"Voracious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... several beasts were let loose upon them; but none of the animals, though hungry, would touch them. The keeper then brought out a large bear, that had that very day destroyed three men; but this voracious creature and a fierce lioness both refused to touch the prisoners. Finding the design of destroying them by the means of wild beasts ineffectual, Maximus ordered them to be slain by the sword, on the 11th of October, ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... must a swine, or a much less voracious animal, be surveyed by a glutton; and how contemptible must the talents of other sensualists appear, when opposed, perhaps, to some of the lowest and meanest of brutes! but in conversation man stands alone, at least in this part of the creation; he leaves all others behind him at his first ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the elephant is so abundant, that in feeding he never appears to be impatient or voracious, but rather to play with the leaves and branches on which he leisurely feeds. In riding by places where a herd has recently halted, I have sometimes seen the bark peeled curiously off the twigs, as though it had been done in mere dalliance. In the same way ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... sole food of the entire lady-bird tribe in their earlier stages of existence; and there is no better way of getting rid of blight on roses and other garden plants than to bring in a good boxful of these active and voracious little grubs from the fields and hedges. They will pounce upon the aphides forthwith as a cat pounces upon the mice in a well-stocked barn or farmyard. The two-spotted lady-bird in particular is the determined exterminator of the destructive hop-fly, and is much beloved accordingly by Kentish farmers. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... subject of old Hoe, the most voracious of men, I gave up the choice of three sage professions, and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... affairs did not continue for long, and our work was soon interrupted in a rude and startling manner. Two most voracious and insatiable man-eating lions appeared upon the scene, and for over nine months waged an intermittent warfare against the railway and all those connected with it in the vicinity of Tsavo. This culminated in a perfect reign of terror in December, 1898, when they actually succeeded in bringing ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... the time of her marriage, a hint of how matters had gone, yet without any details, which now she was voracious to hear. I told her of my aunt's and uncle's apparent seduction of me, nor did I hide our goings-on with young Dale, and my after-possession of Ellen and his mother, who was the last to believe herself ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... the presence of worms in children, much more in adults, yet both are affected by them occasionally. In children, there is more or less fever and restlessness, screaming out in sleep, starting, pain in the bowels, vomiting, choking, diarrhoea, picking at the nose, fetid breath, voracious ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... knew you had some brain concealed among that mop of yellow silk floss! I'll do that same, and be thankful if my voracious cousin leaves me enough room for a ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... "here is breakfast all ready for you." So saying, I lifted my wallet from my shoulders, handed him some bread and cheese, and said, "Let us sit down near that plane-tree." We did so, and I helped myself to some refreshment. While looking at him more closely, as he was eating with a voracious appetite, I saw that he was faint, and of a hue like boxwood. His natural color, in fact, had so forsaken him, that as I recalled those nocturnal furies to my frightened imagination, the very first piece ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the wise god The voracious bird of prey Far away; so the wolf's father To pieces must be torn. Odin's friend got exhausted. Heavy grew Lopt. Odin's companion Must sue ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... business-like, almost enthusiastic, in his voracious hunger. Rebecca ate moderately and without haste, precisely as though seated in the little Peltonville cottage. Phoebe ate but little. She was overcome by the wonders she had seen, realizing for the first time the marvellous situation in which she ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... what a foolish bargain he had made he was not in a position to rid himself of Aristide; Angele's dowry was involved in speculations which were turning out unfavourably. He was exasperated, stung to the heart, at having to provide for his daughter-in-law's voracious appetite and keep his son in idleness. Had he been able to buy them out of the business he would twenty times have shut his doors on those bloodsuckers, as he emphatically expressed it. Felicite secretly defended them; the young man, who had divined her ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... see it: in its broth of putrefaction, the worm is exposed to grave dangers. Now there is a need for maggots in this world, for maggots many and voracious, to purge the soil as quickly as possible of death's impurities. Linnaeus tells us that 'Tres muscae consumunt cadaver equi aeque cito ac leo.' [Three flies consume the carcass of a horse as quickly as a lion could ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... god-insect. As Zeus made his own wife change herself into an insect, for the convenience of swallowing her, there is not much difference between Bushman and early Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm is killed by a stratagem, and all the animals whom he has got outside of, in a long and voracious career, troop forth from him alive and well, like the swallowed gods from the maw of Cronus. {54a} Now, story for story, the Bushman version is much less offensive than that of Hesiod. But the Bushman ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... by; and they made sad work of the poor minnows, who, though smart in some things, did not know when they were whipped, and so kept up the fight, though losing one of their number nearly every morning. The bell now and then rang violently, but I fear it was only sounding an appeal from a voracious stickleback whose appetite had got the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... half starved, capelin and smelt in great numbers come to spawn along the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence. With high tide comes the beluga's chance to feed on the spawning fish and he will rush in quite near to shore for his favourite food. So voracious is he that with the fish he takes quantities of sand into his stomach. In eight or ten days he will eat enough to form from five to eight inches of fat over his whole body. "The facility with which he thus grows fat is explained," says the Abbe Casgrain, "by the easy assimilation ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... hunger at the foothills of their ambition; and instead of winning a niche in the columned aisles of Westminster Abbey, dropped dead in some back alley or gloomy garret, to be carted away by the Beadle to the voracious Potter's field. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... not be placed in an aquarium containing insects and small fish which are to be kept, as it is fierce and voracious. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... [Footnote: Cron. Lib. I. c. vii.] is often committed by ignorant chroniclers. But Tantalus, as we all very well know, was the son of Jupiter, and grandson of Saturn. Now we are quite sure that Noah never married a daughter of Saturn, because that voracious heathen ate up all his children except Jupiter. This simple fact precludes all possibility of a connection with Saturn by the mother's side, and illustrates the advantage of patient historical investigation, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to me that mortals must address their sacrifices and their prayers. Nothing escapes my sight nor my might. My glance embraces the universe, I preserve the fruit in the flower by destroying the thousand kinds of voracious insects the soil produces, which attack the trees and feed on the germ when it has scarcely formed in the calyx; I destroy those who ravage the balmy terrace gardens like a deadly plague; all these gnawing crawling creatures perish beneath the lash of my wing. I hear ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... probability, than one man declared he saw the fin of a shark. No language can convey an idea of the panic which seized the struggling seamen; a shark is at all times an object of horror to a sailor; and those who have seen the destructive jaws of this voracious fish, and their immense and almost incredible power—their love of blood and their bold daring to obtain it, alone can form an idea of the sensations produced in a swimmer by the cry of "a shark! a shark!" ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying it. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all prey for the voracious destroyer. ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... "The Voracious Frog" (No. 6) is a valuable contribution to the store we already possess of what appear to be myths relating to apparent destruction, but ultimate resuscitation. To this class seem to belong the stories on which Little Red Riding Hood was probably based, describing how a wolf or ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... undress and turn out the offender. They visited my bed also, so that night brought no relief from their persecutions; and I verily believe that during my three and a half months' residence at Dorey I was never for a single hour entirely free from them. They were not nearly so voracious as many other kinds, but their numbers and ubiquity rendered it necessary to be ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... intolerable nuisances, destroying your clothes and woollens, we are pestered by large black ants, that gallop about, eating up sugar preserves, cakes, anything nice they can gain access to; these insects are three times the size of the black ants of Britain, and have a most voracious appetite: when they find no better prey they kill each other, and that with the fierceness and subtilty of the spider. They appear less sociable in their habits than other ants; though, from the numbers that invade your dwellings, I should think they formed ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... house the blood of thy mother which drives thee frenzied! Thus I bewail, I bewail. Great prosperity is not lasting among mortals; but, as the sail of the swift bark, some deity having shaken him, hath sunk him in the voracious and destructive waves of tremendous evils, as in the waves of the ocean. For what other[6a] family ought I to reverence yet before that sprung from divine nuptials, sprung from Tantalus?—But lo! the king! the prince Menelaus, is coming! but he is very ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... he had a house in Upper Brook Street to which most clever people were exceedingly glad of admission. His breakfasts were famous, and no one liked to decline his invitations, for it was more dangerous to show timidity than to risk a fray. He was a voracious reader, a strong critic, an art connoisseur in certain directions, a collector of books, but above all he was a man of the world by profession, and loved the contacts — perhaps the collisions — of society. Not even Henry Brougham dared do the things he did, yet Brougham defied rebuff. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... the ducks. These were secured, all but one, which, being wounded, flapped and swam toward the shore, where it was suddenly sucked down by a reptile or fish. Those they secured dropped silvery little arrows, apparently, back into the water in the shape of the tiny voracious fish that had forced their way already between their feathers ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... without it; but he obstinately insisted that there was no necessity why they should eat it. If they put a plaster of nicely-cooked meat upon their epigastrium, it would be sufficient for the wants of the most robust and voracious! They would by that means let in no diseases, as they did at the broad and common gate, the mouth, as any one might see by example of drink; for, all the while a man sat in water, he was never athirst. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... said the squirrel, "though I ought to be hiding my stores as fast as I can from the voracious host of barbarians, who will be here in a minute. But what am I to do? for I cannot get anybody to help ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... the outlay has not been a hundredth part of his own. A considerable proportion of his shelf-furniture are distant acquaintances, as it were, and those acquisitions with which he is intimate are not unlikely to prove less numerous than the belongings of his humbler and less voracious contemporary. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... day one thought dominated all others: where are those treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy their owner's voracious intellectual appetite? As houses were then built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor. Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little parlor, and two small sleeping rooms, one for the doctor and one for myself. Before many ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... often related with pride that in his younger days he had once eaten at a meal, with three other Bedouins, the whole of a mountain goat; although his companions, as he observed, were moderate eaters. Bedouins, in general, have voracious appetites, and whoever travels with them cannot adopt any better mode of attaching them to his interests than by feeding them abundantly, and inviting all strangers met with on the road to partake in the repast. Pounds given as presents in money ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... cram full of thrilling situations. The number of miraculous escapes from death in all its shapes which the hero experiences in the course of a few months must be sufficient to satisfy the most voracious appetite."—Schoolmaster. ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... turn driven out, arrived in the black country on a freezing night in March, descended into the voracious pit, fell in love with the melancholy Catherine, of whom a ruffian robbed him; lived with the miners their gloomy life of misery and base promiscuousness, until one day when hunger, prompting rebellion, sent across the barren plain a howling mob of wretches who demanded bread, tearing ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... presented with a very modest Blue-book of 100 or 150 pages, but I should like to promise noble Lords that to-morrow morning there will be ready for them a series of Papers on the same subject, of a size so enormous that the most voracious or even carnivorous appetite for Blue-books will have ample food for augmenting the joys of the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... trade, the wretch Tangamoyo suddenly appeared, and opened fire upon them. Numbers were shot down, others rushed to their canoes, and, in their terror, made off without their companions, while many, throwing themselves headlong into the water, were seized by the voracious crocodiles. Upwards of four hundred women and children were killed, while a greater number were carried off ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... descendants, the squids and cuttlefish, the cephalopods made the radical change from external to the internal shell. They abandoned the defensive system of warfare and boldly took up the offensive. No doubt, like their descendants, the belemnites were exceedingly active and voracious creatures. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... said Irene, looking at her with a comical expression. "How are we to begin? Shall we do penance like the old monks? Do you know, Rosamund"—here Irene linked her thin, almost steel-like little hand inside Rosamund's arm—"that I am a most voracious reader? Father was a great collector of books, and when I am tired of frightening the servants, and terrifying Frosty, and annoying mother, I spend days at a time in his library swallowing down the contents of his books. There is no other word for it. So I know odds and ends of all sorts ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... beautiful fish, and when first taken out of the water and struggle and flounder in the sun, they exhibit all the colors of the rainbow, but they soon expire, and when dead they are of a delicate white color. The trout, pike, and muscalonge devour them without mercy. Some of these voracious kinds have been caught with the remains of ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... linger at the door as if this were the den of a lion at a menagerie, instead of a room to which you have been cordially invited several times. I am not voracious, have had my luncheon. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... together a number of less important and less constant signs, such as depraved appetite, longings for unnatural food, excessive formation of saliva in the mouth, heartburn, loss of appetite in the first two or three months, succeeded by a voracious desire for food, which sometimes compels the woman to rise at night in order to eat, toothache, sleepiness, diarrhoea, palpitation of the heart, pain in the right side, etc. These, when they occur singly, are ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... long gallery came next, it was very dark, just light enough to show that instead of a wall on one side, there was a grating of iron which parted off a dismal dungeon, from whence issued the groans of those victims whom the cruel giant reserved in confinement for his own voracious appetite. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... ditch country of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with itself in tangled masses five or six feet ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... stuffed with all sorts of learning. His application was equal to that of a German professor. His lively imagination, trained in the school of Puritan theology, and nourished on the traditionary legends of New England, of which he was a voracious and indiscriminate collector, was still further stimulated by fasts, vigils, prayers, and meditations almost equal to those of any Catholic saint. Of a temperament ambitious and active, he was inflamed with a great desire ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... body to the water's side, where, without any ceremony or delay, being thrown into the sea, the tragedy was supposed to have been immediately finished by the not more inhuman sharks, with which the harbour then abounded. These voracious fish were supposed to have followed the vessels from the coast of Africa, in which ten thousand slaves were imported in that one season, being allured by the stench, and daily fed by the dead carcasses thrown ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... Bracciano, died suddenly at Salo on the 10th of November 1585, leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria helpless among enemies. What was the cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was free from the follies and vices of a dissolute period; but the absence of every positive charge, and the silence of numerous accusers, may be admitted to prove, that he partook in them more from general example than inclination, and with a moderate, rather than voracious or undistinguishing appetite. It must be admitted, that he sacrificed to the Belial or Asmodeus of the age, in his writings; and that he formed his taste upon the licentious and gay society with which he mingled. But we have the testimony of one who ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... firing) pafilado. Voluble babilema, fluantparola. Volume (book) volumo. Volume (size) dikeco. Voluminous multdika. Voluntary memvola, propramova. Volunteer memvolulo. Voluptuous voluptema. Voluptuousness volupteco. Vomit vomi. Vomiting vomado. Vomitory vomilo. Voracious englutema. Voracity engluteco. Vortex turnakvo, turnigxado. Vote vocxdoni, baloti. Vouch garantii, atesti. Voucher garantio, garantianto, atesto. Vow dedicxi, promesi. Vow (religious) religia promeso. Vowel vokala. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... meets in the douar (village of tents) a child holding any eatable thing in its hand, she lays him gently on the ground, and robs without hurting him. But the tame ostrich is a great thief, or rather is so voracious, it devours everything it finds—even knives, female trinkets, and pieces of iron. The Arab on whose authority these details are given, relates that a woman had her coral-necklace carried off and swallowed by an ostrich; and an officer in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various
... days his voracious plowshare had been turning over the prairie in long ribbons of swath like the pages of a book. Texas in those days was turning over a new leaf; and such outfits as this did the turning. His last job had been to ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... superior class with whom I had associated during the afternoon, and when we got up we agreed that the wisest thing we could do would be to get out of the town as fast as possible. We scarcely knew each other at first, so swollen were our faces and necks from the bites of the voracious insects. Early in the night the greater part of our men were drunk, and it appeared probable that before the day was much older the rest would be so. We, however, had to wait for breakfast, and before we left the whole place was in an uproar with tipsy seamen and natives ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... conveniently leave the rock till flood-tide, all hands set to work with unwonted energy in order to keep themselves warm, not, however, before they ate heartily of their favourite dulse—the blacksmith being conspicuous for the voracious manner ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... continues to grow it has to moult, and that means losing the disguise. It is then necessary to make a new one. The crab must have on the shore something corresponding to a reputation; that is to say, other animals are clearly or dimly aware that the crab is a voracious and combative creature. How useful to the crab, then, to have its appearance cloaked by a growth of innocent seaweed, or sponge, or zoophyte. It will enable the creature to sneak upon its victims or to escape the attention of ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... characteristically flushed. In the early morning the temperature falls to normal or below it, and the patient breaks into a profuse perspiration, which leaves him pale, weak, and exhausted. He becomes rapidly and markedly emaciated, even although in some cases the appetite remains good and is even voracious. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... of the Boa have been obtained by travellers, from the Asiatics. They resemble those of the fabled dragon and hippogriff, and as they generally relate to the ravaging of whole districts by the voracious monster, a heap o' grief is connected with some of them. The gum-game, however, is much in vogue in India, and most of these snake stories may be characterized as ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... been in this position long when something bit me. I thought I knew the enemy, but I dared not whisper its name even to myself, for I was overcome by its condescension. From a bishop to me was a fall in the social scale that ought to have made the most voracious insect tremble on the edge of the precipice. Maybe it did tremble before it yielded to temptation and forgot ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... monstrous fish called maraches, and they were frightened, as these fish are very dangerous. Their teeth are made like gardiners' knives, for cutting and boring, or like razors slightly bent. They are extremely voracious, and often follow boats, attacking them with violence. Bark canoes cannot resist them, they rend them open with their teeth, so that they sink to the bottom, which is why the Indians have such a terror of them. ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... supposition was correct: there existed in Australia small flies which laid their eggs in the white scales, and these eggs hatched into grubs which devoured the pests. He also found a remarkable little ladybird, a small, reddish-brown convex beetle, which breeds with marvellous rapidity and which, with voracious appetite, and at the same time with discriminating taste, devours scale after scale, but eats fluted scales only—does not attack other insects. This beneficial creature, now known as the Australian ladybird, or the Vedalia, Mr. Koebele at once began to collect in large numbers, together with ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... all historical works of value which the English, French, and German languages can furnish, with an immense amount of other intellectual pabulum, were eagerly gathered, consumed with voracious appetite, and thoroughly digested. Supplied at last with the required means, he braced himself for a systematic curriculum of law, and pursued it with marked constancy and success. While at the university he also took up the German and French languages and mastered ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... them. So dark was the night that it seemed to envelop them like a velvet curtain. Beneath their feet they heard the hissing and moaning of the bog, awaiting its prey like a restless and voracious wild beast. Through the dense blackness they could see the iridescent waters writhing and ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in the same shocking manner. With much difficulty these unhappy people got into their boat, and, cutting her grapnel, pulled off from this treacherous shore. While this was performing, they clearly saw the natives, whom in their account they term voracious cannibals, dragging the bodies of Captain Hill and the seamen from the beach toward some large fires, which they supposed were prepared for the occasion, yelling and howling at the same ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... Ranald superintending, what fun there was with burning of fingers and upsetting of kettles! And then, the talk and the laughter at the lieutenant's brilliant jokes, and the chaffing of the "lumbermen" over their voracious appetites! It was an hour of never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. They were all children again, and with children's hearts were happy in childhood's simple joys. And why not? There are no joys purer than those of the open air; of ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... through. This first of American fish stories, wildly improbable as it may seem, may yet have been founded on fact. When acres upon acres of the countless little capelin swim inshore to feed, and they themselves are preyed on by leaping acres of voracious cod, whose own rear ranks are being preyed on by hungry seals, sharks, herring-hogs, or dogfish, then indeed the troubled surface of a narrowing bay is literally thick with the silvery flash of capelin, the dark tumultuous backs of cod, and the swirling ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... flesh-eaters, as the mink, skunk, opossum, fox, and wolf, are in winter active and voracious, needing much food to supply the necessary animal heat of the body. Hence they are then much more bold than in summer, and the hen yard or sheep pen of the farmer is too frequently called upon to supply ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Varuna.] The character of Indra—who has displaced or overshadowed Varuna[11]—has no high attributes. He is "voracious;" his "inebriety is most intense;" he "dances with delight in battle." His worshipers supply him abundantly with the drink he loves; and he supports them against their foes, ninety and more of whose cities he has destroyed. We do not know that these foes, ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... were called Shark Creek and Pond was more than any one could explain. Most likely it was because no such fish as the shark had ever been seen near them, the circumstances of the case rendering it impossible that such a voracious creature ever should have sported in ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... name of the Kailouee green cap, I know here means the "lion's mouth." This is the phrase with which I always salute Zangheema, En-Noor's chief slave; but the terms are much more appropriate for his master, as intimating his avaricious, nay voracious, disposition. Zangheema, however, might be called "Karen Zakee," the jackal of the lion, or "the lion's provider," so anxious is he to minister to the voracious appetite of ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... rendered—passes so light and seemingly so fortuitous, yet, seen at the right distance, so absolute in their power to create an illusion of the actual velvet. Sheen of white satin and silk, glint of gold, glitter of diamonds—never were such things caught by surer hand obedient to more voracious eye. Yes, all the splendid surface of everything is there. Yet must you not look. The soul is not there. An expensive, very new costume is there, but no evocation of the high antique things it stands for; whereas by the ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the man trapped in the pit. Bait to draw these voracious eaters straight to the prisoner. Rynch's empty stomach heaved. He swung around, ran across the grassy verge of the upper bank, hoping ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... He had a red face, an awkward manner, and a disposition to eat everything on the table. [Or] He was red-faced, awkward, and voracious. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... and accepted, without the smallest intention of acting upon her acceptance, all her invitations. Rodd was there. That was all she knew, he was there among those empty, voracious people. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... himself, when is he turn'd into a meer Devil, if it is not when he is fighting with his fellow Creatures and dipping his Hands in the Blood of his own Kind? Let his Picture be consider'd, the Fire of Hell flames or sparkles in his Eyes, a voracious Grin sits upon his Countenance; Rage and Fury distort the Muscles of his Face; his Passions agitate his whole Body, and he is metamorphos'd from a comely Beauteous angelic Creature into a Fury, a Satyr, a terrible and frightful Monster, nay, into a Devil; for Satan himself is describ'd ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... men under Margarite were similar to those of the Spaniards formerly left at La Navidad. They went straggling over the country: they consumed the provisions of the poor Indians, astonishing them by their voracious appetites; waste, rapine, injury and insult followed in their steps; and from henceforth there was but little hope of the two races living peaceably together in those parts, at least upon equal terms. The Indians were now swarming ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... however; for it gleamed not only in the little room, and on the panes of window-glass in the door, and on the curtain half drawn across them, but in the little shop beyond. A little shop, quite crammed and choked with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth- stones, salt, vinegar, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... his brow, and lowering his eyebrows.] Now, sir, you are a very pretty fellow indeed. You come here and tell me you are a moderate man; but upon examination, I find by your own showing that you are a most voracious glutton. You said you were a sober man; yet, by your own showing, you are a beer-swiller, a dram-drinker, a wine-bibber, and a guzzler of punch. You tell me you eat indigestible suppers, and swill toddy to force sleep. I see that you chew tobacco. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... development of industrial activity of which the more fortunate classes at Rome were now reaping the fruits. The trades represented by Numa's colleges would at best have formed a mere framework for a maze of instruments which formed the complex mechanism needed to satisfy the voracious wants of the new society. The gold-smithery of early times was now complicated by the arts of chasing and engraving on precious stones; the primitive builder, if he were still to ply his trade with profit, must associate it with the skill of the men who made the stuccoed ceilings, the mosaic ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... swarmed so, all over the houses, that people at last could not put their hand or foot down anywhere without touching one. When dressing in the morning they found them in their breeches and petticoats, in their pockets and in their boots; and when they wanted a morsel to eat, the voracious horde had swept away everything from cellar to garret. The night was even worse. As soon as the lights were out, these untiring nibblers set to work. And everywhere, in the ceilings, in the floors, in the cupboards, at the doors, there was a chase and a rummage, ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... recognise this complication—of Bender's voracious integrity; but only to push it away. "Well, I don't know whether the best lovers are, or ever were, the best buyers—but I feel to-day ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... not only the most voracious of all known species of carnivorous plants, but the least fastidious as to the nature of the food upon ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... great minister to the enraptured eyes of his sovereign; that treasure in the Bastille on which Henry relied for payment of the armies with which he was to transform the world, all disappeared in a few weeks to feed the voracious maw ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Field near Islington, as of a whole Troop that has been engaged in any Foreign Adventure. In short, they have a Relish for every thing that is News, let the matter of it be what it will; or to speak more properly, they are Men of a Voracious Appetite, but no Taste. Now, Sir, since the great Fountain of News, I mean the War, is very near being dried up; and since these Gentlemen have contracted such an inextinguishable Thirst after it; I have taken their Case and my own into Consideration, and have thought of a Project which may turn ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... To charm his mistress, scuttle-fish and crabs, And all the shelly race, with mixture due Of cordials filtered, exquisitely rich. For such a host, my friend! expends much more In oil than cotton; solely studying love! To a philosopher, that animal, Voracious, solid ham and bulky feet; But to the financier, with costly niceness, Glociscus rare, or rarity more rare. Insensible the palate of old age, More difficult than the soft lips of youth, To move, I put much mustard in their dish; With quickening sauces make their ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to think of poor Nellie cast helpless among the tempters. She was like a child among voracious beasts of prey. No wonder she felt hard toward him! He was to blame, terribly to blame. In the highest, most exalted state of remorse he wept, not once but often. His ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... England, in their way to the college de propaganda Fide at Naples. Each had a small bundle of clothes under his arm and, according to the custom of their country, a fan in his hand. Being observed by one of those voracious sharks who, under the pretext of preventing frauds on the revenue, plunder unprotected foreigners and convert the booty to their own advantage, the poor fellows were stripped by him of the little property they carried in their hands, and were ...
— 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
... professions of regard for her safety. They had the desired effect; I pretended to think no more of my disappointment, nevertheless, I found myself constantly dwelling on the size of my lost fish, and lamenting my being obliged to abandon him to his more voracious brethren of the deep. These thoughts so filled my mind, that at night I continued to dream over again the whole incident, beginning with my patient angling from the rock, and concluding with my disconsolate swim to shore—and pursued my scaly antagonist quite as determinedly in my sleep as I ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... consent for all my brethren, when they are convinced of my infidelity, to seize me, and thrust my tongue through with a red-hot iron; to pluck out both my eyes, and to deprive me of smelling and hearing; to cut off both my hands, and to expose me in that condition in the field, to be devoured by the voracious animals; and if none can be found, I wish the lightning of heaven might execute on me the same vengeance. O God, maintain me in right and ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles! No,—no,—no! ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... covered with cod and haddock. Franklin denounced catching the fishes, as murderous, as no one could affirm that these fishes, so happy in the water, had ever conferred any injury upon their captors. But Benjamin was blessed with a voracious appetite. The frying pan was busy, and the odor from the fresh fish was exceedingly alluring. As he watched a sailor cutting open a fish, he observed in its stomach a smaller fish, which ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... father of this John, was the voracious leech, with Empson, who sucked the vitals of the people, to feed the avarice ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... where was the frying-pan, sure enough. And now, having made up the fire, I set about cooking my breakfast for the first time in my life and found it no great business, turning the rashers this way and that in the pan until what with their delectable sight and smell, my hunger grew to a voracious desire that amazed me by its intensity. So, placing the frying-pan on the grass between my knees, I began to eat with the aid of my penknife and a hunch of crusty bread, and never in all my days ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Luckily these voracious animals have poor eyesight. They went by without noticing us, grazing us with their brownish fins; and miraculously, we escaped a danger greater than encountering a tiger deep in ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... as he was, to have within himself a will of steel, a hate of diamond, a burning curiosity for the catastrophe, and to burn nothing, to decapitate nothing, to exterminate nothing; to be what he was, a force of devastation, a voracious animosity, a devourer of the happiness of others, to have been created (for there is a creator, whether God or devil), to have been created Barkilphedro all over, and to inflict perhaps after all but a fillip of the finger—could this be possible? could it be that Barkilphedro should miss his aim? ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and neat figure. He was a witty, cynical, broken-down Parisian roue, kept in Washington for years past by his debts and his salary; always grumbling because there was no opera, and mysteriously disappearing on visits to New York; a voracious devourer of French and German literature, especially of novels; a man who seemed to have met every noted or notorious personage of the century, and whose mind was a magazine of amusing information; an excellent musical critic, who was not afraid to criticise ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... him. He pounced on the new, the characteristic, the local; he drew out of her what he wanted to know; he made her see her own trees and fields, the figures of her home, with new sharpness, so quick, so dramatic, so voracious, one might almost say, were his ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... taking their spears, and bows and arrows, bade adieu to the land of their fathers' bones. Did these valiant youths return, and did the words of the prophet-boy fall to the ground? Let the wolf, and the vulture, and the mountain-cat, answer the question. They will tell my brother that their voracious tribes held a feast in the far country of the Coppermines, and that the remains of that feast were a huge heap of human bones. Were they the bones of Andirondacks? They were, and thus were the prophetic words of the wise boy rendered true, and his reputation ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... he had caused them to see and hear. When fatigued with wandering about, and famished for want of food, he had suddenly set before them a delicious banquet, and then, just as they were going to eat, he appeared visible before them in the shape of a harpy, a voracious monster with wings, and the feast vanished away. Then, to their utter amazement, this seeming harpy spoke to them, reminding them of their cruelty in driving Prospero from his dukedom, and leaving him and his infant daughter to perish in the sea; saying, that for ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... see heaven—but to the old who wait The final call, the hills of youth arise More beautiful than shores of Paradise. Beside a glowing and voracious grate A dozing couple dream of yesterday; The islands of a vanished past appear, Bringing forgotten names and faces near; While lost in mist, the present fades away. The fragrant winds of tender memories blow Across the gardens of the "Used-to-be!" ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of its general diffusion and numbers, but because it produces a succession of broods throughout the summer, and is therefore always in force, ready to devour the crop immediately it appears. The so-called 'Fly' is a small beetle named Haltica (Phyllotreta) nemorum, strongly made, and decidedly voracious. The larvae are not to be feared, except that, of course, they in due time become beetles. In the perfect state this winged jumping insect makes havoc of the rising plant of Turnips, but the crop is only in danger while in the seed-leaf stage. It is in the spring and ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... drifting down from the north before a flood of drifting Asiatics. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, after having drifted whence no man knows, poured into Britain, and the English have carried this drift on around the world. Retreating before stronger breeds, hungry and voracious, the Eskimo has drifted to the inhospitable polar regions, the Pigmy to the fever-rotten jungles of Africa. And in this day the drift of the races continues, whether it be of Chinese into the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, of Europeans to the United States or of Americans to the wheat- ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... whether ever again he would be able to win another election by methods legitimate or illegitimate. Hungry aldermen and councilmen might be venal and greedy enough to do anything he should ask, provided he was willing to pay enough, but even the thickest-hided, the most voracious and corrupt politician could scarcely withstand the searching glare of publicity and the infuriated rage of a possibly aroused public opinion. By degrees this last, owing to the untiring efforts of the newspapers, was being whipped into a wild foam. To come into council at this ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... prince of the tribe of Ad who lived 3,500 years, the age of seven vultures (Tabari). He could dig a well with his nails; hence the saying, "Stronger than Lokman" (A. P. i. 701); and he loved the arrow-game, hence, "More gambling than Lokman" (ibid. ii. 938). "More voracious than Lokman" (ibid i. 134) alludes to his eating one camel for breakfast and another for supper. His wife Barakish also appears in proverb, e.g. "Camel us and camel thyself" (ibid. i. 295) i.e. give us camel ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... like those of the mature females of the above-mentioned species. (10. See Yarrell's account of the rays in his 'History of British Fishes,' vol. ii. 1836, p. 416, with an excellent figure, and pp. 422, 432.) As the rays are bold, strong and voracious fish, we may suspect that the males require their sharp teeth for fighting with their rivals; but as they possess many parts modified and adapted for the prehension of the female, it is possible that their teeth may ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... common species throughout eastern North America, breeding throughout the northern tier of the United States, whose northern border is the limit of its summer home. As a rule in winter it is found in Illinois and south to the Gulf of Mexico. It is an exceedingly voracious bird, continually skimming over the surface of the water in search of its finny prey, and often following shoals of fish to great distances. The birds congregate in large numbers at their breeding places, which are rocky islands or headlands in the ocean. Most of the families ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [June, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... been alluding to the "History of the World," and had excited the curiosity of the active-minded amongst his pupils about the great navigator, statesman, soldier, author, and fine gentleman. So Raleigh's works were seized on by various voracious young readers, and carried out of the school library; and Arthur was now deep in a volume of the "Miscellanies," curled up on a corner of the sofa. Presently, Tom heard something between a groan and a protest, and, looking up, demanded explanations; in answer to which, Arthur, in a voice half ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... statistician, Mr. Gradgrind, were in the flesh to-day, how he would gloat over this book! The 'facts' presented in its seven hundred double-columned pages would satisfy, even to repletion, his voracious cravings; and once crammed with them, he would go forth into society a walking cyclopedia of all that appertained to the civil, military, agricultural, industrial, financial, educational, charitable, and religious condition of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from chair-backs, window-sills, stove-cornices, nay, from the floor itself, innumerable dwarfs bounded on to the table, and, taking their places by all the plates, in three seconds consumed the savoury viand. To complete the astonishment, the confusion, the wrath, the fury of the voracious boors, Stringstriker himself galloped up and down the whole length of the table, breaking all the vessels, and draining all the beer and brandy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... we are out-of-doors we are shelling the reluctant almond, poisoning the voracious gopher, pruning grape- vines, and "sich." Now I am only going to shoot to eat, and eat ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... up material for his romances; and Mably would talk politics and drop ill-natured remarks. The learned metaphysician Helvetius, too, was often there, seeking for compliments, his appetite for applause being voracious; so insatiable, indeed, that he even danced one night at the opera. It was said that he was led to study mathematics by seeing a circle of beautiful ladies surrounding the ugly geometrician Maupertuis in the gardens ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... a rabbit?— As a thing of course he stops; And with most voracious swallow Walks into my mutton-chops. In the twinkling of a bed-post Is each savoury platter clear, And he shows uncommon science In ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... forced to the use of crutches; and it was certainly a strange and remarkable thing to witness two men, each at the extreme point of social indulgence, and each departing from reason and common-sense, suffering from the consequences of their respective errors; Manifold, a most voracious fellow, knocked on the head by an attack of apoplexy, and Cooke, the philosopher, suffering the tortures of the damned from a most violent rheumatism, produced by a monomania which compelled him to decline ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... between Ridley and Hardcastle, the servants and men-at-arms beyond. Porridge and broth and very small ale were the fare, and salted meat would be for supper, and as Grisell knew but too well already, her own retainers were grumbling at the voracious appetites of the men-at-arms as much as did their unwilling guests at the plainness and niggardliness of ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a gentle slope commanding a steeper hill beyond, down which the boys would send the cattle in a slow, uneasy march before the storm, Luck focused his telephoto lens upon bleakness enough to satisfy even his voracious appetite for realism. Bill Holmes, his tan pumps wrapped in gunny sacks for protection against the snow that was a foot deep on the level and still falling, thrashed his body with his arms, like a windmill whose paddles have suddenly gone limp in a high ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... amongst them by his non-appearance on this occasion. Loki stretched out his long neck with the curious jerk which makes a cormorant look so idiotic as well as voracious, while one or two scories[1] gave utterance to a good deal of strong language. Pigeons, chickens, shelders,[2] sparrows, and starlings skirmished for the crumbs, &c., which Signy had put out, and wondered what was to happen next; a pony shoved his frowsy head against the window, and a patient large-eyed ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... rays of spring make me more languid than ever Martha cannot be made to understand that nursing such a large, voracious baby, losing sleep, and confinement within doors, are enough to account for this. She is constantly speaking in terms of praise of those who keep up even when they do feel a little out of sorts, ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... returned from the office. The style of living was bad for him. He was alone all day, except for an occasional visit from the good-natured German woman who kept their rooms, and, although he was a voracious reader, the doctor had forbidden all thought of study for a year, even had there been a school near enough for him to attend, where John would have been willing to send him. He ought to be where the air was pure and the surroundings cheerful. John would have preferred ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... words, the reader is fairly entitled to expect some little information, but chiefly for the benefit of a friend of mine, the like of whom, no doubt, the reader counts among his acquaintances. The friend I mean has a mind so quaintly voracious of facts that, often when we have been dining together at one of the great hotels, he would speculate, say, looking round the room filled with eager diners, on how many clams are nightly consumed ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... next day to Morat. Its lake is about two leagues in length by three quarters of a league in breadth, and is said to be the only lake in Switzerland where that voracious fish, the silurus, is found. There are many vineyards in this vicinity, but the wine is very indifferent. It is, however said to produce the best Kirschrvasser, or Cherry brandy in Switzerland. Morat is celebrated in history for the memorable victory obtained under its ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... be hatched have left the nest. Like all its family the young hawk-cuckoo has a healthy appetite. In order to satisfy it the unfortunate foster-parents have to work like slaves, and often must they wonder why nature has given them so voracious a child. When it sees a babbler approaching with food, the cuckoo cries out and flaps its wings vigorously. Sometimes these completely envelop the parent bird while it is thrusting food into the yellow mouth of the cuckoo. The breast of the newly-fledged brain-fever bird is covered with ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... best for the children, they being the public for whom she wrote, and laboured stoutly to supply the demand always in the mouths of voracious youth—'More stories; more right away!' Her family objected to this devotion at their expense, and her health suffered; but for a time she gratefully offered herself up on the altar of juvenile literature, feeling that she ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... funds exhausted and exhausted veins, To demons, by his holiness ordain'd To propagate the gospel—penn'd at Rome; Hawk'd through the world by consecrated bulls; And how illustrated?—by Smithfleld flames: Who plunge (but not like Curtius) down the gulf, Down narrow-minded self's voracious gulf, Which gapes and swallows all they swore to save: Hate all that lifted heroes into gods, And hug the horrors of a victor's chain: Of bodies politic that destin'd hell, Inflicted here, since here their beings end; And fall from foes detested and despis'd, On disbelievers—of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... correspondents. Now I would have them all know that on the 20th instant, it is my intention to erect a Lion's Head, in imitation of those I have described in Venice, through which all the private commonwealth is said to pass. This head is to open a most wide and voracious mouth, which shall take in such letters and papers as are conveyed to me by my correspondents, it being my resolution to have a particular regard to all such matters as come to my hands through the mouth of the Lion. There will be under it a box, of which the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... of Tasmania: migratory. Appear in immense numbers at certain seasons (December to June) in pursuit of the horse-mackerel. Caught with a swivelled barbless hook at night. Voracious in the extreme—individuals frequently attacking each other, and also the allied species, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... wood. One resembled a tiger in fury and rapaciousness; a second prowled about like an hungry wolf, seeking whom he might devour; a third acted the part of a jackal, in beating the bush for game to his voracious employer; and the fourth imitated the wily fox, in practising a thousand crafty ambuscades for the destruction of the ignorant and unwary. This last was the department of life for which he found himself best qualified by nature and inclination; and he accordingly ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the usual courtesies of the table, the voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured, the strange uncouth phrases and pronunciation; the loathsome spitting, from the contamination of which it was absolutely impossible to protect our dresses; the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... that I am persuaded they must have given much time, and much study, to make themselves such adepts in this art. It would be very difficult to determine, whether they were most to be distinguished as gluttons or epicures; for they were, at once, dainty and voracious, understood the right and the wrong of every dish, and alike emptied the one and the other. I should have been quite sick of their remarks, had I not been entertained by seeing that Lord Orville, who, I am sure, was equally ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... of serrated bone plates. In colour they are a very beautiful iridescent silver along the sides and belly, the back and head being a deep, glossy blue. When full grown their length is slightly over four feet, and weight about twenty-five pounds. They are as voracious as the pike, swim with extraordinary swiftness at night-time, and will take the hook eagerly if baited with a whole flying-fish; their flesh is somewhat delicate in flavour and greatly relished ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... made to remove it at a greater distance from the city. But there was a strong objection made to its removal, on account of the ravages which the rats would make in the neighborhood, when they had no longer the carcasses of the horses to feed upon. These voracious creatures assembled at this spot in such numbers, that they devoured all the flesh (that was not much, perhaps, in many cases) of twenty or thirty horses in one night, so that in the morning nothing remained of these carcasses but bare bones. In one of these slaughter-houses, ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... Drake—two hundred years—England had sought to possess the splendid Bay of California, with its great seaport and the tributary country. The war between the United States and Mexico seemed her opportune time for the acquisition, but her efforts, both by sea and land, were thwarted by her only less voracious daughter.(61) ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... papers refused to report the commission's session. But papers outside the State were voracious for the news and little by little tales were published to the world that made Lake City citizens when out of the city, hesitate to confess the name of ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Schell's waistcoat for eighteen grosch, or nine schostacks. I had shot a pullet the day before, which necessity obliged us to eat raw. I also killed a crow, which I devoured alone, Schell refusing to taste. Youth and hard travelling created a voracious appetite, and our eighteen ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... tremendous. No one had ever succeeded in satisfying its voracious appetite; it would swallow anything and hungrily plead for more. His father, having started early and knowing what pleased his boy, was his most satisfactory feeder. It was Caleb's practice to drive out to the ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... were very voracious, and I had a special antipathy to them, on account of their preying so on the crayfish—a crustacean of which I was particularly fond, and which the natives also liked very much, but were afraid to capture for fear their hands might come in contact ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... be particularly understood, that consumption is neither more nor less than scrofula of the lungs. When it attacks the glands of the mesentery, the belly becomes large and hard, while the legs and arms waste; the patient is voracious, yet his food fails in affording sufficient nourishment, and he gradually loses his strength and dies. Then the liver, the heart, the spleen, and even the brain itself, may become the seats of this dreadful ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent
... constantly eating, drinking, or sucking—if it were but a bennet or grass-stalk—was less voracious than that of the other children. Mrs. Lake gave him Benjamin's share of treacle- stick, but he has been known to give some of it away, and to exchange peppermint-drops for a slate-pencil rather softer than ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... are assuredly both mentally and morally lacking. Men and women there are who will say: "Oh, give me anything. I'm not particular—so long as it is plain and wholesome." I've met many of these people. My experience of them is that they are the greatest gluttons on earth, with veritably voracious appetites, and that the best isn't good enough for them. To be sure, at a pinch, they will demolish a score of potatoes, if there be nothing else; but offer them caviare, canvas-back duck, quail, and nesselrode pudding, and they will look askance at food that is plain and wholesome. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that I have seen swimming out in the ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man- eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy water, the monster glides up stealthily, seizes his victim by ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... to satisfy her need by displaying new resources. To her, he seemed pale indeed, after the brilliancy of the night before, and he caused not the faintest emotion to the hungry Beatrix. A great love is a credit opened to a power so voracious that bankruptcy is sure to come ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that modern people do not read these great authors is that they are not encouraged to do so. The very best way to instil a love of Thackeray into the modern world is to make the modern world read just so much of him that its voracious appetite is ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... at one of the up-country stations, where the freer air of the jungle imparts to babes and sucklings a voracious appetite. Besides your own dhye, brought from Calcutta, there is not another wet-nurse to be had, for love or money. Immediately Dhye strikes for higher wages. The Baba Sahib, she says, has defiled her rice; yesterday he put his foot into her curry; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various |
