"Voracious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lodgings. Altogether I cannot complain, but the insects were voracious, even until last night when the turtle-soup and champagne ought to have made me sleep like a top. But I have done a monstrous sight of work here notwithstanding the indolence of this last week, which must ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... be placed in an aquarium containing insects and small fish which are to be kept, as it is fierce and voracious. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... horrid monster had not long ago devoured his little captive (for he thought him a delicious morsel) was, that he might never want an object at hand to gratify his cruelty. For though extremely great was his voracious hunger, yet greater still was his desire of tormenting; and oftentimes when he had teased, beat, and tortured the poor gentle Mignon, so as to force from him tears, and sometimes a soft complaint, he would, with a ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... presently upon a bookseller's shop, outside which were displayed several trays of second-hand volumes which attracted his attention. Jeffreys loved books and was a voracious reader, and in the midst of his wearisome search for work it was like a little harbour of refuge to come upon a nest of them here. Just, however, as he was about to indulge in the delicious luxury of turning over ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... should go short on dog-food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn-out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... unheralded by the hopes, by the buds and blossoms of loving thought, which had opened upon the first child's advent. Marie was remorsefully tender over it, but Osborn continued to be one long uninterrupted sigh. The doctor and nurse seemed to him voracious, greedy creatures seeking for his life-blood. His second child was born at midnight. He came in one day at 6.30 with the fear in his heart men know round and about these agitating times, and found that fear was justified. The nurse had already been sent for, the doctor ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... now passed into a condition of settled gloom. My nerves began to suffer from the strain, and I came gradually to regard Henry as less of a helpmate and more of a voracious monster demanding meals at too frequent intervals. It made me peevish ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... his four guests eat, tapping his tortoise-shell snuff-box, and telling us many interesting things about the past and present state of the convent. Our company was completed with Lupo, the pet cat, and Pirro, a woolly Corsican dog, very good friends, and both enormously voracious. Lupo in particular engraved himself upon the memory of Christian, into whose large legs he thrust his claws, when the cheese-parings and scraps were not supplied him with sufficient promptitude. I never saw a hungrier and bolder ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... Mary's character may be mentioned in connection with this transfer. She had a voracious appetite; and in Elizabeth's household expenses an extra charge was made necessary of 20l. a-year for the meat breakfasts and meat suppers "served into the Lady Mary's chamber."—Statement of the expenses of the Household of the ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... until he was within a few yards of it, but now he saw that it had been his pony. The bones were not yet picked clean, although more than half of the carcass was eaten, and Jimmy wondered, as he rushed forward, that the voracious beasts had left a morsel undevoured. But he did not wonder long; for a low, peculiar sound, seeming to rise from the earth at his very feet, startled him, and he saw, stretched upon the ground like a great cat, ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... and it occurred to him that it was easy to account for the non-success of the fly-fishers in the Gudenaa. The fish would not be often feeding, as trout food existed in such quantity; and besides, to a voracious trout a plump little fish was more acceptable than an ephemera. If there were any fish feeding they would be ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... sunshine of fashionable London—seeing and hearing him, began to follow his lead. Many a burst of applause from the pit that night started from the soft, comfortable patting of the black-gloved hands. The man's voracious vanity devoured this implied tribute to his local and critical supremacy with an appearance of the highest relish. Smiles rippled continuously over his fat face. He looked about him, at the pauses in the music, serenely satisfied with himself ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... and ate heartily. He was a voracious eater at times. But there were days when he ate nothing and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... Almoign, Knight of the Voracious Stomach, cumbered with no domestic ties worthy of mention, a tall slim fellow who knew the appropriate hour to slit a throat or to wheedle a maid, came to be Grand Marshal of the Guild ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... You linger at the door as if this were the den of a lion at a menagerie, instead of a room to which you have been cordially invited several times. I am not voracious, have had my luncheon. You ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... overtaken by a speedier chastisement. As day by day they sank deeper in their wickedness, it was but right they should daily, as it were, stick faster in their woe. The very change in nourishment made manifest their decline and degradation, since as they became feebler they became also more voracious and blood-thirsty." ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Indeed, yes—for these voracious creatures are not fastidious. No particular vegetable seems to be chosen by them. The leaves of the bitter tobacco plant appear to be as much to their liking as the sweet and succulent blades of maize! Pieces of linen, cotton, and even flannel, are devoured by them, as though they were ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... children, the gray-haired man loved flowers, and he had planted the barren strip of land adjoining the fence separating the school yard from the alley with cannas and elephant's ears. He was puttering among them, now seeking voracious parasites, now examining a leaf which hinted in its faded coloring of fast approaching frosts, when boys' voices coming from the alley, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... of this John, was the voracious leech, with Empson, who sucked the vitals of the people, to feed the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... exclaimed Benjamin, as he ushered the digger into the back room, where such chops as had escaped the voracious appetite of Jake Ruggles ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... greatly alarmed by the men getting into the boat in great disorder and telling me that it was a crocodile which I had for a long time observed, and mistaken for the hull of a tree. A crocodile is an amphibious voracious animal, in shape resembling a lizard. It is covered with very hard scales, which cannot but with difficulty be pierced, except under the belly, where the skin is tender. It has a wide throat, with several rows of teeth, sharp and separated, ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... confronted by a problem. I had to apply my own favourite theories and arguments to myself and weigh against them practical advantages. Honey was plentiful and, given that the bees were protected against voracious enemies, might have been stored in marketable quantities. But was I not bound by honour as well as sentiment to protect the birds? Was not my coming hither due to a certain extent to a wish for the preservation of bird-life? Was there ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... grew to be a very pale face which welcomed John with a smile when he returned from the office. The style of living was bad for him. He was alone all day, except for an occasional visit from the good-natured German woman who kept their rooms, and, although he was a voracious reader, the doctor had forbidden all thought of study for a year, even had there been a school near enough for him to attend, where John would have been willing to send him. He ought to be where the air was pure and the surroundings cheerful. John would have preferred to put up with the ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... Jack Shark always kept at too great a distance when the rope was thrown. At last one of the seamen took off his shoes, and, tucking up his trousers, stuck out his leg and moved it slowly backwards and forwards. The voracious shark saw the tempting bait, and made a dash at it. The seaman drew it in, and as the fish, disappointed of his prize, turned round whisking up his tail out of the water, Needham adroitly hove the rope over it. As the shark darted off Dick was very nearly drawn overboard, but the rope tightening ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... this arn't sport." "I have one," cries our young friend again. "So have I," shouts another; and just at the same moment I felt the magic touch of my bait, and in an instant I felt the thrilling stroke. The fish were absolutely voracious, and we had nothing short of a miraculous draught. As fast as we could bait they swallowed, and we frequently pulled them up two at a time. Jorrocks was in ecstasies. "It was the finest sport he had ever encountered," and he kept halloaing and shouting every time he pulled them ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... weeks. As under the guidance of Black Bill, they entered the farm-yard of his master, the elder Lund, they found the rest of the family just entering the house, and joining them, attacked, with voracious appetites, a coarse but ample repast of bacon, potatoes, coarse bread, sweet butter, and strong black tea. After this guns were prepared, ammunition and lunch got ready for the coming morning, for, with the earliest gleam of the rising sun, they were to commence the first short day of watching ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... and Hardcastle, the servants and men-at-arms beyond. Porridge and broth and very small ale were the fare, and salted meat would be for supper, and as Grisell knew but too well already, her own retainers were grumbling at the voracious appetites of the men-at-arms as much as did their unwilling guests at the plainness and niggardliness of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cram full of thrilling situations. The number of miraculous escapes from death in all its shapes which the hero experiences in the course of a few months must be sufficient to satisfy the most voracious appetite."—Schoolmaster. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... existence in this river before we passed the night on its bank, the danger of being surprised by the natives and the stings of the mosquitoes would have dwindled into insignificance in comparison with the presence of such voracious animals. On our return down the river a snake was seen about five feet long, of a light red colour, but it escaped by gliding ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... during the afternoon, and when we got up we agreed that the wisest thing we could do would be to get out of the town as fast as possible. We scarcely knew each other at first, so swollen were our faces and necks from the bites of the voracious insects. Early in the night the greater part of our men were drunk, and it appeared probable that before the day was much older the rest would be so. We, however, had to wait for breakfast, and before we left the ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... succession of broods throughout the summer, and is therefore always in force, ready to devour the crop immediately it appears. The so-called 'Fly' is a small beetle named Haltica (Phyllotreta) nemorum, strongly made, and decidedly voracious. The larvae are not to be feared, except that, of course, they in due time become beetles. In the perfect state this winged jumping insect makes havoc of the rising plant of Turnips, but the crop is only in danger while in the seed-leaf stage. It is in the spring and early summer chiefly that the ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... Helictis are arboreal in their habits. Then it was accused of eating to such a pitch of distention that it had to squeeze itself between two close-growing trees for relief ere it returned again to the repast. There is no doubt, however, that it is to a great extent voracious and extremely cunning; and what it cannot eat it will carry off and hide. The trappers complain bitterly of it, and spare no pains to kill every one they can come across; but it is not easily to be caught, and only a very cunningly-devised bait ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Street poured out incessantly upon the bridge seemed ripe and good in her eyes. A traffic of copious barges slumbered over the face of the river-barges either altogether stagnant or dreaming along in the wake of fussy tugs; and above circled, urbanely voracious, the London seagulls. She had never been there before at that hour, in that light, and it seemed to her as if she came to it all for the first time. And this great mellow place, this London, now was hers, to struggle with, to go where she pleased in, to overcome and live in. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... see it: in its broth of putrefaction, the worm is exposed to grave dangers. Now there is a need for maggots in this world, for maggots many and voracious, to purge the soil as quickly as possible of death's impurities. Linnaeus tells us that 'Tres muscae consumunt cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo.' [Three flies consume the carcass of a horse as quickly as a lion could do it.] There is ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... day to Morat. Its lake is about two leagues in length by three quarters of a league in breadth, and is said to be the only lake in Switzerland where that voracious fish, the silurus, is found. There are many vineyards in this vicinity, but the wine is very indifferent. It is, however said to produce the best Kirschrvasser, or Cherry brandy in Switzerland. Morat is celebrated in history for the memorable ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... Brewarrina they came in trucks to cross the bridge spanning the noble stream at the mountain's base, but they never went back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... I take the liberty of kissing the rattling leg-bones of your voracious Majesty, and humbly laying this little book at your dried-up feet. My predecessors have always been accustomed, as if on purpose to annoy you, to transport their goods and chattels to the archives of eternity, directly under your ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... I see myself as a boy, whose education has been interrupted, and who intellectually was left, for some years, altogether to his own devices. At that time I was a voracious and omnivorous reader; a dreamer and speculator of the first water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and every subject, which is the blessed compensation of youth and inexperience. Among the books and essays, on all ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... A long gallery came next, it was very dark, just light enough to show that instead of a wall on one side, there was a grating of iron which parted off a dismal dungeon, from whence issued the groans of those victims whom the cruel giant reserved in confinement for his own voracious appetite. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... may still add, that the mildness of the climate of Louisiana may have an effect upon the disposition of the bears, and prevent them from being so voracious as those of our continent; but I affirm that carnivorous animals retain the same disposition in all countries. The wolves of Louisiana are carnivorous as well as those of Europe, although they differ in other particulars. The tigers of Africa, and those of America, are equally mischievous animals. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... is an animal domesticated among the aborigines of that country. He is a dog of wolf-like shape, who does not bark, but utters only a mournful howling. He is used by the wretched natives both for the chase and as an article of food; and is a fierce and voracious creature—not hesitating to launch himself on the larger kinds of animals. He is especially employed in hunting the kangaroo; and sometimes terrible combats occur between the dingo and the larger species of kangaroos—resulting always in the death ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... relished infinitely more than a practical problem, and a good game at pinsticking was far more entertaining than a language lesson. Moreover, he was always hungry, and would eat in school before the half-past ten intermission, thereby losing much good play-time for his voracious appetite. ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... satisfied, and the half-starved, mal-shaped brain cells, the prey of vampirism, are in a constant state of suction, ever trying to draw in mental sustenance from the healthy brain cells around them. Idiots and epileptics are the cephalopoda of the land—only, if anything, fouler, more voracious, and more insatiable than their aquatic prototypes. They never ought to be at large. If not destroyed in their early infancy (which one cannot help thinking would be the most merciful plan both for the idiot and the community in general), those polyp brains ought to be kept ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomised life as a voracious appetite and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... her best for the children, they being the public for whom she wrote, and laboured stoutly to supply the demand always in the mouths of voracious youth—'More stories; more right away!' Her family objected to this devotion at their expense, and her health suffered; but for a time she gratefully offered herself up on the altar of juvenile literature, feeling that she owed a good deal to the little friends ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... Luckily these voracious animals have poor eyesight. They went by without noticing us, grazing us with their brownish fins; and miraculously, we escaped a danger greater than encountering a tiger deep in ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... camera set halfway up a gentle slope commanding a steeper hill beyond, down which the boys would send the cattle in a slow, uneasy march before the storm, Luck focused his telephoto lens upon bleakness enough to satisfy even his voracious appetite for realism. Bill Holmes, his tan pumps wrapped in gunny sacks for protection against the snow that was a foot deep on the level and still falling, thrashed his body with his arms, like a windmill whose paddles have suddenly gone limp in a high wind. When he was ready, Luck stopped ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the same positions. Mr. Finch had presented himself (at full length) to Herr Grosse. And Jicks was established on a stool in a corner: devouring a rampant horse, carved in bilious-yellow German gingerbread, with a voracious relish ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... larvae, in fact, contrive to enclose themselves in an egg-shaped cocoon, dark brown in colour and very strong, which preserves them both from the rough contact of their shapeless cells and from the mandibles of voracious parasites, Acari,[5] Cleri[6] and Anthreni,[7] those manifold enemies whom we find prowling in the galleries, seeking whom they may devour. It is by means of this equipoise between the mother's talents and the larva's that the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... she called at the Chinese homes, and they set before her a dish of which she was especially fond, and she had eaten of it as much as she thought she ought, the ladies would ask in a good-natured way in reply to some of her remarks about her voracious appetite, "Shall we get down and knock our heads on the floor, and beg you not to eat too much, and make yourself sick, like the eunuchs do to the Emperor?" There is nothing to wonder at that Kuang ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... bear, and his tracks are often mistaken for those of that animal. Indians and hunters, however, know the difference well. His hind feet are plantigrade, that is, they rest upon the ground from heel to toe; and his back curves like the segment of a circle. He is fierce and extremely voracious—quite as much so as the "glutton," of which he is the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Bracciano, died suddenly at Salo on the 10th of November 1585, leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria helpless among enemies. What was the cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... for when is Man transform'd into the very Image of Satan himself, when is he turn'd into a meer Devil, if it is not when he is fighting with his fellow Creatures and dipping his Hands in the Blood of his own Kind? Let his Picture be consider'd, the Fire of Hell flames or sparkles in his Eyes, a voracious Grin sits upon his Countenance; Rage and Fury distort the Muscles of his Face; his Passions agitate his whole Body, and he is metamorphos'd from a comely Beauteous angelic Creature into a Fury, a Satyr, a terrible and frightful Monster, nay, into a Devil; ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... a mighty power. Her navy, sir, can—and mark me, it will—sweep France and Russia and Prussia and Austria and Italy from the ocean as—as a shar—a wha—a huge and voracious swordfish sweeps before its imperious onslaught, with unerring certainty and cyclonic power, a whole school of sneaking mackerel or codfish from the pathway fixed for it ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... sub-genus of the Conger; it was the most prized of all the Roman fish, and grew to the weight of twenty-five or thirty pounds. The value set upon them was enormous; and it is said that guilty slaves were occasionally thrown into their stews, to fatten these voracious dainties. ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... mine I'd lief see thrown from thy gangway Hurled head over heels precipitous whelmed in the quagmire, Where the lake and the boglands are most rotten and stinking, 10 Deepest and lividest lie, the swallow of hollow voracious. Witless surely the wight whose sense is less than of boy-babe Two-year-old and a-sleep on trembling forearm of father. He though wedded to girl in greenest bloom of her youth-tide, (Bride-wife daintier bred than ever was delicate kidlet, 15 Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... or rickets, while the mental is substantially idiocy. The osseous structure, deficient in the phosphate of lime, is unable to sustain the weight of the body, and the cretin is thus incapacitated for active motion; the muscles are soft and wasted; the skin dingy, cold, and unhealthy; the appetite voracious; spasmodic and convulsed action frequent; and the digestion imperfect and greatly disordered. The mind seems to exist only in a germinal state; observation, memory, thought, the power of combination, are all wanting. The external senses are so torpid, that, for months perhaps, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... for the miseries of my native country, till after the fight at Edgehill. I had known as much, and perhaps more than most in the army, what it was to have an enemy ranging in the bowels of a kingdom; I had seen the most flourishing provinces of Germany reduced to perfect deserts, and the voracious Crabats, with inhuman barbarity, quenching the fires of the plundered villages with the blood of the inhabitants. Whether this had hardened me against the natural tenderness which I afterwards found return upon me, or not, I cannot tell; but I reflected upon myself afterwards with a great deal ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... slippery-elm tree, which they chewed, drawing from it a little strength and sustenance. They found an hour or two later some nearly ripe wild plums, which they ate in small quantities, and, later on, ripe blackberries very juicy and sweet. Paul wanted to be voracious, but Henry restrained him, knowing well that if he indulged liberally he might suffer worse pangs than those of hunger. Slender as was this diet the boys felt much strengthened, and their spirits rose ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a proposition was made to remove it at a greater distance from the city. But there was a strong objection made to its removal, on account of the ravages which the rats would make in the neighborhood, when they had no longer the carcasses of the horses to feed upon. These voracious creatures assembled at this spot in such numbers, that they devoured all the flesh (that was not much, perhaps, in many cases) of twenty or thirty horses in one night, so that in the morning nothing remained of these carcasses but bare bones. In one ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... at last. The careful manner in which he avoided contact with crew or gear would have made Barry grin under any other circumstances; but now near disaster impended, simply on account of the irrepressible salesman's voracious appetite for knowledge. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... probably the most destructive of all insects in Burma. Voracious wood-eaters, they will attack fallen logs or growing trees, which they will entirely consume till only the hollow bark remains. This is one great reason why the wood of the teak-tree is so highly valued, as it is the only timber these ants will not touch, and consequently is the ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... which the Mexicans had made in our walls, and to resist their attempts to scale them, often in twenty places at once. The Mexicans constantly used the most injurious language against us; saying that the voracious animals in the great temple had been kept fasting for two days, that they might be ready to devour our bodies, when we were sacrificed to their gods. They assured us at the same time that our allies were to be put into ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the lookout for black beetle on Aster and Chrysanthemum. As soon as one is discovered apply Nicoticide, and apply it thoroughly, all over the plant. Promptness is demanded in fighting this voracious pest. ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... allow me to have much faith. With great genius and very respectable talents, he has now neither the title nor the credit of prime minister; more active colleagues carry off the most savoury morsels which their voracious creatures immediately devour; our misfortunes and reforms have diminished the number of favours; either through pride or through indolence I am but a bad suitor, and if at last I obtain something, it may perhaps be on the eve of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... producing a feeling akin to desperation. Every week there was less and less to sell from the dairy; chickens and eggs disappeared, and the appetites of those who dropped in to "kape Bridgy from bein' a bit lonely" grew more voracious. ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... Rabelais the man, these few facts will be sufficient to know. In early youth he joined the monastic order of the Franciscans. That order hated letters; but Rabelais loved them. He, in fact, conceived a voracious ambition of knowledge. He became immensely learned. This fact, with what it implies of long labor patiently achieved, is enough to show that Rabelais was not without seriousness of character. But he was much more a merry-andrew than a pattern monk. He made interest ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... voracious appetite will overload their stomachs with food that is hard to digest or is decomposed, causing the organs of assimilation to become weakened, sluggish and incapable of doing ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... a long table with a great shuffling of feet and scraping of benches, and immediately began a voracious attack upon the heaped platters of chicken and dumplings and the bowls of vegetables. Bud found a place at the end where he could look into the kitchen, and his eyes went that way as often as they dared, following the swift motions of the little woman who poured coffee and filled empty dishes ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... war broke out, when he took to army-contracting with considerable success. It was in his capacity of contractor that he became acquainted with the boisterous black Pasha, who greatly appreciated his low but ready wit, and delighted in tormenting him. On discovering that the dervish was a voracious eater, he pressed—I might say forced—him with savage hospitality to eat largely of every dish, so that, when pipes were brought after supper, the poor dervish ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... not only something of a traveller, but a diligent student of history and a voracious novel reader, and, once-in-a-while, I get my history and my fiction mixed. This has been especially the case when the hum-drum of the Boulevards has driven me from the fascinations of the Beau Quartier into the by-ways of the Marais and the fastnesses of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... were likewise sufficient pastures there for tame and savage animals; together with a prodigious number of elephants. For there were pastures for all such animals as are fed in lakes and rivers, on mountains and in plains. And in like manner there was sufficient aliment for the largest and most voracious kind of animals. Besides this, whatever of odoriferous the earth nourishes at present, whether roots, or grass, or wood, or juices, or gums, flowers or fruits—these the island produced and produced ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... field he entered, and consequently considered them non-essentials in a man's career—very good to have, like the cream and confectionery at dessert, tickling the palates of women and children, but eschewed by sensible men. He had travelled twice over Europe, seeing everything with the voracious curiosity of a strong man eager to get his money's worth: after his experience of cities rich in high historic charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... awoke and stretched himself; he felt the grip of that sort of voracious hunger which old soldiers can remember having experienced on the morrow of victory. He was delighted, therefore, to see Paul de Manerville standing in front of him, for at such a time nothing is more agreeable than to eat ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... itself, innumerable dwarfs bounded on to the table, and, taking their places by all the plates, in three seconds consumed the savoury viand. To complete the astonishment, the confusion, the wrath, the fury of the voracious boors, Stringstriker himself galloped up and down the whole length of the table, breaking all the vessels, and draining all the beer and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... was, to have within himself a will of steel, a hate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the catastrophe, and to burn nothing, to decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator, whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger—could this be possible? could it be that Barkilphedro ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... to embark his troops on the Danube. By a well-concerted stratagem, he seized a fleet of light brigantines, as it lay at anchor; secured a apply of coarse provisions sufficient to satisfy the indelicate, and voracious, appetite of a Gallic army; and boldly committed himself to the stream of the Danube. The labors of the mariners, who plied their oars with incessant diligence, and the steady continuance of a favorable wind, carried his fleet above seven hundred miles in eleven days; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... about the bush for some time—giving her to understand now necessary it was that persons situated as they were should live either for themselves or for each other, and that, above all things, they should beware of falling into the mouths of voracious aristocratic lions who go about looking for prey—till they came to a turn in the grounds; at which Miss Dunstable declared her determination of going in. She had walked enough, she said. As by this time Mr ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... discovered the new world. Somewhere in the near background he still beheld the city with the hundred bridges, the crowded bazaar, the long train of caparisoned elephants, the palace with the pavement of solid gold. Naked savages skulking in the forest, marked down by voracious cannibals along the causeway of the Lesser Antilles, were no distraction from the quest of the Grand Khan. The facts before him were uninteresting and provisional, and were overshadowed by the phantoms that crowded his mind. The contrast between the gorgeous and ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... to give one illustration in support of my contention that the education given in Utopia is useful. Of the many complaints that are brought against the output of our elementary schools, one of the most serious is that the boys and girls who have recently left school are voracious readers of a vicious and demoralising literature which seems to be provided for their special benefit. The reason why they take so readily to this garbage is that they have lost their appetite for wholesome food. They are not interested in healthy literature, in Nature-study, in ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... majority of the common people in China believe that the burning of tapers and incense, the prostration of the mandarins, the beating of the gongs and drums, and the recitations on the part of the priests, are signally efficacious in driving away the voracious monster. They observe that the sun or the moon does not seem to be permanently injured by the attacks of its celestial enemy, although a half or nearly the whole appeared to have been swallowed up. This happy result is doubtless viewed with much complacency by the parties engaged to bring ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... are monsters in the lake, are there? I was not aware of that. And what are those 'monsters'? Are they alligators, or voracious fish, or what are they? I should hardly have supposed that the water of the lake was warm enough for alligators ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... to a large size, attaining from thirty to forty pounds weight, and is very voracious. It devours crabs and shell fish, crushing them with its strong teeth. It is common on all the rocky inlets of the coast of New Holland, extending down the eastern ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the dragon-fly it has perhaps happened that I have been vigorously striking at them, making it very unpleasant for them, and also killing and disabling many hundreds—a larger number than the most voracious dragon-fly could devour in the course of a whole day; and yet, after brushing and beating them off until my arms have ached with the exertion, they have continued to rush blindly on their fate, exhibiting not the faintest symptom of fear. I suppose that for centuries ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... powers, dat no use now!" Jack had covered his face with his hands. But the tragedy was not complete: the other men, who were in the water, had immediately turned and made for the shore; but before they could reach it, two more of these voracious monsters, attracted by the blood of the coxswain, had flown to the spot, and there was a contention for the fragments ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... people do not read these great authors is that they are not encouraged to do so. The very best way to instil a love of Thackeray into the modern world is to make the modern world read just so much of him that its voracious appetite is sharpened ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... wallet from my shoulders, handed him some bread and cheese, and said, "Let us sit down near that plane-tree." We did so, and I helped myself to some refreshment. While looking at him more closely, as he was eating with a voracious appetite, I saw that he was faint, and of a hue like boxwood. His natural color, in fact, had so forsaken him, that as I recalled those nocturnal furies to my frightened imagination, the very first piece of bread I put in my mouth, though ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dominated all others: where are those treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy their owner's voracious intellectual appetite? As houses were then built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor. Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little parlor, and two small ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... kinds of birds captured in this way, mocking-birds, blue-birds, robins, meadow larks, quail, and plover were the most numerous. They seemed to have more voracious appetites than other varieties, or else they were more unwary, and consequently more easily caught. A change of station, however, put an end to my ornithological plans, and activities of other kinds prevented me from ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of spring make me more languid than ever Martha cannot be made to understand that nursing such a large, voracious baby, losing sleep, and confinement within doors, are enough to account for this. She is constantly speaking in terms of praise of those who keep up even when they do feel a little out of sorts, and says she always does. In the evening, after baby gets to sleep, I feel fit for nothing but to lie ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... situated between two layers of serous membrane (mesentery) that connects the small intestine with the spinal column, occasionally become diseased in childhood, and prevent the chyle from passing to the thoracic duct. Children thus affected have a voracious appetite, and at the same time are becoming more and more emaciated. The disease is ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... practical joke he relished infinitely more than a practical problem, and a good game at pin-sticking was far more entertaining than a language lesson. Moreover, he was always hungry, and would eat in school before the half-past ten recess, thereby losing much good playtime for his voracious appetite. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... statuettes and engravings, until Mr. Lang rejoined us, accompanied by a gentleman whom he introduced to me as Mr. Leopold, the painter of the picture which I was to see in the course of the evening. Although my reading had necessarily been limited, Miss Darry's persistent training, and my own voracious appetite for information in everything relating to the arts, had given me a somewhat superficial knowledge of the pictures, style, and personal appearance of the best old and modern painters. In spite of some obstinate facts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... episcopal city produced in him, various causes, all of them disagreeable, began to develop in his mind a profound sadness, chief among these causes being the crowd of litigants that swarmed about him like voracious ants. Many others of the neighboring landowners besides Uncle Licurgo claimed damages from him, or asked him to render accounts for lands managed by his grandfather. A claim was also brought against him because of a certain contract of partnership ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... The voracious novel-reader is apt to hold detective stories in the same regard that the Scotchman is supposed to entertain towards whisky—some are better than others, but there are no really bad ones. The Pointing Man (HUTCHINSON) is better than most, in the first place because ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... forget to mention the broiled dishes, the invention of which is attributed to hunters, and which Rabelais continually refers to as acting as stimulants and irresistibly exciting the thirst for wine at the sumptuous feasts of those voracious heroes (Fig. 120). ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... However, no question was asked and no search made. All things were ready and the parson sat down to eat, while the three girls stood about, glancing now and then at the table. The preacher was very voracious and began his meal as though ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... as Mother Sophie and her foolish favorite, our disobedient Prince of Wales, might long for it! And the Hanover Tail, the Robethons, Bernstorfs, Fabrices, even the Blackamoor Porters,—they are not beautiful either, to a taciturn Majesty of some sense, if he cared about their doings or them. Voracious, plunderous, all of them; like hounds, long hungry, got into a rich house which has no master, or a mere imaginary one. "MENTERIS IMPUDENTISSIME," said Walpole in his dog-latin once, in our Royal presence, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... strove in vain to make the troubled and feverish years of his power produce a literature. He himself was one of the most voracious readers of novels that ever lived. He was always asking for the newest of the new, and unfortunately even the new romances of his period were hopelessly bad. Barbier, his librarian, had orders to send ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... of these women were starving, and judging by the voracious manner in which they tackled pedestrians openly on the streets at night there was ample ground for that belief. Men were followed and grabbed by the arm who had no intention or desire to make or ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... six. And I can't put blue ribbons round their necks, and carry them about with me on my travels as pets. Can't you see me walking over the Ponte Vecchio followed by them as by a string of poodles? And they are so voracious. The hotel people are already charging them full pension terms. Oh, dear! Do tell me what I am to ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the juices from flesh, so that meat can be preserved sweet without salt. The waters surrounding these islands may be said to be literally alive, so full are they of fish. Almost as numerous as the fish, are the birds which satisfy their voracious appetites upon this finny multitude, until they can gorge no more, when they retire to the islands to deposit their excrement, composed of the oily flesh and bones of their only food, until the mass which has been accumulating for thousands of years, is so great as almost to exceed ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... patriarchal manners and customs of that excellent land. Before describing this house it may be well, in the interest of other writers, to explain the necessity for such didactic preliminaries,—since they have roused a protest from certain ignorant and voracious readers who want emotions without undergoing the generating process, the flower without the seed, the child without gestation. Is Art supposed to have ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Happily the [v]voracious creatures do not see well. They passed without noticing us, brushing us with their brownish fins, and we escaped by a miracle from a danger certainly greater than that of meeting a tiger full-face in a forest. Half an hour later, guided by the electric light, we reached the Nautilus. ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... emergency landing at another mining station. We had walked through the corridors and rooms looking for desperately needed parts and supplies, and had tried to count the dead until the task became too sickening, exposed in every possible way to the voracious microorganisms that had killed every being aboard. But none of us had gotten even a headache. We found our parts and took ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... country, has too little nutriment in it to support the animal under the exhausting effects of such a climate; and it is observed that he is continually though gradually wasting away, notwithstanding his appetite is most voracious; that at length he partially loses the use of his hind legs, becomes weak across the loins, and for the want of nervous energy, a paralysis ensues, and the horse ultimately dies. But if he is given more stimulating food there is a chance of his ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... generalize and I accept, as the ration of the other Scoliae, larvae of Lamellicorns whose species will be determined by future observation. Perhaps one of them will be found to give chase to the terrible enemy of my crops, the voracious White Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer; perhaps the Hemorrhoidal Scolia, rivalling in size the Garden Scolia and like her, no doubt, requiring a copious diet, will be entered in the insects' "Who's Who" as the destroyer of the Pine-chafer, ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... confined me to the house for more than eight months; and, for the greatest share of that time, with the most excruciating torture. On getting out again, I found myself in a wretched condition indeed—reduced to a skeleton—a voracious appetite, which could not be indulged, and which had scarcely deserted me through the whole eight months. I could not regain my flesh or strength but by almost imperceptible degrees; indeed, loaf-sugar and crackers were almost the only ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... concerned were, a hen of the game species, and a rat of the middle size. The hen, in an accidental perambulation round a spacious room, accompanied by an only chicken, the sole surviving offspring of a numerous brood, was roused to madness by an unprovoked attack made by a voracious cowardly rat on her unsuspecting chirping companion. The shrieks of the beloved captive, while being dragged away by the enemy, excited every maternal feeling in the affectionate bosom of the feathered ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... it, and the patient breaks into a profuse perspiration, which leaves him pale, weak, and exhausted. He becomes rapidly and markedly emaciated, even although in some cases the appetite remains good and is even voracious. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... operation for the first six months after Oliver Twist's admission, and boys having generally excellent appetites, Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation. Each boy had one porringer of gruel, and no more. At last the boys got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one, who was tall for his age and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook's shop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruel ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... scarlet threshing machines, most of them labeled "Made in U.S.A.," which were centers of activity for hundreds of white-smocked peasants who were hauling in the grain with ox-teams, feeding it into the voracious maws of the machines, and piling the residue of straw into the largest stacks I have ever seen. As we drew near the mountains the grain fields gave way to grazing lands where great herds of cattle of various breeds—brindled milch animals, massive cream-colored ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... a witty, cynical, broken-down Parisian roue, kept in Washington for years past by his debts and his salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious devourer of French and German literature, especially of novels; a man who seemed to have met every noted or notorious personage of the century, and whose mind was a magazine of amusing information; an excellent musical critic, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... ham began to wax small before the voracious Norwegian, Captain Cumberland became really alarmed, and determined to report at once to the principal and the surgeon for instructions. Knocking at the door of the main cabin, he was admitted. Dr. Winstock assured him there was no danger to the guest; he had not been without food ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... wars will create a demand for manufactured goods such as our merchants have never dreamed of. And they will command war prices. It means employment with rich reward for capital and labor alike—a vastly increased foreign market, a much greater domestic market, high prices, and a steadily voracious demand for the entire output. The result will be the rapid diversification of industry in the United States, the creation of industries never before possible because of European competition, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the consciences of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans). Where was the legitimate influence of such a man? Was it in the white terror he diffused? Was it not the espionage, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... amphitheatre, several beasts were let loose upon them; but none of the animals, though hungry, would touch them. The keeper then brought out a large bear, that had that very day destroyed three men; but this voracious creature and a fierce lioness both refused to touch the prisoners. Finding the design of destroying them by the means of wild beasts ineffectual, Maximus ordered them to be slain by the sword, on the 11th of October, A. ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... nest. Like all its family the young hawk-cuckoo has a healthy appetite. In order to satisfy it the unfortunate foster-parents have to work like slaves, and often must they wonder why nature has given them so voracious a child. When it sees a babbler approaching with food, the cuckoo cries out and flaps its wings vigorously. Sometimes these completely envelop the parent bird while it is thrusting food into the yellow mouth of the cuckoo. The breast of the newly-fledged ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... and half starved, capelin and smelt in great numbers come to spawn along the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence. With high tide comes the beluga's chance to feed on the spawning fish and he will rush in quite near to shore for his favourite food. So voracious is he that with the fish he takes quantities of sand into his stomach. In eight or ten days he will eat enough to form from five to eight inches of fat over his whole body. "The facility with which he thus grows fat is explained," says the ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... statistician, Mr. Gradgrind, were in the flesh to-day, how he would gloat over this book! The 'facts' presented in its seven hundred double-columned pages would satisfy, even to repletion, his voracious cravings; and once crammed with them, he would go forth into society a walking cyclopedia of all that appertained to the civil, military, agricultural, industrial, financial, educational, charitable, and religious condition of these ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... around the margin and connect also with the four tentacles; from the centre of the lower surface hangs the proboscis, terminating in a mouth. Notwithstanding the delicate structure of this little being, it is exceedingly voracious. It places itself upon the surface of the animal on which it feeds, and, if it have any hard parts, it simply sucks the juices, dropping the dead carcass immediately after; but it swallows whole the little Acalephs of other Species ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... cephalopods made the radical change from external to the internal shell. They abandoned the defensive system of warfare and boldly took up the offensive. No doubt, like their descendants, the belemnites were exceedingly active and voracious creatures. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... water and struggle and flounder in the sun, they exhibit all the colors of the rainbow, but they soon expire, and when dead they are of a delicate white color. The trout, pike, and muscalonge devour them without mercy. Some of these voracious kinds have been caught with the remains of six ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... wretched luncheon in one of the log-and-mud huts I was sitting on the bench in front of the cabin trying to make peace with my digestion. The ground in that spot sloped down towards me, and on the side of this little hill there lay a large hog, a razor-back sow. There were eight little pigs clustered in voracious attitudes about her, and she could supply but six at a time,—I mean that she was provided by nature with but ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... happy as we, if not happier. There would have been to their mirth a little more than mere surface and youthful ability to find some jest in the most crushing tragedy if only they could have kept themselves clean. The lack of sufficient food was a severe trial, for both had voracious appetites; Etta was tormented by visions of quantity, Susan by visions of quality as well as of quantity. But only at meal times, or when they had to omit a meal entirely, were they keenly distressed ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... cartridges, even his coat, reducing his weight when the stuff only gripped him by the ankles. He was half to his thighs. He was sinking to his waist, and with all of his furious efforts, the frightful sand was shuddering, as if in animal ecstacy—some abominable ecstacy of hunger, voracious from long denial, as it ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... out, arrived in the black country on a freezing night in March, descended into the voracious pit, fell in love with the melancholy Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him; lived with the miners their gloomy life of misery and base promiscuousness, until one day when hunger, prompting rebellion, sent across the barren ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... starved hogs—collateral for a promissory note—were huddled into an open pen. Their backs were humped in a curious, camel-like fashion, and they were devouring one of their own number, the latest victim of absolute starvation or possibly merely the one least able to defend himself against their voracious hunger. The farmer's wife looked on indifferently, a picture of despair as she stood in the door of the bare, crude house, and the two children behind her, whom she vainly tried to keep out of sight, continually ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... accursed slave ship more violently than before, the lightning flashing more vividly, a terrific shock was felt, which made her tremble as if about to part asunder; the tall masts bent like willow wands, and fell with a crash into the sea; and the voracious waves came curling up, foam-crested, astern, and sweeping everything before them. The howling of the fierce hurricane overpowered the agonised shrieks of the drowning crew, as they were carried overboard; while from the hold arose the heart-piercing ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... tremendous. No one had ever succeeded in satisfying its voracious appetite; it would swallow anything and hungrily plead for more. His father, having started early and knowing what pleased his boy, was his most satisfactory feeder. It was Caleb's practice to drive out to the farm on Saturday afternoon and remain until Monday ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... ninetieth year. His book by want of order is obscure, and his asthma, I think, not of the same kind with mine. Something however I may perhaps learn. My appetite still continues keen enough; and what I consider as a symptom of radical health, I have a voracious delight in raw summer fruit, of which I was less eager a few years ago[1095]. You will be pleased to communicate this account to Dr. Heberden, and if any thing is to be done, let me have your joint opinion. Now—abite curoe;—let me enquire ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... complaints, cheerful time, the other later and, despite its resignation, from "the Valley of the Shadow"—require no annotation, save in respect of Carlyle's own on Deerbrook. He might well call it "poor": it is indeed one of the few novels by a writer of any distinction, which one tolerably voracious novel-reader has found incapable of being read. And this is curious: for she had written good ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... wreckage. It really looked as though they were aware of my presence, had divined my purpose, and were determined to frustrate it. For what seemed at least half-an-hour, but was probably not more than ten minutes, the voracious fish tacked this way and that, approaching me a little nearer every tack, until at length they were so close that I could have leapt upon the back of the nearer one, so close that I could distinctly ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... collectively. The town has been more occupied this week with Dudley's extravagancies than the affairs of Europe. He, in fact, is mad, but is to be cupped and starved and disciplined sound again. It has been fine talk for the town. The public curiosity and love of news is as voracious and universal as the appetite of a shark, and, like it, loves best what is grossest and most disgusting; anything relating to personal distress, to crime, to passion, is greedily devoured by this monster, as Cowley ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... of a book, a sudden touch, or even speaking to him unexpectedly, will cause him to start. Cowardice is a sure consequence of Self-Abuse and involuntary emissions. The appetite is irregular, often poor, sometimes voracious; the bowels are also variable in their action. The prostatic portion of the urethra is frequently irritable and sometimes is very much inflamed; oftentimes there is a thickening, a sponginess or puffiness of the parts immediately involving the ejaculatory ducts. The ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... contradict me. Think I don't know what I'm saying? You do want me. A boy of your years has no business to look like that. What have you been doing? Why, your pulse is galloping nineteen to the dozen, and your head's as hot as fire. You've been eating too much, you voracious young wolf. It's liver and bile. All right, my fine fellow! Pill hydrarg, to-night, and to-morrow morning a delicious goblet before breakfast—sulph mag, tinct sennae, ditto calumba. ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... hovering motionless. At six the next morning she was crouched safely on a bit of paper a foot from the aquarium. She had missed the open window, the four-foot drop to the floor, and a neighboring aquarium stocked with voracious fish: surely the gods of pollywogs were kind to me. The great fins were gone—dissolved into blobs of dull pink; the tail was a mere stub, the feet drawn close, and a glance at her head showed that Guinevere had become a frog almost within an hour. Three things I hastened to observe: ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... behind, and they had gone on, the child dragging backward at her aunt's hand. Now she could stand as long as she wished, and stare and stare, and drink in everything which her childish imagination craved, and that was much. The imagination of a child is often like a voracious maw, seizing upon all that comes within reach, and producing spiritual indigestions and assimilations almost endless in their effects upon the growth. This window before which Ellen stood was that of a market: a great expanse of plate-glass framing a crude study ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... had taught him how many individuals of the rank plant could occupy prolifically a given area, how the soil must be gathered about the roots to sustain the heavy stock, and that there must be no rival near it to draw away the nutriment on which the voracious plant feeds and grows. Civilization has invented implements to facilitate the processes of culture, but the observation of the savage had led him to a knowledge of all that is absolutely necessary to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles; Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the brown-faced crew; Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... missionary zeal had not yet been invented, and the writing of books would have seemed to them a waste of good parchment, for in their eyes the Scriptures and the Aristotelian writings supplied all the food that the most voracious intellect could crave for. So they applied all their genius—and it is probable that the flower of the European race, as far as intelligence and culture are concerned, was gathered in those days into the Church—and all the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers
... gentlewoman being at table, abroad or at home, must observe to keep her body straight, and lean not by any means with her elbows, nor by ravenous gesture discover a voracious appetite: talk not when you have meat in your mouth; and do not smack like a pig, nor venture to eat spoonmeat so hot that the tears stand in your eyes, which is as unseemly as the gentlewoman who pretended to have as little ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... upon our mind as a perpetual marvel. To witness those well-stocked tables, one moment displaying the prodigal richness of a lord mayor's feast, and the next to behold this scene of gastronomical fertility laid bare, as the simoom of a hundred voracious appetites sweeps across the tempting viands, and leaves all blank behind it, is a theme of exhaustless wonderment. We involuntarily think of the 182,500 Banbury cakes that are here annually consumed by pastry-loving passengers, and of the 70,080 bottles of stout that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the gard'ner cried, "Behold this fellow by my side; What is the use with daily toil To war with weeds, to clear the soil, And with keen intermittent labour To graft and prune for fruit with flavour The peach and plum, if such as he, Voracious vermin, may make free? Give them the roller or the rake, And crush as you would ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... removed, Heaven's own pure day, Full on the confines of our ether, flames: While (dreadful contrast!) far (how far!) beneath, Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, And storms suphureous; her voracious jaws Expanding wide, and roaring for ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... robbed by a third. The Austrians have burnt their Suburbs, the Republicans sold their national and ecclesiastical Estates, and lately they have had the pleasure of being pillaged by French Marshals and satisfying the voracious appetite of the Crown Prince, who put them to an expense of 150,000 frs. in providing his table for 7 weeks, and when they hinted that they thought it but fair their Royal visitor should pay for his own dinners, he departed, leaving his bills unpaid. He ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... voracious, but discriminating in their choice of food, yet I know of no plant they reject if pressed by hunger; not even the foliage of shrubs and trees, including ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... term weendigo, translated here monster, is commonly applied, at this time, by the Indians, to cannibals. Its ancient use appears, however, to have embraced giants and anomalous voracious beasts of the land, to the former existence of which, on ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... was with difficulty brought near the scaffold; the altar upon which he was to be sacrificed to supply the voracious appetites of man. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... winter of 1879, twelve and a half years old; but I do not believe that at any age the black wholly disappears from the primaries, leaving them white as in the Iceland and Glaucous Gulls. The Herring Gull is an extremely voracious bird, eating nearly everything that comes in its way, and rejecting the indigestible parts as Hawks do. Mr. Couch, in the 'Zoologist' for 1874, mentions having taken a Misseltoe Thrush from the throat of one; and I can quite believe ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... given much time, and much study, to make themselves such adepts in this art. It would be very difficult to determine, whether they were most to be distinguished as gluttons or epicures; for they were, at once, dainty and voracious, understood the right and the wrong of every dish, and alike emptied the one and the other. I should have been quite sick of their remarks, had I not been entertained by seeing that Lord Orville, who, I am sure, was equally disgusted, not only read my sentiments, but, by his countenance, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... especially the first months of it when I was doing the work of several normal men, I required an increased amount of fuel to generate the abnormal energy my activity demanded. I had a voracious appetite, and I insisted that the attendant give me the supper he was about to serve when he discovered me in the simulated throes of death. At first he refused, but finally relented and brought me a cup of tea and some buttered bread. Because of the severe choking administered earlier in the day ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... were laid aside, and her boots taken off, and she resigned herself to absolute ease and luxury, while Mary poured out the tea, and her aunt heaped her plate with eggs and rashers 'such as one doesn't get anywhere else,' said Nuttie, declaring herself quite voracious, while her aunt fondly admired her growth and improvement, and she inquired into the cold, not quite gone yet; and there were speculations over what Mark could have got into his head. Mary remembered having met him coming to call, and having told ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Greeley's life had resembled Weed's only in his voracious appetite for reading newspapers. He cared little for the boys about town and less for the sports of youth; he could dispense with sleep, and wasted no time thinking about what he should eat or wear; but books, and especially ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... these voracious little worms hairs enough to serve as food, and to afford material for the construction of their paltry cases; but that restless spirit that ever urges on all beings endowed with life and the power of motion, never forsakes the young clothes moth for a moment. He will not be forced to ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard |
