"Voracious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Secretary of the company which conducted Sierra Leone (the African state for enfranchised negroes); he had also made a private fortune in African trade. From his very babyhood the son displayed almost incredible intellectual precocity and power of memory. His voracious reading began at the age of three, when he 'for the most part lay on the rug before the fire, with his book on the floor, and a piece of bread-and-butter in his hand.' Once, in his fifth year, when a servant had spilled an urn of hot coffee over his legs, ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Three legs upholding firm A massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat, And swayed the sceptre of his infant realms; And such in ancient halls and mansions drear May still be seen, but perforated sore And drilled in holes the solid oak is found, By worms voracious eating ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... of birds captured in this way, mocking-birds, blue-birds, robins, meadow larks, quail, and plover were the most numerous. They seemed to have more voracious appetites than other varieties, or else they were more unwary, and consequently more easily caught. A change of station, however, put an end to my ornithological plans, and activities of other kinds prevented me from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... accidentally found in the pocket of an old coat a paper of fine-cut chewing tobacco. With what delight I grasped the glittering treasure and applied it to my nose can only be conceived by a true lover of the weed—I speak not of your voracious chewers, who masticate this delectable narcotic as if it were food for the stomach instead of nutriment for the soul, but of the genuine devotee, who can appreciate the divinest essence, the rarest delicacies of tone and touch, the most exquisite shades of sentiment in this wondrous ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... 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 ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... many individuals of the rank plant could occupy prolifically a given area, how the soil must be gathered about the roots to sustain the heavy stock, and that there must be no rival near it to draw away the nutriment on which the voracious plant feeds and grows. Civilization has invented implements to facilitate the processes of culture, but the observation of the savage had led him to a knowledge of all that is absolutely necessary to ensure ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... or Frenzy of hugs which some stout Ursa Major On some lean Ursa Minor would doubtless bestow With a warmth for which only starvation and snow Could render one grateful. As soon as he could, Lord Alfred contrived to escape, nor be food Any more for those somewhat voracious embraces. Then the two men sat down and scann'd each other's faces: And Alfred could see that his cousin was taken With unwonted emotion. The hand that had shaken His own trembled somewhat. In truth he descried At ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... about the bush for some time—giving her to understand now necessary it was that persons situated as they were should live either for themselves or for each other, and that, above all things, they should beware of falling into the mouths of voracious aristocratic lions who go about looking for prey—till they came to a turn in the grounds; at which Miss Dunstable declared her determination of going in. She had walked enough, she said. As by this time Mr ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... 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
... fish-globe, out of which none of the other mice could get, but I have repeatedly seen specimens of M. urbanus jump clear out of the opening at the top. They would look up, gather their hind quarters together, and then go in for a high leap. They are much more voracious than the Simla or other mice. The allowance of food given would be devoured in less than half the time taken by the others, and they are more given to gnawing. What sort of mothers they are in freedom I know not, but one which produced ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... they had prepared their hideous banquet, and, going resolutely towards them, levelled his musket at the cannibals. One of the wretches was killed with the horrid morsel in his mouth, and a second shot, brought down his voracious accomplice in the act. This bold example so awed all within ken of the fact, that from that hour, until the day he quitted the island, a period of fourteen years, no captive ever met with the interdicted fate. Though the old sovereign continued in life, he consigned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... problem, and a good game at pin-sticking was far more entertaining than a language lesson. Moreover, he was always hungry, and would eat in school before the half-past ten recess, thereby losing much good playtime for his voracious appetite. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... placed in a hot-house, which was done. The worms, which hatched in a few days, as they were placed in a hot-house, thrived wonderfully well, and I might say they thrived too well, as they grew so fast and became so voracious that the growth of the lilac trees could not keep pace with the growth of the worms. These, at the fourth stage, became so large that the foliage was entirely devoured, and, of course, the consequence was that all the worms were starved. I only ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... at Edgehill. I had known as much, and perhaps more than most in the army, what it was to have an enemy ranging in the bowels of a kingdom; I had seen the most flourishing provinces of Germany reduced to perfect deserts, and the voracious Crabats, with inhuman barbarity, quenching the fires of the plundered villages with the blood of the inhabitants. Whether this had hardened me against the natural tenderness which I afterwards found return upon me, ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... into the lake with the streams that flow into it. The 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, is very ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... his appearance on the day she first met him, she stole glances of half-frightened curiosity at him while he was eating, and was relieved to find that he used his knife and fork like the others, and that his appetite was far from voracious. It was his employer who was the first to recall the experiences of his past life, with a certain enthusiasm and the air of a host anxious to contribute to the entertainment of his guests. "You'd hardly ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... received the money, not as a gudgeon doth a bait, but as a pike receives a poor gudgeon into his maw. To say the truth, such fellows as these may well be likened to that voracious fish, who fattens himself by devouring all the little inhabitants of the river. As soon as the great man had pocketed the cash, he shook Booth by the hand, and told him he would be sure to slip no opportunity of ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... that the mildness of the climate of Louisiana may have an effect upon the disposition of the bears, and prevent them from being so voracious as those of our continent; but I affirm that carnivorous animals retain the same disposition in all countries. The wolves of Louisiana are carnivorous as well as those of Europe, although they differ in ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... food. The fattest of turkeys and the most tender steaks of venison, roasted upon forked sticks, which they held in their hands over the coals, feasted their voracious appetites. This, to them, was almost sumptuous food. The skin of the deer, by a rapid and simple process of tanning, supplied them with moccasons, and afforded material for the repair ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... perpetual marvel. To witness those well-stocked tables, one moment displaying the prodigal richness of a lord mayor's feast, and the next to behold this scene of gastronomical fertility laid bare, as the simoom of a hundred voracious appetites sweeps across the tempting viands, and leaves all blank behind it, is a theme of exhaustless wonderment. We involuntarily think of the 182,500 Banbury cakes that are here annually consumed by pastry-loving passengers, and of the 70,080 bottles of stout ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... near the man trapped in the pit. Bait to draw these voracious eaters straight to the prisoner. Rynch's empty stomach heaved. He swung around, ran across the grassy verge of the upper bank, hoping he was ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... should go short on dog-food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... greatly to the vexation of themselves and the passengers who entered quite as eagerly into this sport as themselves, the cunning fish disdained the bait and swam slowly away. To my enquiries of why they had not seized upon the meat thrown out as lure, sharks having always been represented as voracious and greedy, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Fanny follow him, he entered the alehouse, where a large loaf and cheese and a pitcher of beer, which truly answered the character given of it, being set before them, the three travellers fell to eating, with appetites infinitely more voracious than are to be found at the most exquisite eating-houses in the parish ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... state of affairs did not continue for long, and our work was soon interrupted in a rude and startling manner. Two most voracious and insatiable man-eating lions appeared upon the scene, and for over nine months waged an intermittent warfare against the railway and all those connected with it in the vicinity of Tsavo. This culminated in a perfect reign of terror in December, 1898, when they actually succeeded in bringing ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... given them over to a score or two of men with power to use and enjoy them as absolutely as though these billions had been earned dollar by dollar by the labor of their bodies and minds. Yet in telling the story of Amalgamated, the most brazen and voracious maw of this "System," I desire it understood that I take no issue with men; it is with a principle I am concerned. With the men I have had close and intimate intercourse, and from my knowledge of the means they have used, and the manner in which they have used them, and the causes and effects of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... appeared but a few days before. He made several trials in vain. Jack Shark always kept at too great a distance when the rope was thrown. At last one of the seamen took off his shoes, and, tucking up his trousers, stuck out his leg and moved it slowly backwards and forwards. The voracious shark saw the tempting bait, and made a dash at it. The seaman drew it in, and as the fish, disappointed of his prize, turned round whisking up his tail out of the water, Needham adroitly hove the rope over it. As the shark darted off Dick was very ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... fly forth from the ark, and return across every sea with the olive of every land. Shall objects like these be endangered by the impatience of petty ambition, the promptings of sectional interest, or the goadings of fanatic hate? Shall the good of the whole be surrendered to the voracious demands of the few? Shall class interests control the great policy of our country, and the voice of reason be drowned in the clamor of causeless excitement? If so, not otherwise, we may agree with him who would reconcile us to the evils of war by the promise ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... believe, to the great quantity of vegetable trash which they eat. All the horses, mules, asses, and cattle, which feed upon grass, have the same distension. This kind of food produces such acid juices in the stomach, as excite a perpetual sense of hunger. I have been often amazed at the voracious appetites of these people. You must not expect that I should describe the tables and the hospitality of our Nissard gentry. Our consul, who is a very honest man, told me, he had lived four and thirty years in the country, without ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... In this manner he flourished till the beginning of winter, when those boys, who, by the poverty of their parents, had been compelled to go to service to the neighboring farmers, flocked to him in numbers, quite voracious for knowledge. An addition was consequently built to the school-house, which was considerably too small; so that, as Christmas approached, it would be difficult to find a more numerous or merry establishment under the roof of a hedge school. But it is time to ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... must a 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 part of the creation; he leaves all others behind him at ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... The display was admirable and very abundant, and the keen air, added to the unusual exercise of the morning, had given the young gentlemen a most voracious appetite. ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... had been ready for issue he agreed with Bliss that they should try the experiment of copyrighting it in England, and see how far the law would protect them against the voracious little publisher, who thus far had not only snapped up everything bearing Mark Twain's signature, but had included in a volume of Mark Twain sketches certain examples of very weak humor with which Mark Twain had been ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... simple and without malice, and Ralph liked her for her silent acceptance of her diminished state. Sometimes, as he sat between the lonely primitive old couple, he wondered from what source Undine's voracious ambitions had been drawn: all she cared for, and attached importance to, was as remote from her parents' conception of life as her impatient ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... shore And Samos' isle; the parting waters plash'd. As down to ocean's lowest depths she dropp'd, Like to a plummet, which the fisherman Lets fall, encas'd in wild bull's horn, to bear Destruction to the sea's voracious tribes. There found she Thetis in a hollow cave, Around her rang'd the Ocean Goddesses: She, in the midst, was weeping o'er the fate Her matchless son awaiting, doom'd to die Far from his home, on fertile plains of Troy. Swift-footed Iris at her side appear'd, And thus address'd her: "Hasten, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... 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 ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... immature youth, and of senectitude weary of its toils. I found curious indications among the grounds of Conon-side, of the time that had elapsed since I had last seen them. There was a rectangular pond in a corner of a moor, near the public road, inhabited by about a dozen voracious, frog-eating pike, that I used frequently to visit. The water in the pond was exceedingly limpid; and I could watch from the banks every motion of the hungry, energetic inmates. And now I struck off from the river-side by a narrow tangled ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... zealous mother-bird ever had a busier time feeding her fledglings than had the good Sister in satisfying the appetites of these callow cormorants. To witness the French nun seeking to allay the hunger of these voracious schoolboy aliens was to picture a wren trying to fill the ever-gaping beaks of two young cuckoos whom an adverse fate had dropped into ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... cheek. The whole process, d'Enjoy considers, is founded on sexual desire and the desire for food, smell being the sense employed in both fields. In the form described by d'Enjoy, we have the Mongolian variety of the olfactory kiss. The Chinese regard the European kiss as odious, suggesting voracious cannibals, and yellow mothers in the French colonies still frighten children by threatening to give them the white man's kiss. Their own kiss the Chinese regard as exclusively voluptuous; it is only befitting as between lovers, and not only do fathers refrain from kissing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... were playing in it, sporting together, as it seemed, very amicably; but on closer observation, I saw that they were engaged in a cannibal warfare among themselves. Now and then a small one would fall a victim, and immediately disappear down the maw of his voracious conqueror. Every moment, however, the tyrant of the pool, a monster about three inches long, with staring goggle eyes, would slowly issue forth with quivering fins and tail from under the shelving bank. The small fry at this would suspend their hostilities, and scatter in a panic at the appearance ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... idiocy. The osseous structure, deficient in the phosphate of lime, is unable to sustain the weight of the body, and the cretin is thus incapacitated for active motion; the muscles are soft and wasted; the skin dingy, cold, and unhealthy; the appetite voracious; spasmodic and convulsed action frequent; and the digestion imperfect and greatly disordered. The mind seems to exist only in a germinal state; observation, memory, thought, the power of combination, are all wanting. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... loaded him, and in the slender means which she affords to the relieving of these necessities. In other creatures these two particulars generally compensate each other. If we consider the lion as a voracious and carnivorous animal, we shall easily discover him to be very necessitous, but if we turn our eye to his make and temper, his agility, his courage, his arms, and his force, we shall find that his advantages hold proportion with his wants.... In man alone this unnatural ...
— The Children: Some Educational Problems • Alexander Darroch
... they came in trucks to cross the 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 they ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... beautiful fish, and when first taken out of the water and struggle and flounder in the sun, they exhibit all the colors of the rainbow, but they soon expire, and when dead they are of a delicate white color. The trout, pike, and muscalonge devour them without mercy. Some of these voracious kinds have been caught with the remains of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... 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 companion Must ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... Boa have been obtained by travellers, from the Asiatics. They resemble those of the fabled dragon and hippogriff, and as they generally relate to the ravaging of whole districts by the voracious monster, a heap o' grief is connected with some of them. The gum-game, however, is much in vogue in India, and most of these snake stories may be characterized ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... a most pleasing task to start upon, which was nothing more nor less than that of appeasing his appetite, never more voracious, he fancied, than just then. Without a twinge of conscience regarding the fact that it was stolen food he disposed of, Jack commenced his ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... more deadening to civilization than the forests of the far north. Near the northern limit of the great evergreen forest of North America wild animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can scarcely find a living in a thousand square miles. Today the voracious maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and hemlock by means of relentless saws and rattling pulp-mills. In the wake of the lumbermen settlers are tardily spreading northward from the more favored tracts in northern New ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... from the beginning before a cos-ata-lu child may be born; and when one considers the frightful dangers that surround the vital spark from the moment it leaves the warm pool where it has been deposited to float down to the sea amid the voracious creatures that swarm the surface and the deeps and the almost equally unthinkable trials of its effort to survive after it once becomes a land animal and starts northward through the horrors of the Caspakian jungles and forests, it is plainly a wonder that even a single babe ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gentlewoman being at table, abroad or at home, must observe to keep her body straight, and lean not by any means with her elbows, nor by ravenous gesture discover a voracious appetite: talk not when you have meat in your mouth; and do not smack like a pig, nor venture to eat spoonmeat so hot that the tears stand in your eyes, which is as unseemly as the gentlewoman who ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... white bears; these animals defended themselves with prodigious strength and fury. The first was attacked by the sailors; the other nine were the assailants. Some of them were so daring as to walk into the hut in search of their prey. Those among them who were the least voracious were easily driven away, but the more ravenous were not to be deterred; and it was not without encountering the most imminent danger that the men escaped in the dreadful conflicts. But they were in continual ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... reason that modern people do not read these great authors is that they are not encouraged to do so. The very best way to instil a love of Thackeray into the modern world is to make the modern world read just so much of him that its voracious appetite is sharpened ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... promote such a result on his part. During the wars which followed the French Revolution, the wolf multiplied in many parts of Europe, partly because the hunters were withdrawn from the woods to chase a nobler game, and partly because the bodies of slain men and horses supplied this voracious quadraped with more abundant food. [Footnote: During the late civil war in America, deer and other animals of the chase multiplied rapidly in the regions of the Southern States which were partly depopulated and deprived of their sportsmen by the military operations of the contest, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... So dark was the night that it seemed to envelop them like a velvet curtain. Beneath their feet they heard the hissing and moaning of the bog, awaiting its prey like a restless and voracious wild beast. Through the dense blackness they could see the iridescent waters writhing ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Luckily these voracious animals have poor eyesight. They went by without noticing us, grazing us with their brownish fins; and miraculously, we escaped a danger greater than encountering a tiger deep ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... safety. They had the desired effect; I pretended to think no more of my disappointment, nevertheless, I found myself constantly dwelling on the size of my lost fish, and lamenting my being obliged to abandon him to his more voracious brethren of the deep. These thoughts so filled my mind that at night I continued to dream over again the whole incident, beginning with my patient angling from the rock, and concluding with my disconsolate swim to shore—and pursued my scaly antagonist ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... and Val. iv. 363. Scorpaena miles, Bennett; named, by the Singhalese, "Maha-rata-gini," the Great Red Fire, a very brilliant red species spotted with black. It is very voracious, and is regarded on some parts of the coast as edible, while on others it is rejected. Mr. Bennett has given a drawing of this species, (pl. 9), so well marked by the armature of the head. The French naturalists regard this figure as being only a highly-coloured variety of their species "dont l'eclat ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... there straight from the Argentine Republic on a tramp steamer, and we lived on the Cascapedia coatless and flannel-shirted, with our legs encased in "beef moccasins" as a protection against the hordes of voracious flies that battened ravenously on us from morning to night. It was a considerable change from a tent on the banks of the rushing, foaming Cascapedia to the Citadel of Quebec, which was then appointed like a comfortable English country ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... went to the Salve, and this man remained alone; a caiman, or crocodile, seized and killed him, before he could be assisted or confessed. What most surprised me was that, although this animal is very voracious and always devours a man after killing him, or at least carries away a hand or foot, this man it left untouched, although dead; and thus he was found by the Indians, to their great horror, and causing them to hold in great ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... tear upon tear, transporting to thy house the blood of thy mother which drives thee frenzied! Thus I bewail, I bewail. Great prosperity is not lasting among mortals; but, as the sail of the swift bark, some deity having shaken him, hath sunk him in the voracious and destructive waves of tremendous evils, as in the waves of the ocean. For what other[6a] family ought I to reverence yet before that sprung from divine nuptials, sprung from Tantalus?—But lo! the king! the prince Menelaus, is coming! but he is very easily discernible from the elegance ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... of eating them—and even if I didn't, Major Walters and I can't eat six. And I can't put blue ribbons round their necks, and carry them about with me on my travels as pets. Can't you see me walking over the Ponte Vecchio followed by them as by a string of poodles? And they are so voracious. The hotel people are already charging them full pension terms. Oh, dear! Do tell me what I am to do ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... 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 ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... next; it was very dark—just light enough to show that, instead of a wall on one side, there was a grating of iron, which parted off a dismal dungeon, from whence issued the groans of those poor victims whom the cruel giant reserved in confinement for his own voracious appetite. Poor Jack was half dead with fear, and would have given the world to have been with his mother again, for he now began to fear that he should never see her more, and gave himself up for lost; he even mistrusted ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... splendid fishing ground; the deck was soon covered with cod and haddock. Franklin denounced catching the fishes, as murderous, as no one could affirm that these fishes, so happy in the water, had ever conferred any injury upon their captors. But Benjamin was blessed with a voracious appetite. The frying pan was busy, and the odor from the fresh fish was exceedingly alluring. As he watched a sailor cutting open a fish, he observed in its stomach a smaller fish, which ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and green, or white flit across from tree to tree; parrots chatter, crows scream, and the brain-fever bird soothes or irritates you according to your mood, and you tap your fingers on the table in time to the metallic anvil cry of the coppersmith bird, until a tiger-ant or some such voracious insect ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... occasion for triumph than we had; for he was but attacked with numerous armies of soldiers; whereas our little army was obliged to combat a legion of devils, as it were, worse than the cannibals, who, the same moment they had slain us, would have sacrificed us, to satisfy their voracious appetites. ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... myself confronted by a problem. I had to apply my own favourite theories and arguments to myself and weigh against them practical advantages. Honey was plentiful and, given that the bees were protected against voracious enemies, might have been stored in marketable quantities. But was I not bound by honour as well as sentiment to protect the birds? Was not my coming hither due to a certain extent to a wish for the preservation ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... not be placed in an aquarium containing insects and small fish which are to be kept, as it is fierce and voracious. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... characteristically flushed. In the early morning the 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
... and pollywogs, eels and small fish, that had disappeared in his meditative mouth. For the Stork was like many another philosopher, and in spite of his supernaturally wise external appearance, inside he was just as selfish, and just as voracious, as all the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... of "The Voracious Frog" (No. 6) is a valuable contribution to the store we already possess of what appear to be myths relating to apparent destruction, but ultimate resuscitation. To this class seem to belong the stories on which Little ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... and that was to make herself known. She retraced her steps, pulled open the broken screen door, and entered the cafe. It was a low, dingy dining-room filled with the odor of ham and bad coffee. At the tables ten or fifteen men, a motley throng, were busily feeding their voracious jaws, and on her left, behind a showcase filled with cigars, stood her mother, looking old, unkempt, and worried. The changes in her were so great that the girl stood in shocked alarm. At last she raised her veil. "Mother," she said, "don't ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... affianced bride, his view of THAT furniture that mainly constituted our young man's "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
... pieces. His blood stained the water all around, and this attracting all the sharks proved the means of our escape. Never shall I forget the horrible sensation which I felt as I struggled through the broken water, expecting every minute a limb to be taken off by one of those voracious animals. If one foot touched the other, my heart sank, thinking it was the nose of a shark, and that its bite would immediately follow. Agonized with these terrors, we struggled on—now a large wave curling over us and burying us under ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... he was, to have within himself a will of steel, a hate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the catastrophe, and to burn nothing, to decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator, whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger—could ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... scenic piece for the entrance to the exhibition—picturing the shark swallowing a whole boat-load of people! I was also put on to act as showman, and in that capacity—not in my capacity as a private citizen—I told stories of the voracious appetite of the shark when alive. Many blankets had been found in the shark, not to mention a barrel or two of beer. Leach stood at the door turning a box organ, which we had bought cheaply; and David Hey undertook ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... into a condition of settled gloom. My nerves began to suffer from the strain, and I came gradually to regard Henry as less of a helpmate and more of a voracious monster demanding meals at too frequent intervals. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... Before the advent of the dragon-fly it has perhaps happened that I have been vigorously striking at them, making it very unpleasant for them, and also killing and disabling many hundreds—a larger number than the most voracious dragon-fly could devour in the course of a whole day; and yet, after brushing and beating them off until my arms have ached with the exertion, they have continued to rush blindly on their fate, exhibiting not the faintest symptom of fear. I suppose that for centuries mosquitoes have, in ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... is even this way without danger, for these destructive animals overturn the floats, and tear the passengers in pieces. The river horse, which lives only on grass and branches of trees, is satisfied with killing the men, but the crocodile being more voracious, feeds upon the carcases. ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo
... by a crocodile—a fierce animal of these regions, which is very fond of human flesh—and that before they could render him any assistance, spiritual or temporal. This event was indeed the occasion of no little wonder, for this beast is very voracious, and swallows men whole, or piece by piece, or at least tears off hand or foot; but this man he left whole and untorn, which the Indians attribute to the virtue of the Salve that they sang and the discipline that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... short distance from our camp. It was as large as a shilling, reddish in colour, and from the fierce, rapid way in which it ran about hither and thither as if in search of prey, it had an exceedingly horrible and voracious aspect. The hole of this creature is visible only when its owner is absent from home. It is quite evident either that there are no thieves among the lower animals there, or that there is nothing in the hole ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... candle-flames which the young priest's companion had compared to suffering souls seeking deliverance. All was now exquisitely restful, instinct with unlimited hope. Since Pierre had been there all the heart-rending memories of the afternoon, of the voracious appetites, the impudent simony, and the poisoning of the old town, had gradually left him, allowing him to savour the divine refreshment of that beautiful night, in which his whole being was steeped as in some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the 24th, that the 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 ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... 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 ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... not only something of a traveller, but a diligent student of history and a voracious novel reader, and, once-in-a-while, I get my history and my fiction mixed. This has been especially the case when the hum-drum of the Boulevards has driven me from the fascinations of the Beau Quartier ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... near Islington, as of a whole Troop that has been engaged in any Foreign Adventure. In short, they have a Relish for every thing that is News, let the matter of it be what it will; or to speak more properly, they are Men of a Voracious Appetite, but no Taste. Now, Sir, since the great Fountain of News, I mean the War, is very near being dried up; and since these Gentlemen have contracted such an inextinguishable Thirst after it; I have taken their Case and my ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... there is many a slip between the catch and the feast. A frigate bird had from afar espied the combat, and, flying like a flash of lightning, downward he darted and seized the snake by the back. The voracious crab held on, not liking to lose his prey, till he found himself borne upwards from the ground, and in unpleasant propinquity to the frigate bird's sharp beak. He must have felt that if he did not let go at once, he would be dashed to pieces; still, as a miser clutches his bags ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... the meantime spread over the floor a soft and fragrant carpet of evergreen twigs. The mother is preparing supper, of trout from the stream, and the fattest of wild turkeys or partridges, or tender cuts of venison, which the rifles of her husband or sons have procured. Voracious appetites render the repast far more palatable than the choicest viands which were ever spread in the banqueting halls of Versailles or Windsor. Water-fowl of gorgeous plumage sport in the stream, unintimidated by the approach of man. The plaintive songs of forest-birds float in the evening air. ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... his horse's hoofs was in her ears. Hurtling thus over the pastures, breaking the year-long hush, he was the embodiment of the destructive principle, of cruelty, of the greater part of human society—voracious and carnivorous—with its curious callousness towards the nerves of the rest ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... jaws are armed with rows of serrated bone plates. In colour they are a very beautiful iridescent silver along the sides and belly, the back and head being a deep, glossy blue. When full grown their length is slightly over four feet, and weight about twenty-five pounds. They are as voracious as the pike, swim with extraordinary swiftness at night-time, and will take the hook eagerly if baited with a whole flying-fish; their flesh is somewhat delicate in flavour and greatly relished by ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... suppose that nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse abundance of all external conveniences, 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 appetite 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 or covering: the raw herbage affords him the most delicious fare; the clear fountain, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... complication—of Bender's voracious integrity; but only to push it away. "Well, I don't know whether the best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers—but I feel to-day that ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... drifting in the Indian Ocean, totally destitute of crews and passengers; not even their skeletons were found, and it was estimated that the voracious monsters had carried them away bodily, devoured them in the air, and dropped ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the arched brows drew together for an instant. "But no matter. There are enough and to spare even for Fouquier-Tinvillle's voracious ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... roasted lamb for dinner. Good Christians are anxious to know when the time will arrive that the lion and lamb will lie down together in peace and harmony. Possibly the lamb would like to know if the time will ever come when its carcass will not be utilized to appease the voracious appetite ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... the education given in Utopia is useful. Of the many complaints that are brought against the output of our elementary schools, one of the most serious is that the boys and girls who have recently left school are voracious readers of a vicious and demoralising literature which seems to be provided for their special benefit. The reason why they take so readily to this garbage is that they have lost their appetite for wholesome food. They are not interested in healthy literature, in Nature-study, in music, ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... fish stories, wildly improbable as it may seem, may yet have been founded on fact. When acres upon acres of the countless little capelin swim inshore to feed, and they themselves are preyed on by leaping acres of voracious cod, whose own rear ranks are being preyed on by hungry seals, sharks, herring-hogs, or dogfish, then indeed the troubled surface of a narrowing bay is literally thick with the silvery flash of capelin, the dark tumultuous ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... development of industrial activity of which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the fruits. The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best have formed a mere framework for a maze of instruments which formed the complex mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious wants of the new society. The gold-smithery of early times was now complicated by the arts of chasing and engraving on precious stones; the primitive builder, if he were still to ply his trade with profit, must associate it with the skill of the men who made the stuccoed ceilings, the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... and over-mastering activity of his own mind. He is borne along, almost involuntarily, and not impossibly against his better judgment, by the throng and restlessness of his ideas as by a crowd of people in motion. His perceptions are literal, tenacious, epileptic—his understanding voracious of facts, and equally communicative of them—and he ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... to speak, or to be spoken to, they are excellent company, and quite satisfied. When they all arrive again at the little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch a morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast, but gives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after breakfast, he will come back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day, with a vague sensation upon him as if he hadn't been to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... seldom 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, bloody, ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... hear. When fatigued with 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 ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... as if Scranton boys and girls have developed a voracious appetite for every kind of out-door sport lately," Hugh went on to say. "Did you hear what the committee in charge of the grounds here intends ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... Where Adria sleeps, to where the Bothnian roars, In one great Hanse, for earth's whole trafic known, Free cities rise, and in their golden zone Bind all the interior states; nor princes dare Infringe their franchise with voracious war. All shield them safe, and joy to share the gain That spreads o'er land from each surrounding main, Makes Indian stuffs, Arabian gums their own, Plants Persian gems on every Celtic crown, Pours thro their ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... like this shape: Henry, fifth Earl of Blackwater, had begun life as an Irish peer, with more money than the majority of his class; an initial advantage soon undone by an insane and unscrupulous extravagance. He was, however, a fine, handsome, voracious gentleman, born to prey upon his kind, and when he looked for an heiress he was not long in finding her. His first wife, a very rich woman, bore him one daughter. Before the daughter was three years old, Lord Blackwater had developed a ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Shan Tien. To the alert yet downcast gaze of the former person it seemed as if the usually inscrutable expression of that high official was not wholly stern as it moved in his direction. Ming-shu, on the contrary, disclosed all his voracious teeth without restraint. ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... time mackerel-taking, Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the brown-faced crew; Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, My left foot ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... voracious creatures are not fastidious. No particular vegetable seems to be chosen by them. The leaves of the bitter tobacco plant appear to be as much to their liking as the sweet and succulent blades of maize! Pieces of linen, cotton, and even flannel, are devoured by them, as though ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the slippery-elm tree, which they chewed, drawing from it a little strength and sustenance. They found an hour or two later some nearly ripe wild plums, which they ate in small quantities, and, later on, ripe blackberries very juicy and sweet. Paul wanted to be voracious, but Henry restrained him, knowing well that if he indulged liberally he might suffer worse pangs than those of hunger. Slender as was this diet the boys felt much strengthened, and their spirits ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... custom, a goodly quantity of white sugar. I handed it to the first of the circle. She took the dish from my hand, and, deliberately pouring all the cakes into the corner of her blanket, returned it to me empty. "She must be a meat voracious person," thought I; "but I will manage better the next time." I refilled the dish, and approached the next one, taking care to keep a fast hold of it as I offered the contents, of which I supposed she would modestly take one. Not so, however. She scooped out the whole with her two hands, and, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... is the scene! Yet thy voracious eye Drinks not its beauty; but with bloody glare Watches the wild-fowl idly floating by, Or snow-white sea-gull winnowing the air: Oh, pitiless is thine unerring beak! Quick, as the wings of thought, thy pinions fall— Then bear their victim to the mountain-peak Where clamorous eaglets flutter ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... rush to undress and turn out the offender. They visited my bed also, so that night brought no relief from their persecutions; and I verily believe that during my three and a half months' residence at Dorey I was never for a single hour entirely free from them. They were not nearly so voracious as many other kinds, but their numbers and ubiquity rendered it necessary to be constantly on guard ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of exceptional vigour is necessary to enable a traveller to bear the fatigue, privations, and interruptions of every kind with which he has to contend in these unhealthy districts, with impunity. We were constantly surrounded by voracious tigers and crocodiles, stung by venomous mosquitoes and ants, with no food for three months but water, bananas, fish, and tapioca, now crossing the territory of the earth-eating Otomaques, now wandering through the desolate regions below the equator, where not a human creature ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... frontier settlement is a log-cabin, and it is in a region which is infested by wolves. There are in the family a broken-down patient of a man, a mother, and three daughters. The house is surrounded by a pack of these voracious animals, and the inmates feel that their safety requires that the intruders should be driven away. There are three or four rifles in the house. The man creeps to one of the windows, and to the mother and daughters it is said, "You load the rifles, and hand them to me, and let me fire them." But ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... productive.' Elsewhere he says: 'A willow-branch may be cut with a knife and bent with a finger, but for a great and gnarled oak we must use an ax and a wedge'; and again: 'If my teeth had been less sharp, the Pope would have been more voracious.' 'Of what use is salt,' he exclaims in another passage, 'if it do not bite the tongue? or the blade of a sword unless it be sharp enough to cut? Does not the prophet say, "Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and keepeth ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... dominated all others: where are those treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy their owner's voracious intellectual appetite? As houses were then built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor. Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little parlor, and two small sleeping rooms, one for the doctor and one for myself. Before many hours ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... by a sort of savages that lived more indolent, and for that reason were less supplied with the necessaries of life, than they had reason to believe others were in the same part of the world; and yet they found that these savages were less ravenous and voracious than those who had better supplies of food. Also, they added, they could not but see with what demonstrations of wisdom and goodness the governing providence of God directs the events of things in this world, which, they said, appeared in their circumstances: for ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... monkey-stove. Stoked it while the coal dwindled. When the last chunk had been swallowed up we hunted around for something else to burn. Newspapers, cartons, wooden boxes—everything we could find went into the voracious maw of the stove. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... flavored with orange, and, finally, slices of dry gingerbread. This last delicacy was not on the regular bill of fare, but Mynheer Kleef, driven to extremes, solemnly produced it from his own private stores and gave only a placid blink when his voracious young travelers started up, declaring ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... lively tales of circus-life. Then Miss Celia felt relieved, and every thing went splendidly, especially the food; for the plates were emptied several times, the little tea-pot ran dry twice, and the hostess was just wondering if she ought to stop her voracious guests, when something occurred which spared her that ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... Fishes, many of which are of similar genera to those recommended for the fresh-water tank. The Black Goby is familiar, tamable, but voracious; the Gray Mullet is very hardy, but also rather savage; the Wrasses are some of the most showy fish,—called in some parts of the country Cunners,—and of these, the Ancient Wrasse, (Labrus maculatus,) covered with a network of vermilion meshes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... John with a smile when he returned from the office. The style of living was bad for him. He was alone all day, except for an occasional visit from the good-natured German woman who kept their rooms, and, although he was a voracious reader, the doctor had forbidden all thought of study for a year, even had there been a school near enough for him to attend, where John would have been willing to send him. He ought to be where the air was pure and the surroundings cheerful. John would have preferred to put up with ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... when man has found honey, he enters upon the feast with an appetite so voracious, that he usually destroys his own delight ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... safe 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, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... four-footed animal has become a terrible scourge. After it destroys the rats it goes after the snakes. Then it attacks the other small animals and birds. Finally it begins upon the chickens, and even the vegetables in the garden are not safe from its voracious appetite. ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... Grisell between Ridley 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 and niggardliness of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Mr. Gradgrind, were in the flesh to-day, how he would gloat over this book! The 'facts' presented in its seven hundred double-columned pages would satisfy, even to repletion, his voracious cravings; and once crammed with them, he would go forth into society a walking cyclopedia of all that appertained to the civil, military, agricultural, industrial, financial, educational, charitable, and religious condition of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... forgetting her own danger, flew to his assistance. The tiger darted at her, and having torn her in pieces, was about to devour her, when the huntsmen, coming suddenly up to the brink of the precipice, discharged at once a shower of arrows upon the voracious animal. His body was full of them, the blood gushed from every part of it, and an enormous stone thrown at his head killed him ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the meal, and sees that your appetite for dessert is twice as good as usual, he will reflect upon his butcher's and grocer's bills, and, considering what they would be with provision to make for two such voracious creatures, he will say, "No, Esmeralda, don't ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne
... starting from Resaca he had put on a pair of boots with stout tops as a means of protection from the bushes and brambles he might encounter on his long ride. But he could not hope these would protect him long, if at all, from the attacks of the voracious brutes. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... a past-master in the art of ordering his time, and this was the secret of the vast quantity of work which he was able to do. He was a voracious and quick reader, as is proved by the number of books which he used to review for the Athenaeum, of which he was proprietor. Yet he was an early riser and went to bed early, and a part of his day was given ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... it was not there to eat. Like an English undergraduate who scrambles out of bed to attend Chapel simply to avoid a fine, this product of Broadway theaterdom conformed to the rule of Mrs. Burrell's energetic house because the good air of Devon gave her a voracious appetite. Then, too, even if she missed breakfast, she had to pay for it, "so ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... dressing the same things, that I am persuaded they must have given much time, and much study, to make themselves such adepts in this art. It would be very difficult to determine, whether they were most to be distinguished as gluttons or epicures; for they were, at once, dainty and voracious, understood the right and the wrong of every dish, and alike emptied the one and the other. I should have been quite sick of their remarks, had I not been entertained by seeing that Lord Orville, who, I am sure, was equally disgusted, not only read my sentiments, but, by ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... woman, that as well in her behaviour, as in the manner of her apparell, is most ruffian like, is accounted the most gallant wench." Now, it appears, that the ruff, or pope, is not only, as Walton says, "a greedy biter," but is extremely voracious in its disposition, and will devour a minnow nearly as big as itself. Its average length is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... particular. He was deeply religious, but had an abiding fear of death. He was burly in person, and slovenly in dress, his shirt-frill always covered with snuff. He was a great diner out, an inordinate tea-drinker, and a voracious and untidy feeder. An inherited scrofula, which often took the form of hypochondria and threatened to affect his brain, deprived him of control over the muscles of his face. Boswell describes how his features worked, how he snorted, grunted, whistled, and rolled about in his chair when getting ready ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... destroyed by the consuming wrath of ill-natured whites, but finally allowed an action to lie against the persons who killed a slave. This had a tendency to reduce the number of murdered slaves; but the fateful clause in the Locke Constitution had educated a voracious appetite for blood, and the extremest cruel treatment ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... trifler had exhausted his store of grain, and satisfied the cravings of his voracious favourites, he was relieved of his silver vase by two attendants. The flock of poultry was then ushered out at one door, while the flock of geniuses was ushered in at ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... prized of all the Roman fish, and grew to the weight of twenty-five or thirty pounds. The value set upon them was enormous; and it is said that guilty slaves were occasionally thrown into their stews, to fatten these voracious dainties. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... tribes drifting down from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, after having drifted whence no man knows, poured into Britain, and the English have carried this drift on around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. And in this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans to the United States or of Americans ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... The voracious reader of Dickens, as he grows older, perhaps becomes a student of Dickens, and is surprised to find that the development of Dickens is much more marked and easily noted than the development of Thackeray. In fact, ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... has some claim to priority of verdict, it is a curse, even as the rabbit in Australia, the lemming in Norway, or the locust in Algeria. The tiller of the soil, whose business brings him in open competition with the natural appetites of such voracious birds, beasts, or insects, regards his rivals from a standpoint which has no room for sentiment; and the woodpigeons are to our farmers, particularly in the well-wooded districts of the West Country, even as Carthage was to Cato the Censor, ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... the table went on to remark that he had not meant to make a defence of the extinct school of quotational criticism. What he really meant to do was to suggest a way out of the present situation in which the new multitude of voracious readers were grossly feeding upon such intellectual husks as swine would not eat, and imagining themselves nourished by their fodder. There might be some person present who could improve upon his suggestion, but his notion, as he conceived it, was that something might be done ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... creature infesting these streams supposed by them to be a young alligator, reaching a length of twelve inches, and doubtless subsisting on fish. An alligator as a mountain-reptile had not entered into our conception: can these voracious saurians, playing in the alpine affluents of the Mississippi, possibly be identical with the vast and ugly beasts of the lower bayous and the Gulf? We leave the identification ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... driven out, arrived in the black country on a freezing night in March, descended into the voracious pit, fell in love with the melancholy Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him; lived with the miners their gloomy life of misery and base promiscuousness, until one day when hunger, prompting rebellion, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... of the flesh. [44] The rules of abstinence which they imposed, or practised, were not uniform or perpetual: the cheerful festival of the Pentecost was balanced by the extraordinary mortification of Lent; the fervor of new monasteries was insensibly relaxed; and the voracious appetite of the Gauls could not imitate the patient and temperate virtue of the Egyptians. [45] The disciples of Antony and Pachomius were satisfied with their daily pittance, [46] of twelve ounces of bread, or rather biscuit, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... the diver!" I sang out to the two men who were in the boat receiving the oysters as they came up to seize a couple of oars and violently splash the surface of the water with them, in the hope that the sound would drive the brute away—for, after all, the shark, voracious as it is, is a timid creature, easily frightened by any sudden or unaccustomed noise. And the attempt met with at least partial success, for the shark instantly darted away a few yards; but it as suddenly turned, and, apparently quite undismayed by ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... to generalize and I accept, as the ration of the other Scoliae, larvae of Lamellicorns whose species will be determined by future observation. Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; perhaps the Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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 ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... horribly, the great waves of her own making rushed over her upper deck, and the lofty masts and sails, remaining erect, went down with sad majesty into the deep. And nothing remained but the bubbling and foaming of the voracious water, that had swallowed up the good ship, and her cargo, and her ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... in Mary's character may be mentioned in connection with this transfer. She had a voracious appetite; and in Elizabeth's household expenses an extra charge was made necessary of 20l. a-year for the meat breakfasts and meat suppers "served into the Lady Mary's chamber."—Statement of the expenses of the Household of the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... 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
... mature females of the above-mentioned species. (10. See Yarrell's account of the rays in his 'History of British Fishes,' vol. ii. 1836, p. 416, with an excellent figure, and pp. 422, 432.) As the rays are bold, strong and voracious fish, we may suspect that the males require their sharp teeth for fighting with their rivals; but as they possess many parts modified and adapted for the prehension of the female, it is possible that their teeth may be used ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... at the door as if this were the den of a lion at a menagerie, instead of a room to which you have been cordially invited several times. I am not voracious, have had my ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... silver tankard to his college, which was lost, together with a quantity of other plate, on the 9th of October 1693, for the recovery of which a reward of ten pounds was offered.[55] Luttrell, who, Dibdin says, was 'ever ardent in his love of past learning, and not less voracious in his bibliomaniacal appetites,' formed an extensive library at Shaftesbury House, Little Chelsea, where he resided for many years in seclusion. Hearne speaks of it 'as a very extraordinary collection,' and adds that 'in it are many manuscripts, which, however, he had not the spirit ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... Their backs were humped in a curious, camel-like fashion, and they were devouring one of their own number, the latest victim of absolute starvation or possibly merely the one least able to defend himself against their voracious hunger. The farmer's wife looked on indifferently, a picture of despair as she stood in the door of the bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried to keep out of sight, ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... crammed his bombastian buskins, filled his hair full, and finally stuffed his mouth, so that, as he passed out, he could only wink his fat red eyes and bob to Croesus, who, when he had laughed till his sides ached, repaid his funny, but voracious guest for the amusement he had afforded him by not only confirming the gift of gold, but conferring an equal amount in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner |
