"Rapacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should not take a wider view of politics than was taken by men who had no objects out of Ireland. The few Irish Protestants who still adhered to him, and the British nobles, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, who had followed him into exile, implored him to restrain the violence of the rapacious and vindictive senate which he had convoked. They with peculiar earnestness implored him not to consent to the repeal of the Act of Settlement. On what security, they asked, could any man invest his money or give a portion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "there's nasty weather up there now, and beneath the boat goes he who was sitting along with you on the bottom of the boat just now. If it is wrecked, it will belong to us, and then you will not be able to speak to father to-day." As she said this there was a wild rapacious gleam in her eyes, but ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... the artful object of his pursuit as to see him breathe. Even then no alarm was exhibited; and the gentleman seizing a club, aimed a blow at him, which Reynard evaded by a leap from his singular lurking-place, having thus for a time effectually eluded his rapacious pursuers. ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... of the river-valleys is decidedly, rich and includes aquatic birds. The destruction of the forests and the advance of wheat into the prairies are rapidly impoverishing the Steppe fauna. The various species of rapacious animals are disappearing, together with the colonies of marmots; the insectivores are also becoming scarce in consequence of the destruction of insects, while vermin, such as the suslik (Spermophilus), become a real plague, as also the destructive insects ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... fruits of active toil or voluntary privation, have been confounded with those of expiatory bequest and mistaken devotion, and have alike become the prey of a rapacious and unfeeling government. Many communities are driven from habitations built absolutely with the produce of their own labour. In some places they were refused even their beds and linen; and the stock of wood, corn, &c. provided out of the savings of their pensions, (understood to be at ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... sleep and flung a jewelled hand over his face. Those broad gold rings with the green stones that sparkled like serpents' eyes as they caught the light! They were fixed indelibly in her memory, for she had seen them on the rapacious hand that had seized upon her while it was still red with her father's blood. Only from them, she could reconstruct every hard line of the hidden face. Suddenly, in the rage that rose in her at the recollection, she found ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... unnatural crimes, which they punish with death. Among the Moros is practiced the ordeal by fire, and the burial of the living for certain crimes; but some escape from these in safety, through their power as sorcerers. The authority and government of the chiefs is described; they are tyrannical and rapacious, and treat as slaves even chiefs who are subject to them. Combes makes special mention of some customs peculiar to the Subanos, or river-people. They are exceedingly rude and barbarous, without any government; and a perpetual petty warfare is waged among them. Their women, however, are more chaste ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... overbearing, domineering, ruthless and his victims are powerless to retaliate. Love is the greatest tyrant in all the world, Mr. Schmidt, and we poor wretches can never hope to conquer him. We are his prey, and he is rapacious. Do you ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... prisoners—or asked a large ransom? This last suggestion threw them into a cold perspiration of fear. The wealthiest were seized with the worst panic and saw themselves forced, if they valued their lives, to empty bags of gold into the rapacious hands of this soldier. They racked their brains for plausible lies to dissemble their riches, to pass themselves off as poor—very poor. Loiseau pulled off his watch-chain and hid it in his pocket. As night fell their ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... congenial outlay, was in the relief of the distressed. She could not endure to deny the petition of any whom she believed to be suffering from want; and this tenderness of heart was often imposed on by the artful and rapacious. Those who, from interested motives, desired to separate her from Napoleon, felt a secret satisfaction in the uneasiness which her large expenditure occasionally gave him. To their misrepresentations ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Wicomico, with the coast between them, offered no strong temptation to a rapacious foe, and the inhabitants reposed in the fancied security of their isolation and unimportance. The business of life went on, faintly and sorrowfully, to be sure, but still went on. The village shops at B—— and C—— were kept open, though tended ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... nor do either of them bend sufficiently: As to the seeds, they may be sown in beds or cases at any time, during March; and when they peep, carefully defended with furzes, or the like fence, from the rapacious birds, which are very apt to pull them up, by taking hold of that little infecund part of the seed, which they commonly bear upon their tops: The beds wherein you sow them had need be shelter'd from the southern aspects, with some skreen of reed, or ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... but the quezal, when the Spaniards came And plundered all the white imperial town, Saw in a storm of red rapacious flame The ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... so coarsely built, that you can never appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent, immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of gold; The Arctics lay before me, vast and drear; The sea was green and rough; no gay fish darted Like silver arrows from the quivering wave; But monsters, with thick scales and hideous eyes, Looked sullenly up in stupid wonderment, While some swam to'ards me, with rapacious maws Sharp-fanged and bloody, and exulting fins Flapping with demon slowness their huge sides;— And ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... injustice and he denounced the waste. Many cases of grievous hardship came to his notice. Widows, whose only means of support for themselves and their little children was their salary, were thrown upon the street in order that rapacious politicians might secure places for their henchmen. Roosevelt might plead, but the politician remained obdurate. What was the tragic lot of a widow and starving children compared with keeping promises with greedy "heelers"? Roosevelt saw ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... performers of that age. The greatest Italian singers who visited England regarded him as the dispenser of fame in their art, and exerted themselves to obtain his suffrage. Pacchierotti became his intimate friend. The rapacious Agujari, who sang for nobody else under fifty pounds an air, sang her best for Dr. Burney without a fee; and in the company of Dr. Burney even the haughty and eccentric Gabrielli constrained herself to behave with civility. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... water company, obtaining a temporary restricting order preventing the ordinance from going at once into effect. Here was an affair in point. Were it not for lawyers of the calibre of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon, hard-earned private property would soon be confiscated by the rapacious horde. Once in a while I was made aware that Mr. Watling had his eye ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... story-teller's clothing. "My followers are mostly outlawed Miaotze, who have been driven from their own tribes in Yun Nan for man-eating and disregarding the sacred laws of hospitality. They are somewhat rapacious, and in this way it has become a custom that they should have as their own, for the purpose of exchanging for money, persons such as yourself, whose insatiable curiosity has ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... half-animated heaps of woe and dye, the glances of Rose and Henrietta met in an understanding pleasing to both. This mourning had a professional, almost a rapacious quality, and if these women had no hope of material pickings, they were getting all possible nourishment from emotional ones. Their eyes, very sharp, but veiled by seemly gloom, criticized the slim, upright figures of these young women who could wear ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... cruel, adventurous and rapacious in her colonizing policy on the Black Sea and she left a record of exploitations which makes a black ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... firm as a thousand rocks, incrusted with stockades, and intrenched to the chin in mud batteries. He was a gigantic Swede, who, had he not been rather knock-kneed and splay-footed, might have served for the model of Samson or a Hercules. He was no less rapacious than mighty, and withal as crafty as he was rapacious, so that there is very little doubt that had he lived some four or five centuries since he would have figured as one of those wicked giants who took a cruel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the younger boy know that he was on the lookout he kept a strict watch on all sides for more of the rapacious creatures, and at length discovered two making for him in different directions, one of them suddenly appearing between him and the yacht, ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... that proud eminence," and the husband of the Herodian princess Drusilia, who had become a pagan in order to marry him. Tacitus, the Roman historian, says[1] that "with all manner of cruelty he exercised royal functions in the spirit of a slave." Under his rapacious tyranny the people were goaded to fury. Bands of assassins, Sicarii (so called by both Romans and Jews because of the short dagger, sica, which they used), sprang up over the country. Now they struck down Romans and Romanizers, and now they were employed by ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... acquired a certain purchasing value which procured advantages and luxuries impossible in the preceding period when the brave man was worth infinitely more than the rich who, scorned and considered as a rapacious Jew, was isolated and in constant fear of being robbed or killed. As the number of government officials increased, individual fortunes grew; men became enormously wealthy through the various offices bought by them or given ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... in the teeming earth, 550 Green swells the germ, impatient for its birth; Guard from rapacious worms its tender shoots, And drive the mining beetle from its roots; With ceaseless efforts rend the obdurate clay, And give my vegetable babes to day! 555 —Thus when an Angel-form, in light array'd, Like HOWARD pierced the prison's noisome shade; Where chain'd ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... putrescent insects were collected. Whilst, therefore, these pitchers are answering the double purpose, of being a reservoir to retain a fluid, however produced, for the nourishment of the plant in the exigency of a dry season, as also a repository of food for rapacious insects, as in sarracenia, or the American pitcher-plant; it is also probable that the air, disengaged by these drowned ants, may be important and beneficial to the life of the Australian plant, as Sir James E. Smith has suggested, in respect to the last-mentioned genus, wild in the swamp ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... of as a serious observer of life in Leipsic, and he remembered that their guide had said house-rent was very low. He generalized from the guide's content with his fee that the Germans were not very rapacious; and he became quite irrelevantly aware that in Germany no man's clothes fitted him, or seemed expected to fit him; that the women dressed somewhat better, and were rather pretty sometimes, and that they had feet as large as the kind hearts of the Germans of every age and sex. He was able to note, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hills, and plains, and rocks, Speed the scared leveret and rapacious fox; On rapid pinions cleave the fields above The hawk descending, and escaping dove; With nicer nostril track the tainted ground The hungry vulture, and the prowling hound; Converge reflected light with ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... invention is there seldom exercised beyond suggesting the means of providing for the first necessities and the most pressing wants. A man, indeed, is afraid here to be considered as wealthy, well knowing that some of the rapacious officers of the state would find legal reasons to extort his ...
— 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
... of Merdjan is picturesquely situated on a gentle declivity near the foot of the mountain, and is surrounded by orchards, and poplar trees, which have escaped the rapacious hands of the Arabs: hard by flows a rivulet, which irrigates the adjacent grounds. We left Merdjan early in the morning. Twenty minutes north is Ain Toby [Arabic], or the spring of the gazelle, consisting of several wells, round one of which are ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... pleadest her sufferings from her family. But I have too often answered this plea, to need to say any more now, than that she has not suffered for my sake. For has she not been made the victim of the malice of her rapacious brother and envious sister, who only waited for an occasion to ruin her with her other relations; and took this as the first to drive her out of the house; and, as it happened, into my arms?— Thou knowest how much ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... though it be death to the Cubans. Relieved of the enormous taxation and oppression generally which her people labor under in every department of life, Cuba would gradually assume a condition of thrift and plenty. But while she is so trodden upon, so robbed in order to support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... alone could be found the fulfillment of all aspiration and desire. No doubt they satisfied many women, but they could not satisfy me. They gave me little I did not find in the mere society of the many brilliant and accomplished men with whom I was surrounded. I had a rapacious mind, and there was ample satisfaction for it in the men who haunted my salon and were constantly to be met elsewhere. European men are instruits. They are interested in every vital subject, intellectual and political, despite the itch of amor, their deliberate cult of sex. They ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... butcher, with many blessings invoked on King Harry's head, declared that the country was being sucked dry by these rapacious ecclesiastics; that the monks encroached every year on the common land, absorbed the little farms, paid inadequate wages, and—which appeared his principal ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... syl.), John Graham of Claverhouse (Viscount Dundee), a relentless Jacobite, so rapacious and profane, so violent in temper and obdurate of heart, that every Scotchman hates the name. He hunted the Covenanters with real vindictiveness, and is a by-word ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... to cruise in comfort one must pay and be pleasant," declared the man with the fair beard. "In Greece and the Levant they are more rapacious than in Naples, and the Customs officers always want squaring, otherwise they are for ever rummaging and ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... his advantage; he merely restored the former frontier and abolished the subsidies which had formerly been paid to the Persians. Chosroes II. was much inferior to his grandfather. He was haughty and cruel, rapacious and given to luxury; he was neither a general nor an administrator. At the beginning of his reign he favoured the Christians; but when in 602 Maurice had been murdered by Phocas, he began war with Rome to avenge his death. His armies plundered Syria and Asia Minor, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... preacher; he offered Knox the post, and all present agreed. Knox wept, and for days his gloom declared his sense of his responsibility: such was "his holy vocation." The garrison was, confessedly, brutal, licentious, and rapacious, but they "all" partook ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... man. He was not inclined to be rapacious. He had an interest in a bank in Gibraltar, and two thousand pounds would establish him there. He had thought it might be worth the president's while to put him in the way of two thousand pounds—considering everything. Promotion was slow in ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... standin' by the African Desert one day watchin' them take a picture called "Rapacious Rupert's Revenge," when the Kid comes over and calls me aside. Since he had become a actor he had gave himself up to dressin' in panama hats, Palm Beach suits and white shoes. He reminded me of the handsome young lieutenant in a musical comedy. Every time I seen him in that outfit I expected ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... juiceless brows,(917) Nor can the sweetest pasture stay The charger's long unquiet neigh. Big tears from mules and camels flow Whose staring coats their trouble show, Nor can the leech's art restore Their health and vigour as before. Rapacious birds are fierce and bold: Not single hunters as of old, In banded troops they chase the prey, Or gathering on our temples stay. Through twilight hours with shriek and howl Around the city jackals prowl, And wolves and foul hyaenas wait Athirst for blood at every ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... who could not know their wants and who fell no interest in their prosperity; and then they were administered by a set of agents as ignorant as their masters; men who, from the nature of their employment and accountability, must in general be oppressive and rapacious. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... depended upon, and for the slightest inducement, or with the least irritation, it will fly at its feeder. At other times it seeks perfect solitude, and can only be captured with the utmost skill and perseverance. It generally feeds three times a day, but its appetite is not rapacious; it sleeps little, is usually on the wing at sunrise, and proves that it slumbers but little in the night by ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... attorney, in a very high tone indeed, that on no account would he take any step to harass the lady. It was simply against Sir John Ball that he wished to proceed. "Things would come out in that trial, Mr Walker," he said, "which would astonish you and all the legal world. A rapacious scheme of villainy has been conceived and brought to bear, through the stupidity of some people and the iniquity of others, which would unroll itself fold by fold as certainly as I stand here, if it were properly handled by ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... the French governor, began to shake with apprehension, when he heard their repeated threats, but they durst not apply to this magistrate, who, upon a fair representation of the case, would have punished them severely for their rapacious and insolent behaviour. Peregrine, without further molestation, availed himself of his own attendants, who shouldered his baggage and followed him to the gate, where they were stopped by the sentinels until ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... manner, that he easily drew from the youth the whole history of his acquaintance with Sir James Stewart, of the rescue of his sister, and the promise to conduct him to the captive King of Scots, as the only means of saving him from his rapacious kindred. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... always disapproved the antecedent democracy, and that he entered on the new scheme of government with full hope of seeing justice and wisdom predominant He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved a sanguinary and rapacious tyranny, filling him with disappointment and disgust. He was especially revolted by their treatment of Socrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing his habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to implicate in nefarious murders, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... acquisition of esteem and influence was made by the Drapier's Letters, in 1724. One Wood, of Wolverhampton, in Staffordshire, a man enterprising and rapacious, had, as is said, by a present to the dutchess of Munster, obtained a patent, empowering him to coin one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of halfpence and farthings for the kingdom of Ireland, in which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... Seler considers synonymous, is probably essentially distinct, as it bears a somewhat stronger resemblance to the chuen than to the akbal symbol. In character 54, plate LXIV, from Dres. 17b, which denotes the vulture or rapacious bird figured below the text, it probably indicates the c sound, as the most reasonable interpretation of the symbol is hchom, "the sopilote" (Perez), or hchuy, "a hawk or eagle." If the character shown in plate LXIV, 54, is intended ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas
... does it proclaim as to the character of the King? Purity is the very foundation of His royalty. Meekness and gentleness are the very weapons of His conquest and the sceptre of His rule. The dove will outfly all Rome's eagles and all rapacious, unclean feeders, with their strong wings, and curved talons, and sharp beaks. The lesson as to the true nature of the true Kingdom, which was taught of old when the prophet said 'Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, riding on an ass,' and not upon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... mad man, and the dead and crippled wolves lay as trophies around the bold soldier. In a hollow near the river they found a horse and man partly eaten up, and several cattle that had apparently been hotly pursued and torn to death by the rapacious beasts. They started out in search of the spot from whence the drover had heard the firing in the night. They soon discovered the place; at the foot of a large dead sycamore stump, some twelve feet high lay the carcasses ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... thy thirst with berry-juice? O think how this dry palate would rejoice! If in soft slumber thou dost hear my voice, 330 O think how I should love a bed of flowers!— Young goddess! let me see my native bowers! Deliver me from this rapacious deep!" ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... "so vast in comparison with those furnished by the African Society, were, to our thinking, partly the cause of his loss. The rapacious demands of the African kings grew in proportion to the riches they supposed our traveller to possess; and the effort to meet the enormous drain made upon him, was in great part the cause of the catastrophe which brought the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... some advantage of the wreck, and appropriating such iron- work as he could gather from it to his own use; for that metal is become very valuable to those savages, since their commerce with the Spaniards has taught them to apply it to several purposes. But as the secreting any thing from a rapacious Spanish rey or governor (even an old rusty nail) by any of their Indian dependants, is a very dangerous offence, he was careful to conceal the little prize he had made till he could conveniently carry it away; for in order to make friends of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... and bade them watch it well, for when that tree should fall and the fire die out, then he would return from the far East, and lead his loyal people to victory and power. When the present generation saw their land glide, mile by mile, into the rapacious hands of the Yankees—when new and strange diseases desolated their homes—finally, when in 1846 the sacred tree was prostrated, and the guardian of the holy fire was found dead on its cold ashes, then they thought the hour of deliverance had come, and every morning at ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—it roused a yearning anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the efforts of his reason could not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of the Christian Church, or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ's representatives, was the inextricable Gordian knot, which his sword could not divide. He dared not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... rapacity of their landlords—on whom were poured the full phials of Anti-corn-law wrath. The following are some of the scalding drops let fall upon their devoted heads—"Monster of impiety!" "inhuman fiend!" "heartless brutes!" "rapacious harpies!" "relentless demons!" "plunderers of the people!" "merciless footpads!" "murderers!" "swindlers!" "insatiable!" "insolent!" "flesh-mongering!" "scoundrel!" "law-making landlords!" "a bread-taxing oligarchy!"[29] Need we say that the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... been a rapacious lawyer, and have never omitted any means of amassing a fortune, have, with a truly consistent spirit, shown an implacable enmity to all those who are raised to a condition above want and dependence. And though you kick against the parallel drawn between you and the ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... could reward be hoped? Could the robbed passenger expect a bounty From those rapacious hands, who ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... literally a walking pitfall for luckless aquatic insects; but when transformed into a fly, ever on the wing in pursuit of its prey, it throws off all concealment, and reveals the more unblushingly its rapacious character. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... Thus, practically all the other girls had the advantage over Susan. Soon after they definitely abandoned respectability and appeared in the streets frankly members of the profession, they became bold and rapacious. They had an instinctive feeling that their business was as reputable as any other, more reputable than many held in high repute, that it would be most reputable if it paid better and were less uncertain. They respected themselves for all things, talk to the contrary in the search ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... keep my countenance," said Nicaeus. "A patron of science, forsooth! Of all the insolent, shallow-brained, rapacious coxcombs—" ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... monster? how was he to cover it?—he knew not. He understood well that at the bottom of this all lay an error. On the road of life there was something which he had not noted; something which he had not recognized; he had let something slip from his hands which still were so rapacious; he, an architect, observing with mighty diligence the law of equilibrium in buildings reared by him, had not preserved that equilibrium in his own house; so that now it was hard for him to dwell there, and he wished to depart ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... also invent ingenious combinations to reach a good flier. Most of the great rapacious birds of rapid flight or with powerful talons are so well organised for the chase that they have no need of cunning. To see the prey, to seize it and devour it, are acts accomplished in a moment by the single fact of their natural organisation. It is rather among those ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... of his own need; yet, at the anticipation of the vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money in opposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of a sudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent blood carried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endless strife of bitter and rugged men in high, austere places, stirred once more through ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... 37), are interesting and suggestive. Under the vivid realizations expressed in these notes we seem to see the Apostles sitting in permanent conclave (iv. 35), the daughters of Philip as members of an incipient, "order of Virgins" (xxi. 9), or the rapacious Felix catching at the words "alms and offerings" when uttered by St. Paul (xxiv. 26). The extreme fertility of conjecture which we noticed in the Commentary on the Gospels is somewhat chastened, and is exercised in ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... house, it is claimed, was closed, and the Schapiras met with their tragic end, because "as printers they scrupulously abstained from publishing Haskalah literature." Maskilim were employed by the authorities as tax collectors, and these, as is ever the case with rapacious farmers of taxes, besides executing the harsh laws of the tyrant, looked also to their own aggrandizement, and harassed their pious coreligionists in all ways conceivable. Many of them even hindered the colonization movement, because, if allowed to mature, it would deprive ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... back, rubbed each other, pressing closely together their twisted and knotty fingers. Even here, among hundreds of his own kind, he attracted attention by his resemblance to a sparrow-hawk of the steppes, by his rapacious leanness, his easy stride, outwardly calm but alert and watchful as the flight of the bird that ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... he, "are recorded the heroic deeds of our race while fighting to save our firesides from a rapacious foe. Every character is a history in itself. Yet your race know it not; but still boast of sciences ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... disguised by an appearance of military frankness: in his highest fortune he was accessible and courteous to his fellow soldiers, and while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... state of mind which put me on the venture. When I was a boy, and listened to Homer's and Hesiod's tales of war and civil strife—and they do not confine themselves to the Heroes, but include the Gods in their descriptions, adulterous Gods, rapacious Gods, violent, litigious, usurping, incestuous Gods—, well, I found it all quite proper, and indeed was intensely interested in it. But as I came to man's estate, I observed that the laws flatly contradicted the poets, forbidding adultery, sedition, and rapacity. So I was in a very hazy state ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... died in 1403, her wealth and rank attracted the regards of Alexander Stewart, the natural son of Robert Earl of Buchan, of royal blood. Without waiting for the ordinary mode of persuasion to establish an interest in his favour, this wild, rapacious man appeared in the Highlands at the head of a band of plunderers, and planting himself before the castle of Kildrummie, stormed it, and effected a marriage between himself and the Countess of Mar. Alexander Stewart, in cooler moments, however, perceived the danger of this ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... person of pure soul engaged in penances. With respect to even an ascetic living in the woods and employed in his own (harmless) acts, are raised three parties, viz., friends, neutrals, and foes. They that are rapacious hate them that are pure. The idle hate the active. The unlearned hate the learned. The poor hate the rich. The unrighteous hate the righteous. The ugly hate the beautiful. Many amongst the learned, the unlearned, the rapacious, and the deceitful, would falsely accuse an innocent person even ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... very rarely leaves his palace, and is seldom seen abroad in the streets of Kelat except on Fridays, when he goes to the mosque on foot, attended by an escort armed to the teeth. He is said to live in constant dread of assassination, for his cruel, rapacious character has made him universally detested in and around the capital. His one thought in life is money and the increase of his income, which, with the yearly sum allowed him by the British Government, may be put down at considerably over L30,000 per annum. A thorough miser, the Khan ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... it is so dangerous to generalize about human nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These versions differ by codes in the same person, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... stealings; bands of miscreants resembling foul and unclean birds which clamor and fight for the chance of settling down upon and devouring the body to which their keen scent hag directed them; all were astir and with but little effort obtained all that they desired. The offices were thus filled by rapacious and unscrupulous men. The agents who had helped to elect them, or impose them upon the people by fraud, were supported and protected in their villainies; and in the consciousness of impunity for crime, walked the streets heavily armed and ready on the instant to ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... The deep-set, rapacious eyes of the Scotchman burned into hers for an instant. Without a word he released her ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... Simon Magus! woe to you, His wretched followers! who the things of God, Which should be wedded unto goodness, them, Rapacious as ye are, do prostitute For gold and silver in adultery! Now must the trumpet sound for you, since yours Is the third chasm. Upon the following vault We now had mounted, where the rock impends Directly o'er the centre of the foss. Wisdom Supreme! how wonderful the art, Which thou dost manifest ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... were sums of money extorted from the givers by the terrors of power. Against the system of presents, therefore, the new commission was in general opinion particularly pointed. In the commencement of reformation, at a period when a rapacious conquest had overpowered and succeeded to a corrupt government, an act of indemnity might have been thought advisable; perhaps a new account ought to have been opened; all retrospect ought to have ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... garden the King eats a pear, His servants rapacious the tree will uptear; For every five eggs he gives bounteously, more Than five hundred fowls will ...
— Little Engel - a ballad with a series of epigrams from the Persian - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... shop. The shop had been tenanted by her father, one of whose frequent bankruptcies had happened there; after which his stock of the latest novelties in inexpensive furniture had been seized by rapacious creditors, and Mr Earp had migrated to Birmingham, where he was courting the Official Receiver anew. Ruth had remained solitary and unprotected, with a considerable amount of household goods which had been her mother's. (Like all professional ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... taxation, and unable to draw a sword for the common defence. At this period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland sovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions from acquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode. The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in the provinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administered at the same time. The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the doctrines of Wicklif had made great progress ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... looking as nearly like a dangerous old eagle as a human being well could. Rapacious, merciless, tyrannical; a famous philanthropist. Stingy to pettiness; a giver away of millions. Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife, Hearsay, Partial, Loveself, Lovegold, Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and Slovenly; he called the witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and, in obvious allusion to Ferdinand's seizure of property, he named the statute-book "The Rapacious Defraudment of the Land." He saw the lords oppressing the poor, sitting long at table, and discussing lewd and obscene matters. He saw the rich idlers with bloated faces, with bleary eyes, with swollen limbs, with bodies covered with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... King has been pleased, this very day, to give me a gift of all Fraserdale's escheat." Still, however, one thing was wanting; the rapacious Lovat had not obtained his former enemy's plate; General Wightman had taken possession of it as from the person with whom it was deposited; and he was celebrated for his unwillingness to part with what he had gained. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... tends to reestablish the latter. The power of the sentiment of anger increases with the offensive and defensive faculties, while, in weak and peaceful beings, terror and sadness to a great extent take their place. On the other hand, the sight of defenseless prey suffices to provoke, in the rapacious who are strong and well armed, by simple reflex association, a cruel sentiment of voluptuous anger, which ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... the most," resumed the Earl, "is, not the enemy without, but the jealousy within. By the side of Harold stands Tostig, rapacious to grasp, but impotent to hold—able to ruin, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the sky remained and the earth with a few juniper bushes and countless rows of tree-trunks, hastily stripped of their branches. The rapacious axe had not spared one of the leafy tribe. Not one—not even the centenarian oak which had been touched by lightning more than once. Gazing upwards, this defier of storms had hardly noticed the worms turning round its feet, and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... that the rascally landlord seized upon every chair and table that ought by rights to have belonged to the widow. The estate to which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors; and the only means of subsistence remaining to the widow and child was a rent-charge of L50 upon my Lord Bagwig's property, who had many turf-dealings with the deceased. And so my dear mother's liberal intentions towards her brother ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... certainty, run with such speed. In his right hand he bore a great dart, which he cast with much skill[6]." No wonder that such a rider, upon such a horse, should have struck terror into the very souls of the colonists, and induced them to comply with any demands, however rapacious and humiliating, rather than have to meet him face to face in ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... month.——A new filtering apparatus, intended to render sea-water drinkable, has recently been brought to the notice of the Paris Academy.——A letter in the London Athenaeum from the Nile complains bitterly of the constant devastation of the remains of ancient temples, &c., caused by the rapacious economy of the government. The writer states that immense sculptured and painted blocks have been taken from the temple of Karnac, for the construction of a sugar factory; a fine ancient tomb has also entirely disappeared under this process. Very earnest complaints are ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... What they had hitherto done was bad enough, but this capped the climax of outrages. Were the cowardly villains afraid to murder me, and was this their plan of getting it done, and at the same time getting rid of the body? Great heavens! was I to be devoured piecemeal by a rapacious horde of the wild beasts that are said to infest the Russian beds! And utterly helpless, too, without the power to grapple with as much as a single flea—the least formidable, perhaps, of the entire gang! It was absolutely fearful to contemplate such ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... gone long, but returned to stand beside the bunk, looking down upon Essie with eyes that in the dimness of the illy-lighted cabin shone with the baleful gleam of some rapacious feline. ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... besieged therein at this time. The other effects of this woman had been already seized upon, such I mean as she had brought with her out of Perea, and removed to the city. What she had treasured up besides, as also what food she had contrived to save, had been also carried off by the rapacious guards, who came every day running into her house for that purpose. This put the poor woman into a very great passion, and by the frequent reproaches and imprecations she east at these rapacious villains, she had provoked them to anger against her; but none of them, either ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... one to another. Hardly had Olivier raised the cover of the hell of humanity than there rose to his ears the plaint of all the oppressed, the exploited poor, the persecuted peoples, massacred Armenians, Finland crushed and stifled, Poland rent in pieces, Russia martyred, Africa flung to the rapacious pack of Europe, all the wretched creatures of the human race. It stifled him: he heard it everywhere, he could no longer close his ears to it, he could no longer conceive the possibility of there being people with any other thought. He was for ever talking about it to Christophe. Christophe grew ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... curious talk is spent over the ancient Scandinavians who used to harry the peaceful farmers long ago. We learn that these rapacious gentlemen were above all things "deep-thoughted," and that they had rather fine notions about poetry and the future life. They were, in short, a species of bloodthirsty AEsthetics. Instead of devoting ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... eagle, black, rapacious, with hooked bill and crooked talons, that he paints Miss Nightingale; and the Swan of Scutari, the delicate Lady with the Lamp, fades into a fable. Mr. Strachey glorifies the demon that possessed this pitiless, rushing spirit of philanthropy. He gloats over its ravages; ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... rodent heard the noise, turned back and rushed to the attack, trying to break through to his hole where he had evidently left his family. The struggle began. The eagle fought with one free wing, one leg and his beak but did not withdraw the bar to the entrance. The marmot jumped at the rapacious bird with great boldness but soon fell from a blow on the head. Only then the eagle withdrew his wing, approached the marmot, finished him off and with difficulty lifted him in his talons to carry him away to the ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... the door, but the path of retreat had never yet seemed to him so unpleasant. He was naturally amiable, but it had not hitherto befallen him to be made to feel that he was not—and could not be—a factor in contemporary history: here was a rapacious woman who proposed to keep that favourable setting for herself. He let her know that she was right-down selfish, and that if she chose to sacrifice a beautiful nature to her antediluvian theories and love of power, a vigilant daily press—whose business it was to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... possibly make the Subject of a future Speculation, records some beautiful Transmigrations; as that the Soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a Woman-hater, entered into a Swan; the Soul of Ajax, which was all Wrath and Fierceness, into a Lion; the Soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an Eagle; and the Soul of Thersites, who was a Mimick and a Buffoon, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... in the Ogre's demesne; and he examined every feature of it with the most lively interest. The dilapidated buildings of the Home Farm reminded him of a lawsuit brought by a former tenant against his landlord, in which a story of mean and rapacious dealing on the part of Melrose, toward a decent though unfortunate man, had excited the disgust of the whole countryside. Melrose had never since been able to find a tenant for the farm, and the bailiff he had put in was a drunken ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... speculations, who can seriously doubt that the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests, as an argument against their existence, would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties, situated in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... accomplices, therefore, he loaded a ship with the plunder, and secretly set sail; leaving over half of his band, without food or shelter, in a hostile country. Many of the abandoned buccaneers starved, some were shot or hanged by the enraged Spaniards; but the leader of the rapacious gang reached Jamaica with a huge fortune, and was appointed governor of the island, and made a baronet by the reigning king ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... opportunity to make terms in the interest of the taxpayers. It made annual, not permanent, grants of money to pay official salaries and then insisted upon electing a treasurer to dole it out. Thus the colonists learned some of the mysteries of public finance, as well as the management of rapacious officials. The legislature also used its power over money grants to force the governor to sign bills which he ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... wolves may prevent us, Beric; we heard them howling several times as we came along this morning. The rapacious brutes have not been so bold for years, and it is high time that we hunted them down, or at any rate made our part of the country too hot to hold them. I told Borgon before I started that if we did not return by an hour after midnight it would be because we had been obliged to take to a tree, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Frederick, who owed him at least a debt of gratitude for having helped to keep his territory free from the rapacious Tetzel, but who, both now and afterwards, conscientiously held aloof from the contest, gave proof on this occasion of his undiminished kindness and regard for him, in a letter he addressed to Staupitz. He ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... steed-fam'd Ilium; just revenge they sought For Atreus' sons, but perished first themselves. 655 As two young lions, in the deep recess Of some dark forest on the mountain's brow Late nourished by their dam, forth-issuing, seize The fatted flocks and kine, both folds and stalls Wasting rapacious, till, at length, themselves 660 Deep-wounded perish by the hand of man, So they, both vanquish'd by AEneas, fell, And like two lofty pines uprooted, lay. Them fallen in battle Menelaus saw With pity ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... sovereign can make. Before I came here a delegation of my people approached me. On bended knees they asked me not to voluntarily return the principality to the King, who was likely to give them a ruler rapacious or cruel or indifferent. And while they understood what a sacrifice it meant to me, they asked me to bend my will to the King's and wed the Prince, vowing that I alone should be recognized as their sovereign ruler. Since my coronation they said that they had known ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... and other islands, putting them under contribution, and in this manner raised some eight thousand ducats; from a pen of guinea-fowl to a king's ransom, nothing escaped the maw of this most rapacious of corsairs. Candia and some other islands yielded up some small spoil, but the sufferings of such insignificant folk as the wretched islanders were soon lost to the sight of the Christian world in the magnitude of the events which were ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... celebrated collection of portraits, principally by Vandyck, which Lord Dartmouth, in his notes on Burnet, distinctly accuses the Lord Chancellor Clarendon of having obtained by rapacious and corrupt means; that is, as bribes from the "old rebels," who had plundered them from the houses of the royalists, and who, at the Restoration, found it necessary to make fair weather with the ruling powers. The extensive ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... ascendant. The lasting influences were that of Maurepas, an old man who cared for nothing but himself, whose great object in government was to be without a rival, and whose art was made up of tact and gayety; and that of the rival factions of Lamballe and Polignac, guiding the queen, which were simply rapacious. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... them, for an alliance with the natural enemy of that friend, and with an enemy of human liberty. They spoke of the court of Great Britain as the most faithless and corrupt in the world, and denounced the result of Jay's mission as a surrender of every just claim upon a rapacious enemy for restitution on account ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... these orders and decrees was simply that any American ship which fell in with an English or French man-of-war or privateer, or was forced by stress of weather to seek shelter in an English or French port, was lost to her owners. The times were rude, evidence was easy to manufacture, captains were rapacious, admiralty judges were complaisant, and American commerce was rich prey. The French West Indies fell an easy spoil to the British, and at Martinique and Basseterre American merchantmen were caught in the harbor. Their crews were impressed, their cargoes, not yet discharged, seized, the ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... friend to receive and guide him, but rapacious agents ready to take every advantage of his ignorance, with an eye to his scanty purse. A host of captains, mates, and sailors, eager to make up so many heads for the voyage, pack them aboard like sheep, and cross the Atlantic, either to ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... lodgings, or into a hotel of a kind happily obsolescent. Such a family now frankly goes into one of the hotels which abound in London, of a type combining more of the Continental and American features than the traits of the old English hotel, which was dark, cold, grim, and silently rapacious, heavy In appointments and unwholesome in refection. The new sort of hotel is apt to be large, but it is of all sizes, and it offers a home reasonably cheerful on inclusive terms not at all ruinous. It has a table-d'hote dinner at separate tables and ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... and why the very name of the place had always caused my blood gently to tingle. It is carrying the feeling of race to quite inscrutable lengths when a vague American permits himself an emotion because more than five centuries ago, on French soil, one rapacious Frenchman got the better of another. Edward was a Frenchman as well as John, and French were the cries that urged each of the hosts to the fight. French is the beautiful motto graven round the image ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... wore a long mourning robe, her forehead was lightly daubed with Nile-mud, and in the midst of her chaffering with the functionaries of the embalming-house, whose prices she complained of as enormous and rapacious, from time to time she broke out into a loud wail ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fortified himself, in fear of an assault; but Peter, having learned a little wisdom from experience, thought it best to avoid hostilities. He passed three nights in quietness under the walls, and the duke, not wishing to exasperate unnecessarily so fierce and rapacious a host, allowed the townspeople to supply them with provisions. Peter took his departure peaceably on the following morning; but some German vagabonds, falling behind the main body of the army, set fire to ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... commander, he threw up his commission in disgust, and retired to his native village near the river Hudson. Here, collecting about him a few choice spirits like himself, he kept the inhabitants in a continual state of alarm by his plundering and rapacious conduct. Acting, as he pretended, under the orders of the king, the tories durst not oppose him, and the whigs were too few in numbers to resist his foraging excursions with any ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... scratched and breathless, and his shirt was torn when at last the rapacious Thomas was satisfied. Then he partook of a little refreshment himself, while Thomas turned ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... gods of infinitely more polite peoples are frankly degenerate. The animistic superstitions wildly based on the belief in the soul have not soiled him, and the social conditions of aristocracy, agriculture, architecture, have not made him one in a polytheistic crowd of rapacious gods, nor fettered him as a Baal to his estate, nor localised him in a temple built with hands. He cannot appear as a 'God of Battles;' no Te Deum can be sung to him for victory in a cause perhaps ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... all these fairylike effects of summer suggested only prosaic and misanthropic reflections in Julien's mind. He thought of the tricks, the envy and hatred that the possession of these little squares of ground brought forth among their rapacious owners. The prolific exuberance of forest vegetation was an exemplification of the fierce and destructive activity of the blind forces of Nature. All the earth was a hateful theatre for the continual enactment of bloody and monotonous ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... same noble that had visited Pizarro in the valley. He now came in more state, quaffing chicha—the fermented juice of the maize-from golden goblets borne by his attendants, which sparkled in the eyes of the rapacious adventurers.5 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the jackal are confounded by the Arabic dialects not by the Persian, whose "Rubah" can never be mistaken for "Shaghal." "Sa'lab" among the Semites is locally applied to either beast and we can distinguish the two only by the fox being solitary and rapacious, and the jackal gregarious and a carrion-eater. In all Hindu tales the jackal seems to be an awkward substitute for the Grecian and classical fox, the Giddar or Kola (Cants aureus) being by no means sly and wily as the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... versions of the above story, the hero, after he is abandoned by his brothers in the cistern or cave, is borne into the upper world by an eagle. The rapacious bird on the journey demands from the young man flesh from time to time. At last the stock of flesh with which he had provided himself is exhausted and he is obliged to cut off and give the eagle a piece of his own flesh. In one version (Pitre, ii. p. 208) he gives the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... "At length 't is granted, what I long desir'd! This, this is what my frequent vows requir'd. Ye gods, I take your omen, and obey. Advance, my friends, and charge! I lead the way. These are the foreign foes, whose impious band, Like that rapacious bird, infest our land: But soon, like him, they shall be forc'd to sea By strength united, and forego the prey. Your timely succor to your country bring, Haste to the rescue, and ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... They are quite abundant birds in their range, and are very quarrelsome, both among themselves and other species. They do not breed in as large colonies as do the other Gulls, half a dozen pairs appropriating a small island to the exclusion of all other birds. They are very rapacious birds and live to a great extent, especially during the breeding season, upon the eggs and young of other birds such as Ducks, Murres and smaller Gulls. They place their nests upon the higher portions of ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... conversation and have not the Arab respect for women. I only speak of the common people—not of educated Copts. The best fun was to hear the Greeks (one of whom spoke English) abusing the Copts—rogues, heretics, schismatics from the Greek Church, ignorant, rapacious, cunning, impudent, etc., etc. In short, they narrated the whole fable about their own sweet selves. I am quite surprised to see how well these men manage their work. The boat is quite as clean as an English boat as crowded could be kept, and the engine ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... are told that God never made the clerk who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount of Beziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire. When they sat down before Beziers, then the Catholics within the walls made common cause with the heretics, and refused ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that even the Hawk, rapacious as he undoubtedly is, is a useful bird. Sent for the purpose of keeping the small birds in bounds, he performs his task well, though it may seem to man harsh and tyranical. The Marsh Hawk is an ornament to our rural scenery, and a ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various |
