"Voracity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of a new world for him. He studied with a concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him, and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon outstripped his class, and finally his young instructress was forced to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his library ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... G.-V. p. de pisce lupo—wolf, because of its voracity; a sea fish, sea pike, or sea bass; perhaps akin to our barracuda, wolfish both in appearance and character. Sch. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... Montaigne. When his servant re-entered with the wine and viands, Maltravers followed him out of the room, and bade him see the note sent immediately. On returning, he found Cesarini devouring the food before him with all the voracity of famine. It was a dreadful sight!—the intellect ruined, the mind darkened, the wild, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an extremely good appetite, but the voracity of the stranger soon obliged him to give up, for not contented with eating, or rather devouring, nearly the whole of the olla-podriga, the guest finished a large loaf of bread, without leaving a crumb. While he ate, he kept continually looking round with ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... times a young wolf was put to school, to endeavour, by instruction, to correct his natural propensity to voracity. His master, in order to teach him to read, transcribed, in large characters, some letters of the alphabet, and attempted to make him understand these signs. But instead of reading K L S, as it was written, the savage animal ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... eggs taken at the time of their first making their nests. Fish were to be taken in large quantities. It was sufficient to put a line over the rocks, and it had hardly time to go down a fathom before anything at the end of it was seized. Indeed, our means of taking them were as simple as their voracity was great. Our lines were composed of the sinews of the legs of the man-of-war birds, as I afterwards heard them named; and, as these were only about a foot long, it required a great many of them knotted together to make a line. ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... neighbourhood by his depredations, the villagers turn out in a body to destroy him; and wolves are the enemies of all. In winter, when hard pressed by hunger, a flock of these are very dangerous, and numberless persons have fallen victims to their voracity. A dreadful circumstance relating to wolves occurred near this ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... unfrequentedly Outside the rools so that if you take him that side the politician cannot Run him in which is the wulgar for lagging him for not [waring Mussles I have] ockasionaly done bobys this Way myself so that I am convinzed of my voracity, the lesson we learn from this is that dogs should be treeted kindly and not Injected to unkind tretemant there? was Ice a dog with the pattrynamie of dognes who lived in a tub but; tubs are not helthy kenels because, they Roal when you dont stick brix under, which teechus to be kind 'to our' ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... the last thing I was likely to be guilty of. I wished myself at home. The tales I had heard of the voracity and fierceness of the striped catamount were made much more terrible by the darkness. My position was so cramped and the old sleigh so hard that I had to squirm occasionally; but every time I did so, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... patriarch. It is Jacob's Well,—the scene of the memorable conference between our Saviour and the woman of Samaria. Such a locality was too important to be omitted by Helena while selecting sites for Christian churches. Over it, accordingly, was erected a large edifice; of which, however, the "voracity of time, aided by the Turks," has left nothing but a few foundations remaining. Maundrell tells us that "the well is covered at present with an old stone vault, into which you are let down through a very straight hole; ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... though coarse, fatigue and hunger rendered palatable, steaks, roasted on the coals, were supplied in liberal abundance, and disappeared before Even Dhu and their host with a promptitude that seemed like magic, and astonished Waverley, who was much puzzled to reconcile their voracity with what he had heard of the abstemiousness of the Highlanders. He was ignorant that this abstinence was with the lower ranks wholly compulsory, and that, like some animals of prey, those who practise it were usually gifted with the power of indemnifying themselves to good ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... his stomach, and over-hauling its freight, it is not unfrequently found to contain 'a choice assortment'—as the Calcutta advertisers have it—of gold, silver, or brass bangles and anklets, which have not been so expeditiously digested as their fair owners, victims of the monster's voracity. A little fat Brahminee child, 'farci an ris,' must be a tempting and tender bonne bouche to these river gourmands. Horrific legends such as the above, together with a great deal of valuable advice on the subject, were quite thrown away upon me; for ninety ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... to supply man's wants or satisfy his aspirations. This is a great part of Carlyle's teaching. It is impossible, were it desirable, accurately to define his religious, social, or political creed. He swallows formulae with the voracity of Mirabeau, and like Proteus escapes analysis. No printed labels will stick to him: when we seek to corner him by argument he thunders and lightens. Emerson complains that he failed to extract from him a definite answer about Immortality. Neither by syllogism nor by crucible could ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... be from the E.N.E. Here, too, an occasional grass tree or "black-boy" may be seen, and at intervals little clumps of what is locally termed "mustard bush," so named from the strong flavour of the leaf; camels eat this with voracity, of which fact one becomes very sensible when they chew ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... under way now. Mrs. Bence brought the last of the hot bread, and shuffled into a seat. The old man at the head of the board returned to his feeding, but with somewhat moderated voracity. At length, pretty fully gorged, he raised his head from over his plate and looked about him for diversion. Again his attention was directed ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... particular side of the future building, the moon, an active agent of destruction, will incessantly corrode the stones of the frontage, the shafts of the columns, and that it will efface in a few years all the projecting ornaments; and hence the fear of the moon's voracity will lead to the upsetting of all the views, the studies, and the well-digested plans of several architects. Place a meteorologist on the council, and, despite the authority of the nurses, a whole scaffolding of gratuitous suppositions will be ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... such unattractive guise he had come upon Violet, and the fashion in which he ate also had its effect on her. In the last thirty hours he had had only one hasty meal, and he showed a voracity that offended her fastidious taste. He was worn out and anxious, and since all his thoughts were fixed upon the business that he had in hand, he could not rouse himself to act according to the manner expected of a lover who returns after a long absence. It was, however, once more borne ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... was ready. This meal was devoured by my worthy relative with avidity and voracity. His shipboard diet had turned his interior into a perfect gulf. The repast, which was more Danish than Icelandic, was in itself nothing, but the excessive hospitality of our host made us ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... covering him with leaves, as she did, for the sake of her young. The panther is a ferocious and almost untamable animal, whose nature and habits are like those of the cat; except that the nature and powers of this domestic creature are in the panther immensely magnified, in strength and voracity. It is in the American forest what the tiger is in Africa and India, a dangerous and savage animal, the terror of all other creatures, as well as of the Indian ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... picture is drawn of the rapidity and voracity of the flames—people crying for help in every direction, 'insomuch that the people were so amazed that they knew not which way to turne, nor where the most neede was'—and of the number of people who were burned and the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... nights. The fourth morning, as she arose to her feet, not having the power to stand, she fell to the floor; but recovering herself sufficiently, she made her way to the pantry, and feeling herself quite voracious, and fearing that she might now offend God by her voracity, compelled herself to breakfast on dry bread and water-eating a large six-penny loaf before she felt at all stayed or satisfied. She says she did get light, but it was all in her body and none in her mind-and this lightness of body ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... one recommendation the most," returned the other, smiling courteously, but in a way so equivocal that even Sir Gervaise was momentarily struck by it; "they have fed so well, now, at the crib, that they may not have the same voracity, as those who have been long fasting. It would be, however, more pleasant to take these lands from a Wychecombe—a Wychecombe to a Wychecombe—than to receive them anew from even the Plantagenet ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wretches who were blown up to be searched for, as they floated on the sea; not to afford them Christian burial, but for their clothes and attire: and if any had gold rings on their fingers, these were cut off, leaving them exposed to the voracity of the monsters of the sea. At last they set sail for Savona, the place of their assignation. There were in all fifteen vessels, Captain Morgan commanding the biggest, of only fourteen small guns; his number of men was ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... in their tennis flannels beneath the glare of lamp and gas. Their leather belts were loosened, their soft pink shirts unbuttoned at the collar. They were listening with gloomy voracity to the instruction of a third. They sat at a table bared of its customary sporting ornaments, and from time to time they questioned, sucked their pencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces shone with the bloom of out-of-doors. Studious concentration ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister
... multitude of expedients of all times and nations, collected with research, selected with judgment, and skilfully arranged and described. The interest with which one reads is sustained and continuous, and you devour a two-volume inventory of stoves, grates, and ovens, with the voracity of a parish school-boy, and ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.11.17 • Various
... driven off for a time by the efforts of a human enemy, but his natural voracity will soon impel him to return to the attack. When the Indian therefore rose to the surface of the water—remembering his old practice as a pearl-diver—he cast around him a glance of caution. Having shouted back to his companion in misfortune ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... and lunches and teas, of their receptions and balls, and the guests who were bidden to them. But this sort of unwholesome and exciting gossip, which was formerly devoured by their readers with inappeasable voracity, is no longer supplied, simply because the taste for it has wholly ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... consulted the dictionaries under the word gourmandise, and am by no means satisfied with what I find. The love of good living seems to be constantly confounded with gluttony and voracity; whence I infer that our lexicographers, however otherwise estimable, are not to be classed with those good fellows amongst learned men who can put away gracefully a wing of partridge, and then, by raising ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... through various dictionaries for the word gourmandise and have found no translation that suited me. It is described as a sort of confusion of gluttony and voracity. Whence I have concluded that lexicographers, though very pleasant people in other respects, are not the sort of men to swallow a partridge wing gracefully with one hand, with a glass of Laffitte or clos de Vougeot ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... found broached by him, it is sure to be among the ripest and best flavored. When alarmed he seizes a capital one by striking his open bill into it, and bears it off to the woods." He eats the rich, succulent, milky young corn with voracity. He is of a gay and frolicsome disposition, and half a dozen of the fraternity are frequently seen diving and vociferating around the high dead limbs of some large trees, pursuing and playing with each other, and ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous
... hinted at those masterpieces of voracity for which the region is renowned; yet the undoubted facts related around our campfires, and otherwise, a few of which follow, almost beggar belief. Mr. Young, of our party, an old Hudson's Bay officer, knew of sixteen trackers who, in a few days, consumed eight bears, two moose, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... analogy of structure and probable way of life would lead us to assimilate Rhamphorhynchus, the answer must point to the swimming races with long wings, clawed feet, hooked beak, and habits or violence and voracity; and for preference, the shortness of the legs, and other circumstances, may be held to claim for the Stonesfield fossil a more than fanciful similitude to the groups of Cormorants, and other marine divers, which constitute ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... influence, the Indian was persuaded to partake of the food placed before him. He ate with a voracity which showed that he had been long fasting, and his appearance indicated that he had seen hardship and danger. Mrs. Jones was satisfied that his coming portended something to her, either good or evil; and, from his reserve, she feared it might be the latter, and ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki Nihy, who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his ancestors and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with brightness and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of twelve or eighteen moons. The superstitious here, this person may describe, when they wish to send messages from one to another, inscribe upon the outer ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Poetics. He tumbles out a whole library of reading: but only in Ethics, does he indicate a leading or preferential work; the half-dozen of classical books on the subject are to be perused, "under the determinate sentence" of the scripture authorities. With all this voracity for the useful, Milton had no conception of scientific form, or method; and indeed, few of the subjects had as yet passed the stage of desultory treatment; so that the idea of casting the knowledge into some one form, under the guidance of a chosen author, would never occur to ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... But the gods one and all shrank in dismay when they saw the wolf, and none dared approach to give him food except Tyr, whom nothing daunted. Seeing that Fenris daily increased in size, strength, voracity, and fierceness, the gods assembled in council to deliberate how they might best dispose of him. They unanimously decided that as it would desecrate their peace-steads to slay him, they would bind him fast so that he could work them ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... entitled to it. The camp was on a high, sandy, pine ridge, with spring branches in the valley, in front and rear. The springs furnished an abundance of cool, pure water, and the ridge was above the flight of mosquitoes, which abound in that region in great multitudes and of great voracity. In the valley they swarmed in myriads, but never came to the summit of the ridge. The regiment occupied this camp six months before the first death occurred, and that was caused ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... or reigning family, over the unlucky Jacobite native. Under his figure of a rat, this Jacobite is very scurrilous indeed upon the Hanoverian succession; and, continuing his polypian imitations, relates a few coarse experiments upon his subject illustrative of its destructive properties, voracity, and sagacity, which set at nought "all the contrivances of the farmer to defend his barns; the trailer his warehouse; the gentleman his land; or the inferior people their cup-boards and small beer cellars. No bars or bolts can keep them out, nor can any gin or ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... persons—the persons must be and they must smile—a rudimentary truth which is surely forgotten by those who complain of mankind as generally contemptible, since any other aspect of the race must disappoint the voracity of their contempt. Grandcourt, in town for the first time with his wife, had his non-caring abstinence from curses enlarged and diversified by splendid receptions, by conspicuous rides and drives, by presentations of himself with her on all distinguished occasions. He wished her to be ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... favourite after the little anxiety of the night. As for Kit himself (whose laugh had been all the time one of that sort which very little would change into a cry) he carried a large slice of bread and meat and a mug of beer into a corner, and applied himself to disposing of them with great voracity. ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... daily hand—the Bible, "Aesop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Pilgrim's Progress," a history of the United States, and Weem's "Life of Washington". These were the best, and these he read over and over till he knew them almost by heart. But his voracity for anything printed was insatiable. He would sit in the twilight and read a dictionary as long as he could see. He used to go to David Turnham's, the town constable, and devour the "Revised Statutes of Indiana," as boys in our day do the "Three Guardsmen." Of the books he did ...
— Children and Their Books • James Hosmer Penniman
... which, with the skin removed, weighed exactly two ounces. The animal immediately, as if famished with hunger, fell upon the fruit, seized it between the thumbs and the index fingers, and took large mouthfuls out of it, opening the mouth to the fullest extent with extreme voracity. In the space of three hours the whole fruit was consumed. Next morning the Bat was killed, and found to weigh one ounce, half the weight of the food eaten in three hours! Indeed, the animal when eating seemed to be a kind of living ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... itching; prurience, cacoethes [Lat.], cupidity, lust, concupiscence. edge of appetite, edge of hunger; torment of Tantalus; sweet tooth, lickerish tooth^; itching palm; longing eye, wistful eye, sheep's eye. [excessive desire for money] greed &c 817.1. voracity &c (gluttony) 957. passion, rage, furore^, mania, manie^; inextinguishable desire; dipsomania, kleptomania. [Person who desires] lover, amateur, votary, devotee, aspirant, solicitant, candidate, applicant, supplicant; cormorant &c 957. [Object of desire] desideratum; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... others of his kind. He is, in fact, the weakest and least ferocious of the family. He is sufficiently voracious, but lives chiefly on carrion, and will not dare attack living creatures of half his own strength. He preys only on the smallest quadrupeds, and with all his voracity he is an arrant poltroon. A child of ten years will easily put ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... aptitudes of her character and the warmest passion of her heart; it took away from her the delicious power of serving out the servants' food, of locking up the scraps of meat, and of charging the maids with voracity. But, to tell the truth, Mr. Mason had been driven by sheer necessity to take this step, as it had been found impossible to induce his wife to give out sufficient food to enable the servants to live and work. She knew that in not doing so she injured herself; but she could not do it. The ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... head to foot, clasped and wrung her hands, while an ashen hue came over her distorted features. Good heavens—Beauchene! Yes, it was Beauchene whom he resembled, and in so striking a manner, with his eyes of prey, his big jaw which proclaimed an enjoyer consumed by base voracity, that she was now astonished that she had not been able to name him at her first glance. Her legs failed her, and she had to ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... actual picture of her personality, if you can call it a personality, Dickens did fall into some of his facile vices. The real objection to much of his pathos belongs really to another part of his character. It is connected with his vanity, his voracity for all kinds of praise, his restive experimentalism and even perhaps his envy. He strained himself to achieve pathos. His humour was inspiration; but his pathos was ambition. His laughter was lonely; he would have laughed on a desert island. But his grief was gregarious. ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... memory of her own offspring, moves her to kindness; but she goes at it with a demoniac fury, and would peck its little life out, if fear did not lend it wings. She has a self-abnegation great as that of human mothers. Her voracity and timidity disappear. She goes almost without food herself, that her chicks may eat. She scatters the dough about with her own bill, that it may be accessible to the little bills, or, perhaps, to teach them how to work. The wire-worms, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... requires no Western embroidery of detail to be added to the facts quoted. These facts show, by the way, the immense fertility of the rainbow, where conditions are favourable, its fly-taking propensities, its boldness and voracity; all of which qualities will commend themselves to English fishermen, and confirm the enterprise and judgment of those who have introduced the fish into this country, where it seems to bid fair to equal, if not even to surpass, itself ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert
... you, Dom!" said Pauline, eating with as much relish, though not with such voracity, as her little brother, "Where did you ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... was being wrongfully imprisoned, the result might have been different. As it was, after barking furiously for five minutes, he had recourse to reprisal and, hardly waiting to remove the paper in which it was wrapped, devoured half a kilogramme of ripe Brie with a revengeful voracity to which the condition of the interior of the car bore hideous witness. Finally, when the urchin who was in our confidence, and had engaged for the sum of five francs to endeavour to enter the car, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... exhibited in the confused commingling of fish, flesh, and fowl, soups and syrups, fruits, fricassees, roast and boiled, pickles and preserves. As a most generous supply had been provided, there were still some remnants of the feast left after the guests had satisfied their voracity, which most of these Japanese, in accordance with their custom, stowed away about their persons to carry off. The Japanese always have an abundant supply of paper within the left bosom of their loose robes, in a capacious pocket. This is used for various purposes; one species, as soft as our cotton ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... preparations for my comfort, at the dinner-table of Mr. P——s, with whose amiable family I have latterly dined, was a cup of rose-water and eau de Cologne, with patches of the rice paper of China, wherewith to allay the intolerable itching that attends the puncture of these winged leeches, whose voracity is incredible. I have at times caught a villain in the act, and watched with patience until from one of the veins of the hand he had drunk blood enough to blow out his little carcase to the shape of a tennis-ball, when he would poise himself upon his long legs, and, spreading ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... enjoyed and indulged an enormous appetite. Her example and a natural schoolboy voracity soon overcame my nervousness of her, even to the extent of allowing me to enjoy to the best of my bent so rare a "spread." Seaton was singularly modest; the greater part of his meal consisted of almonds and raisins, which he nibbled surreptitiously ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... jungle. These creatures insinuate themselves through all the openings in a person's dress—up the trousers, under the waistcoat, down the neck, up the wrists, and in fact everywhere, drawing blood with insatiable voracity, and leaving an unpleasant irritation for some ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... Treumann, putting up a protesting hand, "you are very kind. Two cups are a limit beyond which voracity itself could not go. What do you say? You have had three? Oh, well, you are young, and young people can play tricks with their digestions with ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... nourishment, and stiff from cold, Marion would rise and stumble to the nearest heap of wood, and carefully lay two or three pieces on the dying embers. The fire itself was to Marion a source of continual dread; for not only did it consume their precious and unrenewable supply of wood with a terrifying voracity, but she was fairly obsessed by the fear that she might let it go out. In that event they might never waken, clutched by the cold in their sleep; or wakening, find that something had happened to the matches. There remained a good store of these in the ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... a weakness of hers," he now observed. "I hope her voracity is satisfied. I should say that it resembles the voracity of ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... of birds of prey, which skimmed along the surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were urubus, a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and black as crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and their voracity is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave forth the gases which inflated it, its density increased, it sank down little by little, and for the last time what remained of Torres disappeared beneath ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... sailed to and fro in the crowd in a stately manner, as if merely a curious looker-on of his own movements. It was the smaller, and probably the younger sharks, that betrayed the greatest hardihood and voracity. One or two of these made fierce swoops toward Harry, as if bent on having him at every hazard; but they invariably glided off when they found their customary mode of attack resisted by ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Tomerl's cottage was a diminutive barn, from which we removed the door, and nailing strong laths across the aperture, managed to improvise a large and roomy cage. A couple of rabbits furnished a luxurious breakfast, which was devoured with extraordinary voracity. The hen-bird, as is the case with all birds of prey, was considerably larger and stronger than her brother, though the latter had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... highly-flavored caricature. According to Mr. James, John M. Forbes, the Canton millionaire, preserved the balance at one end of the table, while Hawthorne, an oasis in a desert, served as the nearest approach to a human being, at the other. "How he buried his eyes in his plate and ate with such a voracity! that no one should dare to ask him ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... of the swamps and lagoons of stagnant waters, the alligator ranks the first in size and voracity; yet man has nothing to fear from him; and though there are many stories among the cotton planters about negroes being carried away by this immense reptile, I do firmly believe that few human beings have ever been seized ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... you mean me to understand that the voracity of the growing animal will be satisfied with less than I ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... in time, and his hands were at least clean of traffic in reversions, clerkships, tellerships and all the rest of the rich sinecures which it was thought no shame in those days for the aristocracy of the land and the robe to wrangle for, and gorge themselves upon, with the fierce voracity of famishing wolves. The most we can say is that Burke, like Pitt, was too deeply absorbed in beneficent service in the affairs of his country, to have for his own affairs the solicitude ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... hopeless. Horner, it must be admitted, with all his excellence, was too fond of good eating; it is in vain to deny it; his deliberately pulling out a plum with his finger and thumb, shows the epicure, not excited by the voracity of hunger, but evidently aiming to protract his enjoyment. The exclamation which follows savours of vanity; but when his youth is recollected, this will be deemed a venial error, and it must also be considered that his few faults were probably compensated by a constellation of excellencies. This ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... that week. Saturday night I caught her on the way coming back, and got to sit on the steps a while and talk to her. I noticed she looked different. Her eyes were softer, and shiny like. Instead of a Mame Dugan to fly from the voracity of man and raise violets, she seemed to be a Mame more in line as God intended her, approachable, and suited to bask in the light of the Brazilians and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... made when the rear guard of the army filed before them; and great confusion ensued, as each one of the marshal's army who recognized a friend rushed out of the ranks and hastened to him, offering food and clothing, and were almost frightened by the voracity with which they ate, while many embraced each other silently in tears. One of the marshal's best and bravest officers stripped off his uniform to give it to a poor soldier whose tattered clothing exposed him almost naked to the cold, donning himself an old cloak full of holes, saying that ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... proverbial epicurism of the English,—proverbial, that is to say, in Scotland at the period,—the English visitors made no figure whatever at the entertainment, compared with the portentous voracity of Captain Dalgetty, although that gallant soldier had already displayed much steadiness and pertinacity in his attack upon the lighter refreshment set before them at their entrance, by way of forlorn hope. He spoke to no one during the time of his meal; and it was ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... born in Devonshire-terrace. A death in the family followed, the older and more gifted of his ravens having indulged the same illicit taste for putty and paint which had been fatal to his predecessor. Voracity killed him, as it killed Scott's. He died unexpectedly before the kitchen-fire. "He kept his eye to the last upon the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a sepulchral cry of Cuckoo!" The letter which told ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... enough left to cry. Your letter to A—— revived me, and just brought me enough to life again to eat my supper, which I had not felt able to touch, in spite of my exhaustion and great need of it; when, however, I once began, my appetite justified the French proverb and took the turn of voracity, and I devoured like a Homeric hero. I promised to tell you something of our late dinner at Lord Melbourne's, but have left myself neither space nor time. It was very pleasant, and I fell out of my ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... well-conditioned, well-to-do, comfortable Rhinelander. We do not consider Frenchmen small eaters, whatever they may consider themselves—if they eat little of each dish, they eat of a vast number; but for examples of positive voracity, commend us to a German table-d'hote. A coachful of French commis voyageurs, assembled, after a ten hours' fast, round the luxurious profusion and delicacies of a Languedocian dinner, would appear mere babes and sucklings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... immediately divine its lack or its surplusage, and prescribe a treatment that transforms it into something indescribably different and delicious—My, how I do eat! I am quite dumbfounded by the unfailing voracity of my appetite. Already am I quite convinced that I am glad Miss West is making ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... small stone, carefully balanced, and with his feet close together, he made a beautiful cast. It was gracefully done; it was vigorously, manfully done—considering the difficulty of the position, and the voracity of the midges—and would have been undoubtedly successful but for the branch of a tree which grew on the opposite bank and overhung the stream. This branch Mr Sudberry, in his eagerness, did not observe. In casting, he ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... halted for breakfast, which Larry O'Dowd prepared with his accustomed celerity, and assisted to consume with his wonted voracity. ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... by loud and continued screams, and incessant restless leaps from branch to branch. The leopard meanwhile walks round and round the tree, with his eyes firmly fixed upon his victims, till at last exhausted by terror, and prostrated by vain exertions to escape, one or more falls a prey to his voracity. So rivetted is the attention of both during the struggle, that a sportsman, on one occasion, attracted by the noise, was enabled to approach within an uncomfortable distance of the leopard, before he discovered the cause of the unusual dismay ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... hollow and continual rattling noise. Others, leaning against the wall immovable, looked fixedly at the sun. An old man, of monstrous obesity, seated on a wooden chair, devoured his pittance with animal voracity, casting on either side oblique angry glances. Some walked rapidly, describing a circle, limiting themselves to a very small space. This strange exercise would last for entire hours. Seated on the ground, others swayed their bodies continually backward and forward, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... mail. Its arms are its very sharp teeth, about the tenth of an inch in diameter, and as much distant from each other, and near half an inch long. The interval of the larger teeth is filled with shorter teeth. These arms are a proof of its voracity. Its mail is nothing but its scales, which are white, as hard as ivory, and about the tenth of an inch in thickness. They are near an inch long, about half as much in breadth, end in a {277} point, and have two cutting sides. There are two ranges of them down the back, shaped exactly like the head ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling each other in their endeavours to be first to seize upon our innermost territories. They think that China, having neither money nor troops, would never venture to go to war with them. They fail to understand, however, that there ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... privation which they imposed upon themselves, of all that was most pleasing and grateful to their passions. It is true, the Athletae did not always observe so severe a regimen, but at length substituted in its stead a voracity and ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... General Prina, the Minister of Finance, whose remarkable abilities had been devoted towards raising funds for the Imperial Exchequer. Personally incorruptible, Prina was looked upon as the general representative of French voracity; he met his death with the utmost calmness, only praying that he might be the last victim. No one else was, in fact, killed, and next day quiet was resumed, but the affair had another victim—Italy. You cannot change horses when you are crossing a stream. Prince Eugene was in Mantua with ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... days, he lies sleeping in his smoky wigwam without the means of appeasing hunger; then rises and follows his game with the fierceness of a tiger, until the object of his pursuit is overtaken; after which, with the voracity of a dog, he loads his stomach with food sufficient to satisfy the cravings of nature, for as many days as he had previously fasted, and again betakes himself to sleep and inactivity. With all this ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... eating it was not at all a success. It is true that stifling atmosphere, in tense heat, and many varieties of nastiness and nudity are not promoters of appetite; but even had I been given a clearer stage and more favourable conducers towards voracity, I must still have proved but a mere nibbler of sturgeon in the eyes of such a ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... —song in honour Harpies (the), symbol of voracity Heliasts, the, at Athens —tribunal of Hermippus, celebrated comic poet Hephaestus, sword of Heracles, as a glutton Hermae, figures of the god Hermes, conducts dead souls —god of chance, and thieves promised worship Hieronymus, an obscure poet —poet and pederast Hippias, the Tyranny ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... merely with a piece of colored cloth. From the maw of one they took out a living tortoise; from that of another the head of a shark, recently thrown from one of the ships; such is the indiscriminate voracity of these terrors of the ocean. Notwithstanding their superstitious fancies, the seamen were glad to use a part of these sharks for food, being very short of provisions. The length of the voyage had consumed the greater part of their sea-stores; the heat and humidity of the climate, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... more ado, we sat down in the ditch together, side by side, and began to eat. And now I noticed that when he thought my eye was upon him, my companion ate with a due deliberation and nicety, and when he thought it was off, with a voracity that was painful to witness. And after we had eaten a while in silence, he turned to me with ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... lying with her nose close to the vessel, without attempting to touch it. On Mr. Bell's friend entering the room, the dog instantly jumped upon him, laid the money at his feet, and began to devour her victuals with great voracity. ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... big mosquitoes in New Jersey and on Long Island, but, if report of their ancestry is true, they have degenerated in size and voracity; for the grandfather of all mosquitoes used to live in the neighborhood of Fort Onondaga, New York, and sallying out whenever he was hungry, would eat an Indian or two and pick his teeth with their ribs. The red men had no arms that could ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... and snarl and forage hungrily; A worthless prairie vagabond is he. Luckless the settler's heifer which astray Falls to his fangs and violence a prey; Useless her blatant calling when his teeth Are fast upon her quivering flank—beneath His fell voracity she falls and dies With inarticulate and piteous cries, Unheard, unheeded in the barren waste, To be devoured with savage greed and haste. Up the horizon once again he prowls And far across its desolation howls; Sneaking ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... the bee in this respect, that the male seems to have a most rotten time. For one thing he is nearly always about two sizes smaller than the female. Owing to that and to what The Encyclopaedia Britannica humorously describes as "the greater voracity" of the female (there is a lot of quiet fun in The Encyclopaedia Britannica), he is a very brave spider who makes a proposal of marriage. "He makes his advances to his mate at the risk of his life and is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... of a long cucumber pickle, a Frankfort sausage of twice the pickle's length, and a towering goblet of beer; in her lap she held a shivering little hound; she was in the decorous keeping of an elderly maid, and had every effect of being a gracious Fraulein. A curious contrast to her Teutonic voracity was the temperance of a young Latin swell, imaginably from Trieste, who sat long over his small coffee and cigarette, and tranquilly mused upon the pages of an Italian newspaper. At another table there was ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in remote and dreary deserts, inhabited only by wild beasts and vermin, among which last there was, it seems, a species of ants, which were of enormous size, and wonderful fierceness and voracity, and which could run faster than the fleetest horse or camel. These ants, in making their excavations, would bring up from beneath the surface of the ground all the particles of gold which came in their way, ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... water and in air, by the same organs; that is, by extracting the oxygen from the atmosphere as well as from the water in which it is dissolved. They pass a great part of their life in the air; but if they escape from the sea to avoid the voracity of the Dorado, they meet in the air the Frigate-bird, the Albatross, and others, which seize them in their flight. Thus, on the banks of the Orinoco, herds of the Cabiai, which rush from the water to escape the crocodile, become ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... a sight that seemed to admit me deeper into the liquid element than I had ever been before. Now and then came the long, slender gar-fish, and, with his sword-like beak, struck some unhappy fish which tempted his voracity. I watched the manoeuvres of the destroyer and his victims, with no little interest. The fish (which, in the two instances particularly observed, was the mullet) came instantly to the surface, on being struck, and sprang far out of water. He swam on his side with a circular motion, keeping ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... with great diligence. Truly marvellous was the grace with which he painted, and very perfect the harmony that he gave to his works, for which he has been ever esteemed by craftsmen and honoured by our modern masters with consummate praise; nay, so long as the voracity of time allows his many excellent labours to live, he will be held in veneration by every age. In Prato, near Florence, where he had some relatives, he stayed for many months, executing many works throughout that whole district in company with Fra Diamante, a ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... the court. At the foot of the steps in the open air, a loosely built framework of wood ten feet high was standing, displaying on its vertex a yellow disc of paper inscribed with the characters for "voracity." ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... the dear old gentleman's hearty invitation. I had not tasted food since early dawn, and was so outrageously hungry and eat with such a right good will, that he often stopped and laughed heartily at my voracity. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... there can be no doubt that it was most imprudent of us to embark in a little frail canoe, and to make a trip over a lake inhabited by such numbers of caymans, and especially since it was to be feared that the lake did not supply fish enough to satisfy their voracity; and of course when enraged by hunger they were more to ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... keep it between my knees. Though you may not send me from your house till it suits me, there are others who would make me leave theirs against my will, and perhaps head-foremost. Now to your health, let us eat." The curate himself, although a man of good appetite, was amazed at the voracity of the stranger, who seemed to bolt rather than eat almost the whole of the dish, besides drinking the whole flask of wine, and leaving none for his host, or scarcely a morsel of the enormous loaf which occupied a corner of the table. Whilst he was eating ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... for Tortoises, of which there are three large and several small ones. We saw one of them devouring pumpkin as a gourmand would turtle, and this voracity is by weather-wise people considered as a sure indication of rain. This turtle is believed to be very old; he is of stupendous size, but buried as he was (except his neck) with shell, he soon became aware of the approach of his companion, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... was lying before him, and his eyes fairly glared as he turned them from me to the viand, in a way to render it a little doubtful whether I was a welcome visitor. But that honest old principle of seamen which never refuses to share equally with an ancient mess-mate, got the better even of his voracity. ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... are attached to a very light vehicle; but, when much haste is required, or any very heavy goods are to be conveyed, more than treble or quadruple that number are harnessed to the vehicle. M. de Lesseps [2] gives an almost incredible account of this. He is speaking of the voracity of these poor beasts, in the midst of the snowy desert, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... wagging his tail. He became insensible in two minutes; but upon being laid on the grass, he revived from his trance in a few seconds, without the process of immersion in the lake, which is generally mentioned as necessary to his recovery. From the voracity with which he bolted down a loaf of bread which I bought for him, the vapour does not seem to injure the animal functions. Addison seems to have been very particular in his experiments upon the vapour of this cavern. He found that a pistol would ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... recollect, when I was a gyp at Cambridge, that the "men" used to have breakfast-parties for the very same purpose; and the exhibition of the morning acted infallibly upon the stomach, and caused the young students to eat with much voracity. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... several changes actually took place: the female hangers-on and drones were subjected to instant expulsion; among their number two old women suffered, one who was blind and the other crippled with paralysis, also a decrepit Major of the Otchakoff period, who, on account of his truly astonishing voracity, was fed on nothing but black bread and lentils. A decree was also issued, that the former guests were not to be received: they were superseded by a distant neighbour, a fair-haired, scrofulous baron, a very well educated and very stupid man. New furniture from Moscow ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... little and whispered a great deal; but Kinch, the voracity of whose appetite had not at all diminished in the length of years, makes up for their abstinence by devouring the delicious round short-cakes with astonishing rapidity. He did not pretend to make more ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... school a poor man. When he began to reprehend our pleasures, to praise a chaste body, a moderate table, and a mind pure not from all unlawful but even from all superfluous pleasures, it was my delight to set strict limits to all voracity and gluttony. And these precepts, my Lucilius, have left some permanent results; for I embraced them with impetuous eagerness, and afterwards, when I entered upon a political career, I retained a few of my good beginnings. In consequence of them, I have all my life long renounced eating ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... growling profanely, like tigers that have learned German imperfectly, and were trying to swear, in choice Teutonic, about the peculiar qualities of Limburger cheese. In their sudden subversion, the Israelites dropped three fine watches out of their pockets, and the mule, with an unprecedented voracity, and determined on having a good time, ate the chronometers without any apparent detriment to digestion. The owners of the watches were frenzied. They glanced at my beast, and were about to devour him, hoping thereby to get the timepieces back. They did not violate the third commandment. They ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... responded to her tone by a smile, which but half lit up his face. It was followed by a coarser expression, and he ate his food with fierce voracity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... state of my stomach, and I ate sparingly in the knowledge that my natural voracity would surely kill me did I yield myself to it. Never had sweeter morsels passed my lips, and I make free to confess that I shed tears of joy, again and again, at contemplation ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... catalogue of grimaces that the heat of the boiling mess and its savoury flavour had probably an equal share in producing. Another juvenile performer on the sheepskin was squatted upon his haunches on the opposite side of the fire, acting as a check upon any excess of voracity on the part of his comrade, whilst he diligently employed his dirty digits and a rusty knife in peeling and slicing a large pumpkin, of which the fragments, so soon as they were in a fitting state, were plunged into the pot. A quantity of onion skins ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... expectations, since every man who is born to the grave thought himself equally certain of living at least to the next year; the survivor still continues to flatter himself, and is never at a loss for some reason why his life should be protracted, and the voracity of death continue to be pacified with some ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... anaconda may indeed be able, by reason of its marvellously flexible jaws and its abundant activity of salivary glands, to swallow the calf, and even the ox; but sometimes the serpent is killed by its own voracity, or at least made helpless before the destroying hunter. When sweet potatoes and pumpkins are planted in the same hill, and the cooked product comes on the table, it is hard to tell whether it is tuber or hollow fruit, subterranean or ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... others, plays a part that is but little appreciated or understood; whether it be the question of diet, dress, or custom, climate exerts its influence in no uncertain manner. As Sulpicius Severus remarked to the Greek monks, when they accused the Gaulish monks with voracity and gluttony, "That which you of Greece consider as superfluous, the climate of Gaul renders into a positive necessity." So of all physical needs and passions,—they are subject to a similar law. Those who have read Canon Kingsley's small work ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... are laid, and no sooner are they there than the awaiting vultures descend and consume the flesh. I saw these grisly birds sitting expectantly in rows on the coping of the towers, and the sight was almost too gruesome. Such is their voracity that the body is a skeleton in an hour or so. The Parsees choose this method of dissolution because since they worship fire they must not ask it to demean itself with the dead; and both earth and water they hold also ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... abandoned him. Topertoe, of the gout, and he were old acquaintances and companions, and had spent many a merry night together—both, as the proverb has it, being tarred with the same stick. Topertoe was as great a glutton as the other, but without his desperate voracity in food, whilst in drink he equalled if he did not surpass him. Manifold would have forgotten every thing about the dinner had he not from time to time been reminded of it ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... imprudently left open, he beheld his young favourite making a hearty breakfast on a very noble collection of insects. In the first transports of his anger, he resolved to strangle the monkey in his arms: but his rage immediately gave way to pity, when he perceived that the crime of its voracity had carried the punishment along with it. In eating the beetles, it had swallowed several of the pins on which they were transfixed. Its agony, consequently, became great; and all his efforts were unable to preserve ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... in importance and in numbers were the white ants, whose powers of destructiveness were simply awful. Mats, cloth, portmanteaus, clothes, in short, every article I possessed, seemed on the verge of destruction, and, as I witnessed their voracity, I felt anxious lest my tent should be devoured while I slept. This was the first khambi since leaving the coast where their presence became a matter of anxiety; at all other camping places hitherto the red and black ants had usurped our attention, but at Mpwapwa the red species were not ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... will apprise the king of it. That is to say, I shall take good care not to do this myself, for it is always dangerous to approach a hungry tiger in his cage and carry him his food, because he might in his voracity very readily devour our own hand together with the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... actually cleared eighty-three! To be sure, Mr. Wiggins spent fifty dollars at the sale. And Mrs. Thompson spent forty-nine. And the cake-table took in thirty-eight. And the ice-cream was sold, thanks to the voracity of the children, for nineteen dollars. And some pictures which had been donated by Mrs. Bumpkin sold for thirty-one dollars, and the gambling cakes, with rings and gold dollars in them, cleared fifteen. Still, when it was all reckoned up, eighty-three dollars ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... excellent in its way, but my chief pleasure was to see the voracity with which the girls devoured the meal. One would have thought they were savages devouring raw meat after a long fast. I had got a case of excellent wine and I made each of them drink a bottle, but not being accustomed to such an indulgence they became quite drunk. The mother had devoured ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... probably the following passage which provoked Byron's note: "When every day is bringing forth some new work from the pen of Scott, Campbell,... Wordsworth, and Southey, it is natural to feel some disgust at the undistinguishing voracity which can swallow down these... verses to a pillow." The 'Wanderer of Switzerland', which Byron said he preferred to the 'Lyrical Ballads', was published in 1806. The allusion in line 419 is to the first stanza of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... envelope. With a well-satisfied smile, the bearer of these communications seized a sandwich in one hand and poured himself out some tea with the other. He ate and drank with the restraint of good-breeding, but with a voracity which gave point to his plea of starvation. A few yards away, the breathless silence between the two women had given place to an almost hysterical series ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... dreamers. I think he was the champion eater of the world. Many a time I have seen him at my grandfather's table, and the viands and battercakes vanished "like the baseless fabric of a vision,"—he left not "a wreck behind." But one day, in the voracity of his shark-like appetite, he unfortunately undertook too large a contract for the retirement of an immense slice of ham. It scraped its way down his rebellious esophagus for about two inches, and lodged as tightly as a bullet in a rusty gun. His prodigious Adam's apple suddenly shot up to his ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... filled, saying as he did so, "It goes to my heart to part with you; but only the king of historians is worthy to enjoy the queen of apples." Then, plunging his hand into the basket, he snatched up another, hap-hazard, and began eating it with savage voracity, as if made reckless by this act of self-denial. Re-seating himself as he had chosen his apple, hap-hazard, he missed his chair, and keeled over, bringing his heels in the air where his head should have ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... three meals a day. The first is partaken of early in the morning, and is only a light one; then comes lunch in the middle of the day, a good square meal; and finally the Tai-sek, a great meal, in the evening, at which Corean voracity is exhibited to the best advantage. The climate being so much colder than that of Japan, it is only natural that the Cho-senese should use more animal food and fat than do the landsman of the Mikado. Pork and beef, barely roasted ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... more human—that conquered them by its cries for pity, and of eternal misery, which henceforth they were to hear rising from all things. Besides, they were not difficult to please; they showed the voracity of youth, a furious appetite for all kinds of literature, good and bad alike. So eager were they to admire something, that often the most execrable works threw them into a state of exaltation similar to that ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... said, and then Clemens went directly down to them. How or by what means he appeased their voracity I cannot say, but I fancy it was by the confession of the exact truth, which was harmless enough. They went away joyfully, and he came back in radiant satisfaction with having seen them. Of course he was right and I wrong, and he was right as to the point at issue between Gorky ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beast.—Ver. 782. Antoninus Liberalis and Apollodorus say that this was a fox, which was called 'the Teumesian,' from Teumesus, a mountain of Boeotia, and that the Thebans, to appease its voracity, were wont to give it a child to devour every month. Palaephatus says that it was not a wild beast, but a ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... finally, a horse with its rider. In candor, none of these sounds like divinely inspired truth. But the fact remains that not a single dogfish let itself get caught in the Nautilus's nets, so I can't vouch for their voracity. ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... in vain. Our guides being encamped by themselves, I was curious to ascertain by ocular evidence the manner in which the first kettle would be disposed of, nor did I wait long till my curiosity was gratified. The cannibals fell upon the half-cooked flesh with a voracity which I could not have believed even savages capable of; and in an incredibly short space of time the kettle was disposed of;—and this, too, after their usual daily allowance, which is equal to, and sometimes exceeds, that of the other men, who say they have enough. Proceeded ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... the Treasury, since none other could have satisfied him. To young men wasting their summer at Quincy for want of some one to hire their services at three dollars a day, such a dramatic scandal was Heaven-sent. Charles and Henry Adams jumped at it like salmon at a fly, with as much voracity as Jay Gould, or his ame damnee Jim Fisk, had ever shown for Erie; and with as little fear of consequences. They risked something; no one could say what; but the people about the Erie office were not ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... letter written in April of 1919 by her Vice-Chancellor, Mathias Erzberger, also her minister of finance? A very able, compact masterpiece of malignant voracity, good enough to do credit to Satan. Through that lucky flaw of stupidity which runs through apparently every German brain, and to which we chiefly owe our victory and temporary respite from the fangs of the wolf, Mathias Erzberger posted his ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... children addicted to secret vice. At the commencement of the practice, they almost invariably manifest great voracity for food, gorging themselves in the most gluttonous manner. As the habit becomes fixed, digestion becomes impaired, and the appetite is sometimes almost wanting, and at other ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... twenty-five feet; as a matter of fact it seldom exceeds ten feet, but its great girth, and its solitary, nocturnal habit of haunting the mouths of shallow streams has invested it even to the native mind with fictional powers of voracity and destruction. Yet, despite the exaggerated accounts of the creature, it is really a dreadful monster, rendered the more dangerous to human life by the persistency with which it frequents muddied and shallow water, particularly after a freshet caused by heavy rain, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... mighty hunter before the Lord;" and it is evident, from the account already given of the animals indigenous in Lower Mesopotainia, that there was abundant room for the display of a sportsman's skill and daring when men first settled in that region. The Senkareh tablets show the boldness and voracity of the Chaldaean lion, which not only levied contributions on the settlers' cattle, but occasionally ventured to attack man himself. We have not as yet any hunting scenes belonging to these early times; but there can be little doubt that the bow was the chief weapon used against the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... with oval interstices, and the dentellated border of the commonwealth resembles that sort of lace which was made by arranging on glass the food of a silk-spinning worm: the creature ate and wove, having voracity always before him and Fine Art behind him. Much of the solider part of the State is made of the materials which enter into glass-manufacture: a mighty enchanter might fuse the greater portion of it into one gigantic goblet. A slight approximation to this work of magic is already being carried on. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... am convinced that for most persons the views thus laid down by Mr. Harrison are wrong; and that what he describes, with characteristic vigor, as "an impotent voracity for desultory information," is in reality a most desirable and a not too common form of mental appetite. I have no sympathy whatever with the horror he expresses at the "incessant accumulation of fresh books." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... his appetite, and the voracity of his capacious stomach, he had diminished his paternal estate; but yet, even then, did his shocking hunger remain undiminished, and the craving of his insatiable appetite continued in full vigour. At last, after he has swallowed down his estate ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... and two large cubs, being attracted by the scent of some blubber, proceeding from a seahorse, which had been set on fire, and was burning on the ice, ran eagerly towards it, dragged some pieces out of the flames, and eat them with great voracity. The sailors threw them some lumps still left in their possession, which the old bear took away and laid before her cubs, reserving only a small piece for herself. As they were eating the last piece, the men shot the cubs, and wounded the mother. Her distress was most painful ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... nobleman. We put up at the George, where we found about five tourists, redolent of sketch and note books, drinking toddy and lying in wait to catch a sight of the lion of the neighbourhood, Sir Walter. The voracity with which they devoured any anecdotes of him was amusing. In the evening it came on a peppering storm. I had foreseen this on our route from Jeddart. The Eildons had mounted their misty cap, always a sure prognostic of rain; in fact they are the barometer of the district. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various |
