"Avidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... destined to be soon abandoned. It was reserved neither for Charles nor Philip to divert the succession in Germany from the numerous offspring of Maximilian; yet it is instructive to observe the unprincipled avidity with which the prize was sought by both. Each was willing to effect its purchase by abjuring what were supposed his most cherished principles. Philip of Spain, whose mission was to extirpate heresy throughout his realms, and who, in pursuance ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Schmidt had formerly told me that he was at one time shooting in the Base country, where the grass had been burnt, and not a blade of vegetation was procurable. He had abundance of sport, and he fed his donkey upon the flesh of antelopes, which he ate with avidity, and throve exceedingly. It is a curious fact that donkeys should under certain circumstances become omnivorous, while ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... nor the outdoor splendor, nor all the personal comforts they enjoyed, made this favored band of colored people forgetful of the brethren they had left in bondage. Every word about John Brown was sought for and read with avidity. When he was first taken captive, Chloe said: "The angel that let Peter out o' prison ha'n't growed old an' hard o' hearing. If we prays loud enough, he'll go and open the ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... converted by Lao-Kung into the art of producing a renovation of the faculties in the same body, by the means of certain preparations taken from the three kingdoms of nature. The infatuated people flew with avidity to the fountain of life. Princes even sought after the draughts that should render them immortal, but which, in fact, brought on premature death. Numerous instances are said to be on record, wherein the eunuchs have prevailed on the sovereign to swallow the immortal liquor which seldom ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... bent up their tails, unhooked their wings, and began immediately digging away with wonderful rapidity into the earth. They had good need of haste, for birds were seen assembling from all quarters, numerous hawks being among them, who began snapping them up with the greatest avidity. The natives, too, immediately set to work to collect them, giving them a pinch and putting them into baskets which they carried at their sides. They were quite as eager to obtain them as the birds were. On picking some of them up I found ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... twice or thrice in the course of the day; and it was now become a filthy puddle; but into this did the men as soon as they arrived, throw themselves headlong, over the shoulders of each other, and drink with an avidity which seemed insatiable. This was the first water in Greene's rear, which is mentioned by historians, as being resorted to by his army.* The battle had ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... are the only stock maintained at Ohotsk. The former live on grass in summer, and on hay and fish in whiter. Though repeatedly told that cows and horses in Northeastern Siberia would eat dried fish with avidity, I was inclined to skepticism. Captain Mahood told me he had seen them eating fish in winter and appearing to thrive on it. What was more singular, he had seen a cow eating fresh salmon in summer when the hills were covered ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... eleventh century, wandering poets went from castle to castle reciting or singing love-songs, composed in the old Provencal dialect, a sort of vulgarized Latin. The life in the great feudal chateaux was so dull that the lords and ladies seized with avidity any amusement which promised to while away an idle hour. The troubadours were made much of and became a strong element in the development of the Southern spirit. So-called Courts of Love were formed where questions of an amorous nature were discussed in all their bearings; learned opinions were ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... gathering thoughts. Books of impassioned poetry, and descriptions of heroic character and achievements, were her especial delight. Plutarch's Lives, that book which, more than any other, appears to be the incentive of early genius, was hid beneath her pillow, and read and re-read with tireless avidity. Those illustrious heroes of antiquity became the companions of her solitude and of her hourly thoughts. She adored them and loved them as her own most intimate personal friends. Her character became insensibly molded to their ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... thick and fast. For now that the populace had the support of several hundred soldiers, their courage became so reckless that they could no longer restrain themselves; and they accordingly engaged in the attack upon the English with avidity—from the comparatively safe position of the upstairs windows of the houses on either side of the street. Stukely and Dick were with the rearguard, making a vigorous and successful stand against the attack of the soldiery, when this new feature ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... expression: "My class is very fine!" She had told him this repeatedly, enunciating the words with delicacy. She had once said to him, commiseratingly: "You work very hard?" And when he had confessed that his duties were onerous, she had brightened. "Much work, much money," she had said, with the avidity of a boy who has caught a rabbit in a trap. And Harboro had wondered where she had got such a monstrously erroneous conception of the law ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... nothing happened with reference to the tonic port, until one day I noticed that our cat (who had recently lost her kittens) seemed in a poor state of health. I gave it a few spoonfuls of the tonic port in a little milk. It drank it with avidity, somewhat to my surprise. I had one or two little things to do in the garden after that, and when I came back Eliza said that the cat had become so very strange in its manner that she had thought it best to lock ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... chemist, the physician, and the agriculturist. It appears to be a natural stimulant to the digestive organs of all warm-blooded animals, and that they are instinctively led to immense distances in pursuit of it. This is strikingly exemplified in the avidity with which animals in a wild state seek the salt-pans of Africa and America, and in the difficulties they will encounter to reach them: this cannot arise from accident or caprice, but from a powerful instinct, which, beyond control, compels them to seek, at all risks, that which is salubrious. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... she did, in parleying with him, in bearing with his presence, in suffering his gaze, she made it plain that she did it against her will; as the captive endures perforce the company of the brigand in whose power he lies, but whom, when opportunity offers, he will deliver with avidity to the cord or the garotte. Because she must, and for her brother's sake, for the sake of his name and pride and home, she was willing to do this, though she abhorred it; and though every time that she broke bread with the ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... eyes, seized with a sudden vague fear. Everything connecting Andrea with his former life was distasteful to her. She wished that that life, of which she knew next to nothing, could be entirely wiped out of the memory of this man who had flung himself into it with such avidity and dragged himself out with so much weariness, so many losses, so many wounds—'To live solely in you and for you, with no to-morrow and no yesterday—without other bond or preference—far from the world——' Were not those his words to her? What ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... you set it down. I don't want none," said Hetty tenderly. She steadied the bowl on its way back, and 'Melia, relinquishing the claims of entertainment, picked into her small mouth with a swift avidity. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... Clover cut in the morning after the dew has lifted may be thus stored the same day. Where the facilities are present such a method of curing mammoth clover may be eminently wise in showery weather. The natural color of the hay and blossoms is thus preserved and the straw is eaten with avidity, because of what it has ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... and the return of his ships laden not only with the commodities peculiar to the coast of Malabar, but with many of the richer and rarer productions of the eastern parts of India, stimulated the Portuguese to enter on this new career with avidity and ardour, both military and commercial. It fortunately happened that Emanuel, who was king of Portugal at this period, was a man of great intelligence and grasp of mind, capable of forming plans with ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... by which they could reduce those formidable guests to such a state of privation as to compel them to retire. The only things which had not been burned or carried off were some large sacks of hides, which were to these freebooters objects of avidity, and which had almost occasioned a bloody dispute. Previously to devouring them, it was necessary to cut them into pieces with all possible equity. Thus divided, the leather was cut into small bits, these were scraped and violently beaten ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... another type of steamer passenger and hotel guest who may, or may not, be a climber. This one searches out potential acquaintances on the passenger list and hotel register with the avidity of a bird searching for worms. You have scarcely found your own stateroom and had your deck chair placed, when one of them swoops upon you: "I don't know whether you remember me? I met you in nineteen two, at Countess della Robbia's in Florence." ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... born A.D. 90, in Chaeronea, a city of Boeotia. To him we are indebted for so many of the lives of the philosophers, poets, orators and generals of antiquity. No book has been more generally sought after or read with greater avidity than "Plutarch's Lives." However ancient, either Greek or Latin, none has received such a universal popularity. But the character of Plutarch himself, not less than his method of writing biography, explains his universal popularity, and gives its special charm and value to his book. He ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... would allow him to take up the work of construction. The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. Under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. He secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his interest in ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... at the troughs. Excessive thirst made many of them furious; others, being too weak to contend for the water, endeavoured to quench their thirst by devouring the black mud from the gutters near the wells, which they did with great avidity, though it was ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... to be read by every man and woman who professes to keep in touch with modern thought. It is deeply interesting and so full of information that by intellectual readers it will be seized upon with avidity."—Buffalo Commercial. ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... darknesses, enormous cloudy darknesses, above him and below. He was going along this path without looking back, without a thought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him on his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success of the conspiracy, and the safety of the conspirators, as only her woman's tact, inspired by the ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... dauphine, the idea of working the handkerchiefs was entertained, and some designs of exquisite beauty and neatness had been prepared. They were not simple, vulgar, unmeaning ornaments, such as the uncultivated seize upon with avidity on account of their florid appearance, but well devised drawings, that were replete with taste and thought, and afforded some apology for the otherwise senseless luxury contemplated, by aiding in refining the imagination, and cultivating the intellect. ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... ground like the uneven tread of a drunken giant. Sarah Brown concentrated on an evening newspaper, busily reading again and again one of those columns of confidential man-to-man advertisement, which everybody reads with avidity while determining the more never to buy the article advertised. But presently the fidgeting hands of Richard caught her eye, and she looked at him. He was sitting next to his mother on a stone step. He seemed to be in a quieter ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... songs, so soft and tender, and yet so redolent of manliness and hope, inspired the ambition to compose a minstrelsy as wild and vigorous as themselves. They were read and learned and sung with an avidity and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... in which they had originally embarked. By the latter Lilburne was revered as an apostle and a martyr; they read with avidity the publications which repeatedly issued from his cell; and they condemned as persecutors and tyrants the men who had immured him and his companions in the Tower. Preparations had been made[a] to bring them to trial as the authors of the late mutiny; but, on more mature deliberation, ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... had not prevented him from basking in the rays of the earthly Venus. Before leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain Mile. M———, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he considered such perfidy! His one thought was to ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... ones published items about actresses and the like. She began to read the newspaper notices, not only of the opera in which she had so small a part, but of others. Gradually the desire for notice took hold of her. She longed to be renowned like others, and read with avidity all the complimentary or critical comments made concerning others high in her profession. The showy world in which her interest lay ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... too good to me! How did you know I was hungry? I was ashamed to say so, but I felt that a little food was all that was needed to make me perfectly well." And Molly fell to with an avidity that surprised her mother, who had not been able to persuade her to take a mouthful ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... amusement it is otherwise, and most especially in writings of fiction. These are sought after with avidity by the idle, because for the most part they are found to have the virtue of communicating impressions to the reader, even while his mind remains in a state of passiveness. He finds himself agreeably affected with fits of mirth or of sorrow, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... blackberries in a little heap where they could be found again, she took off her apron, dipped one end of it into the spring, and ran back to the wounded man. The apron was clean, and she squeezed a little stream of water from it into the man's mouth. He swallowed it with avidity. Cicely then knelt by his side, and with the wet end of her apron washed the blood from the wound lightly, and the dust from the man's face. Then she looked at her apron a moment, debating whether she ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... on the banks of a stagnant pond, nigh a rickety building, which looked like a poorhouse—clothing not improbably, as he surmised, left there on the bank by some pauper suicide. Marvel not that he should with avidity seize these rags; what the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... produced such good effects could never be carried to excess. If five hundred millions of paper had been of such advantage, five hundred millions additional would be of still greater advantage. This was the grand error of the Regent, and which Law did not attempt to dispel. The extraordinary avidity of the people kept up the delusion; and the higher the price of Indian and Mississippi stock, the more billets de banque were issued to keep pace with it. The edifice thus reared might not unaptly be compared to the gorgeous palace erected by Potemkin, that princely barbarian of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... attempts at indifferent drawing, the Princess begged her tutor to suggest some occupation for her where they could start afresh and work out problems together. Scheffer suggested modeling in clay, and the subject was taken up with avidity. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... instructions, which contain the result of what has been for a long time the subject of our conversations. The trading interest of Saxony has seized with avidity the overtures and details, which, after our interviews, I placed under the eyes of the Ministry. Persuaded that the goodness and cheapness of our commodities will give them an advantage in such an enterprise, they have adopted the plan, which you have indicated, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... passed pleasantly. Time did not drag, for I was engaged upon some enterprise every minute. I would draw, read, write, or talk. If any feeling was dominant, it was my feeling for art; and I read with avidity books on the technique of that subject. Strange as it may seem, however, the moment I again found myself in the world of business my desire to become an artist died almost as suddenly as it had been born. Though my artistic ambition was clearly an outgrowth of my abnormal condition, and languished ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... very grateful to the teeth, nor render it very palatable. The bran, or coarse part of the meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the bread.{81} This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves. They eat it with avidity, and are more concerned about the quantity than about the quality. They are far too scantily provided for, and are worked too steadily, to be much concerned for the quality of their food. The few minutes ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the writers of satire stands Count Roger Rabutin de Bussy, whose mind was jocose, his wit keen, and his sarcasm severe. He was born in 1618, and educated at a college of Jesuits, where he manifested an extraordinary avidity for letters and precocious talents. The glory of war fired his early zeal, and for sixteen years he followed the pursuit of arms. Then literature claimed him as her slave. His first book, Les amours du Palais Royal, excited the displeasure ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... encouragement were given to settle the country over the mountains; that the suspension of this encouragement, by the proclamation of October 1763, was merely temporary, untill the lands were purchased from the natives;—that the avidity to settle these lands was so great, that large settlements were made thereon, before they were purchased;—that although the settlers were daily exposed to the cruelties of the savages, neither a military force, nor repeated proclamations could induce them to vacate these ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... whisper. His words were low, but their effect upon Leh Shin was startling, for he recoiled as though touched by a hot needle. His hands clutched his clothes, and his whole frame stiffened. Even when he drew away, he listened with avidity as the Burman continued to pour ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... had been found in the garret of Col's house, and which he said was a treasure here. When we descried him from above, he had a most eremitical appearance; and on our return told us, he had been so much engaged by Gataker, that he had never missed us. His avidity for variety of books, while we were in Col, was frequently expressed; and he often complained that so few were within his reach. Upon which I observed to him, that it was strange he should complain of want of books, when he could at any ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... up the railway's offer with such avidity and had invested large sums of shareholders' capital in building the elevator accommodation were mostly shrewd grain dealers whose primary object was to buy and sell. These interested corporations were not constructing elevators in order to admire their silhouettes against the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... in the city. This threw the entire charge of house and store on me. As soon, therefore, as possible, she sent me to the city to school, where I realized my aspiration of studying ancient history and the piano, and devoured the contents of the text-book of natural philosophy with an avidity I had ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... thin hands together with an appearance of avidity which was a surprise to me, who knew his ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the French continued to increase in the north of Europe. About the end of September there appeared at Kiel, in Denmark, a libellous pamphlet, which was bought and read with inconceivable avidity. This pamphlet, which was very ably written, was the production of some fanatic who openly preached a crusade against France. The author regarded the blood of millions of men as a trifling sacrifice for the great object ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... larger and some meaner than his own; and it is a very rough effort so to consider him which is the excuse of these pages. Of the essays in this book I desire to say as little as possible; I will discuss any other subject in preference with a readiness which reaches to avidity. But I may very curtly apply the explanation used above to the cases of two or three of them. Thus in the article on David Copperfield I have done far less than justice to that fine book considered in its ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... truth which is the slow result of unconscious observation. There can be no stronger proof of the greatness of her genius, of her possessing that conceptive faculty which belongs to the higher order of imagination, than the avidity with which 'Uncle Tom' was read at the South. It settled the point that this book was true to human nature, even if not minutely so ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of his own producing. This ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... in the interior of the house—a vertical thread of light, widening towards the bottom, such as might escape between two wings of arras over a doorway. To see anything was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid ground to a man labouring in a morass; his mind seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring at it and trying to piece together some logical conception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a flight of steps ascending from his own level to that of this illuminated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... instinct, to a rational and intelligent being. But when first I opened a book, after so long an abstinence from all mental nourishment,—Oh it was rapture! no half-famished beggar regaled suddenly with food, ever seized on his repast with more hungry avidity." ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... whom he consulted in my presence; and she told him that he was doomed to possess it, but that first of all he must cross water. She cautioned him likewise against an enemy, which he supposes must be the canon of Saint James. I have often heard people speak of the avidity of the Swiss for money, and here is a proof of it. I would not undergo what Benedict has suffered in these last journeys of his, to possess all ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... 'middles,' which he considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, it really loves a sermon, and is glad to hear preachers who are not bound by the proprieties of the religious pulpit. Some essayists, like Johnson, have been as solemn as the true clerical performer, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... lawn-tennis, bicycling, and rowing are all extensively patronised by the young men of Japan, and cricket has of recent years come considerably into vogue. The students of the Imperial University have not only shown no disinclination, but, on the contrary, an avidity to combine athletics with their studies, and in base-ball especially they have more than held their own against the foreigner. I confess I have no desire to see the craze for outdoor sports which is so much in evidence in ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... and dwells timidly around the feet Marufa dozed in the cool of his hut; but later when it spread boldly out was he squatted once more in his favourite seat at the entrance to the compound, taking snuff and contemplating. The shadows grew from violet to blue; the small hens pecked for worms with avidity and the goats scratched with vigour in the cool. Patiently Marufa sat. At length that for which he had waited with a sound though primitive knowledge of psychology, came to pass. Bakuma appeared, apprehensive, but with yet an abandon which sang her happiness. Beside Marufa ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the Bible unshaken, and men might feel that the destructive process had its limit, and that adamant was still beneath their feet. But a world which is intellectual and keenly alive to the significance of these questions, reading all that is written about them with almost passionate avidity, finds itself brought to a crisis the character of which any one may realize by distinctly presenting to himself the idea of existence ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... which he won that glory, who, albeit he was, while he yet lived, the master of others, yet did ever refuse to be called their master. And this title that he rejected adorned him with a lustre the more splendid in proportion to the avidity with which it was usurped by those who were less knowing than he, or were his pupils. But for all the exceeding greatness of his art, yet in no particular had he the advantage of Messer Forese either in form or in feature. But to come to the story:—'Twas in Mugello that Messer ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection, would writhe and twist in and out again. Little girls just learning to crochet borrowed their patterns from Tony's ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... by Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, Marston, Wilkie Collins, and other men of prominent intellectual distinction, has given a remarkable prestige to this play, independent of its actual merits. It can not fail to be sought with avidity, both from interest in the occasion, and the popularity of the author. Nor is it altogether unworthy of his great reputation. The construction of the plot shows his usual fertility of resource, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... from 1847 to 1853, Sir James Brooke was very popular in England. The story of his first occupation of Sarawak, published in his journals, and the cruizes of her Majesty's ships in those eastern seas—the Dido and the Samarang—were read with avidity, and furnished the English public with a romance which had all the charm of novelty. However difficult and inconvenient it might be for the English Government to recognize a native State under an English rajah, who was at the same time a subject of the Queen of Great Britain, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic relief. She went very far, keeping in the lonely places, unveiling ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... know," muttered the lad, as he turned now and walked back toward the town street, down which he hurried with the intention of finding a quiet place where he could have a meal, and turned at last into a coffee-house, where he ordered tea and bread-and-butter, drinking the former with avidity, for he was feverishly thirsty, but the first mouthful of food seemed as if it would choke him, and he took ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... plan. Many powerful impressions and arguments, instinctive, critical, or moral, combine to teach that in the wreck of matter the spirit emerges, deathless, from the closing waves of decay. The confirmation of that truth becomes irresistible when we see how reason and conscience, with delighted avidity, seize upon its adaptedness alike to the brightest features and the darkest defects of the present life, whose imperfect symmetries and segments are harmoniously filled out by the adjusting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... numbers engraved upon small balls of mother-of-pearl, and presented the open sack to the youngest of her maids of honor, for the purpose of taking one of the balls out of it. The eager expectation, amid all these tediously slow preparations, was rather that of avidity than of curiosity. Saint-Aignan bent toward Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente to whisper to her, "Since we have each a number, let us unite our two chances. The bracelet shall be yours if I win, and if you are successful, deign to give me but one look ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... place. I am well informed that the late proceedings in America have produced a wonderful sensation in England in our favor. I mean the disposition, which seems to be becoming general, to invest Congress with the regulation of our commerce, and, in the mean time, the measures taken to defeat the avidity of the British government, grasping at our carrying business. I can add with truth, that it was not till these symptoms appeared in America, that I have been able to discover the smallest token of respect towards the United ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... because their confusedly mingled fibres and particles are incompetent to absorb the luminous rays. Whether, then, the cloth will sink or not depends entirely upon the dark rays of the sun. Now the substance which absorbs these dark rays with the greatest avidity is ice,—or snow, which is merely ice in powder. Hence, a less amounts of heat will be lodged in the cloth than in the surrounding snow. The cloth must therefore act as a shield to the snow on which it rests; and, in consequence of the more rapid fusion of the exposed snow, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... rooms at the hotel temporarily, and the plan suited her mother excellently. For one thing, Mrs. De Graf could go home and tell her Cloverton gossips that she had stopped at the most "fashionable" hotel in New York; a second point was that she loved to feast with epicurean avidity upon the products of a clever chef, being one of those women who live to eat, rather ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... the movement of certain needles, and caused the threads of the warp to deviate in such a manner as to produce a given design, though only of a simple character. Jacquard seized upon the suggestion with avidity, and, with the genius of the true inventor, at once proceeded to improve upon it. At the end of a month his weaving-machine was completed. To the cylinder of Vancanson, he added an endless piece of pasteboard pierced ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... leetle a gal as ye are," she began, and then she related experiences quite devoid of the simplicity and innocence of childhood. The girl soon forgot her fears and listened with avidity until the old dame's face grew heavier, if possible, with sleep, and she stumbled ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... attack of hydrophobia, and came to his end miserably in some such fashion as has been indicated. The popular mind was credulous to an extent inconceivable at the present day, and the mere accusation of madness was seized on and swallowed with an avidity that ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... supercilious scorn of my birth and blood, and I determined to fit myself for the proud niche I would one day fill as Cuthbert's wife. My grandmother spoke French fluently, it was her vernacular; and my father had left some valuable and choice books. To these I turned with avidity, prosecuting my studies with renewed zest. About three months after my husband left me, Uncle Orme sent money to defray our expenses to California. Grandmother who foreboded the future, told me I had been sacrificed, abandoned, repudiated, and urged me to accompany her. In return, I indignantly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... girl, in safety in the midst of my many packages, not altogether satisfied with my prospects; for the rain was falling heavily and steadily, and the Gatun porters were possessing themselves of my luggage with that same avidity which distinguishes their brethren on the pier of Calais or the quays of Pera. There are two species of individuals whom I have found alike wherever my travels have carried me—the reader can guess ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... object was to proceed in quest of water, of which they stood in most need. They had gone for more than a mile without finding anything to moisten their lips, or any signs of habitation, when one of the men discovered a cocoa-nut tree: here was both food and drink, and with avidity they seized upon the fruit, and found relief from ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... the repartitions of the extraordinary demands made by the Emir, they always gain considerable sums; but whenever a Sheikh has filled his purse, he is sure to fall a victim to the avidity of the chief governor. These Sheikhs affect all the pomp of the Turks; surpass them in family pride, and equal them in avarice, low intrigue, and fanatism. The governor of the province of Zawye is also a Christian, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... been said, was in reality a trifle fagged. When everybody had removed to the Gymnasium, where the dancing was to be, and he had been delightful there, too, for a whole half-hour, he grasped with avidity at his first chance to slip away, and did so under cover of a ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... kindness, washed and dressed their wounds, presented them with parched corn and dried meat, and fitted them a bed of ferns and dried leaves to sleep upon. They were congratulating themselves on their happy change, when they saw with horror, the Indians roast and devour with great avidity the dead Tabagauches: they were at the mercy of cannibals! Late in the night the revolting feast was prolonged, and then all was still, save the soft tread of their guard, as he hovered around them. The next morning a deer was given them which had ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... They had never dreamed of a God of love; their only notion of a superior power was one which inspired them with awe and terror. I have frequently observed that the unsophisticated minds of savages grasp the simple and glorious truths of the gospel with an avidity and a power of comprehension which would be surprising to those who have been accustomed week after week and year after year to set the same truths before those to whom they are familiar. As I heard Mr Bent and Vihala addressing the people, whose upturned eager earnest ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... tired of singing, Rose went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame, slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, 'I am ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... up to her and dropped his bread at her feet; she picked it up and ate it with avidity. Soon she looked quite recovered, and Cherry, delighted, was trotting back again to his kennel, when he heard loud cries, and saw a young girl dragged by four men to the door of the palace, which they were trying to compel her to enter. Oh, how he wished himself a monster again, as when ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... to your notion, to stiffen, to harden, to contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which had been dormant all through our first and second youth. We expect to see the time when we shall read the Elizabethan dramatists with avidity. We may not improbably find a delight in statistics; there must be a hidden charm in them. We may even form a relish ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... hand and glided gently out of the room. In a few minutes he returned with a can of warm soup and a roll; of which Aunt Dorothy partook with an avidity that showed she had been in urgent need. Immediately after, she went to sleep; and Martin sat upon the bed holding her hand in both of his till she awoke, which she did in an hour after, and again ate a ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... guard was taken from my gates, my establishment reduced to that of a private nobleman, and no longer having it in my power to gratify the avidity or to flatter the ambition of those who came about me, I was soon left nearly alone. All but the poor old lieges whom you see, and who had been faithful to me through every change of my life, instantly deserted the forlorn Baliol. In vain I remonstrated ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Italian language, and writes to a friend: 'I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of these (the classical) languages, but in proportion to my years have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent waves of its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent my visiting with ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the success of Christian missions, between such people and those whose chief sustenance is farinaceous food, is very striking and worthy of especial notice. In the East, and in Polynesia, literature and Christian doctrines are seized upon with avidity. But in vain were the most earnest labors of the best men to introduce reading and writing among the American Indians until they had first been taught to grow corn and to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... to pay her compliments, while his soul sickened at the avidity with which she swallowed them. He asked himself if it would not be better to put an end to this impossible state of things by telling her he was in love with Anne. But when he glanced at the little fragile figure beside him, and noted the delicacy and ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... point where Mr. Oxley saw its waters covering the country; or whether it pursued a course so much more to the westward as to have been taken for the Darling by Captain Sturt. Near the Lachlan at this place the Anthericum bulbosum occurred in abundance, and the cattle seemed to eat it with avidity. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... scrap of paper fluttered to the ground. Roger seized it with avidity, and, crouching on the floor, smoothed the paper ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... kind. Fish, when he can obtain them, are preferred to all other fare. Young lambs and pigs are dainty morsels, and made free with on all favourable occasions. Ducks, geese, gulls, and other sea fowl, are also seized with avidity. The most putrid carrion, when nothing better can be had, is acceptable; and the collected groups of gormandizing vultures, on the approach of this dignified personage, instantly disperse, and make way for their master, waiting his departure in sullen silence, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... greeting those who were going off, following them with their eyes while they were crossing the large square. The latest editions of the daily papers were announced with hoarse yells, and instantly the dark throng would be spotted with white, all reading with avidity the printed sheets. Good news: "Vive la France!" A doubtful despatch, foreshadowing calamity: "No matter! We must press on at all costs! The Russians will close in behind them!" And while these dialogues, ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... With avidity—for there is ever a charm in the supernatural—did the Arabs receive from their Nestorian and Jewish medical instructors these mystical interpretations along with true knowledge. And far from resting satisfied with what their masters had thus ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... instant success. Not only was it read with avidity but the Washington politicians were flabbergasted at the audacity of a man who dared to print what the press associations and the dailies would not touch. I do not think there can be any doubt of the genuineness of Harvey's motives at this time. His journal ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... opinion and his supposed position, the archbishop lauds rather the character of the man than the excellence of the author, declaring that it is not so much for the multitude of his books, though welcomed by the public with avidity, that Marivaux owes his election, as it is to "l'estime que nous avons faite de vos moeurs, de votre bon coeur, de la douceur de votre societe, et, si j'ose le dire, de ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... at the suggestion with avidity, and in a very few minutes each of the boys was mounting the fire-escape once again, this time with a large sheet of ice, not unlike a heavy pane of ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... editorials, and got interested. The Colonist never advanced beyond the proof-sheet stage, but as such it circulated with avidity over the valley. Eloquence flowed serene under mashed type and variegated fonts. The editor persisted in viewing the Empire and Republic as political parties, and the horrors of civil warfare as incidents of an ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... is not imbued with the sporting spirit. He wears it like an ill-fitting coat. I find a singular feature among the Americans in connection with their sports. Thus if something is known and recognized as sport, people take to it with avidity, but if the same thing is called labor or exercise, it is considered hard work, shirked and avoided. This is very cleverly illustrated by Mark Twain in one of his books, where a boy makes his companions believe that white-washing a fence is sport, and ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... of cool fresh water to his lips, and as he drank with avidity the reviving liquid seemed to give clearness to his brain, and the troubles there came ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... his eyes on every appearance of decline in the prosperity of the West Indies, he also seized with avidity every indication of the successful operation of his scheme, and magnified it both to himself and to the world. He made haste, in particular, to paint in the most glowing colors the rising prosperity of Jamaica.[175] His narrative was hailed with eager delight by abolitionists in all parts ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Peritoneum loaded with black pigment. Intestines in short loops across abdomen of intermediate size, as to length and diameter. Air bladder small; very common. Swarm in deepish pools under limestone rocks, takes bait, i.e. offal and worms with great avidity. Like many other species, it is asserted to be the English trout: it rises ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... loftier ideals, and a sense of the value of intellectual gifts, which had kept him singularly free from and indifferent to, the temptations of the senses. He had learnt to drink mental stimulants with avidity. He had made one or two brilliant successes in literature, and was looked upon as a supremely "odd ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... discharge of the musket, and as yet the former only had been distinguishable, amid the intervals that ensued between each sullen booming of the cannon. While this impression continued on the mind of the anxious officer, he caught, with the avidity of desperation, at the faint and improbable idea that his companions might be able to penetrate to his place of concealment, and procure his liberation; but when he found the firing, instead of drawing nearer, was confined to the ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... ones. That they were the "light reading" of adults, the equivalent of to-day's Ally Sloper or the penny dreadful, is much more probable. No doubt children who came across them had a surreptitious treat, even as urchins of both sexes now pounce with avidity upon stray copies of the ultra-popular and so-called comic papers. But you could not call Ally Sloper, that Punchinello of the Victorian era—who has received the honour of an elaborate article in the Nineteenth ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... victimized in permitting themselves to be deluded into the belief that they are acquiring the valid editions of reputable clubs. When club publications come into the open market they are usually picked up with avidity by collectors, and they have thus grown into very general favor among book-lovers. Indeed, the high esteem in which they have come to be regarded offers a productive field for a few crafty publishers to ply their wily designs in. The audacity ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... been, and may be illustrated by experiment. Feed a dog with pure sugar, or olive-oil, (articles that contain no nitrogen,) for several weeks, and the evil effects of non-nitrogenous nutriment will be manifested. At first, the dog will take his food with avidity, and seem to thrive upon it; soon this desire for food will diminish, his body emaciate, his eye become ulcerated, and in a few weeks he will die; but mix bran or sawdust with the sugar or oil, and ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... to try questions between the King and his subjects, or between party and party, on whatever side they may be published, are most highly and extremely improper. I think it is a disgrace, that the press of this country has engendered such an avidity in the public mind to have these things detailed to them; that they indulge it to a degree subversive of all justice. Hardly a case has happened within our own observation of late years, that the whole of the case has not ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... worn-out, commonplace, absurdly natural theories of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. My only chance is that, being so ancient, and so absurdly natural, the modern world may mistake them for something entirely new, and seize upon them with the fasionable avidity ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... orang-outangs "looking up;" pythons show but little animation at this season of the year; proboscis monkeys, on the other hand, continue scarce; there is quite a run on lions, and kangaroos are jumped at with avidity; elephants heavy; birds of paradise drooping; crocodiles are snapped up as offered, while dugongs bring large prices. What is pig ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... having no breakfast, the Battalion was halted in an orchard. The men filled their haversacks with apples and pears, and consumed scarcely ripe plums with an avidity that made the Officers fear that at least half of the Battalion would be in the grip of colic ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... into what I chose to tell her of our idyll with avidity, like a cat licking her whiskers over a dish of cream; and, strange to say—and so expansive a passion is that of love!—that I derived a perhaps equal satisfaction from confiding in that breast of iron. It made an immediate ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battalion was directed to cover the rear. These orders were executed, and a disorderly flight commenced. The pursuit was kept up about four miles, when, fortunately for the surviving Americans, that avidity for plunder which is a ruling passion among savages, called back the victorious Indians to the ramp, where the spoils of their vanquished foes were to be divided. The routed troops continued their flight to fort Jefferson, a distance ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... smallest particle, which produces a most exhilarating effect; in less then ten minutes he tastes again and again, always increasing the quantity; and in half an hour he has a gum-stick of condensed snow, which he masticates with avidity, and replaces with assiduity the moment that it has melted away. But his thirst is not allayed in the slightest degree; he is as hot as ever, and still perspires; his mouth is in flames, and he is driven to the necessity of quenching them with snow, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... at Boston and previously cited. The New York Times became Russell's most vicious critic, labelling him "Bull Run Russell," a name which stuck, and beginning its first article on his sins "The terrible epistle has been read with quite as much avidity as an average President's message. We scarcely exaggerate the fact when we say, the first and foremost thought on the minds of a very large portion of our people after the repulse at Bull's Run was, what will Russell ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... hatched, and from which issue so many young girls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... vacant lots which lay open and inviting children to healthful play; but instead of marbles or leap-frog or ball, he found little boys in ragged knickerbockers huddled together on the ground, "shooting craps" with precocious avidity and quarreling over the pennies that made the pitiful wagers. He heard glib profanity rolling from the lips of children who should have been stumbling through baby catechisms; and his heart ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... been transferred without warning or notice from the streets of London to the streets of Pekin. Every object which he saw he looked upon with different eyes. Every face which he passed produced a different impression upon him. He looked about him with all the avidity of one suddenly conscious of a great store of unused impressions. It was like a second birth. He neither understood the situation nor attempted to analyze it. He was simply conscious of a most delightful and inexplicable light-heartedness, and of a host of sensations which seemed to produce ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the curtain approached, so did the excitement in him overcome every other emotion; so did he become absolutely a creature of this region into which he had plunged, breathing its air with avidity and entranced by ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Lizzie, with avidity, "did you ever hear tell where you were with Sandy O'Neil on the night of the ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... of the people were these things gathered with such avidity and regarded with such all-absorbing interest as by the schoolboys of Paris. Every step of the "Grand Army" was watched with deep solicitude and commented upon with no doubtful criticism. They made themselves acquainted with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... breathe in the atmosphere of heaven deeply? Is that holy awe filling you? Is that tender sensibility of spiritual things filling your heart? Is that fine, keen edge upon your soul that gives such avidity for holy things? Is to become more godly a sincere desire of your heart? Then diligently perform all the duties that belong to a godly life. Some give great diligence for a time and make spiritual gain and then lose it all in a day of slackness. But do not slack, be constant, be persevering, ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... comprehend; nobody is fined or imprisoned for reasoning upon knowledge, and liberty, to the beasts of the field, for they are incapable of such truths. But these themes are forbidden to slaves, not because they cannot, but because they can and would seize on them with avidity—receive them gladly, comprehend them quickly; and the masters' power over them would be annihilated at once and for ever. But I have more frequently heard, not that they were incapable of receiving instruction, but something much nearer the truth—that knowledge only makes them miserable: the ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Lincoln is eulogized by Fuller as producing superior dogs for the sport; and in Grimsby bull-baiting was pursued with such avidity, that, to increase its importance, and prevent the possibility of its falling into disuse, it was made the subject of an official regulation of the magistracy. It had been practised within the borough from time immemorial, but about the beginning of the reign of Henry VII., the ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... it with instant avidity, returning it to its owner with that air that seems to flourish in parks and public places—a compound of gallantry and hope, tempered with respect for the policeman on the beat. In a pleasant voice, he risked an inconsequent ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... of an insupportable load by giving free vent to my tears. But I saw no bounds, no relief, to my surpassing wretchedness; and I drank in the fresh poison which the mysterious stranger had poured into my wounds with a furious avidity. As I retraced in my mind the loved image of my Minna, and depicted her sweet countenance all pale and in tears, such as I had beheld her in my late disgrace, the bold and sarcastic visage of Rascal would ever and anon thrust ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... occasion of her asking him a question of this kind that he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. "You are always snatching at information," he said; "you will never consent to have ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... a sparing drop of water that was used, and that was presently drunk with avidity, defiled as it was. Howard declared the cuts to be mere flesh wounds ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... cries the thin voice of Garrigou's bell, and this time the unlucky priest, abandoning himself to the demon of gluttony, rushes through the missal, devouring its pages with all the avidity of an overcharged appetite. Frantically he bows; arises; makes the signs of the cross, goes through the genuflexions, abbreviates all his gestures, the sooner to be finished. Scarcely does he extend his arms ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... am happy. (He drinks the milk with avidity; the footsteps in the street grow louder, filing the room with their sound, and then die away again) What a ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... had sounded, Kate Sanders and Angela were having murmured conference on the Wrens' veranda. Aunt Janet had gone to hospital to carry unimpeachable jelly to the several patients and dubious words of cheer. Jelly they absorbed with much avidity and her words with meek resignation. Mullins, she thought, after his dreadful experience and close touch with death, must be in receptive mood and repentant of his sins. Of just what sins to repent poor Pat might still be unsettled ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... it, came up to town; and from that day my business began to decline.... A great change at once took place in everything. Vessels were fitted out in numbers for the coast of Africa, and as fast as they returned their cargoes were bought up with avidity, not only consuming the large funds that had been accumulating, but all that could be procured, and finally exhausting credit and mortgaging the slaves for payment.... For myself, I was upwards of five years disposing of my large stock, at a sacrifice of more than a half, in all ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... sent there, as the slight they have put upon our offered friendship is very disreputable to us, and, of course, hurtful to our affairs elsewhere. I think they are short-sighted, and do not look very far into futurity, or they would seize with avidity so excellent an opportunity of securing a neighbor's friendship, which may hereafter be of great consequence ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... it at last, coming down from hundreds of feet above their heads, over vivid green moss and under fern fronds, to form into tiny pools in the crevices of the rocks; and from one of these they drank with avidity long cooling draughts of the sparkling water dipped out in the flask cup, and then ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... feature in oil operations. The idea of flowing wells for the production of petroleum, once inaugurated, was seized upon with avidity. There was not only a spontaneous yield, but a yield in enormous quantities. And so a pumping well was voted a slow institution, and all parties on Oil Creek renewed the operation of boring, and, at about the depth of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... by the pack of heathens around her," Mrs. Dr. Van Buren retorted, feeling a good deal guilty herself for having been instrumental in bringing about this unhappy match, and in proportion as she felt guilty, seizing with avidity any other offered cause for Ethie's wretchedness. "I've heard even more about them than you told me," she went on to say. "There was Mrs. Ellis, whose cousin lives in Olney—she says the mother is the most peculiar and old-fashioned woman imaginable; actually wears blue yarn stockings, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... the alleged violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act. The fosterers of the impeachment crusade, weary with their long vigil and growing desperate with every additional day's delay, clutched at the new turn of affairs like a drowning man at a floating straw, and with the avidity of a starved ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... to the hold, in which were not less than one hundred and fifty, nearly all sick, some very sick. It was like plunging into a vapor bath, so hot, close, and full of moisture, and then in this dismal place, we distributed our bread, oranges, and pickles, which were seized upon with avidity. And here let me say, at least twenty of them told us next day that the pickles had done them more good than all the medicine they had taken. The tea was carried all around in buckets, sweetened, but no milk in it. How much we wished for some concentrated milk. The gruel, into which we had put ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... stone near the edge of the water. This fly is generally but an indifferent killer in the middle of the day, mornings and evenings, (when not glutted and the weather propitious), Trout take it with avidity, provided there has been no frost during the night, and the water is free from the steaming sort of mist prevalent about this season. You may begin to fish with the May-fly as soon as you can see to put the ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... fishing is good he is kept busy hauling in and striking off the fish until his arms ache, and the tough skin on his hands is nearly chafed through. Sometimes the hooks are baited with bits of clam or porgy, though usually the mackerel, when biting at all, will snap with avidity at a naked hook, if tinned so as to shine in the water. Mr. Nordhoff, whose reminiscences of life on a fishing boat I have already quoted, describes this method of fishing and ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... in circulation. Though regular in the irregularity of its publication, the subscribers seem to have become accustomed to the delay, and when it did make its appearance it was read with eagerness and avidity. The interest and variety of its contents, and the skill of the editor in the arrangement of his materials, made up for ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... frightful thing, this well-born, well-bred poverty! There is a pauper state, which, loathsome as it is to look upon, yet brings with it a callousness to endure all inflictions, and a recklessness that can seize with avidity whatever coarse fragments of pleasure the day or the hour may afford. But this poverty applies itself to nerves strung for the subtlest happiness. No torpor here; no moments of rash and unscrupulous gratification—unreflected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who, with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after—What? In the streets there were few loiterers,—none walking for mere pleasure; every man's face was set in lines of eagerness or anxiety; news was sought for with fierce avidity; and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and in the Exchange, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of competition. There was gloom over the town. Few came to buy, and those who did were looked at suspiciously by the sellers; for credit was insecure, and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... vaguely the general character and scope of this great work; nor are we sure that even this is not quite a useless labor, as it must find its way at once into the library of every literary gentleman throughout the country, and be read with the greatest avidity by men of every class. One of the most valuable portions of the history is the extended view which Mr. PRESCOTT has presented, at the opening of the work, of the character and civilization of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... August came—the date for breaking up camp and going into barracks—I felt as though I had been at West Point always, and that if I staid to graduation, I would have to remain always. I did not take hold of my studies with avidity, in fact I rarely ever read over a lesson the second time during my entire cadetship. I could not sit in my room doing nothing. There is a fine library connected with the Academy from which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more time ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... grandmother's up in the garret there's a blue silk that she wore in Washington that is that curious new blue color, Pat, and a lot more of—" Mamie Lou was saying with great executive ability when Miss Elvira seized on her idea and made it her own with the avidity of ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... have always cherished with grateful affection those who devote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious or useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desired with more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of the ancients. For whether they had by nature a greater vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these things, one thing ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... fury. The pagan Venus was gnawing at his heart, and instilling her most subtle poisons into it. The image of the fatal beauty was there without truce, present in his burning brain, before his dazzled eyes; he inhaled with avidity and in spite of himself, its languor, ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... which are still bounded by matter, among genuine lovers of art the individuality of each stands out in mitigation of the antagonism of competition, for no two will have precisely the same tastes or estimates, or will seek with equal avidity the same embodiments of art. As we rise to purely intellectual or moral enjoyments, competition gives way to generous rivalry in co-operation. In the pursuit of knowledge or goodness the rivalry is no longer antagonism—what one gains another ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed 'superstitions,' now, under the brand-new title of 'cases of hystero-epilepsy,' are republished, reobserved, and reported with an even too credulous avidity. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... a century has passed since the incidents of this true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been gradually withdrawn from sight. The intense avidity which at first grasped at every incident of the great insurrectionary plot was succeeded by a distaste for the memory of the tale; and the official reports which told what slaves had once planned and dared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... and exhausted state of France during the middle of the fifteenth century. He has shown that the spoliation of the great merchant was a deliberately calculated act, and that the king sacrificed him without scruple or shame to the avidity of a singularly villanous set of courtiers. The whole story is an extraordinary picture of high-handed rapacity—the crudest possible assertion of the right of the stronger. The victim was stripped of his property, but escaped with his life, made his way ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James |
