"Omnivorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... system based on private property and mercantile competition. No creative power, no nobility, no courage can battle against them. And below—in the slums and factories, what will be going on? The survival of a race of stunted toilers, with great resisting power to infection, contagion and fatigue, omnivorous as rats.... ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... Colonel Davidson also mentions a race in Bundelcund called Kunjurs who were in the habit, as he was informed by the Bramins, of "catching lizards, scorpions, snakes, and foxes," which, if it is meant that they use them for food, is analogous to the omnivorous propensities of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... cataclysm of Nature; but, in reality, it has all been done by water, assisted, no doubt, by the subtler action of the winds and storms in the disintegration of the monster cliffs, which, as they slowly crumbled into dust, were carried downward by the rains, and, finally, were borne off by the omnivorous river to ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... Seward, at Auburn; Gerrit Smith's family at Peterboro; Beriah Green's at Whitesboro, with the Sedgwicks and Mays, and Matilda Joslyn Gage at Syracuse. Although Mrs. Gage was surrounded with a family of small children for years, yet she was always a student, an omnivorous reader and liberal thinker, and her pen was ever at work answering the attacks on the woman movement in the county and State journals. In the village of Manlius, where she lived some time after her marriage, she was the sole ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... author, "even the pupils at the village schools threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to study primers of history, geography, and political economy"—a striking anticipation of the movement in vogue to-day. "I have myself been," he tells us, "an omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient medical and botanical works. I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable in aiding ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... cash, and the Chinaman strikes a balance in his mind and sees more nourishment in one bowl of rice than in three eggs. Of meat there is pork—pork in plenty, and pork only. Pigs and dogs are the scavengers of China. None of the carnivora are more omnivorous than the Chinese. "A Chinaman has the most unscrupulous stomach in the world," says Meadows; "he will eat anything from the root to the leaf, and from the hide to the entrails." He will not even despise the flesh of dog that has died a natural ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... numbers of kelp geese were obtained, giving the crew what Cook describes as a dainty Christmas feast, though the flesh of these birds is as tough, fishy, and unpalatable as can well be imagined; on this occasion, however, the seamen seemed to have concurred in the verdict of their omnivorous commander, to whom nothing ever came amiss. Be it remembered, however, how long they had been on salt provisions, and that the South Sea Islands, though pleasant in many respects, produced but little solid food—no beef, mutton, ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... edification or amusement they may be able to derive from the discussion of my individual affairs, or the analysis of my peculiar tastes. You forget, my dear Constance, that to devour and in turn be devoured is an inexorable law of this world; and if my eccentricities furnish a ragout for omnivorous society, I should be philanthropically glad ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... ready to take up its abode under buildings. At the Lake Hotel I saw a number of them that lived around the back door, and were almost tamed through the long protection there given them. Like most of these small rodents, they are supposed to be grain-eaters but they really are omnivorous, and quite ready to eat flesh and eggs, as well as seeds and fruit. Warren in his "Mammals of Colorado," tells of having seen one of these Ground-squirrels kill some young Bluebirds; and adds another instance of flesh-eating observed in the Yellowstone Park, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of my box of books was a subject Hendry was very willing to shake his head over, but he never showed any desire to take off the lid. Jess, however, was more curious; indeed, she would have been an omnivorous devourer of books had it not been for her conviction that reading was idling. Until I found her out she never allowed to me that Leeby brought her my books one at a time. Some of them were novels, and Jess took about ten minutes to each. She confessed that what she read was only ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... of minute significance in Parliament were not unknown to him, and he was ready with a theory or an explanation on the most recondite matters. But coffee and cigars found him a different man. He ceased to be the enthusiast, the omnivorous and versatile inquirer, and relapsed into the ordinary good fellow, who is ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... whom he kindly introduced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's benediction rest upon him! He is a most pleasant man; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary; for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite's bag as highly as Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time's carpet-bag, or give him the carpet-bag itself, to take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... second-class cars of the Atlantic and Pacific Road correspond to the omnivorous cars in use on our railroads generally. But we are a family-party, have nearly a week of travel before us, and prefer to sacrifice our money rather than our comfort. It costs a third, perhaps one-half more, to take ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... devoting his life to literature, his talents in that direction were freely confessed. From my father, whose studious habits in life had made him not only eminent at the bar but profoundly conversant with general literature, he had inherited a taste for reading, and it was this omnivorous passion for books that led my brother to say that his education had only begun when he fancied that it had left off. In boyhood he contracted that fascinating but highly injurious habit of reading in bed, which he subsequently ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... writers of absolute superiority—Macaulay (History of England since James II), an omnivorous reader and very brilliant writer, and Carlyle, the English Michelet, feverish, passionate, incongruous, and disconcerting, who dealt with history as might a ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... smaller than the other, but more active and a better climber; he is the rat of the barn and the granary. The brown or Norway rat (Mus decumanus) is larger but less active, a burrower rather than a climber, and though both rats are omnivorous the brown rat is more especially a scavenger; he is the rat of sewers and drains. The black rat came to Northern Europe first—both of them probably being Asiatic animals—and has no doubt been to some ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... left a number of fragments including the outline of a pretentious novel of which Heinrich von Veldeke, whom he looked upon as "der Heilige des Enthusiasmus," was to be the hero. And he was, incidentally, an omnivorous reader, for, ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his jacket—omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... ever-changing litter of tattered books, with a card above which announced that any volume therein could be purchased for the identical sum which I carried in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever raged betwixt the hunger of a youthful body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five times out of six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then there was an entrancing five minutes' digging among out-of-date almanacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until one found something which made it all worth while. If you will ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... company." The old blacksmith is a veteran of 1870, and was for a long time a prisoner at Konigsburg. He likes nothing better than to rest a bit on a big stone at my gate and talk of 1870. Like all Frenchmen of his type he is wonderfully intelligent, full of humor, and an omnivorous reader. Almost every day he has a bit of old newspaper in his pocket out of which he reads to la dame Americaine as he calls me, not being able to pronounce my name. It is usually something illuminating about the Germans, when it is not something prophetic. It is wonderful how these old chaps take ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... the wandering bee, highly poetical, seems at first sight very improbable, and passes for one of the many strange creations of this wild poem. But yet it is quite true to nature, and was probably suggested to Southey, an omnivorous reader, by some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... many-sided equipment of attainment which enriched the rich, natural soil. Intermeddling as he did with all knowledge, he must necessarily have been but an amateur in many of the subjects into which he rushed with such generous eagerness. But none the less is the example of all but omnivorous acquisitiveness of everything that was to be known, a protest, very needful in these days, against the possible evils of an excessive specialising which the very progress of knowledge in all departments seems to make inevitable. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... wet one's whistle. purvey &c 637. Adj. eatable, edible, esculent^, comestible, alimentary; cereal, cibarious^; dietetic; culinary; nutritive, nutritious; gastric; succulent; potable, potulent^; bibulous. omnivorous, carnivorous, herbivorous, granivorous, graminivorous, phytivorous; ichthyivorous; omophagic, omophagous; pantophagous, phytophagous, xylophagous. Phr. across the walnuts and the wine [Tennyson]; blessed hour of our dinners! [O. Meredith]; now good digestion wait on appetite, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... writing his thanks, he added, "I think I must bring my little boy to see you." So I wrote to say "don't," or words to that effect: and he wrote again that he could hardly believe his eyes when he got my note. He thought I doted on all children. But I'm not omnivorous!—like a pig. ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... inevitable, fatal; we must not complain, but look forward to a good result. Still, in travelling through this country, I could not but be struck with the force of a symbol. Wherever the hog comes, the rattlesnake disappears; the omnivorous traveller, safe in its stupidity, willingly and easily makes a meal of the most dangerous of reptiles, and one which the Indian looks on with a mystic awe. Even so the white settler pursues the Indian, and ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... remarkably easy. The highest point which the road crossed is about 4600 feet above the sea, or a little higher than the Brenner Pass in the Tyrol. But there grain grows and orchards bear fruit, while here, under the parallel of 62 deg., nearly all vegetation ceases, and even the omnivorous northern sheep can find no pasturage. Before and behind you lie wastes of naked grey mountains, relieved only by the snow-patches on their summits. I have seen as desolate tracts of wilderness in the south made beautiful by the lovely hues which they took from the air; ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... found nothing save science engrossing enough to make him oblivious of his constant ill-health, Huxley never lost his keen delight in literature and art. He was a rapid and omnivorous reader, devouring everything from a fairy tale to a blue book, and tearing the heart out of a book at express speed. With this went a love of great and beautiful poetry and of prose expression that is at once exact and artistically ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Hebrew, belong to this category. But the deep student did not persist long in this species of diversion. Wittgenstein, the field-marshal, and professors at the Lyceum of his town, supplied him with books, and he, an omnivorous reader, plunged again into his graver work, the result of which was the little book since translated into English, Russian, and German, Efes Dammim (No Blood!). As the name indicates, it was intended as a defence against the blood, or ritual murder, accusation. It was the right ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... forefathers' worship have crept back into favour by hiding themselves in the voluminous draperies of History or Art. Our appetite for shows is omnivorous, and we don't object to a shrine if it has a Gothic moulding sufficiently "cute," or a Byzantine roof, or some other attraction—are we not pilgrims of Art?—though if called upon to define our roof or moulding many of ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... seaweed itself, whose growth is generally sufficiently rapid to make up for the ravages committed upon it, and in the host of infusoria constantly produced in the water. If any of the creatures die, their bodies should be immediately removed,—though sometimes the omnivorous crabs will do this work rapidly enough. As the water evaporates, it should be filled up to its original level with fresh spring-water,—the salts in it undergoing no diminution by evaporation. If, suddenly, the water should grow thick, it should be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... creature inhabiting the desert surpasses the road-runner, sometimes called the ground-cuckoo or snake-killer. Though omnivorous, this bird lives chiefly on reptiles and mollusks. It is decked in a gay plumage of coppery green, with streaks of white on the sides and a topknot of deep blue. In fleetness of foot it is said to equal the horse. ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... In the suburbs I have about half a dozen family friends. Here I meet with pleasant society and a hearty welcome. I am passionately fond of music, have an excellent piano, and can hear the best concerts in Europe. I go to all good plays. I am a good chess player. Lastly, I am an omnivorous reader. You will allow that my resources for passing the time ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... many goats had been brought to the Colony by that time. Multiplying, they provided able assistance during the early seventeenth century in thoroughly clearing away the undergrowth, preparatory to cutting down trees and grubbing stumps. Joseph Ham, in the colony by 1633, resorted to these omnivorous quadrupeds in clearing his land. He lived in the New Poquoson area where growth of all kinds is lush. The region, which has its name from the Indian term for lowlands, had afforded the Kecoughtan Indians a rich hunting-ground. Midst tall pines, oak, walnut, cedar, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... mediaeval relationships have been published from time to time in learned periodicals like "Archaeologia," the "Archaeological Journal," the "Antiquary," etc., where, being sandwiched between others of another character, they have been lost to all but antiquarian experts of omnivorous appetite. Assuredly, the average educated Englishman will not go in quest of them, but it may be thought he will esteem the opportunity, here offered, of gaining enlightenment, if not in the full and perfect sense ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... they separated that Quin's thoughts left the disturbing events of the day and flew to something more pleasing. For two weeks now he had had to content himself with chance interviews with Eleanor, meager diet for a person with an omnivorous appetite; but to-night there was the prospect for a long, uninterrupted evening. Since the day of Miss Enid's wedding he had found her perplexed and absent-minded; but the fact that she always had a smile for him, and that nothing was seen or heard of ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Israelites; not only from living with those people, but because they were unclean animals. They are still viewed in that light by Brahmins and Mussulmans, who only rear them to sell to Christians, or to make scavengers of them, for, in a domestic state, they are omnivorous. The dislike of the latter to them was once very serviceable to me; for when we were bivouacking close to a Mahommedan village, the people, and the priests thronged around us, so as to be extremely troublesome; and the only way in which we could keep them at ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... manage fowls successfully is to observe their habits and modes of life when left to themselves. In summer, when they have a range, we find them eating grass, seeds, insects, etc. In short, they are omnivorous. In winter, when they can't get these things, they are often fed one or two kinds of grain continuously. Now, from their very nature, they need in winter all the kinds of food that they instinctively select when foraging ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... found it, and tells us that the great part of the books named were perused before the age of fifteen. Making allowance for the fact that most of the poet's autobiographic sketches are emphatically "Dichtang und Wahrheit," we can believe that he was an omnivorous reader—"I read eating, read in bed, read when no one else reads"—and, having a memory only less retentive than Macaulay's, acquired so much general information as to be suspected of picking it up from Reviews. He himself declares that he never read a Review till he was ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Most readers read to be informed or to be entertained; and books of information are absorbed as if all printed statements must of course be true, or even if not true must, as a record, be worth knowing. This omnivorous, careless style of reading is a grievous waste of life and energy. Were books read with critical, enquiring thought, the time misspent in reading would be wholesomely reduced, and readers would increase in mental power in due ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... turns an unseeing eye upon any object you may present for his inspection. Now, since I have basked longer in your light, I may perhaps—allow me." He reached for the book and began to turn over the leaves. She watched his growing absorption with indulgent amusement, and the comradeship of the two omnivorous readers was evident. Cardington was frankly reading, oblivious of his hosts, a liberty which indicated his familiar standing in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... it became my duty to warn a girl of eleven, who was an omnivorous reader of romances, that such reading was in all probability hastening her development, and she would become a woman in bodily functions while she ought yet to be a child. Her indications of approaching ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... Zezdon Afthen slowly, "were men such as you are. They descended from a primeval omnivorous mammal very closely related to your race. Evidently the tendency of evolution on any planet is approximately the same with ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... of a telescope. Fanny went into the sitting-room and shut the door with a bang. Amabel did not look up from her book. She was reading a library book much beyond her years, and sniffing pathetically with her cold. Amabel had begun to discover an omnivorous taste for books, which stuck at nothing. She understood not more than half of what she read, but seemed to relish it ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that I cannot refrain from citing it. The fifteenth Earl of Derby held such a high position in the political world that his literary attainments have been comparatively neglected. He was in truth an omnivorous reader and a cool, sagacious critic, who was not led astray by enthusiasm, and never said more than he felt. Writing to Froude on the 20th of October, 1884, Lord Derby described the Life of Carlyle as the most interesting biography in the English language, and added, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... had been an omnivorous reader—there were numerous examples of youths left, like him, to the care of distant relatives, or step-parents, or utter strangers. Their experiences, generally speaking, had not been cheerful ones. Most of them ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... enliven the forest; they are insectivorous, granivorous, and omnivorous but all are beautiful in their rich and wonderful variety of colour. Amongst these the pheasant for its oriental plumage and the cockatoo for its querulous voice ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... conscious of not having read enough and of therefore being secretly inferior to more omnivorous readers. She did not think Rachel read much, but Rachel was different. Rachel was an artist and had ideas. Mary respected artists and was always sarcastic toward them. It usually made them talk a lot—particularly male artists—and thus ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... morning and evening, and all departments of the Epworth League. He takes the Epworth Herald, the Southwestern Christian Advocate, the Literary Digest, some poultry and farm magazines, the Arkansas Gazette, and the St. Louis Democrat, and several other journals. He is on omnivorous reader and a clear thinker. He raises chickens and goats and plants a garden as avocations. He has on invincible reputation for honesty as well as for ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... oval, hairy, alternate leaves, and crowned with a one-sided raceme of widely expanded, purple-blue bells rising about two feet above the ground, has little of the exquisite grace of its cousin. It blooms from July to September. This is the species whose roots are eaten by the omnivorous ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... omnivorous, and can subsist either on animal or vegetable food—an arrangement which fits him to dwell in any part of the habitable globe,—yet he is subject, with regard to the actual material of his diet, in a remarkable manner, to the influence of climate, since a particular kind of aliment, which is very ...
— The Church of England Magazine - Volume 10, No. 263, January 9, 1841 • Various
... educated man—or was supposed to be. He had spent five years in schools, and nine years in colleges and universities; he had given the scholars of the world full opportunity to guide him to whatever was of importance. Also, he had been an omnivorous reader upon his own impulse; and here he was, at the end of it all—practically ignorant ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... student, Lanier was an omnivorous reader in the wide fields of English literature, sharing his tastes with some of his companions who with him lived in "an atmosphere of ardent and loyal friendship." "I can recall," says Mr. T. F. Newell, his classmate and room-mate,* "those ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... are decidedly omnivorous. Their appetite is immense; quantity and (for most of them come from France), not quality, is what they chiefly desire. When not dining at their own expense, they eat all they can, and pocket the rest. Indeed, a celebrated sylphide—unsurpassed for the graceful airiness of her evolutions—has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... wash down, crack a bottle, wet one's whistle. purvey &c. 637. Adj. eatable, edible, esculent[obs3], comestible, alimentary; cereal, cibarious[obs3]; dietetic; culinary; nutritive, nutritious; gastric; succulent; potable, potulent|; bibulous. omnivorous, carnivorous, herbivorous, granivorous[obs3], graminivorous, phytivorous[obs3]; ichthyivorous[obs3]; omophagic[obs3], omophagous[obs3]; pantophagous[obs3], phytophagous[obs3], xylophagous Phr[Biol]. "across the walnuts and the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the childish reminiscences which are to be found among her earlier poems, of 'Hector in the Garden,' 'The Lost Bower,' and 'The Deserted Garden.' And here too her earliest verses were written, and the foundations laid of that omnivorous reading of literature of all sorts and kinds, which was so strong a characteristic of her ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... had never been his associates or confidants, it mattered little to him whether they feared or respected him, or were hypocritically obsequious, after the fashion of the weaker. His studies, at all events, profited by this lack of distraction. Already his two years of desultory and omnivorous reading had given him a facile familiarity with many things, which left him utterly free of the timidity, awkwardness, or non-interest of a beginner. His usually reserved manner, which had been lack of expression rather than of conviction, had deceived his tutors. The audacity of a ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... means a new one. Scaliger says, as quoted by omnivorous old Burton: "Nequaquam, nos homines sumus sed partes hominis." The old illustration of this used to be found in pin-making. It took twenty different workmen to make a pin, beginning with drawing the wire and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... He was an omnivorous reader. His extraordinary knowledge of books was evident in his conversation, for he liked to adorn his speech with quotations, which came readily to his memory. Herzl read Eugen Duehring's book The Jewish-Problem as a Problem ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... her,—special, I mean, since the accident,—regarding him as in some sense the angel which had driven her out of paradise into a better world. If ever he got loose, and Connie was anywhere about, he was sure to find her: he was an omnivorous animal, and she had always something he would eat when his favorite apples were unattainable. More than once she had been roused from her sleep on the lawn by the lips and the breath of Sprite upon her face; but, although one painful sign of her weakness ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Omnivorous children who are addicted to birch-chewing prefer these tender yellow-green leaves tinged with red, when newly put forth in June—"Youngsters" rural New Englanders call them then. In some sections a kind of tea is steeped ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food,—new languages, new statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in it as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is necessary to mention him. He had become known to Nelson while serving in the same capacity with Sir Hyde Parker, and had been found very useful in the negotiations at Copenhagen. An accomplished linguist and an omnivorous reader, Dr. Scott was doubly useful. Upon him devolved the translating of all despatches and letters, not only from, but to, foreign courts and officials; for Nelson made a point of sending with all such papers a copy in the language of the ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... Rawlinson were, probably, the most omnivorous collectors of the earlier part of the last century. Everything in the shape of a book was welcomed. The former (1681-1725), whose 'C. & P.' (collated and perfect) appears on the frontispiece, title-page, or fly-leaf of books, when he lived in Gray's Inn, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... ground under a bush in the dense jungle, are dull brownish white and nearly three inches long. The chicks are sometimes domesticated, but even when born in captivity, it is said they are difficult to tame and soon wander away. The birds are omnivorous, feeding on insects, grubs, reptiles, flower buds, young ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... were broken with sledge-hammers, hewn with axes, trampled, torn; and beaten into shreds. A troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars, stood around the destroyers and lighted them at their work. Nothing escaped their omnivorous rage. They desecrated seventy chapels, forced open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with the gorgeous robes of the ecclesiastics, broke the sacred bread, poured out the sacramental wine into golden ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to graminivorous and omnivorous animals this is tantamount to a deficient supply of oxygen. The carbon of the food, not meeting with a sufficient supply of oxygen to consume it, passes into other compounds containing a large excess of carbon—or, ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... front. If not [OE]dipuses and Electras and Alcestises, then in God's name Birdofredum Sawins! These also shall get born into the world, and filch (if so need) a Zingali subsistence therein, these lank, omnivorous Yankees of his. He shall paint the Seen, since the Unseen will not sit to him. Yet in him also are Nibelungen-lays, and Iliads, and Ulysses-wanderings, and Divine Comedies,—if only once he could come at them! Therein lies much, nay ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... have quoted from the speech of this kilted critic. If it were possible to retain the elasticity and adjustableness of the mind till the end of life, new authors would perhaps fix our attention as much as the old. But only a limited number of articulate-speaking men, such as the omnivorous Professor Saintsbury of Edinburgh, preserve their appetite tireless and intact. The Professor, like a literary Livingstone, can grapple with the most arid and dusty libraries, and is the envy of all scholars; but, alas! the majority of us have to take something ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... acceptable to the aforesaid professional censor. The reviewer, sitting surrounded by them, tier on tier, may rail at the productiveness of the age, and wish that there might not be more than one new book each week. And the omnivorous reader, anxious to keep up with the literature of the day, might fairly re-echo the aspiration. Who, indeed, can hope to turn over a tithe of the new leaves which are issued daily? Nor can an unlimited consumption of them be recommended. Mr. Lowell ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the most omnivorous song composer that ever lived. He could hardly see a poem—good, bad, or indifferent, without being at once seized by a passionate desire to set it to music. He sometimes wrote half a dozen or more songs in one day, and some of them originated under the most peculiar circumstances. ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies gathered from everywhere. Just as he endeavored with indefatigable eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried to assimilate the poetry of all nations. The Greeks and Romans no longer sufficed his omnivorous appetite and his "panoramic ability." When Hammer-Purgstall's German version of the D[i]w[a]n of H[a]f[i]z came into his hands he at once set about making himself at home in the mental world of the Persian and Arabic poets. Thus arose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the nations of the forest (Indios del monte), have a decided aversion to cultivate the land, and live almost exclusively by hunting and fishing. They are men of very robust constitution; but ill-looking, savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree; and therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barbarians, have a common saying, nothing is so loathsome but that an Ottomac will eat it. While the waters of the Orinoco and its tributary streams are low, the Ottomacs subsist ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... will be the thought of the learned reader, who knows that young women could not be strulbrugs; since the true strulbrug was one who, from base fear of dying, had lingered on into an old age, omnivorous of every genial or vital impulse. The strulbrug of Swift (and Swift, being his horrid creator, ought to understand his own horrid creation) was a wreck, a shell, that had been burned hollow, and cancered by ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... response. It was usual for him to regard MTutor devoutly when he talked in this way, and to feel that no man on earth talked so well. Jock in his omnivorous reading knew perhaps Dante better than his instructor, but he had come to the age when the mind, confused in all its first awakening of emotions, cannot talk of what affects it most. The time had been at which he had discussed everything he read with whosoever would listen, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... The Grackle is as omnivorous as the Crow or Blue Jay, without their sense of humor, and whenever opportunity offers will attack and eat smaller birds, especially the defenseless young. His own meet with the like fate, a fox squirrel having been seen to emerge from a hole in a large dead tree with a young Blackbird ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various
... inhale a mouthful of fresh air, can scarcely be gratified, unless, at some expense of time and money, they make a journey for the purpose. Even our parks, not unaptly termed the lungs of the metropolis, have been partially invaded by the omnivorous builder; nor are those portions of them which are still open available to the commonalty for purposes of pastime and sport. Under such circumstances who can wonder that they should lounge away ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... character. The lover becomes the student—the student of the thirteenth century—struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical forms, loose in premise and ostentatiously rigid in syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half-awakened taste and the mannerisms ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... out of it; the old sailor in his delight told the doctor. He, however, was not in the least surprised; he knew that in the north of America the horses make fish their main article of food, and what a herbivorous horse could content himself with would certainly satisfy an omnivorous dog. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... turn in what direction you may; and the green covert, the shady lane, the barks of columned beeches and speckled birches, of gnarled oaks and rugged elms—no longer the mysterious haunts of nymphs and dryads, who have been driven far away by the omnivorous demon of the shop—are all invaded by Puff, and subdued to the office of his ministering spirits. Puff, in short, is the monster megatherium of modern society, who runs rampaging about the world, his broad back in the air, and his ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... with Ben was the next question of importance. He was fond of books, an omnivorous reader, in fact, a very fair scholar, and, with a certain amount of push, could have graduated the year before. He really was ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... my own egotism," he wrote; "I know my omnivorous lines, and must not write any less." He was not disconcerted by any failure of art, or any propriety, or any ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... legal organizations. Its growth insensibly increases, attracting to itself the substance of the others, employing them for its own ends, substituting itself for them, acting by and for itself alone, a sort of omnivorous outgrowth the encroachment of which is irresistible, not only because circumstances and the working of the Constitution nourish it, but also because its germ, deposited at a great depth, is a living portion ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... doctor was not successful, the boy was removed to London with the double purpose of effecting a cure under an eminent surgeon, and of educating him according to his rank; for his education thus far had been sadly neglected, although it would appear that he was an omnivorous reader in a desultory kind of way. The lameness was never cured, and through life was a subject of bitter sensitiveness on his part. Dr. Glennie of Dulwich, to whose instruction he was now confided, found him hard to manage, because of his own undisciplined ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... departure had forced her younger sister into the front rank of domestic combatants. At Mount Music, where once the milk and honey had flowed with effortless abundance, each year brought increasing stress. The rents grew less, the expenses greater, that large and omnivorous item, known as "keeping up the place," was as exacting as ever, the minor problems of household existence more acute. There had been a time when the Mount Music tenants had vied with one another in the provision of sons and daughters ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... chronicle the first part is the more literal and prosaic in its steady servility to actual record and registered fact: the bitterest enemy of poetic or dramatic fiction, from William Prynne to Thomas Carlyle, might well exempt from his else omnivorous appetite of censure so humble an example of such obsequious and unambitious fidelity. Of fiction or imagination there is indeed next to none. In Thomas Drue's play of "The Duchess of Suffolk," formerly and plausibly misattributed to Heywood, part of the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the Country of True Love. Mrs. Behn, an omnivorous reader of romances, was thinking of the celebrated Carte de Tendre (Loveland), to be found in Mlle. de Scuderi's Clelie (1654, Vol. I, p. 399), and reproduced in the English folio edition of 1678. This fantastic map, which is said to have been suggested by Chapelain, aroused ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... was a hosier, a hatter, a printer; and he is said also to have been a brick and tile maker. In 1692 he failed in business; but, in no long time after, he paid every one of his creditors to the uttermost farthing. Through all his labours and misfortunes he was always a hard and careful reader,— an omnivorous reader, too, for he was in the habit of reading almost every book that came in his way. He made his first reputation by writing political pamphlets. One of his pamphlets brought him into high favour with King William; another had the effect of placing him in the ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... remarks on those critics who, however warily, admire a considerable number of authors, as though they were coarse and omnivorous persons, unfit to rank with the delicates who can only relish one or two things in literature. But this is a foolish mistake. "One to one" is not "cursedly confined" in the relation of book and reader; and a man need not be a Don Juan of letters to have ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... our birds the robin has life in the fullest measure, or best stands the Darwinian test of the fittest to survive. His versatility, adaptiveness, and fecundity are remarkable. While not an omnivorous feeder, he yet has a very wide range among fruits and insects. From cherries to currants and strawberries he ranges freely, while he is the only thrush that makes angle-worms one of his dietetic staples and looks upon a fat grub as a rare tidbit. Then ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... had been a voracious and an omnivorous reader. He read with amazing rapidity. The first book he enjoyed whole-heartedly was Mabel Dearmer's "Noah's Ark Geography," one of the best children's books written in the past twenty years. He read and re-read this book as a little boy and used ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... period Damaris was an omnivorous reader, eager for every form of literature and every description of knowledge—whether clearly comprehended or not—which the beloved printed page has to give. An eagerness, it may be noted, not infrequently productive of collisions with Theresa, and at this particular juncture all ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... her tastes and personal habits, indulgent never beyond the dictates of perfect simplicity and sobriety. Proficient in all branches of housekeeping, her apparel was mostly of her own making. Good literature was a passion with her, and while never an omnivorous reader, she had a natural instinct for the best in language. A spirit of indomitable independence, courage and persistence in purpose characterized her from childhood. She must think her own thoughts, and mark out and follow her own path. Suffering ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... mere intellectual exchange, but one very agreeable to Miss Rolleston; for a fine memory, and omnivorous reading from his very boyhood, with the habit of taking notes, and reviewing them, had made Mr. Hazel a walking dictionary, and a walking essayist ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... who was safely in charge of a nurse and maid at all times, and she was invariably the picturesque center of a group of admirers recruited from every capital of the civilized world. Letty Gerald was a talented woman, beautiful, graceful, artistic, a writer of verse, an omnivorous reader, a student of art, and a sincere and ardent ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... plovers, snipes like those in Europe; but others, entirely unlike European birds, would fill a volume. Insects are very numerous. I have seen about twelve sorts of grylli, or grasshoppers and crickets. Ants are the most omnivorous of all insects; we have eight or ten sorts very numerous. The termes, or white ants, destroy everything on which they fasten; they will eat through an oak chest in a day or two and devour all its contents. Butterflies are not so numerous as in England, but I ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... possibilities of wrongdoing become) there will on any system be ample range for the development of new methods and processes. Whatever danger there once was in choking individual initiative by needlessly paralyzing restrictions, will be, in the long run, negligible in an age of omnivorous reading and free discussion, and in a land whose conscious ideal is improvement, new invention, progress. As a matter of fact, it is chiefly through legislation that new methods of social practice become diffused. Each of our forty-eight States is experimenting ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... to him a pledge of entire success: he is so transported, that he leaps clean out of his senses forthwith, and the giddiness of his newly-fired conceit fairly puts out the eyes of his understanding. His vanity is now quite omnivorous: once possessed with the monstrous idea of having become an object of love in such a place, nothing is too gross for him to swallow. The raw and unspiced stuffings of Master Brook convey to him no hint of mistrust: he drinks them in ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... are sixty-seven percent, which comes fairly close to the seventy-one percent in Scott's group who rate themselves at fifteen minutes a day. The omnivorous readers of from four to eight papers coincide roughly with the twenty-five percent who rated themselves at ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the courses in medicine and philosophy, but a fact of even more consequence than his proficiency in his regular work was his persistent study of languages and his omnivorous reading. He was associated with the other Filipinos who were working in a somewhat spectacular way, misdirected rather than led by what may be styled the Spanish liberals, for more considerate treatment of the Philippines. But while he ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... I have stated, the Sotadic Zone begins to broaden out, embracing all China, Turkistan and Japan. The Chinese, as far as we know them in the great cities, are omnivorous and omnifutuentes: they are the chosen people of debauchery, and their systematic bestiality with ducks, goats, and other animals is equalled only by their pederasty. Kaempfer and Orlof Toree (Voyage en Chine) notice the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... about her children was no less glorious. The oldest was the wise one of the family. He was devoted to philology and the historical sciences, but his sight was growing weaker all the time because of his omnivorous reading. Soon he would be a Doctor, and before he was thirty, a Herr Professor. The mother lamented that he had not military aspirations, considering that his tastes had somewhat distorted the lofty destinies of the family. Professorships, sciences ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... bottle, a disposition to ride anything that could by any exercise of the liveliest fancy be made to assume equine proportions, a propensity to blacken his venerable white hair with ink and coal dust, and an omnivorous appetite which did not stop at chalk, clay, or cinders, were peculiarities not calculated to excite respect. In fact, he would seem to have become demoralized, and when, after a prolonged absence the other day, he was finally discovered standing upon the front steps addressing a group of delighted ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... given to few, and thanks to his skill in it, Sir Thomas reminds us strongly of the two illustrious brothers Shandy combined in one person. To the exquisite kindliness and simplicity of Uncle Toby he unites the omnivorous intellectual appetite and the humorous pedantry of the head of the family. The resemblance, indeed, may not be quite fortuitous. Though it does not appear that Sterne, amidst his multifarious pilferings, laid hands upon Sir Thomas Browne, one may fancy that he took a general hint or ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... life a student now concerns himself with, the more he will somehow ultimately realize; and if he aims at none in particular, he will very likely hit most of them. Thus aimlessness, so far as relations of study to life are concerned, is put at a premium, and students are directly encouraged to be omnivorous absorbers without further responsibility. ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... than that, he has a onelegged disposition. His whole ego, his entire spirit is changed. No longer a twolegged creature, reduced, he is another—warped, if you like—being. To come to the immediate point of the grass: if you engender an omnivorous capacity you implant an ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the secret of many a man's success,—keeping his eyes open and asking questions. Although Beecher was an omnivorous reader he did not care much for the writings of the theologians; the Christ was his great model, and he knew that He did not search the writings of the Sanhedrin for His sermons, but picked them up as He walked along the banks of the Jordan and over the hills and through the ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the Kings of Israel in the tomb of the Kings of Judah?" Grim asked, more by way of keeping up the conversation, I think, than because he could not guess the answer. He is an omnivorous reader, and there is not much recorded of the Near East that he does ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... If it be expended on one thing, there is none left for the other thing. And so with Vance Corliss. Scholarly lucubrations and healthy exercises during his college days had consumed all the energy his normal digestion extracted from a wholesome omnivorous diet. When he did discover a bit of surplus energy, he worked it off in the society of his mother and of the conventional minds and prim teas she surrounded herself with. Result: A very nice young man, of whom no maid's mother ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... I was down Long Island more or less every summer, now east, now west, sometimes months at a stretch. At 16, 17, and so on, was fond of debating societies, and had an active membership with them, off and on, in Brooklyn and one or two country towns on the island. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later years, devour'd everything I could get. Fond of the theatre, also, in New York, went whenever ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dared to be other than absolute perfection. Petawanaquat's solemnity was too much for him. Thus it came to pass that Tony was soon thoroughly broken in. Meekeye taught him to make leggings and to ornament moccasins, for the boy was omnivorous in his thirst for knowledge. He swallowed everything with avidity, including immense quantities of food, so that his frame and mind developed together in ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... exactly like a small common wasp of the genus Odynerus, that Mr. Bates informs us he was afraid to take it out of his net with his fingers for fear of being stung. Had Mr. Bates's taste for insects been less omnivorous than it was, the beetle's disguise might have saved it from his pin, as it had no doubt often done from the beak of hungry birds. A larger insect, Sphecomorpha chalybea, is exactly like one of the large metallic blue wasps, and like them has the abdomen connected with ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... ill at that time. They were "The Man who was Dead," by Thomas H. Knight and "Monsters of Moyen," by Arthur J. Burks. For Mr. Knight there is no hope. To him I can only say "Stop trying to write and get a job." I am a rapid and omnivorous reader, but never have I read a story so utterly bad as his. He gets the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... volume. Sometimes he was found sitting on the top rung of a ladder, sometimes on the roof of a turf-thatched cottage, oblivious of the world about him, plunged up to his ears in some historic or mythological tale. He was voracious, nay, omnivorous, in his reading. A book was a book to him; no matter what was its subject, whether it were poetry, history, heraldry, or horticulture, he was always likely to find something in it to interest him. But his favorite reading was the old ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... seem to have stamped out rabies, yet you couldn't be too careful with a dog bite. A dog bite might be injurious in all sorts of ways—particularly Sultan's bite. He was, they had to confess, a dog without refinement, a coarse-minded omnivorous dog. Both the elder ladies insisted upon regarding Benham's wound as clear evidence of some gallant rescue of Amanda from imminent danger—"she's always so RECKLESS with those dogs," as though Amanda was not manifestly capable of taking care ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Germany, an idea to which, in common with most British people, I am bitterly opposed. Walsh's "World Rebuilt" is a good exhortation, and Mugge's "Parliament of Man" is fresh and sane and able. The omnivorous reader will find good sense and quaint English in Judge Mejdell's "Jus Gentium," published in English by Olsen's of Christiania. There is an active League of Nations Society in Dublin, as well as the London ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... most people are omnivorous. The food is plentiful and people believe in generous living. They put upon their tables at each meal enough variety for a whole day and the custom is to eat some of each. Some breakfasts are heavy enough for dinners. Three heavy meals a day ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... studies and entered William and Mary College with advanced standing at the age of eighteen. Many stories are told of his precocity and ability, all of which tend to forecast the later man of catholic tastes, omnivorous interest, and extensive but superficial knowledge; he was a strange combination of natural aristocrat and theoretical democrat, of philosopher and practical politician. After having been a student in the law office of George Wythe, and being a friend of Patrick Henry, Jefferson early espoused ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand
... other purely vegetarian feeders, with remoter cousins, the ancestral hogs. Working in this way, we presently get a glimpse of a possible yet remoter connection of all these hoofed and mainly vegetarian animals, with certain "central types" that carry us across to the omnivorous, and, in some cases, almost entirely vegetarian bears, and to the great and prosperous family of clawed, meat-eaters. And thus we elucidate, at last, a thread of blood relationship between the, at present, strongly ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... him to the end. He had a less commanding personality than his father Increase. His nervous sensibility was excessive. His natural vanity was never subdued, though it was often chastened by trial and bitter disappointment. But, like his father, he was an omnivorous reader and a facile producer of books, carrying daily such burdens of mental and spiritual excitement as would have crushed a normal man. Increase Mather published some one hundred and fifty books and pamphlets: Cotton Mather not less than four hundred. The Rev. John Norton, in his ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... thorough study of such classics as were available in his day, and we have seen how he employed them in his novel and in his plays. But the classics formed only a small section of the books digested by this omnivorous reader. If he could not read Spanish, French, or Italian, he devoured and assimilated the numerous translations from those languages into English, Guevara indeed being his chief inspiration. Nor did he neglect the literature of his ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... down for beer and a long smoke in front of the cafe below. A homely little place it was, with two rows of small iron tables in front, and at one of these we would seat ourselves. Behind us in the window was a long glass tank of gold fish, into which from time to time a huge cat would reach an omnivorous paw. Often from within the cafe we would hear Russian folk songs played on balalaikas by a group of Russian students there. And between the songs a low hubbub rose, in French and many other tongues, for here were French and Germans, English and Bohemians, ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... "What omnivorous creatures those Grassinis are!" Martini said contemptuously to Gemma as they crossed the Signoria square one bright, cold Sunday morning. "Did you notice the way Grassini bowed when the Cardinal's carriage drove up? It's all one to them who a man ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... man is prone to lose sight of perfidy in magnitude and to say, when he hears all the facts: "At least these rascals hunt big game." I wish to say here that such distinction is undeserved. The "System" is omnivorous. Its insatiable maw yawns as greedily for the ten-cent pieces of the people as for the thousands of the larger investor. It is as avid and relentless in devising ant-traps as elephant-snares. There fell into my hands recently certain valuable documents in the meanest of contemporary swindles, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Passionals of Lucas Cranach, and can be traced in England through her Rebellion and Restoration up to the very confines of the eighteenth century. Why, we have to ask, even granting that William Hogarth's "monster Caricatura" is thus omnivorous and omnipresent, does he tower aloft in some countries and under some conditions to the majesty of a new art, and in others dwindle ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton
... in such a rambling mansion. It has become a national monument. On the days when it is open we revisit it with admiration; and those chambers and garden walks re-echo to us the clear dogmas and savoury diction of the sage—omnivorous, artless, loquacious—whose dwelling ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... contour of countenance, of brow, nose, cheeks and chin. Furthermore it is difficult to think of any other Roman in private life who attained to such fame that six marble replicas of his portrait should have survived the omnivorous lime-kilns of the dark ages. The Barrocco museum of Rome has a very lifelike replica[9] of this type in half-relief. Though its firm, dry workmanship seems to be of a few decades later than Vergil's youth it may well be a fairly ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... acknowledged force in her form. She came from a very refined and cultured home, where intellectual interests were cultivated both by father and mother. Her temperament was naturally artistic; she was an omnivorous reader, and could devour anything in the shape of literature that came her way. The bookcase in her dormitory was filled with beautiful volumes, mostly Christmas and birthday gifts. She rejoiced in their soft leather bindings or fine illustrations with a true book-lover's ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... matter of food and warmth is the first issue in the wilderness; already she had learned this lesson. Her eyes glanced about the walls. There were two or three sacks, perhaps filled with provisions, hanging from the ceiling, safely out of the reach of the omnivorous pack-rats that often wreak such havoc in unoccupied cabins. But further than this the place seemed ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... omnivorous beasts," said Edmund. "They feed on the carbon from your breath, too. Rather remarkable, isn't it, that every time you expel the air from your lungs you ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... Cockchafer—and other dishes probably unknown to her race, she accepts all and any, large and small, thin-skinned and horny-skinned, that which goes afoot and that which takes winged flight. She is omnivorous, she preys on everything, down to her own kind, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... and look like talismans carved from metal. These are his tidbits, but he will take most anything alive that is small enough for him to swallow, and when in winter he retires to the warmer layers of water next the pond bottom, his omnivorous appetite in a large measure goes with him. Hence the fishermen use many varieties of small fish for ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... considerable size and strength. But this is, by no means, general. Even the voracious and ubiquitous Colorado Beetle manifests no taste for this plant, although it has had abundant opportunity to test its edible qualities. To the credit of insects generally, be it said, they are not omnivorous. ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones
... of atheism comes from the unbelieving Bayle, whose omnivorous mind, like the anaconda, assisted its enormous deglutition with a poisonous saliva of its own, and whose negative temper makes the "Dictionnaire Historique" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... South Australian Institute was a treasure to the family. I recollect a newcomer being astonished at my sister Mary having read Macaulay's History. "Why, it was only just out when I left England," said he. "Well, it did not take longer to come out than you did," was her reply. We were all omnivorous readers, and the old-fashioned accomplishment of reading aloud was cultivated by both brothers and sisters. I was the only one who could translate French at sight, thanks to Miss Phin's giving me so much of Racine and Moliere and other good French ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... criminal conspiracy upon the self-styled Doctor. But in order to make assurance still more certain, we threw out vague hints to him that the portrait of Maria Vanrenen might really be elsewhere, and even suggested in his hearing that it might not improbably have got into the hands of that omnivorous collector, Sir J. H. Tomlinson. But the vendor was proof against all such attempts to decry his goods. He had the effrontery to brush away the documentary evidence, and to declare that Sir J. H. Tomlinson (one of the most learned and astute picture-buyers in England) had ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... upon the rotting ribs of a wreck on the beach. Its distance from the tide line, its position, and its deep imbedding of sand, showed that it was of ancient origin. An omnivorous reader of all that pertained to the history of California, Jenny had in fancy often sailed the seas in one of those mysterious treasure-ships that had skirted the coast in bygone days, and she at once settled in her mind that her discovery was none ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... century have surpassed those of the most trumpery trash of the "Minerva Press" period—the last decade of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century. For the main novel-public is quite omnivorous, and almost absolutely uncritical of what it devours. The admirable though certainly fortunate Scot who "could never remember drinking bad whisky" might be echoed, if they had the wit, by not a few persons who never seem to read a bad novel, or at least to be aware that ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... no factory in Bologna or Frankfort, or any other possible birthplace of the real article, could rival this amazing, this funny, tree in fertility. Its product was just a trifle large, save for the omnivorous lover of sausage; but in other respects it was a faithful copy of the original—unless, indeed, the first sausage-maker borrowed the idea from the tree, instead of the other way about. These vegetable sausages hung in hundreds of strings ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... smiled, a certain satirical smile, intensely irritating to his sister's temper (which she called her nerves), and which it was rather fortunate she did not see. He was perfectly alive to the omnivorous quality of his sister's vanity, and perfectly aware that it had on many occasions led her into a fool's paradise, whence she had been ejected into the waste regions of disappointment and bitterness of spirit. He had ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... frustrated, however, by a young man of twenty-seven—Robert Clive. At the age of eighteen, Clive had entered the employ of the English East India Company as a clerk at Madras. His restless and discontented spirit found relief, at times, in omnivorous reading; at other times he grew despondent. More than once he planned to take his own life. During the War of the Austrian Succession, he had resigned his civil post and entered the army. The hazards of military ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... swine rushing violently down a steep place into the sea. Nor can the guidance of mankind be with safety entrusted to one who for eighty-six years insisted on remaining by his own hearth-stone a mere omnivorous reader and omnigenous writer of books. Carlyle was a true and pure "man of letters," looking at things and speaking to men, alone in his study, through the medium of printed paper. All that a "man of letters," of great genius and lofty spirit, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison |
