery leap of the flames, feeling that terrible hot breath on ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... dancing columns before the blast which swept across the unsheltered flat, with nothing, for a day's march, to check its force. But the wilderness is not only shelterless, it is waterless too—a place in which wild and ravening thirst finds no refreshing draughts, and the tongue cleaves to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Sir Knight, or thou diest;" and with that the cruel monster sprang upon him to accomplish his end. Still Sir Lancelot would not yield, nor sue to him for quarter, but flew on his enemy like the ravening wolf to his prey. Then were they seen hurtling together like wild bulls—Sir Lancelot holding fast his adversary's sword, so that in vain he attempted to make ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... must beg you to take charge of my clothes for me, for I intend to leave them with you. Why I have these fits of yawning I cannot tell: maybe they are sent as a punishment for my misdeeds; but, whatever the reason, the facts are that when I have yawned three times I become a ravening wolf and fly at men's throats." As he finished speaking he yawned a second time and howled again as before. The Innkeeper, believing every word he said, and terrified at the prospect of being confronted with a wolf, got up hastily and started ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... 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, ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing



Words linked to "Ravening" :   aggressive, gluttonous, acquisitive



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