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More "Avidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from pa's room, Des," said the girl. He shook the carving-knife at her, at which gesture she said "Pooh!" and applied herself to the roast mutton with avidity. They all ate largely, especially the girl, whose wide mouth was filled with splendid teeth. Mrs. Somers made a motion with her glass for Murphy to bring her the wine, and pouring a teaspoonful, held it to her mouth, as if she were practicing drinking healths. Her hands were ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... year 1748, the strongest marks of royal encouragement were given to settle the country over the mountains; that the suspension of this encouragement, by the proclamation of October 1763, was merely temporary, untill the lands were purchased from the natives;—that the avidity to settle these lands was so great, that large settlements were made thereon, before they were purchased;—that although the settlers were daily exposed to the cruelties of the savages, neither ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... bicycling, and rowing are all extensively patronised by the young men of Japan, and cricket has of recent years come considerably into vogue. The students of the Imperial University have not only shown no disinclination, but, on the contrary, an avidity to combine athletics with their studies, and in base-ball especially they have more than held their own against the foreigner. I confess I have no desire to see the craze for outdoor sports which is so much in evidence in this country extending to Japan. Some of the public schools ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... though we all contributed to make up deficiencies. But Mr. Moorshed, not much carin' for further Navy after what Frankie said, certainly threw himself into the part with avidity." ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... houses with pictures, hangings, porcelain, and precious objects from all the countries of Europe and Asia, the rich merchants of the large Dutch cities began to spend considerable sums in ornamenting their gardens with tulips—the flower which answers best to that innate avidity for vivid colors which the Dutch people manifest in so many ways. This taste for tulips promoted their rapid cultivation; everywhere gardens were laid out, studies promoted, new varieties of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... landscape to eyes that had thus far rested only on palaces and drawing-rooms, a natural garden to men who had never promenaded outside of clipped shrubs and rectilinear borders, the country, the family, the people, simple and endearing pleasures, to townsmen made weary by social avidity, by the excesses and complications of luxury, by the uniform comedy which, in the glare of hundreds of lighted candles, they played night after night in their own and in the homes of others[4141]. An audience thus disposed makes no clear distinction between pomp and sincerity, between sentiment ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... has been robbed with difficulty of its oxygen it takes it on again with great avidity. This has been made use of in the making of hydrogen. A mixture of silicon (or of the ferro-silicon alloy containing 90 per cent. of silicon) with soda and slaked lime is inert, compact and can be transported to any point where hydrogen is needed, say at a battle front. ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... tracts of buffalo-grass, a thin, low, wiry grass that grows in small tufts, and does not look as if there were any nourishment in it, but is said to be more fattening than corn. Our animals ate it with avidity. Was not all this dreary waste wearily monotonous and tame? Monotonous, yes; but no more tame than the sea is tame. We sailed along day after day over the land-waves as on a voyage. To ride over those lonely divides in the fresh morning ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... original sources into his beloved Castilian tongue. Before setting out for Rome he had so applied himself to the worn little grammar which the proprietor of the bookstall in Seville had loaned him, that he was able to make translations with comparative fluency. In the seminary he plunged into it with avidity; and when he returned from his journey with the Papal Legate he began in earnest his translation of the Testament. This, like so much of the boy's work and writing, was done secretly and in spare moments. And his ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... sounds of their language, while the mountaineers, armed, even while engaged in this peaceful occupation, with musket and pistol, sword, dagger, and target, stared with astonishment on the articles of luxury of which they knew not the use, and with an avidity which seemed somewhat alarming on the articles which they knew and valued. It is always with unwillingness that the Highlander quits his deserts, and at this early period it was like tearing a pine from ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... by headaches. Books of historical memoirs, hitherto an unfailing solace, failed to interest her. Love stories she would avoid for weeks on end, as if they were the plague, suddenly to fall to and devour them with avidity, when the inclination ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... while my acquaintance with English literature was gradually extending itself. In the intervals of my school hours I had always perused with avidity such books of history or poetry or voyages and travels as chance presented to me—not forgetting the usual, or rather ten times the usual, quantity of fairy tales, Eastern stories, romances, etc. These studies were totally unregulated and undirected. My tutor thought it almost ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted to him because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters with which they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands were reading him with no less avidity because he introduced them to passages of nature and life of which they before knew nothing, but of the truth of which their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them. Only to genius are so revealed the affinities and sympathies ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... tails, unhooked their wings, and began immediately digging away with wonderful rapidity into the earth. They had good need of haste, for birds were seen assembling from all quarters, numerous hawks being among them, who began snapping them up with the greatest avidity. The natives, too, immediately set to work to collect them, giving them a pinch and putting them into baskets which they carried at their sides. They were quite as eager to obtain them as the birds were. On picking some of them up I found that they were fully half an inch long, as ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... many philosophies. He had one for every day in the week, yet none wherewith to thoroughly satisfy himself. While still a mere lad he had taken to the study of science as a duck takes to water,—no new discovery or even suggestion of a new discovery missed his instant and close attention. His avidity for learning was insatiable,—his intense and insistent curiosity on all matters of chemistry gave a knife-like edge to the quality of his brain, making it sharp, brilliant and incisive. To him the ordinary ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honore held a glass of water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to him spoonful ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... indelicate kind. Fish, when he can obtain them, are preferred to all other fare. Young lambs and pigs are dainty morsels, and made free with on all favourable occasions. Ducks, geese, gulls, and other sea fowl, are also seized with avidity. The most putrid carrion, when nothing better can be had, is acceptable; and the collected groups of gormandizing vultures, on the approach of this dignified personage, instantly disperse, and make way for their master, waiting his departure in sullen ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... good place for our encampment. I gave a pound of flour to one of the blackfellows. He is going tomorrow on foot to see if there is water in the waterholes on the road to Barcoo River. Jemmy made flour into a cake and the blackfellow and his companions ate it with avidity. I gave the blacks a comb, and Jackey pleased them very ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... with avidity; and then setting down the jug once more, partook of some bread, looking down the while at his little benefactor, and ending ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... pronounced intellectual side—goodness knew she didn't even then by the physical!—which she had artfully kept in view till she had entangled him past undoing. And it had all been but the cheapest of traps—when he came to take the pieces apart a bit—laid over a brazen avidity. What he now collapsed for, none the less—what he sank down on a chair at a table and nursed his weak, scared sobs in his resting arms for—was the fact that, whatever the trap, it held him as with ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... four letters. She opened them with avidity, for they were certificates that there were other things in life as well as Richard with which she could occupy herself. Two were bills, the first from her dressmakers and the other from the dealer who had sold her some coloured glass a few weeks before; and there was a dividend warrant ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... books I came upon Wraxall's "Memoirs of the House of Valois," and, reading it with great avidity, determined to write an historical novel, of which the heroine should be Francoise de Foix, the beautiful Countess de Chateaubriand. At this enterprise I now set eagerly to work, the abundant production ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the cool water with avidity, Brian looking at me with twinkling eyes as he helped himself to a ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... minutes she returned, bland and benignant as before; but I thought she had forgotten to give the "poor ittie doggie" anything to eat, judging by the avidity with which he swallowed down chance pieces of cake. The tea-tray was abundantly loaded—I was pleased to see it, I was so hungry; but I was afraid the ladies present might think it vulgarly heaped up. I know they would have done at their own houses; ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... running amuck." ... "There are abundant indications that this epidemic is now rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating articles of a notorious frenzied fakir, who, like a crazed Malay, is wildly running amuck, and, without rhyme or reason, slashing at the reputations ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Vaucanson was still more remarkable. It was of the size of life, and so perfect an imitation of the living animal that all the spectators were deceived. It executed, says Brewster, all the natural movements and gestures, it ate and drank with avidity, performed all the quick motions of the head and throat which are peculiar to the duck, and like it muddled the water which it drank with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking in the most natural manner. In the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... disturbed to note that there began to appear in various publications—especially M——'s, which was flourishing greatly for the moment—stories which while exhibiting much of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy ending, had been impressed on him—by whom? To my sincere dissatisfaction, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... spell was thrown round his fancy which led to all the rest. The same might be said of her, for when her husband, then a stranger, poured forth, in one of their evening meetings, the great rich volume of his voice, she ceased to sing that she might listen with avidity. It was not long after that before Kern mustered courage to ask "Miss Buggone, mout I hab de pleasure ob 'companyin' you home?" Not many months elapsed before he accompanied her home to stay, with Aun' ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years, being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy. His dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not the annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the psychology of the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both political and intellectual, and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... throughout this conversation, had stood bending over his visitor, waiting for each of his words with feverish avidity, now drew himself up and looked at Lupin as though he undoubtedly had to do with a madman. When Lupin had finished speaking, the baron stepped back two or three paces, seemed on the point of uttering words which he ended by not saying, and then, without taking his eyes from his strange ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... notion of a superior power was one which inspired them with awe and terror. I have frequently observed that the unsophisticated minds of savages grasp the simple and glorious truths of the gospel with an avidity and a power of comprehension which would be surprising to those who have been accustomed week after week and year after year to set the same truths before those to whom they are familiar. As I heard Mr Bent and Vihala addressing the people, whose ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... 'middles,' which he considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, it really loves a sermon, and is glad to hear preachers who are not bound by the proprieties of the religious pulpit. Some essayists, like Johnson, have been as ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... inspiration, were the props on which my brother thought proper to repose. Pleyel was the champion of intellectual liberty, and rejected all guidance but that of his reason. Their discussions were frequent, but, being managed with candour as well as with skill, they were always listened to by us with avidity and benefit. ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... along this path without looking back, without a thought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him on his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled along that path, the darkness closed in upon him. His ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... When sufficiently done, it is taken out, the ashes are knocked away, and then—no civilized man, whose appetite has never been sharpened by open-air exposure in the woods, can understand the keen avidity with which the delicious ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... mortification and penance, I might safely permit your stay, nor fear your inspiring me with warmer sentiments than pity. But to yourself, remaining in the Abbey can produce none but fatal consequences. You will misconstrue my every word and action; You will seize every circumstance with avidity, which encourages you to hope the return of your affection; Insensibly your passions will gain a superiority over your reason; and far from these being repressed by my presence, every moment which we pass together, ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... and has been for a century loved and mourned of all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender lays—prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is known of Highland ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... are enclosed in wooden cages on the backs of camels, and are guided by experienced pilots by chart and compass, as mariners on the ocean. In this journey many perish by thirst, and many by drinking with too much avidity when they fall in with wells. Owing to this Momia is found in these sands, bring the flesh of such as have been drowned in the sea of sand, which is there dried up by the heat of the sun, and the excessive dryness ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... the dignity of even such thin history as this; but I confess that when, as a story-seeker always and ever, I have come in from my strolls with an irritated sense of the dumbness of stones and mortar, it has been to listen with avidity, over my dinner, to the proffered confidences of the worthy man who stands by with a napkin. His talk is really very fine, and he prides himself greatly on his cultivated tone, to which he calls my attention. He has very little good to say about the Sienese nobility. ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... superb splendour from a pearly haze, the innumerable towers of Manhattan floated and gleamed before my eyes. Irresistibly there came to me a memory of Turner's Venetian masterpieces, and I knew that even that great magician would have seized upon the scene before me with avidity, would have delighted in the fairy-like threads of the bridges, the poetic groupings of the vast buildings, and the innumerable fenestrations of the campanili. One by one half-forgotten fragments of Byron came back to me as I looked ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... to be fulfilled concerning these men, "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." But I am inclined to think this avidity does not proceed from any bad intention. For the monks of this Order (although themselves most abstemious) incessantly exercise, more than any others, the acts of charity and beneficence towards the poor and strangers; and because they do not live as others upon ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... had produced such good effects could never be carried to excess. If five hundred millions of paper had been of such advantage, five hundred millions additional would be of still greater advantage. This was the grand error of the Regent, and which Law did not attempt to dispel. The extraordinary avidity of the people kept up the delusion; and the higher the price of Indian and Mississippi stock, the more billets de banque were issued to keep pace with it. The edifice thus reared might not unaptly be compared to the gorgeous palace erected by Potemkin, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... fight—when no other alternative was open to him—but the bustle and confusion, and, above all, the exertion, he considered such "a howwid boah," that he always most carefully avoided those occasions for distinguishing himself, which other men are wont to seek with avidity. Why on earth he ever entered the navy was a ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... seemed scarcely to have warranted these trifling blows. I was moved to compassion as it sat upon the jaw-bone of a whale, which projected beneath the tafrail, at one moment devouring pieces of its mother and sister with avidity, and at the next stretching its throat and blaring out mournfully, when a fragment of ice met its view, passing astern as we sailed on our course. It was about the size of a sheep, and after their tea the sailors got it down below, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... taken rooms at the hotel temporarily, and the plan suited her mother excellently. For one thing, Mrs. De Graf could go home and tell her Cloverton gossips that she had stopped at the most "fashionable" hotel in New York; a second point was that she loved to feast with epicurean avidity upon the products of a clever chef, being one of those women who live to eat, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... but considers opposed opinions and listens attentively and respectfully to them. Hazlitt said of the charming discussion of Northcote, the painter: "He lends an ear to an observation as if you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it with as much avidity and earnestness as if it interested only ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... about Zawisza, Farurej, Powala of Taczew, about Lis of Targowisko and about all the others; what they were doing; how they amused themselves; in what honest exercises they passed the time? And he listened with avidity to Macko who told him that in the morning, the knights dressed in their armor, jumped over horses, broke ropes, tried one another's skill with swords and with axes having sharp ends made of lead; finally, he told how they feasted and what songs they sang. Zbyszko ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... house, which is in the suburbs, and called Schauspielhause, is by much the larger and more commodious place of entertainment. I seized with avidity the first opportunity of seeing the Zauberfloete here, and here also I saw Don Giovanni: the former as perfectly, in every respect, as the latter was inefficiently, performed. But here I saw the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... later the Missing Link and the Living Skeleton were sitting under the pile bridge a mile above the township, with a bottle of whisky between them. Bonypart was eating bread and cheese with an avidity which demonstrated the abandonment of all professional instincts. Nicholas Crips was drinking whisky slightly diluted with creek water. His drinking cup was ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... unaccountable, the more prodigious, has been the phenomenon which has scared and astounded us, the more, with involuntary effort, the mind seeks to rid itself of an enigma which might disease the reason that tries to solve it. We go about our mundane business with renewed avidity; we feel the necessity of proving to ourselves that we are still sober, practical men, and refuse to be unfitted for the world which we know, by unsolicited visitations from worlds into which every glimpse is ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... founder before even they touched the rocks—the more did the infernal joy of this passenger reveal itself in frightful transports. He seemed to long, with ferocious impatience, for the moment when the work of destruction should be accomplished. To see him thus feasting with avidity on all the agony, the terror, and the despair of those around him, one might have taken him for the apostle of one of those sanguinary deities, who, in barbarous countries, preside over ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... "stercoris taurini et anserini par, quantitas trium magnarum nucum," of the hell-broth containing which "guoties-cumque sitit oeger, large bibit." When I have recalled the humane common-sense of Captain Cook in the matter of preventing this disease; when I have heard my friend, Mr. Dana, describing the avidity with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is often a return to nature, and seen in this ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... boy's story which will be read with avidity, as it ought to be, it is so brightly and frankly written, and with such evident knowledge of the temperaments and habits, the friendships and enmities of ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... again, which was the signal for an obsequious roar. He said he would prefer some bread and anchovy, and could help himself. He accepted a little of the rum for politeness' sake, and then professed himself satisfied. After some outcry on his lack of appetite the rest of the party fell to with avidity. The presence of his uncle, which he now realised for the first time, relieved Iskender from the fear of personal indignity. He, too, attacked the victuals with good appetite, but refused the spirits, strong in the example of Abdullah's abstinence. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... were friends, they were fellow-sufferers, and long after Henrietta had tired of singing, Rose went on playing, mournfully, as it seemed to Henrietta, consoling herself with sweet sounds. Sophia sat before her embroidery frame, slowly pushing her needle in and out; Caroline read a novel with avidity and an occasional pause for chuckles, and when Rose at length dropped her hands on her knees and remained motionless, staring at the keys, Henrietta startled her aunts by saying firmly, 'I am just going to ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... 28th of August came—the date for breaking up camp and going into barracks—I felt as though I had been at West Point always, and that if I staid to graduation, I would have to remain always. I did not take hold of my studies with avidity, in fact I rarely ever read over a lesson the second time during my entire cadetship. I could not sit in my room doing nothing. There is a fine library connected with the Academy from which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. I devoted more time to these, than to books ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... in the most abject misery and in the last stages of starvation. As Champlain could only furnish them, from his limited stores, temporary and partial relief, it was the more painful to see them slowly dragging their feeble frames about in the snow, gathering up and devouring with avidity discarded meat in which the process of decomposition was far advanced, and which was already too potent with the stench of decay to be approached by ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... sects of the Christian religion, we find that its progressiveness is to be measured, not by the numbers of its women adherents, but by their relative freedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, who follow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leave them all as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remain contented Romanists, but in America the status ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... 'Notes.' The old-fashioned quill pen was his preference; and as the hours advanced, and mental excitement waxed in activity, the profuse spattering of ink rattled like rain. As a matter of course, his pay was of the highest rate, and his articles were read with avidity. One reason of this may be found in the boldness with which he drags into the imaginary colloquies of Noctes Ambrosianae the literati of both kingdoms. This liberty was sometimes felt keenly, and sharply resented. Poor James Hogg, the 'Ettrick ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the bits were replaced and the check fastened. Then he chewed a handful of clover with avidity and went on again as dejectedly as ever. Presently they reached a long, level stretch of road and stopped in the shade of a big ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... This proclivity of mind manifested itself in very early life. He organized a volunteer company, the Natchez Fencibles, soon after he came to the Bar, and took great pride in its drill and soldierly bearing and appearance. He seized with avidity the opportunity the Mexican war presented, and there greatly distinguished himself. After the termination of this war, he was engaged (very little to the honor of his sagacity) in endeavoring to organize ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... cupful was passed to each then, swallowed with avidity, and then Wilton sighed as he helped to secure ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... grew older, I exhibited a remarkable love of reading, and as no one took the trouble to direct my tastes, I seized every book which came within my reach and devoured it, with the avidity of a hungry and unoccupied mind. My father was a gentleman of pure and elegant taste, and had he dreamed that I was exposed, without guardianship, to dangerous influences, he would have shielded and warned me. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... self-same commodity. Even in art-objects which are still bounded by matter, among genuine lovers of art the individuality of each stands out in mitigation of the antagonism of competition, for no two will have precisely the same tastes or estimates, or will seek with equal avidity the same embodiments of art. As we rise to purely intellectual or moral enjoyments, competition gives way to generous rivalry in co-operation. In the pursuit of knowledge or goodness the rivalry is no longer antagonism—what one gains another does not lose. One man's ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... about to be corrected by the observations and treatises of Mr. H., who was now generally known to have forwarded an account of his discoveries to some of the learned Societies of London; and the English papers were perused with avidity, in the hope of finding that due honour had been paid to ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... a gal as ye are," she began, and then she related experiences quite devoid of the simplicity and innocence of childhood. The girl soon forgot her fears and listened with avidity until the old dame's face grew heavier, if possible, with sleep, and she ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... must not be imputed to me either, that I have any intention of authorizing. For instance, what I have related of the manes, or lares; of the evocation of souls after the death of the body; of the avidity of these souls to suck the blood of the immolated animals, of the shape of the soul separated from the body, of the inquietude of souls which have no rest until their bodies are under ground; of those superstitious ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... to the advocate you chose,—one whom I never refuse,—one to whom I feel under the deepest obligation, especially this morning,—one who is so modest that she can seldom be induced to ask me a favor, or to allow me to serve her. Thus, you see, it is but natural that I should seize with avidity upon this opportunity." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... amateurs. The part taken in its representation by Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, Marston, Wilkie Collins, and other men of prominent intellectual distinction, has given a remarkable prestige to this play, independent of its actual merits. It can not fail to be sought with avidity, both from interest in the occasion, and the popularity of the author. Nor is it altogether unworthy of his great reputation. The construction of the plot shows his usual fertility of resource, and the dialogue, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... muscles stood out like cords, and which were deeply wrinkled above the elbow; then she opened and closed her curved fingers, like the talons of a griffin, and sprang at the mass of golden bars with fierce and bestial avidity. She plunged her arms amid the ingots, moved them, stirred them round, rolled them over, threw them up; her lips trembled, her nostrils swelled, and down her spine ran convulsive tremors. Intoxicated, mad, shaken by trepidation and spasmodic laughter, she cast handfuls ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... which had been brought along were filled with good things, and these were speedily passed around. The boys fell to eating with avidity, for the adventures of the evening had made them hungry. Then Dave was ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... water at a draught, with the avidity of raging thirst, and let herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly overcome. Her attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine: the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... just what should be expected. It is the very weakness of the hold which nitrogen maintains upon the elements combined with it that facilitates their release, and affords them the opportunity to seize with so much avidity and violence on those for which they have a ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... dangers to his darlings he thought a woman the worst, and had therefore seized with avidity the chance of making that room a hidden one, the possibility of which he had spied almost the moment ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... successor. This doctrine, a branch of the Metempsycosis, was converted by Lao-Kung into the art of producing a renovation of the faculties in the same body, by the means of certain preparations taken from the three kingdoms of nature. The infatuated people flew with avidity to the fountain of life. Princes even sought after the draughts that should render them immortal, but which, in fact, brought on premature death. Numerous instances are said to be on record, wherein the eunuchs have prevailed on the sovereign to swallow the immortal liquor which seldom failed ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... latter was disposed to believe himself a subject of interest with this person, against whose exclusiveness and haughty reserve, notwithstanding, he had been making side-hits ever since the ship had sailed. But the avidity with which the Americans of Mr. Dodge's temperament are apt to swallow the crumbs of flattery that fall from the Englishman's table, is matter of history, and the editor himself was never so happy as when he could lay hold of a paragraph to republish, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... intense interest. It was just such a one as he would have read with avidity under any circumstances. It gratified his taste for adventure, and he entered heart and soul into the Baron's plans, and felt a corresponding gratification when he succeeded. When he completed the perusal of the fascinating volume, he thought, "Why ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... something about "business," while a slight flush tinged his cheeks, and at once asked Mr. Winters "what effect he supposed the resumption of specie payment would have upon the state of the country," and the unsuspecting old gentleman was ready to enter with avidity upon the ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... peculiar hobby, through his influence Fremont was sent with an exploring party to the Rocky Mountains. Under his command similar expeditions were repeated again and again to that mysterious wonderland; and never were the wildest fictions read with more avidity than his official reports of daily adventure, danger and discovery, of scaling unclimbed mountains, wrecking his canoes on the rapids of unvisited rivers, parleying and battling with hostile Indians, and facing starvation while hemmed in by trackless snows. One of these journeys had led him ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... possible right issue from the rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this—he believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious "tightness" of the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the "story," with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, essentially—it ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... among women of letters, was almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The editor of these epistles, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... marked an old biographical dictionary at pages containing lives of "self-made" men, who had risen as inventors or improvers in mechanics or as discoverers of important facts of natural science. Jan had not hitherto studied their careers with the avidity Master Swift would have liked to see, but one day he found him reading the fat ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... newspapers knew the avidity with which their articles are read by persons isolated as we are, I have the charity to believe they would devote a little more time, and exert a little more candor, in penning them. For, after all, how large a portion of all that a newspaper contains is, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... regretted the inability of my memory to retain a more strong impression of the beautiful forms before me; and again and again, in quitting a fortunate station, have I returned to it with the most eager avidity, in the hope of bearing away a more lively picture. At this moment, when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high enjoyment in reflecting that perhaps scarcely a day of my life will pass in which I shall not derive ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... long time to find that bubbling spring; but they discovered it at last, coming down from hundreds of feet above their heads, over vivid green moss and under fern fronds, to form into tiny pools in the crevices of the rocks; and from one of these they drank with avidity long cooling draughts of the sparkling water dipped out in the flask cup, and then they ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... dispute it with Edinburgh to possess you. If I had ships, I would make a descent on Scotland, to steal off my CHER MYLORD, and bring him hither. Alas, our Elbe Boats can't do it. But you give me hopes;—which I seize with avidity! I was your late Brother's friend, and had obligations to him; I am yours with heart and soul. These are my titles, these are my rights:—you sha'n't be forced in the matter of progeny here (FAIRE L'ETALON ICI), neither priests nor attorneys shall ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... before the stems of the common Goats-beard shoot up the roots, boiled like asparagus, have the same flavour, and are nearly as nutritious. We are also informed by Villars that the children in Dauphine universally eat the stems and leaves of the young plant before the flowers appear, with great avidity. The fresh juice of these tender herbs is said to be the best ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... he was down on one knee with an arm under the sufferer's shoulders, raising him as gently as if the task was being done by a woman. Then the tin was held to the poor fellow's lips, and the orderly smiled as he saw the avidity with which ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... the proper foundation for future historical reading; and that, outside of the enforced study of the school-room, it is seldom made use of. The people in general—the masses—do not read such works, while they do read with avidity historical legends, historical romances, historical poems and dramas, and biographical sketches. And we do not hesitate to assert that from Shakspeare's historical plays the reading public have acquired (together with much other valuable information) a hundred-fold more ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... place during a certain month in the Gulf of Satalia (on the coast of Pamphylia). There appeared a great and black dragon which came in clouds, and let down his head into the water, whilst his tail seemed turned to the sky; and the dragon drew the water to him by drinking, with such avidity, that, if any ship, even though laden with men or any other heavy articles, had been near him when drinking, it would nevertheless have been sucked up and carried on high. In order however to avoid this danger, it is necessary, when people see it, at once to make a great uproar, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... reference to the tonic port, until one day I noticed that our cat (who had recently lost her kittens) seemed in a poor state of health. I gave it a few spoonfuls of the tonic port in a little milk. It drank it with avidity, somewhat to my surprise. I had one or two little things to do in the garden after that, and when I came back Eliza said that the cat had become so very strange in its manner that she had thought it best to ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... the press of Joseph Israel, of Clarksburg, in North Western Virginia, prepared by Alexander Scott Withers, on the border wars of the West. It was well received at the time of its publication, when works on that subject were few, and read with avidity by the surviving remnant of the participators in the times and events so graphically described, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... third of a century has passed since the incidents of this true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been gradually withdrawn from sight. The intense avidity which at first grasped at every incident of the great insurrectionary plot was succeeded by a distaste for the memory of the tale; and the official reports which told what slaves had once planned and dared have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... against the patronizing manner of the steward's wife; but he waited, like Bridau, for some word which might give him his cue; one of those words "de singe a dauphin" which artists, cruel, born-observers of the ridiculous—the pabulum of their pencils—seize with such avidity. Meantime Estelle's clumsy hands and feet struck their eyes, and presently a word, or phrase or two, betrayed her past, and quite out of keeping with the elegance of her dress, made the two young fellows aware of their prey. A single glance at each other ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... owner of his vessel and cargo, as well as padrone or captain, entertained Bacri with accounts of his adventures on the sea, which the Jew returned in kind with his experiences of mercantile transactions in savage lands. Mariano drank in all that they said with youthful avidity, and the little old lady's mouth rippled responsive, like the aspen leaf to the breeze; while Lucien and Juliet, thus left to themselves, had no other resource than to entertain each other as best ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... been found in the garret of Col's house, and which he said was a treasure here. When we descried him from above, he had a most eremitical appearance; and on our return told us, he had been so much engaged by Gataker, that he had never missed us. His avidity for variety of books, while we were in Col, was frequently expressed; and he often complained that so few were within his reach. Upon which I observed to him, that it was strange he should complain ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... not to be swallowed with avidity by me. Too late I remembered that I was already enslaved by inextricable obligations. It was easy to have hidden this impediment from the eyes of my companion, but here my integrity refused to yield. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the cloisters where, in place of antiphonaries, heavy ledgers reposed on reading-desks. Like leprosy, the avidity of the age was ravaging the Church, weighing down the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Comte, with which to enrich my chapters in the subsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me in some of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As his subsequent volumes successively made their appearance, I read them with avidity, but, when he reached the subject of Social Science, with varying feelings. The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. But the fifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm; ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... him, in bearing with his presence, in suffering his gaze, she made it plain that she did it against her will; as the captive endures perforce the company of the brigand in whose power he lies, but whom, when opportunity offers, he will deliver with avidity to the cord or the garotte. Because she must, and for her brother's sake, for the sake of his name and pride and home, she was willing to do this, though she abhorred it; and though every time that she broke bread with the intruder, met his eyes, or breathed ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... skirmish a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground. Roger seized it with avidity, and, crouching on the floor, smoothed the paper ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of amnesty, and may be deemed fit objects of example; that the friends to peace and good government were not in need of that aid and countenance which they ought always to receive, and, I trust, ever will receive, against the vicious and turbulent, I should have caught with avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... in fertility of invention, and exaggerated descriptions. Hence large fresh water rivers, valuable ores, and quarries of limestone, chalk, and marble, were daily proclaimed soon after we had landed. At first we hearkened with avidity to such accounts; but perpetual disappointments taught us to listen with caution, and to believe from ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... them and set them in such a manner that an ornament which had at first been looked upon as wanting in lustre, proceeded out of Cardillac's shop possessing a dazzling magnificence. Every commission he accepted with burning avidity, and fixed a price that seemed to bear no proportion whatever to the work to be done—so small was it. Then the work gave him no rest; both night and day he was heard hammering in his work-shop, and often when the thing was nearly finished he would suddenly conceive a dislike to the form; ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... column" would really be amusing were it not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity by Suburbia. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... finances, agreed poorly with my stomach. The restaurant was a place I had often visited experimentally, to taste the life of students then more unfortunate than myself; and I had never in those days entered it without disgust, or left it without nausea. It was strange to find myself sitting down with avidity, rising up with satisfaction, and counting the hours that divided me from my return to such a table. But hunger is a great magician; and so soon as I had spent my ready cash, and could no longer fill up on bowls of chocolate or hunks of bread, I must depend entirely on that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... finished it had gripped him hard again. In those last days of January he well remembered wandering about in the parks day after day, trying to get away from it. Mild weather, with a scent in the wind! With what avidity he had watched children playing, the premature buds on the bushes, anything, everything young—with what an ache, too, he had been conscious of innumerable lives being lived round him, and loves loved, and he outside, unable ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... bed and announced that he had completely recovered and was extremely hungry. On being asked what he would like to eat he begged for bread and sardines. These were immediately provided, the bread being coarse and brown. He ate with avidity, and every one present felt the greatest satisfaction. Within a few ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... are very intelligent, not only the inhabitants of the cities, but of the most remote rural districts. Their education goes far beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic. The peasant learns with avidity. His mental faculties are ever on the alert. He takes a deep interest in the public welfare and no mean part in all political and local affairs. More than half of the Storthing is made up of members of this rank in life. Not unfrequently ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... he saw Brunehaut in her beauty, her attractiveness and her trouble; he was smitten with her and married her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, had the imprudent courage to seal their union. Fredegonde seized with avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and destroying her step-son, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The Austrasians, who had preserved the child Childebert, son of their murdered king, demanded back with threats their queen Brunehaut. She was ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the midst of my many packages, not altogether satisfied with my prospects; for the rain was falling heavily and steadily, and the Gatun porters were possessing themselves of my luggage with that same avidity which distinguishes their brethren on the pier of Calais or the quays of Pera. There are two species of individuals whom I have found alike wherever my travels have carried me—the reader can ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... himself, then threw them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged with avidity into ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is the name of the new novel written by Mrs. Ann S. Stephens. Its pages are replete with incidents of absorbing interest, and her admirers will read it with avidity, and with a zest which would indicate that the freshness and interest of each of her new novels are still as potent as were her earliest productions. The leading characters are carried through a series of exciting adventures, all of which are narrated and drawn out ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... who have always cherished with grateful affection those who devote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious or useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desired with more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of the ancients. For whether they had by nature a greater vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these things, ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... opposite to me. No servants appeared, and we waited on ourselves. I have a vague recollection of various excellent dishes, and a distinct one of abundance of wine. Someone filled me a glass of champagne, and I confess that I drained it with honest avidity, blessing the craftsman who coaxed forth the essence, the fruit that harboured it, the sun that ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of the cup against the trembling lips, and perforce the Frenchman drank, at first slowly, then with avidity, till at last he clasped the cup in both his quivering hands and ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... these elements of romance, with the moral principles lying at their root, were laid hold of by Mrs. Stowe. The wonderful enthusiasm with which her work was received, the avidity with which it was read all the world over, showed how wide and deep was the sympathy which the position of the colored race in America was calculated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... days no memory of the past returned to her, her existence was as the existence of a new-born babe, spent alternately in taking food and sleep. Food she took with eager avidity after her long starvation, and then sank back again into ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... supply. The elephant, true lord of the forest, revels in this fruit, and so do the different species of rhinoceros, although naturally so diverse in their choice of pasture. The various kinds of antelopes feed on them with equal avidity, and lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice, all seem to know and appreciate the common blessing. These melons are not, however, all of them eatable; some are sweet, and others so bitter that the whole are named by the Boers the "bitter watermelon". The natives select them by striking one melon after ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... already, and despise money that is made of jam. Yet coal and beer are swallowed with avidity by young women who have not forfeited the right to be fastidious. That is the last thing I wished to say, but you have wrung it from me. Have you no pride? Do you want Society to say that you have embraced the profession of a Religious, and intend henceforth to employ ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... done," cries the thin voice of Garrigou's bell, and this time the unlucky priest, abandoning himself to the demon of gluttony, rushes through the missal, devouring its pages with all the avidity of an overcharged appetite. Frantically he bows; arises; makes the signs of the cross, goes through the genuflexions, abbreviates all his gestures, the sooner to be finished. Scarcely does he extend his arms to the Gospel, or strike his breast where it is required. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... speaking Members still feel an avidity; If they burn to make orations of most uncommon zest, Let them just take our precaution against intense stupidity! Let them study PUNCHINELLO and learn how to make a jest; But away with dreams chimerical and projects vain, though clever! The power of tongue's proportionate to wondrous length ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... stupid-looking boy at this time, his appearance not revealing the undeveloped depths of his nature. He made the acquaintance of some of the students at Yale College, and of the Rev. E. W. Dwight. These friends becoming interested in his welfare, offered to teach him. He accepted their aid with avidity, and made wonderful progress, at the same time becoming more ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... to these ladies. However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... that Lord Vincent was unfolding to his companion. It was the very same plot that he had communicated to his valet, the atrocity of which had shocked even that cut-throat. It did not shock Faustina, however. She listened with avidity. She co-operated with zeal. She suggested such modifications and improvements for securing the success of the conspiracy, and the safety of the conspirators, as only her woman's tact, inspired ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... are recalled to the same territory, no longer as the goal of the adventurous trader or the battle ground of the political agitator, but as a land of promise—a new El Dorado, to which men are rushing with all the avidity that the presence of the one, thing which all men, in all times and in all places, insatiably desire is sure ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... confidence that I knew Dr Duncan would call several times in the course of the day. As for Tom, I had equal assurance that he would attend to orders; and as Gerard was very fond of him, I dismissed all anxiety about both, and allowed my mind to return with fresh avidity to the contemplation of its own cares, and ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... years of age. Liquor was never meant to be a steady companion. It was the animating influence which made oats wild. Work and responsibility are the portion of the mature man. Rum was designed for youthful days when the reckless avidity for experience is so great that reality must be blurred a ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who, having been always an enthusiastic admirer of Lord Byron, was no less surprised than delighted to find that the person tinder his care had for so many years been an attendant on his favourite poet. With avidity, as may be supposed, he noted down from the lips of his patient all the particulars she could remember of his Lordship's early days; and it is to the communications with which this gentleman has favoured me, that I am indebted ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... of the Old Bailey would be included in the package of books we received from London; among these my husband found and read with avidity:— ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by great hooked weapons and dashed against the ground, we feel a pity akin to contempt for a people so stupid and passive, and are not altogether sorry that the Picts and Scots, "differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood," had come with their bushy beards and their half-clothed bodies, to supplant so effeminate a race. When he makes this feeble people send an embassy to a Roman in Gaul to say, "The barbarians ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... of surpassing my seniors, and the hope of exposing their ignorance, stimulated me to inquiry, and roused me to application. The books which I had reported lost to my father, were handed out from the bottom of my chest, and read with avidity: many others I borrowed from the officers, whom I must do the justice to say, not only lent them with cheerfulness, but offered me the use of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... strangers, prompts him to lay claim to a much greater knowledge of such matters than he actually possesses. In reply to incessant queries, he communicates not only all he knows but a good deal more, and if there be any information deficient still he is at no loss to supply it. The avidity with which his anecdotes are noted down tickles his vanity, and his powers of invention increase with the credulity auditors. He knows just the sort of information wanted, and furnishes ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... poets went from castle to castle reciting or singing love-songs, composed in the old Provencal dialect, a sort of vulgarized Latin. The life in the great feudal chateaux was so dull that the lords and ladies seized with avidity any amusement which promised to while away an idle hour. The troubadours were made much of and became a strong element in the development of the Southern spirit. So-called Courts of Love were formed where questions of an amorous nature ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Greed [excessive desire] — N. covetousness, ravenousness &c. adj.; venality, avidity, cupidity; acquisitiveness (acquisition) 775; desire &c. 865. [greed for money or material things] greed, greediness, avarice, avidity, rapacity, extortion. selfishness &c.943; auri sacra fames[Lat]. grasping, craving, canine appetite, rapacity. V. covet, crave (desire) 865; grasp; exact, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... almost as a matter of course. Glad enough were the poor things to be thus liberated. To Mark's surprise, no sooner did they reach the reef, than to work they went, and commenced picking up something with the greatest avidity, as if let loose in the best supplied poultry-yard. Confident there was nothing for even a hen to glean on the rocks when he left there, the young man could not account for this, until turning his eyes inboard, he saw the ducks doing the same thing on deck. Examining the food of these ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... exhausting the land by their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... return to them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might mean to her whose witness I had ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was as good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone to excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidity of woodchucks into their holes—all except Jim Galway, who remained leaning ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... served rather to corrupt than improve the poetry and eloquence of his time. When the theatres were opened at the restoration, and freedom was again given to pleasantry and ingenuity, men, after so long an abstinence, fed on these delicacies with less taste than avidity, and the coarsest and most irregular species of wit was received by the court as well as by the people. The productions represented at that time on the stage were such monsters of extravagance and folly, so utterly destitute of all reason or even common sense, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... at last going to find out the truth? Was he going to solve this enigma and discover the name of his family, the land of his birth? Truly the scene appeared to him almost chimerical. He fastened his eyes upon the wounded man, ready to drink in his words with avidity. For nothing in the world would he have interfered with his recital, neither by interruption nor gesture. He did not even observe that a shadow had appeared behind him. It was the sight of this shadow which had stopped the story ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... will tell you that half the manuscripts sent to editors are not even accorded the courtesy of an examination unless signed by a well-known name. Another says that editors are keenly on the outlook for original matter, seizing with avidity anything that promises to make a new element in ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various
... citizen, was one of the chief actors, and that he was searching for his daughter who had taken refuge in the wilderness, created a sensation. It was the first knowledge that the public had that the girl was not drowned, and every scrap of information was seized upon with avidity. That it was a love-affair of no ordinary nature was quite apparent, and this added to the intense interest which prevailed. Great credit was given to John Hampton and Eben Tobin for their part in the rescue, although it was hinted that the former was ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody
... and the early navigators first sailed into the South Seas on their voyages of discovery, one of the things that struck them with most surprise was the avidity which the natives displayed for iron. "Nothing would go down with our visitors," says Cook, "but metal; and iron was their beloved article." A nail would buy a good-sized pig; and on one occasion the navigator bought some four hundred pounds weight of fish for a few wretched knives ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... by the cage of the staircase that led to the platform, I saw a cabin six feet long, in which Conseil and Ned Land, enchanted with their repast, were devouring it with avidity. Then a door opened into a kitchen nine feet long, situated between the large store-rooms. There electricity, better than gas itself, did all the cooking. The streams under the furnaces gave out to the sponges of platina a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed. They also heated a distilling ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... thousand times in the course of this tour have I regretted the inability of my memory to retain a more strong impression of the beautiful forms before me; and again and again, in quitting a fortunate station, have I returned to it with the most eager avidity, in the hope of bearing away a more lively picture. At this moment, when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high enjoyment in reflecting that perhaps scarcely a day of my life will pass in which I shall not ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... his uncle and Constantia, excusing his absence by the uncontrollable avidity he felt to engage in the cause of his injured Prince, to whose commands he promised a strict obedience, and vowed to be sedulously attentive to all his new duties. To Constantia he added that he hoped to return worthier of her, and to feel in future the glorious consciousness of having contributed ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... quite as prevalent, though not, perhaps, equally hurtful, in great cities as in the smallest village. The same people who in London delight in the perusal of newspapers of the most libellous description, and who read with avidity every publication which attacks private character, will, when removed into a congenial sphere, pick their neighbours to pieces; an amusement which cannot be enjoyed in the metropolis, where happily we do not know the names of the parties who occupy ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... complete explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin merchant and the procurer,[12] into the wildest part of the earth; so absurd on the face ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... were shortly these: Mike had, among the other gossip of the place, heard frequent tales of the immense wealth and great parsimony of the doctor, and of his anxiety to amass money on all occasions, and the avidity with which even the smallest trifle was added to his gains. He accordingly resolved to amuse himself at the expense of this trait, and proceeded thus. Boring a hole in a halfpenny, he attached a long string to it, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... necessaries of life to which by the grace of her being Carlotta she was entitled, she treated me with human affection and sympathy, keeping her own wants in the background, anxious only to anticipate mine. But she still loved sweetmeats and would eat horrible Moorish messes with an avidity only equalled by my repugnance. She was still the same Carlotta. On the other hand again, she had of late abandoned her caressing habits. If she laid her hand on my arm, she did it timorously—whereat I would laugh and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... write the deeds of heroes and the words of sages. Carissime Jacobe! how happy shall we be when we get into Virgil!" I hardly need say that I loved him—I did so from my heart, and learned with avidity to please him. I felt that I was of consequence—my confidence in myself was unbounded. I walked proudly, yet I was not vain. My school-fellows hated me, but they feared me as much for my own prowess as my interest with the master; but still many were the bitter gibes and innuendoes ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... boys must have been privately prepared on their questions; but the teacher desired Lord John Russell to write down any number of questions which he wished to have given to the toys to solve, from his own mind. Lord John wrote down two or three problems, and I was amused at the zeal and avidity with which the boys seized upon and mastered them. Young England was evidently wide awake, and the prime minister himself was not to catch them, napping. The little fellows' eyes-glistened as they rattled ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... name, including man, rejoice in the rich supply. The elephant, true lord of the forest, revels in this fruit, and so do the different species of rhinoceros, although naturally so diverse in their choice of pasture. The various kinds of antelopes feed on them with equal avidity, and lions, hyaenas, jackals, and mice, all seem to know and appreciate the common blessing. These melons are not, however, all of them eatable; some are sweet, and others so bitter that the whole are named by the Boers the "bitter watermelon". ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... after day in the paper, this golden domesday-book, the lists of rich people who ate terrapin together, or danced together in lace frills and white cravats afterwards, and to read it with avidity, is what might be done in some world of satire. But in a hard-working, sensible, Yankee world! You might say that nobody does read it, but the column of the newspaper which is devoted to this narrative, contrasted with the few paragraphs ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... appearance not revealing the undeveloped depths of his nature. He made the acquaintance of some of the students at Yale College, and of the Rev. E. W. Dwight. These friends becoming interested in his welfare, offered to teach him. He accepted their aid with avidity, and made wonderful progress, at the same time becoming more and more ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... here they were about to be witnesses of the deed. Instinct taught them the proper conduct on such occasions. The tenderfoot was as good as dead; but, being a tenderfoot and naturally a bad shot and prone to excitement, he might draw and fire wild. They ducked with the avidity of woodchucks into their holes—all except Jim Galway, who ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... indigenous to Leadville, besides feeding on small flies, insects, and caterpillars—the carcasses of which they may be seen dragging to their nests—show the greatest avidity for sweet liquids. They are capable of absorbing large quantities, which they disgorge into the mouths of their companions. In winter time, when the ants are nearly torpid and do not require much nourishment, two or three ants told off as ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... in place of submitting to the very moderate duties imposed upon their trade by the new Chinese tariff,—all and each of them must take the consequences of their conduct; and they may rest assured, that the Chinese will always be ready to seize with avidity the slightest opportunity afforded them for charging foreigners with a breach of the Treaty. We must hope that foreigners resorting to China for the purposes of trade, or merely as travellers in search of health or of strange ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... passion, and a bond of union among men. Pity and love are to be considered in the same light. And as to envy and revenge, though pernicious, they operate only by intervals, and are directed against particular persons, whom we consider as our superiors or enemies. This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society. There scarce is any one, who is not actuated by it; ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Her father-in-law and uncle was also a mullā, and also called Muḥammad; he was conspicuous for his bitter hostility to the Sheykhi and the Bābī sects. Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn herself had a flexible and progressive mind, and shrank from no theological problem, old or new. She absorbed with avidity the latest religious novelties, which were those of the Bāb, and though not much sympathy could be expected from most of her family, yet there was one of her cousins who was favourable like herself to the claims of the Bāb. Her father, too, though he upbraided ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... would talk on and on with an enthusiasm and an interest in what she was saying which made her a wonder and a delight; and seeing that by some good fortune he had come upon her in one of these rare humours, he did not regret her refusal to sing, and watched her at his feet listening to him with an avidity which was enchanting, making him feel that there was nothing in the world but he and she. She had once said, enchanting him with the admission, for it was so true, that if she were alone with a man for an evening he must hate her very much if ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... from 1847 to 1853, Sir James Brooke was very popular in England. The story of his first occupation of Sarawak, published in his journals, and the cruizes of her Majesty's ships in those eastern seas—the Dido and the Samarang—were read with avidity, and furnished the English public with a romance which had all the charm of novelty. However difficult and inconvenient it might be for the English Government to recognize a native State under an English rajah, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... milking the pretty white cow while Agnella prepared the supper. At the moment she was placing some good soup and a plate of cream upon the table, she saw an enormous toad devouring with avidity some cherries which had been put on ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... difference there was between the two toasts, he said, "Why, Sir, you may be sure he meant something." Yet when the life of that prelate, prefixed to his sermons by Dr. Porteus and Dr. Stinton his chaplains, first came out, he read it with the utmost avidity, and said, "It is a life well written, and that well deserves ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... to have been entirely confined to the productions of the eastern and middle parts of Asia, which have, from the earliest periods, been sought after with great avidity by the people ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... in sufficient quantity to be an item of daily fodder; the Mauritius or the Guinea grass is seized with avidity; lemon grass is rejected from its overpowering perfume, but rice in the straw, and every description of grain, whether growing or dry; gram (Cicer arietinum), Indian Corn, and millet are his natural food. Of such of these as can be found, it is the duty of the leaf-cutters, when in ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... only pleased them, as baubles do children, for a moment: for at other times we had frequently found our presents lying dispersed on the beach, although caught at by these people with much apparent avidity at ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... remembered that with the studies, while they completely exhibit the entire range of Chopin's genius, the play's the thing after all. The poetry, the passion of the Ballades and Scherzi wind throughout these technical problems like a flaming skein. With the modern avidity for exterior as well as interior analysis, Mikuli, Reinecke, Mertke and Scholtz evidence little sympathy. It is then from the masterly editing of Kullak, Von Bulow, Riemann and Klindworth that I shall draw ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... hence stories involving a large element of imagination retain their charm at this stage. The myth, and longer and more involved fairy tales, such as Ruskin's King of the Golden River, Hawthorne's Wonder Book, and Kingsley's Greek Heroes, are read with avidity. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... had thoroughly mastered his work, and his active mind wanted farther scope, so that he threw himself with avidity into deeper studies, and once fell into horrible disgrace for being detected with a little Plato on his desk. Mr. Goldsmith nearly gave him up in despair, and pronounced that he would never make a man of business. He made matters ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of steamer passenger and hotel guest who may, or may not, be a climber. This one searches out potential acquaintances on the passenger list and hotel register with the avidity of a bird searching for worms. You have scarcely found your own stateroom and had your deck chair placed, when one of them swoops upon you: "I don't know whether you remember me? I met you in nineteen ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... has taken place, within a few years, in the practice of the executive government, which has produced a corresponding change in our political condition. No one can deny that office, of every kind, is now sought with extraordinary avidity, and that the condition, well understood to be attached to every officer, high or low, is indiscriminate support of executive measures and implicit obedience to executive will. For these reasons, Sir, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... business, instead of lessening his propensity to study, increased it, so that many times, after a fatiguing day of fourteen or sixteen hours spent in his vocation, he would retire at night with the greatest avidity to unbend the mind, if it may be so called, with a few propositions in MACLAURIN'S Fluxions, or ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... when the Treveri had shut their gates against Caesar Decentius, was chosen to defend that people. After him, Asclepiodotus, and Luto, and Maudio, all Counts, were put to death, and many others also, the obdurate cruelty of the times seeking for these and similar punishments with avidity. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... resisted pressure from the inside, and made escape, when once the trap was entered, impossible. The baskets were baited with mussels or frogs, both of which had great attractions for the Purpurae, and were seized and devoured with avidity. At the upper end of the rope was attached to a large piece of cork, which, even when the baskets were full, could not be drawn under water. It was usual to set the traps in the evening, and after waiting a night, or ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... and proved that this catastrophe was due entirely to the pyrogallic acid pomade, and that the chrysarobine was innocuous. In some instances the rabbit died within two hours. It was also found that in the case of the patient in the Breslau Hospital the pyrogallic acid had acted by its extreme avidity for oxygen when in contact with alkaline fluids. The blood had been affected, and the red corpuscles were destroyed and turned brown. Very little urine was voided, but it presented a most extraordinary character, being dark brown and very thick; it contained no blood corpuscles, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... his eyes on every appearance of decline in the prosperity of the West Indies, he also seized with avidity every indication of the successful operation of his scheme, and magnified it both to himself and to the world. He made haste, in particular, to paint in the most glowing colors the rising prosperity of Jamaica.[175] His narrative was hailed with eager delight by abolitionists in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... accompanied by headaches. Books of historical memoirs, hitherto an unfailing solace, failed to interest her. Love stories she would avoid for weeks on end, as if they were the plague, suddenly to fall to and devour them with avidity, when the inclination ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... thoughts. Books of impassioned poetry, and descriptions of heroic character and achievements, were her especial delight. Plutarch's Lives, that book which, more than any other, appears to be the incentive of early genius, was hid beneath her pillow, and read and re-read with tireless avidity. Those illustrious heroes of antiquity became the companions of her solitude and of her hourly thoughts. She adored them and loved them as her own most intimate personal friends. Her character became insensibly molded to their forms, and she was inspired ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... founders were impressed by a number of considerations which we can all fully appreciate even today. They were bent upon choosing a name which would not deter any Jewish student from enrolling under it with avidity; which would not excite opposition from any source; which would command respect and reverence, increasing respect and reverence, both from the University public and the general public; which would be voluntarily ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... impurities took hold of him with a fierceness which it might not have done had he been in perfect physical condition; but his stomach, already disordered from irregular and improper food, absorbed the poison with avidity, and the result ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... but illiterate persons. And if a minister was known to possess any portion of eccentricity, absurd sayings were invented for him, and when, at any time, a singular statement, or an uncouth expression, was heard to proceed from him, it was seized upon with avidity, treasured up, and repeated as an illustration of the kind of preaching that was common among the ministers of his church. It is almost inconceivable, therefore, how many, even among the intelligent classes of society, in the present day, have been led, most unwarrantably, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... utterly worthless, vastly inferior to those which constantly pass between friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain, amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly in his dressing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... hypocrisy to his other sins, that we naturally pity him; then kill and eat him, with Harvey sauce, perhaps. Our pity is misplaced,—the fish is not. There is an immense trout in Loch Awe in Scotland, which is so voracious, and swallows his own species with such avidity, that he has obtained the name of Salmo ferox. I pull about this unnatural monster till he is tired, land him, and give him the coup-de-grace. Is this cruel? Cruelty should be made ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... should dine at Delmonico's and go to the Empire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirred Joan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll see me in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction to have whatever she bought sent ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... myth is innate in the human race. It seizes with avidity upon any incidents, surprising or mysterious, in the career of those who have at all distinguished themselves from their fellows, and invents a legend to which it then attaches a fanatical belief. It is the protest of romance against the commonplace of life. The incidents of the legend become the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... indeed, when he delivers a lecture, the amphitheatre, spacious as it is, is much too small to contain the crowd of auditors. Then, the young pupils are seen with their eyes stedfastly fixed on their master, catching his word with avidity, and fearing to lose one of them; thus paying by their attention the most flattering tribute to the astonishing facility of this orator of science, from whose lips naturally flow, as from a spring, the most just and most select expressions. Frequently too, carried away by the torrent of his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Turk smoking, with his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and he read with avidity the Arabian Nights and other Oriental tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc. He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure of ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... repudiated Queen Audovere; he saw Brunehaut in her beauty, her attractiveness and her trouble; he was smitten with her and married her privately, and Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, had the imprudent courage to seal their union. Fredegonde seized with avidity upon this occasion for persecuting her rival and destroying her step-son, heir to the throne of Chilperic. The Austrasians, who had preserved the child Childebert, son of their murdered king, demanded back with threats their queen Brunehaut. She was surrendered to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... whole, she entered into what I chose to tell her of our idyll with avidity, like a cat licking her whiskers over a dish of cream; and, strange to say—and so expansive a passion is that of love!—that I derived a perhaps equal satisfaction from confiding in that breast of iron. It made an immediate bond: from that hour we seemed to be welded ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as so many go to the morgue, merely to see dead bodies. No; the curiosity that impelled me, and the avidity with which I pursued the object of my study, was not to be ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... portioned out; but from the impatience of some of the women to get at the liver, a general scramble took place for it, and it was snatched in pieces, and, without the slightest process of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting orgies, when ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... rather absent, and she took wine. These were all the circumstances that her anxious sister could fix upon, during dinner, for silent comment. After dinner, having eaten an orange with something like avidity, Margaret withdrew for a very few minutes. As the door ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust, devour this book with avidity, I have so far explained our ancient manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, I should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness of mere antiquity. In this, I respectfully ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... some moist bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make proposals of marriage to one of them. She consented to accept them on the condition that he would distinguish her from her two ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... broad foundations of material well-being for the society of the future. The worst of these justifications is, that they are generally addressed to the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement in question; at all events, that they are always seized with [34] the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life; and that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... struck the right scheme was proven by the avidity with which the girls and boys rushed for the boxes. The fact that a heavy rain was falling did not dampen their ardor for a moment, nor did the fact that they were tramping Mr. Phillips' beautiful lawn into a ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... doubt that many high-handed and arbitrary acts were done against English subjects by the officers of Spanish authority. On every real and every reported and every imaginary act of Spanish harshness the Patriots seized with avidity. They presented petitions, moved for papers, moved that this injured person and that be allowed to appear and state his case at the bar of the House of Commons. Some English sailors and other Englishmen were thus allowed to appear at the bar, and did make statements of outrage and imprisonment. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... formed, and named the "Subterranean Boring Company" its originator, Hiho Pop-coq, was made its president. The stock was seized on with avidity, and the project was not abandoned until a multitude of families had been ruined, and the public affairs brought into the greatest disorder; and even then the scheme was dropped, less from its supposed impracticability, than from the length of ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... that this thankless wit, reflecting on it, would conclude that she had no appreciation of merit, and that he had flattered himself in supposing that she cared for his own. Restless, discontented, visionary, without personal ambitions, but with a certain avidity of imagination, she was, as I have said before, eminently incomplete. She was full—both for good and for ill—of beginnings that came to nothing; but she had nevertheless, morally, a spark of the ...
— The American • Henry James
... lovely ideal of art and beauty, but this had not prevented him from basking in the rays of the earthly Venus. Before leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain Mile. M———, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the Christian Religion" were published, the great reformer then residing in the city of Basle. This great work became the banner of the Protestants of France. It was read with avidity in the cottage of the peasant, in the work-shop of the artisan, and in the chateau of the noble. In reference to this extraordinary man, of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... But Bimala is what she is. It is preposterous to expect that she should assume the role of an angel for my pleasure. The Creator is under no obligation to supply me with angels, just because I have an avidity for imaginary perfection. ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... she reached the end of her endurance. Standing with her back towards him, she told her story, and Concha listened with a still, breathless avidity as one who, having long sought knowledge, finds it at last when it seemed out of reach. The little fountain plashed in the courtyard below; a frog in the basin among the water- lilies croaked sociably while the priest and the beautiful woman in the room ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... Israel, of Clarksburg, in North Western Virginia, prepared by Alexander Scott Withers, on the border wars of the West. It was well received at the time of its publication, when works on that subject were few, and read with avidity by the surviving remnant of the participators in the times and events so graphically described, and ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the nights on a chair by her bedside. Often, too, Pokrovski would give me books. At first I read them merely so as to avoid going to sleep, but afterwards I examined them with more attention, and subsequently with actual avidity, for they opened up to me a new, an unexpected, an unknown, an unfamiliar world. New thoughts, added to new impressions, would come pouring into my heart in a rich flood; and the more emotion, the more pain and labour, it cost me to assimilate these new impressions, the dearer did they ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... highest in the land. The snobbery of the "social column" would really be amusing were it not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity by Suburbia. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... the logging-camps for three days," he replied glibly. Of late he was finding it much easier to lie to her than to tell the truth, and he had observed with satisfaction that Mrs. Daney's bovine brain assimilated either with equal avidity. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... seized the bottle with avidity and thankfulness. He settled again in his seat by the window, more in harmony with the world. Then the head of the house came in and said: "Senator, you are up early." He replied: "Yes, malaria, you know." "Well," said the old gentleman, "we ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... what should be expected. It is the very weakness of the hold which nitrogen maintains upon the elements combined with it that facilitates their release, and affords them the opportunity to seize with so much avidity and violence on those for which they have a ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... amusement it is otherwise, and most especially in writings of fiction. These are sought after with avidity by the idle, because for the most part they are found to have the virtue of communicating impressions to the reader, even while his mind remains in a state of passiveness. He finds himself agreeably affected with fits of mirth or of sorrow, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... haunch or other portion. When sufficiently done, it is taken out, the ashes are knocked away, and then—no civilized man, whose appetite has never been sharpened by open-air exposure in the woods, can understand the keen avidity with which the delicious viand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... supply of money was now the question, and one most difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would that evening have the honor of appearing ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... beyond its reach, on a foreign station like this, where a paper some three months after its publication is seized upon with the greatest delight; and news, which at home has long lost its name, is devoured with avidity, and discussed as a dainty. How true is it, that we can only appreciate our blessings by their loss. Why, with all the arts lending their aid; with steam, with electricity, with the painter's skill, condensed by the most ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... whirling all over the country before daybreak, and, marvelous anomaly, which took Richard Hardie by surprise, they oiled the waves, the panic abated from that hour. The holders of country notes took the 1 pound B. E. notes as cash with avidity. The very sight of them piled on a counter stopped a run in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the bread.{81} This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves. They eat it with avidity, and are more concerned about the quantity than about the quality. They are far too scantily provided for, and are worked too steadily, to be much concerned for the quality of their food. The few minutes allowed them at dinner time, after partaking of their coarse ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... with him first-rate, a-feedin' of him the goat's milk, which he goes for with avidity; tharby nettin' Jack that fifty from Dave Tutt. Boggs builds a fire so Jack keeps the milk warm. Jack turns loose that earnest he don't even go for no grub; jest nacherally has 'em ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... very different from the common mass of dirty Soyots with their queues and felt caps finished off with squirrel tails on the top. The Lama was very kindly disposed towards us but looked ever greedily at our gold rings and watches. I decided to exploit this avidity of the Servant of Buddha. Supplying him with tea and dried bread, I made known to him that I was in ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... thick and fast. For now that the populace had the support of several hundred soldiers, their courage became so reckless that they could no longer restrain themselves; and they accordingly engaged in the attack upon the English with avidity—from the comparatively safe position of the upstairs windows of the houses on either side of the street. Stukely and Dick were with the rearguard, making a vigorous and successful stand against the attack of the soldiery, when this new feature in the fighting was introduced, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... story which will be read with avidity, as it ought to be, it is so brightly and frankly written, and with such evident knowledge of the temperaments and habits, the friendships and enmities ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... of so luxuriant a character that those of the party who were not very tall travelled, as they themselves expressed it, between two high green walls, over which they could not see; and these green walls were composed of rich grass which the ponies ate with avidity. On a subsequent occasion when we visited this valley we had to call to one another in order to ascertain our relative positions when only a few yards apart; and yet the vegetation was neither rank nor coarse, but as fine a grass as I ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... organized,—which so far has won, and still secures, the greatest triumphs of good in the checkered history of mankind. Our material advantages, once noted, will be recognized readily and appropriated with avidity; while the spiritual ideas which dominate our thoughts, and are weighty in their influence over action, even with those among us who do not accept historic Christianity or the ordinary creeds of Christendom, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... compared with those questions which affected the position and welfare of the society. Pascal became a popular idol, and "Tartuffe grew pale before Escobar." The reports of the trial lay on every toilet table, and persons of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, read with avidity the writings of the casuists. Nothing was talked about but "probability," "surrender of conscience," and "mental reservations." Philosophers grew jealous of the absorbing interest with which every thing pertaining to the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... His recovery he always attributes (under Heaven) to the humane interference of one Doctor Wilhelm Richter, a German empiric, who, in this extremity, prescribed a copious diet of sauer-kraut, which the child was observed to reach at with avidity, when other food repelled him; and from this change of diet his restoration was rapid and complete. We have often heard him name the circumstance with gratitude; and it is not altogether surprising that a relish for this kind of aliment, so abhorrent and harsh to common English palates, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... grows plentifully in places, and is sometimes used as food for cattle when grass is scarce. In its natural state it is inaccessible to cattle because of its hard and thorny exterior. To make it available it is cut down and quartered with a hoe, when the hungry cattle eat it with avidity. Where the plant grows thickly one man can cut enough in one day to feed several hundred ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... writings of Henry George, particularly his Progress and Poverty, brought him from obscurity to prominence in six years, and by 1885 had "formed a noteworthy epoch in the history of economic thought." The success of Bellamy's utopian romance proved the avidity of the reading public. Parkman and Bancroft, of the older generation, Henry Adams, McMaster, and Rhodes, of the younger, led the way through history to an understanding of American conditions. Economics, sociology, and government were beginning to have a literature ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... possibilities. First, the murderer may have done the deed without entering. If so, it is clear that he must have made use of the partly-opened window. This seems so likely that they will seize upon it with avidity. At first they will suggest that the assassin reached in at the window and struck his victim as he sat by it. This, they will urge, accounts for our not finding the weapon, and they will be so sure that this is the correct solution of the problem that ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... training would allow him to take up the work of construction. The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. Under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. He secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his interest in ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... called the father of the madrigal (despite the fact that madrigals were written before he was born), became chapel master of St. Mark's, Venice, in 1527. He seized with avidity the suggestion offered by the existence of two organs in the cathedral and wrote great works "for two choruses of four voices each, so that the choruses could answer each other across the church. He paid much less attention to rigid canonic style than his predecessors had done because it was ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... With avidity I read that the young Princess, as noted for her beauty as for her jewels, the only daughter of the millionaire Italian shipowner Andrea Ottone, of Genoa, who had married the Prince a year ago, had been robbed of her famous string of ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... was to tell you that I had doubled your capital, you would not ask how I did it, nor whether I had stocked the cards. You would virtuously pocket the money. But I have lost: I am a thief. Well, so be it. But, then, you are all my accomplices. It is the avidity of the dupes which induces the trickery ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... post-office and a church, a catechism and a few score of books. Here in the crowded city she had come to be a woman who, bitterly shaken in soul, knew life's sufferings; who had, during the past few months, read with avidity history, poetry, romance, fiction, and the drama, English and French; for in every one she found something that said: "You have felt that." In these long months she had learned more than she had known or learned in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... testimony of a Christian missionary, it may be backed by the explorer Lander, who, in speaking of this same class of men, says: "These Mollahs procure an easy subsistence by making fetishes or writing charms on bits of wood which are washed off carefully into a basin of water, and drank with avidity by the credulous multitude." And he adds: "Those who profess the Mohammedan faith among the negroes are as ignorant and superstitious as their idolatrous brethren; nor does it appear that their having adopted a new creed has either improved their manners ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... indulge for a few minutes in what had lately become a very frequent treat, namely a pause before a certain tempting store of second-hand books. She had never had money enough to buy anything except the necessary school books, and, being a great lover of poetry, she always seized with avidity on anything that was to be found outside the book shop. Sometimes she would carry away a verse of Swinburne, which would ring in her ears for days and days; sometimes she would read as much as two or three pages of Shelley. No one had every ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... not made as much advance toward any definite result as one single moment of disclosure to the people we were among would have inevitably compelled us to decide upon. We were very prudent in our outward bearing, and hardly aware of the avidity with which the concealed passion was ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... who devoured thrillers, shockers, and ingenious crime and mystery stories with avidity. She did not believe that life was really much like that, and Kay's assertion that if it weren't it ought to be, she rightly regarded as pragmatical. Neither did she share Kay's more fundamental taste for the Elizabethans, Carolines ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... had given Grace, but she refused to receive them; and now, she asked for these very pearls, which, intrinsically, were not half the value of the sum I had informed Mr. Hardinge Grace had requested me to expend in purchasing a memorial. This avidity to possess these pearls—for so it struck me—was difficult to account for, Grace having owned divers other ornaments that were more costly, and which she had much oftener worn. I confess, I had thought of attempting to persuade Lucy to receive my own necklace as the memorial of Grace, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... was a favourite meet, and in the ladies' drawing-room each fresh piece of news was torn with avidity. The consumption of notepaper was extraordinary. Two, three, four, and even five sheets of paper were often filled with what these scavengeresses could rake out of the gutters of gossip. 'Ah! me arm aches, and the sleeve of ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... he could add more, he was shocked by the avidity with which she almost snatched them ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... that account, that the ancient Romans consecrated the woods to goddesses, in order to make them respected by the people. At present, forests without number have been cut down;—can there indeed exist, in our days, any place so sanctified, that the avidity of man will spare it from the work of devastation? The malaria is the scourge of the inhabitants of Rome, and threatens the city with an entire depopulation; but perhaps it increases the effect produced by the superb gardens ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... more urgent needs satisfied and the coffee imminent, drew a chair to this little table, sat down, examined the gun discreetly, loaded it warily, aimed, and hit his man. Thereupon he boasted of the deed, and issued challenges that were accepted with avidity.... ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... possessions, the records of which were shelved in our libraries but yesterday in the alcove headed 'superstitions,' now, under the brand-new title of 'cases of hystero-epilepsy,' are republished, reobserved, and reported with an even too credulous avidity. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... in species and wonderfully preserved in type—and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period—one so remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may be measured by geologic periods. And these ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... with it yet. Apart from bringing the four to justice, there was, after all, a chance to vindicate the Gray Seal in this matter at least, and repudiate the newspaper theory which the public, to whom the Gray Seal was already a monster of iniquity, would seize upon with avidity. ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... two vessels to founder before even they touched the rocks—the more did the infernal joy of this passenger reveal itself in frightful transports. He seemed to long, with ferocious impatience, for the moment when the work of destruction should be accomplished. To see him thus feasting with avidity on all the agony, the terror, and the despair of those around him, one might have taken him for the apostle of one of those sanguinary deities, who, in barbarous countries, preside over ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with Mr. de 's tenants in the country. Nothing can equal the avidity of these people for news. We sat down after dinner under some trees in the village, and Mr. de began reading the Gazette to the farmers who were about us. In a few minutes every thing that could hear (for ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... the others caught at the suggestion with avidity, and in a very few minutes each of the boys was mounting the fire-escape once again, this time with a large sheet of ice, not unlike a heavy pane of glass, ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... have yet seven years to write of his life. ... Mrs. (Thrale) Piozzi's Collection of his letters will be out soon. ... I saw a sheet at the printing-house yesterday... It is wonderful what avidity there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr. Malone's on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr. Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was of Johnson's merit that we had been talking of him all the ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... ninety; and Nollekens, though nearly blind, passed all his mornings in giving directions about some group or bust in his workshop. You have seen Mr. Northcote, that delightful specimen of the last age. With what avidity he takes up his pencil, or lays it down again to talk of numberless things! His eye has not lost its lustre, nor 'paled its ineffectual fire'. His body is but a shadow: he himself is a pure spirit. There is a kind ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... exalted on the sudden from a mere creature of instinct, to a rational and intelligent being. But when first I opened a book, after so long an abstinence from all mental nourishment,—Oh it was rapture! no half-famished beggar regaled suddenly with food, ever seized on his repast with more hungry avidity." ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... not yet alive to her position. She saw she had lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity to her next interview with Mr. Bloomfield; but she had no idea that she was imprisoned, for she knew ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the United States. Except some cavils about the power of convening EITHER house of the legislature, and that of receiving ambassadors, no objection has been made to this class of authorities; nor could they possibly admit of any. It required, indeed, an insatiable avidity for censure to invent exceptions to the parts which have been excepted to. In regard to the power of convening either house of the legislature, I shall barely remark, that in respect to the Senate at least, we can readily discover a ...
— The Federalist Papers
... out among the assembled company; a bladder of grease is added, and seized with avidity by one of the party; a portion of this was then melted down and eaten with the dried meat; while the steaming tea, sipped out of small tin cups, and taken without sugar or milk, was the "loving cup" of that dark-visaged company. And far into the morning hours they sat sipping their favourite ...
— Owindia • Charlotte Selina Bompas
... manners, it is, according to Latham, a very docile bird, being easily tamed and feeding with the common poultry, scratching the ground with the foot like the latter. It will feed on many things, such as roots of plants, fruits, and grain, but will eat fish with avidity, dipping them in the water before it swallows them; will frequently stand on one leg and lift the food to its mouth with the other, like a parrot. Its flesh is exquisite in taste. This bird was famous among the ancients under the name Porphyrion, indicating ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... them all with that graciousness that was her native manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated at her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon's. Gordon had fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the hostess, and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among the visitors who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he might find the face for which he had been looking. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... painful sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... defeats, told with so much spirited humour, yet with such close attention to accuracy, that the work holds a unique position. It was continued in several volumes, with copperplates, to 1824. At this date, having seen that Londoners read with avidity his accounts of country sports and pastimes, he conceived the idea of a similar description of the amusements pursued by sporting men in town. Accordingly he announced the publication of Life in London in shilling numbers, monthly, and secured ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... brought their prisoners half cooked food from their fire, which was scarcely touched, and water from the spring by which they were camped for the night; and of this they drank with avidity. ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... trium magnarum nucum," of the hell-broth containing which "guoties-cumque sitit oeger, large bibit." When I have recalled the humane common-sense of Captain Cook in the matter of preventing this disease; when I have heard my friend, Mr. Dana, describing the avidity with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... this bellicose disposition on the part of the cactuses is a tolerably easy one to guess. Fodder is rare in the desert. The starving herbivores that find themselves from time to time belated on the confines of such thirsty regions would seize with avidity upon any succulent plant which offered them food and drink at once in their last extremity. Fancy the joy with which a lost caravan, dying of hunger and thirst in the byways of Sahara, would hail a great bed of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... telegrams of the local centre. At Chicago, the New York paper is forty hours behind the news; at San Francisco, thirty days; in Oregon, forty. Before California had been reached by the telegraph, the New York newspapers, on the arrival of a steamer, were sought with an avidity of which the most ludicrous accounts have been given. If the news was important and the supply of papers inadequate, nothing was more common than for a lucky newsboy to dispose of his last sheets at five times ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... brought quantities of the most precious kinds and bartered them away for European trinkets and cheap commodities. Immense profits were thus made by the early traders, and the traffic was pursued with avidity. ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... with which it came into contact. It knew continued war and interrupted peace for centuries. It held united under its vast sway, states decrepit with the oldest of civilisations, and peoples hardly out of primitive barbarism. It exploited with avidity the intelligence, the laboriousness, the science of the former; the physical force, the war-valour and the daring of the latter; it absorbed the vices, the habits, the ideas of the Hellenised Orient, and transfused them in the untamed Occident. ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... judged. He lived in a time when the worst examples abounded, a time of court intrigue and state revolution, when nothing was certain for a moment, and when all who were possessed of any opportunity to make profit, used it with the most shameless avidity, lest the golden ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... grandmother's up in the garret there's a blue silk that she wore in Washington that is that curious new blue color, Pat, and a lot more of—" Mamie Lou was saying with great executive ability when Miss Elvira seized on her idea and made it her own with the avidity of real genius. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... in their complex manifestations until they have been studied in their simpler ones. And when this is seen, it will be also seen that in aiding the child to acquire the out-of-door information for which it shows so great an avidity, and in encouraging the acquisition of such information throughout youth, we are simply inducing it to store up the raw material for future organisation—the facts that will one day bring home to it with due force, those great generalisations ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... "There are abundant indications that this epidemic is now rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating articles of a notorious frenzied fakir, who, like a crazed Malay, is wildly running amuck, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 222: Was 'o' (The avidity manifested by the agent of the St. John's River Society in seeking favors at the hands of government would seems to ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... At the period of their advent Huasca was obtaining the worst of the struggle, and, seeing the possibility of salvation in the arrival of the newcomers, he sent to these beseeching their help. It can be imagined with what avidity Pizarro seized upon this pretext to enter into the domestic affairs of the nation. Atahualpa unconsciously helped to play the fate of the unfortunate Inca race still further into the hands of the Spaniards. Learning of the warlike might of ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... the weather is more uniform than here, the air is more moist, and the excessive heat of our summers is scarcely known. Such is the greater humidity of the atmosphere that the bog-mosses,—the so-called Sphagnums,—which have a wonderful avidity for moisture, (hence used for packing plants which require to be kept moist on journeys), are able to keep fresh and in growth during the entire summer. These mosses decay below, and throw out new ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... Base-ball, lawn-tennis, bicycling, and rowing are all extensively patronised by the young men of Japan, and cricket has of recent years come considerably into vogue. The students of the Imperial University have not only shown no disinclination, but, on the contrary, an avidity to combine athletics with their studies, and in base-ball especially they have more than held their own against the foreigner. I confess I have no desire to see the craze for outdoor sports which is so ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... doubt that the bait, at which Henry nibbled with much avidity, was the maritime part of the Netherlands. Holland and Zeeland in the possession of either England or Spain, was a perpetual inconvenience to France. The King, or rather the Queen-Mother and her advisers—for ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... it was rejected by the world, and looking upon it as the pearl of the Gospel, to acquire it, he abandoned father, mother, and all that he had. No person ever sought after riches with so much avidity, and no one ever guarded his treasure with so much care. He never wore, until his death, anything but a worthless tunic, and he refused himself everything but what was absolutely necessary. He would yield to no one in poverty, although he considered himself ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... different hunts he patronized—for he was one of the run-about, non-subscribing sort—were long in finding out. It was observed that he generally affected countries abounding in large woods, such as Stretchaway Forest, Hazelbury Chase, and Oakington Banks, into which he would dive with the greatest avidity. At first people thought he was a very keen hand, anxious to see a fox handsomely found, if he could not see him handsomely finished, against which latter luxury his figure and activity, or want of activity, were somewhat opposed. Indeed, when we say that he went by the name of the Woolpack, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... in the city. This threw the entire charge of house and store on me. As soon, therefore, as possible, she sent me to the city to school, where I realized my aspiration of studying ancient history and the piano, and devoured the contents of the text-book of natural philosophy with an avidity I had never known for ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... bills and coin brought doubt to the sceptic. "Say," he demanded, his eyes burning with avidity, "does youse mean dat? Dere oin't no crawl ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford
... these were drawn every day on the sandy portions of the beach, and never failed to catch a number of fish, which added to the store of provisions. Drawing the seine afforded not only occupation but amusement to the men, who engaged in it with the greatest avidity. The fresh fish, too, assisted to keep scurvy at a distance. The surgeon explored the island in search of any vegetable productions which might assist in that object. Happily there were a good number of cocoa-nuts, but it was necessary to husband them, or the men would have consumed them ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... you suck then, you little rogue!" And at length, as though he had suddenly come to a decision, he begins to drink with such avidity that the woman leans over to him, surprised by this extraordinary appetite, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... judge whether, even under favourable circumstances, the play would have had as long a run as was intended; but the casting vote in favour of this view is given by the conduct of Mr. Osbaldistone, the manager, when it was submitted to him. The diary says, March 30, that he caught at it with avidity, and agreed to produce it without delay. The terms he offered to the author must also have been ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... whether it would not be better for me to return to them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might mean to her whose witness I had thus ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... this, however, she believed herself to have obtained on observing that Bluebell never failed to study the daily papers with an avidity ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... that local truth which is the slow result of unconscious observation. There can be no stronger proof of the greatness of her genius, of her possessing that conceptive faculty which belongs to the higher order of imagination, than the avidity with which 'Uncle Tom' was read at the South. It settled the point that this book was true to human nature, even if not minutely ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... people, — their temperament and their civilization, — and his indebtedness to Southern scenery will be the more apparent in later chapters of this book. All the while his genius had been steadily growing. When the time came he was a prepared man — ready to seize with avidity every opportunity that ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... from Borneo wore his clothes wrong side out, as it is well known wild men from Borneo always do; and he ate grass with avidity. Wry-mouthed and squint-eyed, he was the incarnation of the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... may quote the market in Mr. Hornaday's line: Tigers are still reported "lively;" orang-outangs "looking up;" pythons show but little animation at this season of the year; proboscis monkeys, on the other hand, continue scarce; there is quite a run on lions, and kangaroos are jumped at with avidity; elephants heavy; birds of paradise drooping; crocodiles are snapped up as offered, while dugongs bring large prices. What ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... trials than those of the Old Bailey would be included in the package of books we received from London; among these my husband found and read with avidity:— ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
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