"Voracious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Hardcastle, the servants and men-at-arms beyond. Porridge and broth and very small ale were the fare, and salted meat would be for supper, and as Grisell knew but too well already, her own retainers were grumbling at the voracious appetites of the men-at-arms as much as did their unwilling guests at the plainness ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of various kinds allure the taste, Of choicest sort and savour, rich repast! Delicious wines the attending herald brought; The gold gave lustre to the purple draught. Lured with the vapour of the fragrant feast, In rush'd the suitors with voracious haste; Marshall'd in order due, to each a sewer Presents, to bathe his hands, a radiant ewer. Luxurious then they feast. Observant round Gay stripling youths the brimming goblets crown'd. The rage ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... at Malaga I have not yet been able to obtain a perusal of; it will therefore perhaps suffice for the present to say that in one of them the Government was stigmatized as being 'voraz de pesetas' (voracious of pesetas), and the Catholic religion termed 'un sistema del mas grosero fanatismo' (a system of the grossest fanaticism). It was well for the writer of this trash that the Government were at the time alarmed at the step which ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... had entire France to divide like a cake between these cormorants, whose voracious appetites ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... fish hovers In a pond surrounded by grass. A tree leans against the sky—burned and bent. Yes... the family sits at a large table, Where they peck with their forks from the plates. Gradually they become sleepy, heavy and silent. The sun licks the ground with its hot, poisonous, Voracious mouth, like a dog—a filthy enemy. Bums suddenly collapse without a trace. A coachman looks with concern at a nag Which, torn open, cries in the gutter. Three children ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... that I have seen swimming out in the ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man- eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy water, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... on the yacht saw the shark between them and Jack, and Dick Percival seized a gun from the captain, aimed at the creature and fired, doing no great damage, but causing the voracious monster to rush off to one side, and out of ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... a subject of old Hoe, the most voracious of men, I gave up the choice of three sage professions, and the sweet ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... scales, and these eggs hatched into grubs which devoured the pests. He also found a remarkable little ladybird, a small, reddish-brown convex beetle, which breeds with marvellous rapidity and which, with voracious appetite, and at the same time with discriminating taste, devours scale after scale, but eats fluted scales only—does not attack other insects. This beneficial creature, now known as the Australian ladybird, or the Vedalia, Mr. Koebele at once ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... size was soon produced, and a line was quietly provided from some of the small cordage that still remained about the masts. A piece of leather, torn from a spar, answered for the bait; and the lure was thrown. Extreme hunger seemed to engross the voracious animals, who darted at the imaginary prey with the rapidity of lightning. The shock was so sudden and violent, that the hapless mariner was drawn from his slippery and precarious footing, into the sea. The whole passed with a frightful and alarming rapidity. A common cry of horror was heard, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... tells the story of the wild race of life in its thronging streets, or than the waving tips of a forest of mighty trees reveal the myriad forms below. Each current of the ocean is an empire of its own with its tribes endlessly at war; the serried hosts of voracious fish prey on those about them, fishes of medium depth do perpetual war upon the surface fish, and some of these are forced into the air to fly like birds away ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... remarkable fish of these rivers are, the peri or omah, two feet long; its teeth and jaws are so strong, that it cracks the shells of most nuts to feed on their kernels, and is most voracious; the Indians say that it snaps off the breasts of women, and emasculates men. Also the genus silurus, the young of which swim in a shoal of one hundred and fifty over the head of the mother, who, on the approach of danger, opens her mouth, and thus saves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... three guineas, and, being silver, have not greatly lessened in their value. The conscientious pawnbroker allowed me—'he thought he might'—half a guinea for them. I took it very readily, being determined to call for them very soon, and then, if I afterwards wanted, carry them to some less voracious animal of ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... present,—while the unexpress, for good or for evil, is so busy with a poor little fellow! Other departments of schooling had been infinitely more productive, for our young friend, than the gerund-grinding one. A voracious reader I believe he all along was,—had "read the whole Edinburgh Review" in these boyish years, and out of the circulating libraries one knows not what cartloads; wading like Ulysses towards his palace "through infinite dung." ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... that it was best to read the story BEFORE giving out presents to the immature guests. On a great many occasions, the youngsters—in those early days they were waifs—either went sound asleep before he was half way through or became so restless and voracious that he couldn't keep his place in the book, what with watching to see that they didn't choke on the candy, break the windows or mirrors with their footballs, or put some one's eye out ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... elephant does his trunk, though with infinite celerity. Every time a key is touched, these pincers seize a type from one of the tubes, turn downward, and, as it were, put it into the mouth of the stick. And so voracious is the appetite of this little creature, that in a few seconds its stomach is full,—in other words, the line is set. A tiny bell gives warning of this fact, and the operator finishes the word or syllabic. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... natures having an individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of speculations on government and religion, yet loth to part with long-sanctioned forms which, for him, were quick with memories and sentiments that no argument could lay dead. We fall on the leaning side; and Deronda suspected himself of loving too well the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... extortion. selfishness &c.943; auri sacra fames[Lat]. grasping, craving, canine appetite, rapacity. V. covet, crave (desire) 865; grasp; exact, extort. Adj. greedy, avaricious, covetous, acquisitive, grasping; rapacious; lickerish[obs3]. greedy as a hog; overeager; voracious; ravenous, ravenous as a wolf; openmouthed, extortionate, exacting, sordid|!, alieni appetens[Lat]; insatiable, insatiate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the larger mammals, one occasionally sees the long lithe sea leopard, formidably armed with ferocious teeth and doubtless containing a penguin or two and perhaps a young crab-eating seal. The killer whale (Orca gladiator), unappeasably voracious, devouring or attempting to devour every smaller animal, is less common in the pack but numerous on the coasts. Finally, we have the great browsing whales of various species, from the vast blue whale (Balaenoptera Sibbaldi), ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... the shining snow, which they filled curiously with patches of black, and in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man, already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long, voracious beaks. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... attention keep, And, silent, seem compassionate to weep; Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views, Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues: Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends, And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends; No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan, And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... house for more than eight months; and, for the greatest share of that time, with the most excruciating torture. On getting out again, I found myself in a wretched condition indeed—reduced to a skeleton—a voracious appetite, which could not be indulged, and which had scarcely deserted me through the whole eight months. I could not regain my flesh or strength but by almost imperceptible degrees; indeed, loaf-sugar and crackers were almost the only food I could use with ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... not a more palpable instance of the facility with which good natured and voracious piety is made to swallow the most flimsy arguments, if only agreeable to its wishes and wants, than the case under consideration. This Psalm, containing these passages, "they parted my raiment among them;" and "they pierced my hands and my feet," is read, and for ages has been read, ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... description, are assuredly both mentally and morally lacking. Men and women there are who will say: "Oh, give me anything. I'm not particular—so long as it is plain and wholesome." I've met many of these people. My experience of them is that they are the greatest gluttons on earth, with veritably voracious appetites, and that the best isn't good enough for them. To be sure, at a pinch, they will demolish a score of potatoes, if there be nothing else; but offer them caviare, canvas-back duck, quail, and nesselrode pudding, and they will ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... upon the subject of worm-holes, a few words more may not be out of place when contemplating the ravages of these voracious creatures. Almost all devotees to the "gentle art" of fiddling have a great horror of the possible presence or the ungauged depths of the mysterious tunnellings the entrance or exit to which will cause a start of dismay in a searcher after the beautiful, when, in an otherwise perfectly preserved ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... looked up to the jar of clear water and watched Guinevere hovering motionless. At six the next morning she was crouched safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aquarium. She had missed the open window, the four-foot drop to the floor, and a neighboring aquarium stocked with voracious fish: surely the gods of pollywogs were kind to me. The great fins were gone—dissolved into blobs of dull pink; the tail was a mere stub, the feet drawn close, and a glance at her head showed that Guinevere had become a frog almost within an ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... they leave the sea, are generally gorged, and do not desire, or seek for food until they have travelled some distance up the rivers; for it is equally well ascertained that the farther the first foss is removed from the mouth of a salmon river, the more voracious are the fish. Now, the foss, or fall of the Sand river, is scarcely five hundred feet from the shore of the Fiord, and the water is salt, or, at least, brackish; and salmon are not caught in ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... our three Pacific Coast states combined. At frequent intervals we passed huge scarlet threshing machines, most of them labeled "Made in U.S.A.," which were centers of activity for hundreds of white-smocked peasants who were hauling in the grain with ox-teams, feeding it into the voracious maws of the machines, and piling the residue of straw into the largest stacks I have ever seen. As we drew near the mountains the grain fields gave way to grazing lands where great herds of cattle of various breeds—brindled milch animals, massive cream-colored oxen, blue-gray buffalo with elephant ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... the most destructive of all insects in Burma. Voracious wood-eaters, they will attack fallen logs or growing trees, which they will entirely consume till only the hollow bark remains. This is one great reason why the wood of the teak-tree is so highly valued, as it is the only timber these ants will not touch, and consequently is ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... naturally a voracious animal, he can endure hunger for a very great length of time, and be brought by habit to subsist on a very scanty meal. In the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences it is stated, that a bitch which was ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... that the voracious country people scuffle and fight about the right to what they find, and that in a desperate manner; so that this part of Cornwall may truly be said to be inhabited by a fierce and ravenous people. For they are so greedy, and eager for the prey, that they are charged with strange, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter to perish in the sea; ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... observes, [Footnote: Cron. Lib. I. c. vii.] is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. Now we are quite sure that Noah never married a daughter of Saturn, because that voracious heathen ate up all his children except Jupiter. This simple fact precludes all possibility of a connection with Saturn by the mother's side, and illustrates the advantage of patient historical investigation, when founded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... And at the making of the tea, which Kate had taken in charge with Ranald superintending, what fun there was with burning of fingers and upsetting of kettles! And then, the talk and the laughter at the lieutenant's brilliant jokes, and the chaffing of the "lumbermen" over their voracious appetites! It was an hour of never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. They were all children again, and with children's hearts were happy in childhood's simple joys. And why not? There are no joys purer than those of the open air; of grass and trees flooded with the warm light ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... the story of your last snow-shoeing party when he was prompted to the enclosed tragedy in five acts. He hopes that you will not mistake the stars for mosquitoes, nor fail to comprehend the terrible fate that has overtaken Eddy Martin at the mouth of the voracious musquash, whose retreating tail speaks so eloquently of his toothsome repast. The lone pine tree is a thing that you will enjoy; also the expression of horror on your own face when you behold the empty boots of Eddy. There ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... boats could not conveniently leave the rock till flood-tide, all hands set to work with unwonted energy in order to keep themselves warm, not, however, before they ate heartily of their favourite dulse—the blacksmith being conspicuous for the voracious manner in ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... were represented with great teeth, and therefore the same name was given to gluttons. The Harpies, to whom the two voracious poets are also compared, were monsters with the face of a woman, the body of a vulture ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... guavina, of which I made a drawing on the spot, is 20 inches long and 3.5 broad. It is perhaps a new species of the genus erythrina of Gronovius. It has large silvery scales edged with green. This fish is extremely voracious, and destroys other kinds. The fishermen assured us that a small crocodile, the bava,* which often approached us when we were bathing, contributes also to the destruction of the fish. (* The bava, or bavilla, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... As day by day they sank deeper in their wickedness, it was but right they should daily, as it were, stick faster in their woe. The very change in nourishment made manifest their decline and degradation, since as they became feebler they became also more voracious and blood-thirsty." ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... bridge spanning the noble stream at the mountain's base, but they never went back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Volume (size) dikeco. Voluminous multdika. Voluntary memvola, propramova. Volunteer memvolulo. Voluptuous voluptema. Voluptuousness volupteco. Vomit vomi. Vomiting vomado. Vomitory vomilo. Voracious englutema. Voracity engluteco. Vortex turnakvo, turnigxado. Vote vocxdoni, baloti. Vouch garantii, atesti. Voucher garantio, garantianto, atesto. Vow dedicxi, promesi. Vow (religious) religia promeso. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... program of sleeping, eating and working at odd hours, and his appetite became positively voracious. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it, even if it were the middle of the night. He pouted and groused when he didn't get it. In calmer moments he hated himself for these tantrums, but no amount ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... United States one is accustomed to seeing preciously conserved in hot- houses. In fact, the ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself in tangled masses five or six ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... rejoined us, accompanied by a gentleman whom he introduced to me as Mr. Leopold, the painter of the picture which I was to see in the course of the evening. Although my reading had necessarily been limited, Miss Darry's persistent training, and my own voracious appetite for information in everything relating to the arts, had given me a somewhat superficial knowledge of the pictures, style, and personal appearance of the best old and modern painters. In spite of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... lifted my wallet from my shoulders, handed him some bread and cheese, and said, "Let us sit down near that plane-tree." We did so, and I helped myself to some refreshment. While looking at him more closely, as he was eating with a voracious appetite, I saw that he was faint, and of a hue like boxwood. His natural color, in fact, had so forsaken him, that as I recalled those nocturnal furies to my frightened imagination, the very first piece of bread I put in my mouth, though exceedingly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Emerson—had all a certain starved and abstract quality. They could not retail the genteel tradition; they were too keen, too perceptive, and too independent for that. But life offered them little digestible material, nor were they naturally voracious. They were fastidious, and under the circumstances they were starved. Emerson, to be sure, fed on books. There was a great catholicity in his reading; and he showed a fine tact in his comments, and in his ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... capelin and smelt in great numbers come to spawn along the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence. With high tide comes the beluga's chance to feed on the spawning fish and he will rush in quite near to shore for his favourite food. So voracious is he that with the fish he takes quantities of sand into his stomach. In eight or ten days he will eat enough to form from five to eight inches of fat over his whole body. "The facility with which he thus grows fat is explained," says the Abbe Casgrain, "by the easy assimilation of ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... track we intended to follow was completely covered, and our march to-day was very fatiguing. We passed the remains of two red-deer, lying at the bases of perpendicular cliffs, from the summits of which they had, probably, been forced by the wolves. These voracious animals who are inferior in speed to the moose or red-deer are said frequently to have recourse to this expedient in places where extensive plains are bounded by precipitous cliffs. Whilst the deer are quietly grazing, the wolves assemble in great numbers, and, forming a crescent, creep slowly ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... If he had any thing, he wanted diamonds. Nor did he accept "a stone for bread." He knew what bread was, which is not true of many readers; and so he had bread or nothing. His mind was a voracious eater, much more of an eater than his body. It demanded substantial food, too, the bread, meat, and potato of literature and science. It did not crave cake and confectionery. There was no mincing and nibbling ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... temperature falls to normal or below it, and the patient breaks into a profuse perspiration, which leaves him pale, weak, and exhausted. He becomes rapidly and markedly emaciated, even although in some cases the appetite remains good and is even voracious. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... something bit me. I thought I knew the enemy, but I dared not whisper its name even to myself, for I was overcome by its condescension. From a bishop to me was a fall in the social scale that ought to have made the most voracious insect tremble on the edge of the precipice. Maybe it did tremble before it yielded to ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... from them; they squat in the grass and pounce on you. I've got a twist, my eye trying to watch them. They are ugly, voracious people without manners or neighbourliness, terrible, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... needs were not so pressing, one might well devote an entire volume, not inappropriately in these days of fiscal controversy, to the question of vital imports and exports. Year after year passes, and politicians in Great Britain grow more and more voracious and, if possible, less and less veracious on the subject of what they misunderstand by imports and exports. The subject is really one for knowledge, not for politicians. With great ceremony at intervals, they go through the highly superfluous performance of calling ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Mary, Devonshire. Early in his life, the future poet became a confirmed dreamer, refusing to participate in the play common to boys of his age. Before he was five years old, he had read the Arabian Nights. Only a few years later, the boy's appetite for books became so voracious that he devoured an average of two ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... large to hold it. Do not be afraid of the size of the hook. The stoot-fisher cannot afford to take any risks. I do not wish to dogmatise, but it must be big enough to cover the bait. And the stoot is extremely voracious. Almost anything will do for bait, if one remembers, as I have said above, that the stoot is a clean feeder. At different times I have tried a large square of corridor soap, a simulation pancake, three pounds of tough beefsteak or American bacon, or a volume of Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... heaven—but to the old who wait The final call, the hills of youth arise More beautiful than shores of Paradise. Beside a glowing and voracious grate A dozing couple dream of yesterday; The islands of a vanished past appear, Bringing forgotten names and faces near; While lost in mist, the present fades away. The fragrant winds of tender memories blow Across the gardens of the "Used-to-be!" They smile into ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... period of elation, especially the first months of it when I was doing the work of several normal men, I required an increased amount of fuel to generate the abnormal energy my activity demanded. I had a voracious appetite, and I insisted that the attendant give me the supper he was about to serve when he discovered me in the simulated throes of death. At first he refused, but finally relented and brought me a cup of tea and some buttered bread. Because of the ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... commenced baling, when the cry was heard of—'A shark! a shark!' No words can describe the consternation which ensued: it is well known the horror sailors have of these voracious animals, who seem apprised by instinct when their prey is at hand. All order was at an end, the boat again capsized, and the men were left struggling in the waters. The general safety was neglected, and it was every man for ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... succession of broods throughout the summer, and is therefore always in force, ready to devour the crop immediately it appears. The so-called 'Fly' is a small beetle named Haltica (Phyllotreta) nemorum, strongly made, and decidedly voracious. The larvae are not to be feared, except that, of course, they in due time become beetles. In the perfect state this winged jumping insect makes havoc of the rising plant of Turnips, but the crop is only in danger while in the seed-leaf stage. It is in the spring and early ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for himself. Anyhow the modern system fails, for where are the amusing books from voracious ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... pickerel—vulture of the water—rising to the surface, and, supreme in his indifference to man or fish, would swim lazily round until he had discovered the cause of all this commotion among the smaller fishes, and then, opening wide his jaws would take the bait with one voracious snap. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... that drew him now—the cabin in which Nanette and the baby had lived; and it was toward this cabin that he lured Neewa during the first two weeks of their hunting. They did not travel quickly, largely because of Neewa's voracious spring appetite and the fact that it consumed nine tenths of his waking hours to keep full on such provender as roots and swelling buds and grass. During the first week Miki grew either hopeless or disgusted in his hunting. One day he killed five rabbits ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... altogether. At that they all stopped short with heads thrown back, and eyes on the alert for another worm. Desiree called them by their names, and talked pettingly to them; while Abbe Mouret retreated a few steps from this display of voracious life. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... of radial expansion and the exercise of widespread influence; but if weak, its very existence is imperilled, because it is exposed to encroachments on every side. A central location minus the bulwark of natural boundaries enabled the kingdom of Poland to be devoured piecemeal by its voracious neighbors. The kingdom of Burgundy, always a state of fluctuating boundaries and shifting allegiances, fell at last a victim to its central location, and saw its name obliterated from the map. Hungary, which, in the year 1000, occupied a restricted inland location on the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... of Francois Rabelais the man, these few facts will be sufficient to know. In early youth he joined the monastic order of the Franciscans. That order hated letters; but Rabelais loved them. He, in fact, conceived a voracious ambition of knowledge. He became immensely learned. This fact, with what it implies of long labor patiently achieved, is enough to show that Rabelais was not without seriousness of character. But he was much more a merry-andrew than a pattern monk. He made interest enough with influential friends ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... amphitheatre, several beasts were let loose upon them; but none of the animals, though hungry, would touch them. The keeper then brought out a large bear, that had that very day destroyed three men; but this voracious creature and a fierce lioness both refused to touch the prisoners. Finding the design of destroying them by the means of wild beasts ineffectual, Maximus ordered them to be slain by the sword, on the 11th of ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... having the start, and being acquainted with the by-ways, I presently got clear of their voracious jaws. ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... a near view of one of these voracious animals, and, at the time when they frequented the vicinity of my house, I made several attempts to accomplish my wishes. One night I baited a huge hook, secured by a chain and strong cord, with an entire sheep. Next morning, sheep and chain had disappeared. I lay in wait for the creatures with ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... cheerful time, the other later and, despite its resignation, from "the Valley of the Shadow"—require no annotation, save in respect of Carlyle's own on Deerbrook. He might well call it "poor": it is indeed one of the few novels by a writer of any distinction, which one tolerably voracious novel-reader has found incapable of being read. And this is curious: for she had ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... man who discovered the new world. Somewhere in the near background he still beheld the city with the hundred bridges, the crowded bazaar, the long train of caparisoned elephants, the palace with the pavement of solid gold. Naked savages skulking in the forest, marked down by voracious cannibals along the causeway of the Lesser Antilles, were no distraction from the quest of the Grand Khan. The facts before him were uninteresting and provisional, and were overshadowed by the phantoms that crowded his mind. The contrast between ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... even among the later Romans for his gluttony and voracious appetite. During the four months of his reign he is said to have spent seven millions sterling on the pleasures of his table. When at last the people rose against him, and the soldiers proclaimed another emperor, Vitellius was found hiding ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... amount of sentiment that she would not swallow, but she knew from mortifying experience that Patty was not equally voracious. ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... But there was a strong objection made to its removal, on account of the ravages which the rats would make in the neighborhood, when they had no longer the carcasses of the horses to feed upon. These voracious creatures assembled at this spot in such numbers, that they devoured all the flesh (that was not much, perhaps, in many cases) of twenty or thirty horses in one night, so that in the morning nothing remained of these carcasses but bare bones. In one of these slaughter-houses, which was inclosed ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... straight line. As he got nearer, his great projecting eyes could be seen inflamed with greed, and his gaping jaws with their quadruple row of teeth. His head was large, and shaped like a double hammer at the end of a handle. John Mangles was right. This was evidently a balance-fish— the most voracious ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Bracciano, died suddenly at Salo on the 10th of November 1585, leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria helpless among enemies. What was the cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini family were all interested in ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... is cram full of thrilling situations. The number of miraculous escapes from death in all its shapes which the hero experiences in the course of a few months must be sufficient to satisfy the most voracious appetite."—Schoolmaster. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... then with the wise god The voracious bird of prey Far away; so the wolf's father To pieces must be torn. Odin's friend got exhausted. Heavy grew Lopt. Odin's ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... of the poor minnows, who, though smart in some things, did not know when they were whipped, and so kept up the fight, though losing one of their number nearly every morning. The bell now and then rang violently, but I fear it was only sounding an appeal from a voracious stickleback whose appetite had got the better ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... He reminds me of the larva, which is the first state of animal existence in the caterpillar, for his appetite is voracious, and, as a French naturalist states in describing that insect, "Tout est estomac dans un larve." —— is of the opinion of Aretaeus, that the stomach is the great source of pleasurable affections, and that as Nature ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... daily toil, From choaking weeds to rid the soil? Why wake you to the morning's care? Why with new arts correct the year? Why glows the peach with crimson hue? And why the plum's inviting blue? Were they to feast his taste designed, That vermin, of voracious kind? Crush, then, the slow, the pilf'ring race; So ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... almost enthusiastic, in his voracious hunger. Rebecca ate moderately and without haste, precisely as though seated in the little Peltonville cottage. Phoebe ate but little. She was overcome by the wonders she had seen, realizing for the first time the marvellous situation in ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... to mention the broiled dishes, the invention of which is attributed to hunters, and which Rabelais continually refers to as acting as stimulants and irresistibly exciting the thirst for wine at the sumptuous feasts of those voracious heroes (Fig. 120). ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... and in which they kept rummaging obstinately. A young fellow went to see what they were doing, and discovered the body of the blind man, already half devoured, mangled. His wan eyes had disappeared, pecked out by the long voracious beaks. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... were still occupying the same positions. Mr. Finch had presented himself (at full length) to Herr Grosse. And Jicks was established on a stool in a corner: devouring a rampant horse, carved in bilious-yellow German gingerbread, with a voracious relish wonderful and ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... swine, or a much less voracious animal, be surveyed by a glutton; and how contemptible must the talents of other sensualists appear, when opposed, perhaps, to some of the lowest and meanest of brutes! but in conversation man stands alone, at least in this ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... "romance"—and to an extent that made of his inward state a contrast that he was intelligent enough to feel. He was intelligent enough to feel quite humble, to wish not to be in the least hard or voracious, not to insist on his own side of the bargain, to warn himself in short against arrogance and greed. Odd enough, of a truth, was his sense of this last danger—which may illustrate moreover his general attitude toward dangers from within. Personally, he considered, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... would have lighted three or four at a distance of five or six yards from each other, and thus found comparative immunity from the attacks of lions and hippos, but the baobab—it reminded him of a certain incident when he was "attached" to the Haussas—was able to protect both rear and flank from the voracious assaults ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... considerably improved in condition. There were three different species of flies which sought shelter in my tent, which, unitedly, kept up a continual chorus of sounds—one performed the basso profondo, another a tenor, and the third a weak contralto. The first emanated from a voracious and fierce fly, an inch long, having a ventral ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... of low ground for wheat, cutting a black snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of his farm,—for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had from his arm; and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Briar-Bush Farm, that popular holiday resort, and there met Minnie Hill, he would doubtless have continued to spend in peaceful reading the hours not given over to work at the New York bank at which he was employed as paying-cashier. For Henry was a voracious reader. His idea of a pleasant evening was to get back to his little flat, take off his coat, put on his slippers, light a pipe, and go on from the point where he had left off the night before in his perusal of the BIS-CAL volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—making notes as ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... feminine delicacy, than to see a beautiful woman with one of these midnight bowls burning before her, and when her complexion is rendered livid by its flames, looking through this medium like some unknown but voracious inhabitant of ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... with thorns. The bark is as susceptible of fire as tinder, and when one of these trees is cut down it never springs up again. There is another sort of a yellowish colour, which is reckoned valuable. The best manna is produced in this country. Among the fish of this river is one equally voracious with the crocodile, from which no man escapes that gets within their reach, but they never injure women. One of these of a prodigious size was caught having gold rings in its ears, which was supposed to have been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... receding wreckage. It really looked as though they were aware of my presence, had divined my purpose, and were determined to frustrate it. For what seemed at least half-an-hour, but was probably not more than ten minutes, the voracious fish tacked this way and that, approaching me a little nearer every tack, until at length they were so close that I could have leapt upon the back of the nearer one, so close that I could distinctly see their entire bulk; and the sight turned my blood cold, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... effect had been only to make room for a fresh lot of bloodsuckers. There were so-called advertising agents, so-called journalists, so-called "men of influence in the City,"—a swarm of relentless and voracious harpies, who dragged from him in blackmail nearly the half of what he had left, before he summoned the courage and decision ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... again. Perhaps he is laboring for the endowment of some great literary or benevolent institution, for the building of a national monument. No. Perhaps he has some theory that thousands of facts must prove and illustrate; or it may be he is a voracious gatherer of statistics. The last is the most probable; but the more I mused, the more the fire burned within me to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... caked with dust and perspiration was he. He made his way to the swimming-bath, still cheerful and smiling, determined not to miss the midday meal by one second, for, like all the heroines of Mr. E. F. Benson's novels, the eighteen-year-old Joven was afflicted with a perpetual voracious hunger. When I complimented him at dinner on his very skilful performance, the Joven, being in a loquacious mood, said, after a pause for thought, "Oh, yes," beamed with friendliness, and promptly devoured another plateful of beef. I asked him whether he never regretted the quiet of his father's ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... position to rid himself of Aristide; Angele's dowry was involved in speculations which were turning out unfavourably. He was exasperated, stung to the heart, at having to provide for his daughter-in-law's voracious appetite and keep his son in idleness. Had he been able to buy them out of the business he would twenty times have shut his doors on those bloodsuckers, as he emphatically expressed it. Felicite secretly defended them; the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the consciences of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans). Where was the legitimate influence ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... dat no use now!" Jack had covered his face with his hands. But the tragedy was not complete: the other men, who were in the water, had immediately turned and made for the shore; but before they could reach it, two more of these voracious monsters, attracted by the blood of the coxswain, had flown to the spot, and there was a contention for the fragments ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... the vison or minx; the clever little tree-loving raccoon; the American badger, differing from his European relative; and the pekan. There are several varieties of wolves, differing in size and somewhat in habits, but all equally voracious. There are several species of foxes, and no less than thirty of lemmings, marmots, and squirrels, all of which are to be found within the more northern latitudes of the New World. There are three hares—known as the American, the prairie, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... his chest deep; his face was ugly to the measure of hideousness; his lower jaw protruded so as to make it impossible for his teeth to meet, and his speech was for that reason barely intelligible. A voracious eater, an incessant talker, adventurous, a born soldier, fond of tournament, spectacular in war and peace and abdication, now crippled in hands and legs, he stands, a picture of decrepitude, ready to give away a crown he can no longer wear. Philip, the son, is thin and fragile ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... wonderfully fecund germ of repression. To sustain a notion from generation to generation that the Negro should be denied participation in the political life of his nation necessitates an atmosphere charged with the spirit of repression, a voracious guest, whose appetite calls for food other than ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... these valiant youths return, and did the words of the prophet-boy fall to the ground? Let the wolf, and the vulture, and the mountain-cat, answer the question. They will tell my brother that their voracious tribes held a feast in the far country of the Coppermines, and that the remains of that feast were a huge heap of human bones. Were they the bones of Andirondacks? They were, and thus were the prophetic words of the wise boy ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... gran pisce. An animal of the cetacean or whale tribe, distinguished by the large pointed teeth with which both jaws are armed, and by the high falcate dorsal fin. It generally attains a length of 20 to 25 feet, and is very active and voracious. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the Abbe Jerome Coignard die. Now, it was his soul, his sparkling and sweet soul, which I fancied reduced to ashes together with the queen of libraries. The wind strengthened the fire and the flames roared like voracious beasts. ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... majority of the common people in China believe that the burning of tapers and incense, the prostration of the mandarins, the beating of the gongs and drums, and the recitations on the part of the priests, are signally efficacious in driving away the voracious monster. They observe that the sun or the moon does not seem to be permanently injured by the attacks of its celestial enemy, although a half or nearly the whole appeared to have been swallowed up. This happy result is doubtless viewed with much ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... has bestowed on the human race such profuse ABUNDANCE of all EXTERNAL conveniencies, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want, or luxurious imagination wish or desire. His natural beauty, we shall suppose, surpasses all acquired ornaments: the perpetual clemency of the seasons renders useless all clothes ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... No one had ever succeeded in satisfying its voracious appetite; it would swallow anything and hungrily plead for more. His father, having started early and knowing what pleased his boy, was his most satisfactory feeder. It was Caleb's practice to drive out to the farm on Saturday afternoon ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... they felt such voracious appetites as on this flight. Perhaps the invigorating sea air had something to do with it; but Jack, at least, was not the one to bother himself about the cause, so long as the provisions ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... going along a bridle-path that used to leave the town at the back of the old dens of the carnivora in the Berlin Zoological Gardens were often terrified by the propinquity of enemies who were entirely unknown to them. Sticklebacks will swim composedly among a number of voracious pike, knowing, as they do, that the pike will not touch them. For if a pike once by mistake swallows a stickleback, the stickleback will stick in its throat by reason of the spine it carries upon its back, and the pike must starve to death without being able to transmit his painful ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... ignorance of the black citizens and the insatiate greed and unscrupulousness of their carpet-bag leaders—a band of vultures more voracious and depraved than any which ever before imposed upon and abused the confidence of a credulous people—the white men of the South had been educated to regard themselves as, naturally, the factors of power and the colored people as, naturally, the subject class, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... earliest of the brain-fever birds to be hatched have left the nest. Like all its family the young hawk-cuckoo has a healthy appetite. In order to satisfy it the unfortunate foster-parents have to work like slaves, and often must they wonder why nature has given them so voracious a child. When it sees a babbler approaching with food, the cuckoo cries out and flaps its wings vigorously. Sometimes these completely envelop the parent bird while it is thrusting food into the yellow mouth of the cuckoo. The breast of the newly-fledged brain-fever bird is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar |
