"Voracity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seems she has only to look at a dish, no matter who has cooked it, and immediately divine its lack or its surplusage, and prescribe a treatment that transforms it into something indescribably different and delicious—My, how I do eat! I am quite dumbfounded by the unfailing voracity of my appetite. Already am I quite convinced that I am glad Miss West is making ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... peculiarities appalling to the civilised beings who were the companions of his old age. The perverse irregularity of his hours, the slovenliness of his person, his fits of strenuous exertion, interrupted by long intervals of sluggishness, his strange abstinence, and his equally strange voracity, his active benevolence, contrasted with the constant rudeness and the occasional ferocity of his manners in society, made him, in the opinion of those with whom he lived during the last twenty years of his life, a complete original. An original he was, undoubtedly, in some respects. But ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pretty big mosquitoes in New Jersey and on Long Island, but, if report of their ancestry is true, they have degenerated in size and voracity; for the grandfather of all mosquitoes used to live in the neighborhood of Fort Onondaga, New York, and sallying out whenever he was hungry, would eat an Indian or two and pick his teeth with their ribs. The red men had no arms that could prevail against it, but at last the Holder of the Heavens, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... then have a smile from my dear young master Mr Frank, and gaze once more on those familiar ligaments which I loved so much in dear old England. Mr Frank, it's the simple truth, I assure you. With all my failings and interjections, you'd never any cause to doubt my voracity." ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... for it to be exported to far countries even if there was any chance of its finding favour in European markets, in consequence of its horrible smell, which does not however protect it from the voracity of the monkeys and their rodent companions—especially the squirrels—that manage, in spite of its formidable prickles, to make a hole in the husk and nibble out some of its contents leaving the rest ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the dear old gentleman's hearty invitation. I had not tasted food since early dawn, and was so outrageously hungry and eat with such a right good will, that he often stopped and laughed heartily at my voracity. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... playing at ducks and drakes with their resources. Fourteen ducks, a leg, a wing, and a bit of the breast, entombed, within twenty-four hours, in the stomach of each of these seven men! The very feathers in their pillows (had they had any) would have cried out against such voracity. Truly it is without a spark of compassion that we read of their reduction, precisely one week afterwards, to short and less palatable commons. "Oct. 26. We enjoyed most gratefully our two wallabies, which were stewed, and to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... peach-trees, the forbidden fruit of which ripened temptingly before us through the summer. Yet we rather avoided this side, because we here could not satisfy our dainty appetites; and we turned to the side opposite, where an interminable row of currant and gooseberry bushes furnished our voracity with a succession of harvests till autumn. Not less important to us was an old, high, wide-spreading mulberry-tree, both on account of its fruits, and because we were told that the silk-worms fed upon its leaves. In this peaceful region my grandfather was found every ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... country, might obtain these succors at Montmorency, near to which I lived; as if there were no old people, except in Paris, and that it was impossible for them to live in any other place. Madam le Vasseur who eat a great deal, and with extreme voracity, was subject to overflowings of bile and to strong diarrhoeas, which lasted several days, and served her instead of clysters. At Paris she neither did nor took anything for them, but left nature to itself. She observed the same rule at the Hermitage, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... his way towards our vessel, which was at that time more than two hundred miles from land. Exhausted, it clung on to the fore-yard arm; and a present of a rupee induced a Lascar to go aloft and seize it, which he did after several attempts. The voracity with which it attacked some plantains showed that it had been for some time deprived of food, probably having been blown off shore by high winds. Hanging head-downwards from its cage, it stuffed the fruit into its cheeks, monkey-fashion, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... nibble; it is situated just above the hip-joint, it is protected by a tegument of exquisite fibre, vulgarly called "THE BREECHES POCKET." The thoroughbred Anthropophagite usually begins with his own relations and friends; and so long as he confines his voracity to the domestic circle, the law interferes little, if at all, with his venerable propensities. But when he has exhausted all that allows itself to be edible in the bosom of private life, the man-eater falls loose on society, and takes to prowling,—then "Sauve qui peut!" the laws rouse ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... great diligence. Truly marvellous was the grace with which he painted, and very perfect the harmony that he gave to his works, for which he has been ever esteemed by craftsmen and honoured by our modern masters with consummate praise; nay, so long as the voracity of time allows his many excellent labours to live, he will be held in veneration by every age. In Prato, near Florence, where he had some relatives, he stayed for many months, executing many works ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... looked through various dictionaries for the word gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me. It is described as a sort of confusion of gluttony and voracity. Whence I have concluded that lexicographers, though very pleasant people in other respects, are not the sort of men to swallow a partridge wing gracefully with one hand, with a glass of Laffitte or clos de ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... life again to eat my supper, which I had not felt able to touch, in spite of my exhaustion and great need of it; when, however, I once began, my appetite justified the French proverb and took the turn of voracity, and I devoured like a Homeric hero. I promised to tell you something of our late dinner at Lord Melbourne's, but have left myself neither space nor time. It was very pleasant, and I fell out of my love for our host (who, moreover, is absorbed by Mrs. Norton) and into another love with Lord O——, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... appeared to consider this as a very great rarity. So soon as the meat was baked, and withdrawn from the fire, our Arabians, without allowing us time to clean it from the sand, devoured it with incredible voracity. After having thoroughly gnawed the bones, they made use of their nails for scraping off any flesh which remained upon them; they then threw them to us, with orders to eat expeditiously, and reload our camels, so that our journey might ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... p. de pisce lupo—wolf, because of its voracity; a sea fish, sea pike, or sea bass; perhaps akin to our barracuda, wolfish both in appearance and character. Sch. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... not at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon in the eyes of such a ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... modern rationalism, and the ponderous hot irons of empirics, it is undeniably true that the habit of 'seeking after a sign' survived the generation of Scribes and Pharisees whom Christ rebuked; and manifests itself in the middle of the nineteenth century by the voracity with which merely material phenomena are seized as unmistakable indications of preternatural agencies. The innate leaven of superstition triumphs over common sense and scientific realism, and men and women are awed by coincidences that reason scouts, but credulity ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... her; it interfered greatly with the stringent aptitudes of her character and the warmest passion of her heart; it took away from her the delicious power of serving out the servants' food, of locking up the scraps of meat, and of charging the maids with voracity. But, to tell the truth, Mr. Mason had been driven by sheer necessity to take this step, as it had been found impossible to induce his wife to give out sufficient food to enable the servants to live and work. She knew that in not doing so she injured herself; but she could not do it. The ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... those masterpieces of voracity for which the region is renowned; yet the undoubted facts related around our campfires, and otherwise, a few of which follow, almost beggar belief. Mr. Young, of our party, an old Hudson's Bay officer, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... the same ratio; and by gratifying the appetite thus excited, we obtain the most efficient protection against the most piercing cold. A starving man is soon frozen to death; and everyone knows that the animals of prey in the Arctic regions far exceed in voracity those in the torrid zone. In cold and temperate climates, the air, which incessantly strives to consume the body, urges man to laborious efforts in order to furnish the means of resistance to its action, while in hot climates the necessity of labour to provide ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... satisfied him. To young men wasting their summer at Quincy for want of some one to hire their services at three dollars a day, such a dramatic scandal was Heaven-sent. Charles and Henry Adams jumped at it like salmon at a fly, with as much voracity as Jay Gould, or his ame damnee Jim Fisk, had ever shown for Erie; and with as little fear of consequences. They risked something; no one could say what; but the people about the Erie office were not ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... one evening encountered by a starved Irish wolf. In his distress the poor man could think of nothing better than to open his wallet, and try the effects of his hospitality; he did so, and the savage swallowed all that was thrown to him, with so improving a voracity as if his appetite was but just returning to him. The whole stock of provision was, of course, soon spent, and now his only recourse was to the virtues of his bagpipe; which the monster no sooner heard, than he took to the mountains with the same precipitation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... sympathetic feeling. Not of love! And be there ale, or wine, or potent draught Superior to them both, to that I fly, And glory in the certainty that mine Is the ethereal soul of food, while his Is but the rank corporeal—the vile husks Best suited to his crude voracity. And far as the bright spirit may transcend Its mortal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... it was not the flies' fault that their parents were prolific, and that they had been hatched in a climate eminently conducive to their vigour and happiness. Their numbers and their voracity showed that they, too, were compelled by the struggle for life to be active and enterprising. Unlike some beings of a higher order, they did not take this trouble sadly; but, then, they ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... day would seem to be from the E.N.E. Here, too, an occasional grass tree or "black-boy" may be seen, and at intervals little clumps of what is locally termed "mustard bush," so named from the strong flavour of the leaf; camels eat this with voracity, of which fact one becomes very sensible when ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... but those who have travelled on the Upper Amazons can have any idea of the number and voracity of the insect torments which work their wicked will on the bodies of the unfortunates exposed to their attacks. The "sancudos," or small sand-flies, form by far the most important section. In the villages, round which the forest is cleared away for some distance, the sancudos are generally ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... with the skin removed, weighed exactly two ounces. The animal immediately, as if famished with hunger, fell upon the fruit, seized it between the thumbs and the index fingers, and took large mouthfuls out of it, opening the mouth to the fullest extent with extreme voracity. In the space of three hours the whole fruit was consumed. Next morning the Bat was killed, and found to weigh one ounce, half the weight of the food eaten in three hours! Indeed, the animal when eating seemed to be a kind of living mill"—so ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... of this separation in no way changed the prisoner's almost disease of voracity. Nor was he, in other respects, obviously altered. He did not speak of Heartall to any of his comrades. He walked alone in the airing-ground, in the hours of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... branch. The leopard meanwhile walks round and round the tree, with his eyes firmly fixed upon his victims, till at last exhausted by terror, and prostrated by vain exertions to escape, one or more falls a prey to his voracity. So rivetted is the attention of both during the struggle, that a sportsman, on one occasion, attracted by the noise, was enabled to approach within an uncomfortable distance of the leopard, before he discovered the cause ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the dogs keep running when they drink at the Nile, for fear of becoming a prey to the voracity ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... bee in this respect, that the male seems to have a most rotten time. For one thing he is nearly always about two sizes smaller than the female. Owing to that and to what The Encyclopaedia Britannica humorously describes as "the greater voracity" of the female (there is a lot of quiet fun in The Encyclopaedia Britannica), he is a very brave spider who makes a proposal of marriage. "He makes his advances to his mate at the risk of his life and is not infrequently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... unfrequently found to contain 'a choice assortment'—as the Calcutta advertisers have it—of gold, silver, or brass bangles and anklets, which have not been so expeditiously digested as their fair owners, victims of the monster's voracity. A little fat Brahminee child, 'farci an ris,' must be a tempting and tender bonne bouche to these river gourmands. Horrific legends such as the above, together with a great deal of valuable advice on the subject, were quite thrown ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... the morning and one after night. They immediately devour the entire carcass, after which they lie up and sleep for a few hours. Fortunately their numbers are comparatively few; otherwise there would be no other life within Caspak. It is their very voracity that keeps their numbers down to a point which permits other forms of life to persist, for even in the season of love the great males often turn upon their own mates and devour them, while both males and females occasionally devour their young. How the human and semihuman races have ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... palatable, steaks, roasted on the coals, were supplied in liberal abundance, and disappeared before Even Dhu and their host with a promptitude that seemed like magic, and astonished Waverley, who was much puzzled to reconcile their voracity with what he had heard of the abstemiousness of the Highlanders. He was ignorant that this abstinence was with the lower ranks wholly compulsory, and that, like some animals of prey, those who practise it were usually gifted with the power ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... useful articles, he drew half a dozen raw onions, which he added to the feast; and we ate with such appetite, that very soon we were reduced to the melancholy dessert of sucking our fingers. We washed the whole down with some water from the rivulet, and only then (such had been our voracity) we thought of questioning each other concerning the object of our respective journeys. From my dress, he perceived me to be a dervish, and my story was soon told: as for himself, he was a courier belonging to the Governor of Asterabad, and, to ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the actual picture of her personality, if you can call it a personality, Dickens did fall into some of his facile vices. The real objection to much of his pathos belongs really to another part of his character. It is connected with his vanity, his voracity for all kinds of praise, his restive experimentalism and even perhaps his envy. He strained himself to achieve pathos. His humour was inspiration; but his pathos was ambition. His laughter was lonely; he would have laughed on a desert island. But his grief was ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton |
