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More "Avidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has been destroyed not by its enemies but by its too ardent devotees. The horrid banquet, devoured with avidity for so many years, has become so highly seasoned that the jaded palate at last cries out for something different, and, according to Peacock, finds what it desires in "the vices and blackest passions of our nature tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and disappointed benevolence"—an ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... his victim with an eye of avidity and triumph. His eager curiosity wandered over her hoard of charms; and his brutal passion was soothed with the contemplation of her disorder. Already in imagination, he had possessed himself of a decisive advantage over so apparent a weakness; and his ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... prevented him from basking in the rays of the earthly Venus. Before leaving Paris he had had an intrigue with a certain Mile. M———, a somewhat frivolous and unscrupulous beauty, who had bled his not overfilled purse with the avidity of a leech. Berlioz heard just before returning to Paris that the coquette was about to marry, a conclusion one would fancy which would have rejoiced his mind. But, no! he was worked to a dreadful rage by what he considered such perfidy! His one thought was to avenge himself. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... lessons and forming his political creed from a most unlikely source, apparently. This was the Weekly Dispatch, a paper that in those days was scarcely thought to be proper reading for young people. He read it, however, with avidity, and there is no doubt that it had much to do with forming his political character, and in laying the foundation of the sturdy inflexibility with which he held to his political principles. One of his early friends says, "He liked the Weekly Dispatch. The politics, being racy, had ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... intellectual activity. Even when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people, living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a strong expression, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hunting-shirt over her, for the air was shrewdly cool. In the dying coals I saw pictures, wherein Kirst, Dale, and Lost Sister paraded in turn; the fate of each the result of race-hatred, and a race-avidity to possess the land. And a great fear came over me that the girl leaning against the walnut, the mass of blue-black hair seeming to bow down the proud head, was destined to be added to the purchase-price the frontier ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... where, in place of antiphonaries, heavy ledgers reposed on reading-desks. Like leprosy, the avidity of the age was ravaging the Church, weighing down the monks with inventories ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... man that one, by his death, might ransom all the rest. The lot was cast, and it fell on La Chore, the same wretched man whom Albert had doomed to starvation on a lonely island. They killed him, and with ravenous avidity portioned out his flesh. The hideous repast sustained them till the land rose in sight, when, it is said, in a delirium of joy, they could no longer steer their vessel, but let her drift at the will of the tide. A small English bark bore down upon them, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... first story,—"The Two Voices, or the Shadow and the Shadowless,"—is a sweet thing, as is also the one entitled, "The Diamond Fountain." Indeed, the whole number, and there are ten, will be read with avidity. Their moral is as pure as ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... were winging through the air—driven now by the breeze, or lingering over our heads as if afraid to be soiled by the earth, which we were bent to open where the dead then lay—or some time before lay—a mass of putrefaction; yet dear to the feelings of the bereaved, and sought now with greater avidity than when the body was arrayed in the smiles of beauty, and filled with living, breathing love. The husband spoke nothing; and George was silent, save for the deep sobs that burst from him as he looked upon the woe-worn form of his father, who stalked ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... convicts particularly happy in fertility of invention and exaggerated descriptions; hence, large fresh-water rivers, valuable ores, and quarries of limestone, chalk, and marble were daily proclaimed soon after we had landed. At first we hearkened with avidity to such accounts, but perpetual disappointments taught us to listen with caution, and to ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... was rather absent, and she took wine. These were all the circumstances that her anxious sister could fix upon, during dinner, for silent comment. After dinner, having eaten an orange with something like avidity, Margaret withdrew for a very few minutes. As the door ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... upon knowledge, and liberty, to the beasts of the field, for they are incapable of such truths. But these themes are forbidden to slaves, not because they cannot, but because they can and would seize on them with avidity—receive them gladly, comprehend them quickly; and the masters' power over them would be annihilated at once and for ever. But I have more frequently heard, not that they were incapable of receiving ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... severely judged. He lived in a time when the worst examples abounded, a time of court intrigue and state revolution, when nothing was certain for a moment, and when all who were possessed of any opportunity to make profit, used it with the most shameless avidity, lest the golden ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... civilization, — and his indebtedness to Southern scenery will be the more apparent in later chapters of this book. All the while his genius had been steadily growing. When the time came he was a prepared man — ready to seize with avidity every ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... hold up large caravans of ships to the number of three hundred or more at the very gates of the English Channel. And the worst of it was that there was no ransom that we could pay to satisfy his avidity; for whatever evil is wrought by the raiding East Wind, it is done only to spite his kingly brother of the West. We gazed helplessly at the systematic, cold, gray-eyed obstinacy of the Easterly weather, while short rations became the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... mediator, a final judge, a future saviour, a king, god, conqueror and legislator, who was to restore the golden age upon earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between the oracles of different nations, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... there was no salvation for this country until six heads of the principal persons in administration were laid upon the table. Eleven days after, this same gentleman accepted a place of lord of trade under those very ministers, and has acted with them ever since!" Such was the avidity of bidders for the most trifling production of Fox's genius, that, by the addition of this little record, the book sold for ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... contract. We have in this very period formed a new taste—or taken a new lease of an old one—for reading history, which had been dormant all through our first and second youth. We expect to see the time when we shall read the Elizabethan dramatists with avidity. We may not improbably find a delight in statistics; there must be a hidden charm in them. We may even form a relish ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... stage all these things of which I have spoken, and more. He saw the fight at Nombre de Dios, the capture of the rich galleon, the sacking of Maracaibo. I do not know whether other boys of that time were reading the American authors with such avidity, or whether it was by some chance that these books were thrown in his way. Washington Irving, Fenimore Cooper, Prescott, Emerson (in parts), Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, Lowell, Holmes, not to mention Thoreau, ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... others caught at the suggestion with avidity, and in a very few minutes each of the boys was mounting the fire-escape once again, this time with a large sheet of ice, not unlike a heavy pane of glass, under ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... surer, and the free laborer will pass a hundred times sooner from his present condition to that of a serf attached to the soil. Formerly, the length of time required to effect the seizure curbed the usurer's avidity, gave the borrower an opportunity to recover himself, and gave rise to a transaction between him and his creditor which might result finally in a complete release. Now, the debtor's sentence is irrevocable: he has but a few days ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... producing a volume of 'Monte Cristo'. She seized the book with avidity, and, after running her eyes over the pages, turned inquiringly to ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... regent was recklessly extravagant, but his expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred examples of his selfish nature might be given, but cui bono? Everything he could get hold of, which could minister to his own personal gratification, he grasped with avidity. In this spirit he appropriated the jewels and spent on himself the whole of the money belonging to his late father's estate, amounting to L120,000. His ministers did not dare to oppose his greed, or tell him that this ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... notable trophy as the tomb of Ceadwalla, the royal catechumen, which was erected and inscribed by Sergius I., disappeared from the Vatican, and was irretrievably lost, together with innumerable monuments of ancient art and piety, owing to the calamities of the times, the avidity of the workmen, and the ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... honors my father's memory shall be deposited as a most sacred family property in that room of mourning where once his son and grandsons used to receive with avidity from him lessons of patriotism and active love of liberty. There the daily contemplation of it will more and more impress their minds with that encouraging conviction that the affection and esteem of a free nation is the most desirable reward that can be obtained ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... exhibited a remarkable love of reading, and as no one took the trouble to direct my tastes, I seized every book which came within my reach and devoured it, with the avidity of a hungry and unoccupied mind. My father was a gentleman of pure and elegant taste, and had he dreamed that I was exposed, without guardianship, to dangerous influences, he would have shielded and warned me. But he believed ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... granted a supply, the largest by far that had ever been given to a king of England, yet scarcely sufficient for the present undertaking. Near two millions and a half were voted, to be levied by quarterly payments in three years. The avidity of the merchants, together with the great prospect of success, had animated the whole ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... power is not sure, because the dispositions of its heir apparent are not sure. But whether the present be truce or peace, it will allow time to mature the conditions of the alliance between France and the two empires, always supposed to be on the carpet. It is thought to be obstructed by the avidity of the Emperor, who would swallow a good part of Turkey, Silesia, Bavaria, and the rights of the Germanic body. To the two or three first articles, France might consent, receiving in gratification a well-rounded portion of the Austrian ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... avidity, and repaired to his tent. But what was his confusion and surprise to find, on examining his present, that it was nothing but a fragment of a human skull. "And is this," exclaimed he, "the mighty gift that they bestow on kings and heroes? Is this ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... type of steamer passenger and hotel guest who may, or may not, be a climber. This one searches out potential acquaintances on the passenger list and hotel register with the avidity of a bird searching for worms. You have scarcely found your own stateroom and had your deck chair placed, when one of them swoops upon you: "I don't know whether you remember me? I met you in nineteen two, at Countess della Robbia's in Florence." Your memory being woefully ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... idioms of the original. Coming out in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,—Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and expression? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... At least it is correct as far as it goes, but leaves us very far from a complete explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin merchant ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... hook, but its disposition seemed scarcely to have warranted these trifling blows. I was moved to compassion as it sat upon the jaw-bone of a whale, which projected beneath the tafrail, at one moment devouring pieces of its mother and sister with avidity, and at the next stretching its throat and blaring out mournfully, when a fragment of ice met its view, passing astern as we sailed on our course. It was about the size of a sheep, and after their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various
... great swampy plains, from which the greater part of the snow had been melted by the warm south wind, leaving exposed, over hundreds of acres, vast quantities of this jointed grass, on which the geese feed with such avidity. The frost was still in the ground, and so there was no difficulty on the part of the hunters in arranging their shooting nests and decoys as they desired. The camp was made very similar to those already described. ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... matter of surprise that, rendered desperate by her accumulated disappointments and misfortunes, Marie de Medicis at this moment welcomed with avidity the suggestions of Chanteloupe, who urged her to revenge upon the Cardinal the daily and hourly mortifications to which she was exposed. At first she hearkened listlessly to his counsels, for she was utterly discouraged; but ere long, as he ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... astonished to see itself surpassed by the reality, caught fire; enthusiasm possessed these people, as in the times of Austerlitz and Jena; numerous groups collected round the couriers, whose tidings were listened to with avidity; and the inhabitants, in a transport of joy, never separated without exclamations of "Long live the emperor! Long ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... Religionis," etc., he began to think himself highly culpable for neglecting such a means of information, and took himself severely to task for this sin, adding many acts of voluntary, and to others unknown, penance. The first opportunity which offered, of course, he seized the book with avidity, but on examination, not finding himself scholar enough to peruse its contents, set his heart at rest; and, not thinking to inquire whether there were any English books written on the subject, followed his usual amusements, and considered his conscience as lightened of ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... way to a natural desire of hunger and dived at the curate's delight, forgetting entirely the crumb-begetting habits of cake. "Try one of those," I went on, indicating the topmost plate, and to my delight she helped herself, almost with avidity. "You remember, Penelope, how we used to loiter near the kitchen when we ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... money. Hesitatingly she asked to have her due, but it was refused on some excuse of having a large payment to make on that very day. Again she turned to go, but again turned to ask for only a part of what was her own. One dollar was thrown her with an unkind remark. The first she seized with avidity, the last ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of the sound, that they conceive it to be supreme felicity. This is indeed Vanity of Vanities, and if such deluded Men ever come to their Senses, they will find it to be vexation of Spirit. When they reflect on their own folly, and injustice in having received the breath of Applause with avidity, and great delight, for Merrit which they are conscious they never had; and that many who have been the loudest in sounding their praises, had nothing in view, but their own private, and selfish interests, it will excite in them the feelings of shame, remorse, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... look of satisfaction came into his eyes and he smiled happily. Next his look changed to a nasty look of determination, and he abruptly got up, tossing a bank-note on the table which Old Meg grabbed with avidity, calling down Heaven's blessings on the handsome gentleman until Paul, running up-stairs, could hear ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... "On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned," which I came upon, by chance, in an odd volume of the Edinburgh Review. The latter was certainly strange reading for a boy, and I could not possibly have understood a great deal of it;[37] nevertheless I devoured it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind the strong conviction that, on even the most solemn and important of questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... party who were not very tall travelled, as they themselves expressed it, between two high green walls, over which they could not see; and these green walls were composed of rich grass which the ponies ate with avidity. On a subsequent occasion when we visited this valley we had to call to one another in order to ascertain our relative positions when only a few yards apart; and yet the vegetation was neither rank nor coarse, but as fine a grass as I have ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... this kind are sought and read with avidity, especially by children, and are well calculated to excite their attention, inform their understanding, and improve them in the art of reading, the greatest care has been observed to render the style easy, the language comprehensive, and the description natural. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... supply of money was now the question, and one most difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would that evening have the honor of appearing before the ladies and gentlemen ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... was accustomed to having his business offers snapped up the instant they were made, the younger man's deliberation piqued his interest and respect as almost nothing else could have done. He had thought the terms suggested very generous and had expected them to be seized with avidity. It was something new to have a penniless youth waver as to whether ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... they passed, searching among the ruins for plunder, occasionally turning up some trifle upon which they pounced with the avidity of children, and examining the half-burnt remnants of chairs, tables and stands, etc. Here and there they pulled the black, twisted nails forth, that looked like worms burnt to a cinder, and carefully preserved them for future use. Every metallic substance was seized as a prize, and ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... from the shore, we got out our fishing-lines. So beautifully clear was the water as the sun shone down into it, that we could actually see the fish take the hook. They bit with wonderful avidity, and in a short time we caught as many rock-cod and other fish as we required. After this we stood along the coast, seldom within sixty miles of it, yet in sight of the snowy summits of the towering Andes. This part of the ocean is called by whalers "the off-shore fishing ground," ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... closed his eyes on every appearance of decline in the prosperity of the West Indies, he also seized with avidity every indication of the successful operation of his scheme, and magnified it both to himself and to the world. He made haste, in particular, to paint in the most glowing colors the rising prosperity of Jamaica.[175] His narrative was hailed with eager delight by abolitionists in ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... deal. To the same class may be referred the persona who lay themselves out for saying disagreeable things, the "candid friends" of Canning, the "people who speak their mind," who form such pests of society. To find fault is to right-feeling men a very painful thing; but some take to the work with avidity and delight. And while people of cultivation shrink, with a delicate intuition, from saying any thing which may give pain or cause uneasiness to others, there are others who are ever painfully treading upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... his uncle and Constantia, excusing his absence by the uncontrollable avidity he felt to engage in the cause of his injured Prince, to whose commands he promised a strict obedience, and vowed to be sedulously attentive to all his new duties. To Constantia he added that he hoped to return worthier of her, and to feel in future the glorious ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... which resulted after days and nights of anxiety and overtaxed strength of body and mind, in a low state of health and spirits that almost unfitted him for his accumulated business, which, nevertheless, he continued to prosecute with avidity. This was about the year 1841. I do not recollect how long his ill health lasted, but I well remember how his flesh went away—how pale he was—how he perspired at night, from nervous prostration, ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... constant delight and surprise, and nothing astonished or pleased him more than the avidity with which she took up German. This language was like play to her, and by the time she was ten years old she spoke, and read, and wrote it almost as well as ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... not yet come, and I subdued the momentary impulse and proceeded with my scrutiny of the people about me. The jury looked tired, with the exception of one especially alert little man who drank in even the most uninteresting details with avidity. But they all had good faces, and none could doubt their interest, or that they were fully alive to the significance of ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... scarce, but they got a sufficiency of either small bok or birds to supply their wants; and, whether it was the constant change, the fresh air, the rich meat essence which Dick partook of with avidity, or whether it was a combination of the effect of all these, the change in the boy was magical. He could take a long ride now without feeling weary, and wanting in appetite; he was ready to buckle ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... studies was very wearisome and uninteresting. When the 28th of August came—the date for breaking up camp and going into barracks—I felt as though I had been at West Point always, and that if I staid to graduation, I would have to remain always. I did not take hold of my studies with avidity, in fact I rarely ever read over a lesson the second time during my entire cadetship. I could not sit in my room doing nothing. There is a fine library connected with the Academy from which cadets can get books to read in their quarters. ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... the picker-up and the payer exceedingly contented. Meanwhile Peter with difficulty restrained Leslie from "picking up" stray pieces of mosaic from tessellated pavements, and other curios. Oddly together with Leslie's feeling for the costly went the insane and indiscriminate avidity of the collecting tourist. ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... Jerrold, John Forster, Marston, Wilkie Collins, and other men of prominent intellectual distinction, has given a remarkable prestige to this play, independent of its actual merits. It can not fail to be sought with avidity, both from interest in the occasion, and the popularity of the author. Nor is it altogether unworthy of his great reputation. The construction of the plot shows his usual fertility of resource, and the dialogue, which is various and spirited, is managed with no small skill. The scene is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... this quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity. "And if she dies without doing anything, what becomes ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... cold, queenly—he had acquired strength of character, loftier ideals, and a sense of the value of intellectual gifts, which had kept him singularly free from and indifferent to, the temptations of the senses. He had learnt to drink mental stimulants with avidity. He had made one or two brilliant successes in literature, and was looked upon as a supremely "odd ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... a new and overmastering horror, bethought him of Jack's admonition about the water. He slipped down from the tree, gathered the large moist leaves that clustered near the pool and held them to the burning lips, Jones swallowed the drops with a hideous gurgling avidity, clutching the boy's hand ravenously to secure a more copious flow. There was a tin cup in the holster under the invalid's head. Taking this, Dick dipped up water from the black pool between the green leaves; the hot lips sucked it in at ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... her father, who was always authoritative and sentimental; Manning, who was always Manning. And most of the others she had met had, she felt, the same steadfastness. Goopes, she was sure was always high-browed and slow and Socratic. And Ramage too—about Ramage there would always be that air of avidity, that air of knowledge and inquiry, the mixture of things in his talk that were rather good with things that were rather poor. But one could not count with ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... the nature and situation of man; must reject appearances, which may be false, though specious; and must search for those rules, which are, on the whole, most USEFUL and BENEFICIAL. Vulgar sense and slight experience are sufficient for this purpose; where men give not way to too selfish avidity, or too extensive enthusiasm. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... so many go to the morgue, merely to see dead bodies. No; the curiosity that impelled me, and the avidity with which I pursued the object of my study, was not ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... article, I must not deprive myself of the pleasure of congratulating you heartily on another. Since October 1802 no article on foreign affairs has been so apropos as your Cuban one of last October. Here it has been read with avidity and universal satisfaction, and I believe it will do much to guide influential opinion in England at this crisis. I hope to see you return to the subject in January. Remember that your January number, as far ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... unrolls with emotion the frightful misfortunes that assailed France during the reign of King John. The temerity, the improvidence of that monarch; the disgraceful passions of the King of Navarre; his treacheries; the barbarous avidity of the nobility; the seditious disposition of the people; the sanguinary depredations of the great companies; the ever recurring insolence of England; all this is expressed without disguise, yet with extreme moderation. No trait reveals, no fact even foreshadows ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... rightly-conceived tight place; he does much more than this—he believes, irresistibly, in the necessary, the precious "tightness" of the place (whatever the issue) on the strength of any respectable hint. It being thus the respectable hint that I had with such avidity picked up, what would be the story to which it would most inevitably form the centre? It is part of the charm attendant on such questions that the "story," with the omens true, as I say, puts on from this stage the authenticity of concrete existence. It then is, essentially—it begins to be, though ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... Orders in Council. He told me in direct terms, 'the Universal monopoly of Commerce'; that they had long desired an excuse for such measures as the Orders in Council, and that the French decrees were exactly what they wished, and the opportunity was seized with avidity the moment it was offered. They knew that the Orders in Council bore hard upon the Americans, but they considered ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... down again on that day, and she sat down on several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity. Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes, from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased. But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... some said it was the prospect of national expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks; trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened—a current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned by the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... part liked with a mild and subdued liking. Everybody likes good and well-made bread; but nobody goes into raptures over it. Few persons like caviare; but those who do like it are very fond of it. I never knew but one being who liked mustard with apple-pie; but that solitary man ate it with avidity, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... by the pack of heathens around her," Mrs. Dr. Van Buren retorted, feeling a good deal guilty herself for having been instrumental in bringing about this unhappy match, and in proportion as she felt guilty, seizing with avidity any other offered cause for Ethie's wretchedness. "I've heard even more about them than you told me," she went on to say. "There was Mrs. Ellis, whose cousin lives in Olney—she says the mother is the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... ebb, but, as she herself expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out into life," and in the spring she rallied sufficiently to take a few drives and to sit on the balcony of her apartment. She came back to life with a feverish sort of thirst and avidity. "No such cure for pessimism," she says, "as a severe illness; the simplest pleasures are enough,—to breathe the air and ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... that as the key had been left in the lock, there could be no harm in looking in. Her husband became as curious as she. Of course, the first things they saw were the prearranged books. They were seized upon with avidity probably with the expectation of finding something smutty, but to their surprise, and especially that of the doctor, it was quite ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... from Borneo wore his clothes wrong side out, as it is well known wild men from Borneo always do; and he ate grass with avidity. Wry-mouthed and squint-eyed, he was the incarnation of the ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... only to high office but even to the love of women. Tachibana Hiromi was one of the leading literati of his era. He rendered into most academical terms the Emperor's intentions towards Mototsune. From time immemorial it has always been a canon of Japanese etiquette not to receive anything with avidity. Mototsune declined the rescript; the Emperor directed Hiromi to re-write it. Thus far the procedure had been normal. But Hiromi's second draft ran thus: "You have toiled for the welfare of the country. You have aided me in accordance with the late sovereign's will. You are ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity. When I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... Treveri had shut their gates against Caesar Decentius, was chosen to defend that people. After him, Asclepiodotus, and Luto, and Maudio, all Counts, were put to death, and many others also, the obdurate cruelty of the times seeking for these and similar punishments with avidity. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... against every human ill, had yet never experienced or been habituated to prosperity. Accordingly, excess of good fortune and unrestrained indulgence were the ruin of men whom no severity of distress had subdued; and so much the more completely, in proportion to the avidity with which they plunged into pleasures to which they were unaccustomed. For sleep, wine, feasting, women, baths, and ease, which custom rendered more seductive day by day, so completely unnerved both mind and body, that from henceforth their past victories rather than their present ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Further, in the diverging sects of the Christian religion, we find that its progressiveness is to be measured, not by the numbers of its women adherents, but by their relative freedom. The women of America, who belong to a thousand sects, who follow new ones with avidity, who even make them, and who also leave them all as men do, are women, as well as those of Spain, who remain contented Romanists, but in America the status ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... took up the idea with avidity. Coffee houses increased in number. The demand outstripped the supply. In the seraglio itself special officers (kahvedjibachi) were commissioned to prepare the coffee drink for the sultan. Coffee was in ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... desires, who have always cherished with grateful affection those who devote themselves to study and who add anything either ingenious or useful to the opinions of our forefathers, yet we have always desired with more undoubting avidity to investigate the well-tested labours of the ancients. For whether they had by nature a greater vigour of mental sagacity, or whether they perhaps indulged in closer application to study, or whether they were assisted in their progress by both these things, one thing we are ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... one who obtains the fruition of all his wishes, and one who casts off every wish, the latter, who renounces all, is superior to the former who obtains the fruition of all. No one could ever attain to the end of desire.[526] Only he that is destitute of knowledge and judgments feels an avidity for protecting his body and life.—Forbear from every desire for action. O my Soul that art possessed by cupidity, adopt tranquillity by freeing thyself from all attachments! Repeatedly hast thou been deceived (by desire and hope). How is it that thou dost not still free ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... story that had filled my childhood with tragic horror? How should I ever cease to see the pale face of the murdered man, with its fixed, open eyes? How should I not say: "I will avenge thee, thou poor ghost?" Poor ghost! When I read Hamlet for the first time, with that passionate avidity which comes from an analogy between the moral situation depicted in a work of art and some crisis of our own life, I remember that I regarded the Prince of Denmark with horror. Ah! if the ghost of my father had come to relate the drama of his death to me, with ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... peace and good government were not in need of that aid and countenance which they ought always to receive, and, I trust, ever will receive, against the vicious and turbulent, I should have caught with avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... telegrams of the local centre. At Chicago, the New York paper is forty hours behind the news; at San Francisco, thirty days; in Oregon, forty. Before California had been reached by the telegraph, the New York newspapers, on the arrival of a steamer, were sought with an avidity of which the most ludicrous accounts have been given. If the news was important and the supply of papers inadequate, nothing was more common than for a lucky newsboy to dispose of his last sheets at five times their usual price. All this has changed. A spirited local press ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the seashore, he would most probably have said that the males subsist on decaying vegetable matter and moisture of slime. It is, however, more important to know what the female subsists on. We know that she thirsts for warm mammalian blood, that she seeks it with avidity, and is provided with an admirable organ for its extraction—only, unfortunately for her, she does not get it, or, at all events, the few happy individuals that do get it are swamped in the infinite multitude of those that are doomed by ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... of Pamphylia). There appeared a great and black dragon which came in clouds, and let down his head into the water, whilst his tail seemed turned to the sky; and the dragon drew the water to him by drinking, with such avidity, that, if any ship, even though laden with men or any other heavy articles, had been near him when drinking, it would nevertheless have been sucked up and carried on high. In order however to avoid this danger, it is necessary, when people see it, at once to make a great uproar, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... criticism have ever recovered the eruption which they both made at the beginning of this century into the fashionable world. The poems of Lord Byron were received with an avidity that resembles our present avidity for sensation novels, and were read by a class which at present reads little but such novels. Old men who remember those days may be heard to say, 'We hear nothing of poetry nowadays; it seems quite down.' ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... therefore, to the multitudes who will, I trust, devour this book with avidity, I have so far explained our ancient manners in modern language, and so far detailed the characters and sentiments of my persons, that the modern reader will not find himself, I should hope, much trammelled by the repulsive dryness ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... covered with scales, perfectly resembles that of the Calamus rotang. It has somewhat the taste of the apple. When arrived at its maturity it is yellow within and red without. The araguato monkeys eat it with avidity; and the nation of the Guaraounos, whose whole existence, it may be said, is closely linked with that of the moriche palm-tree, produce from it a fermented liquor, slightly acid, and extremely refreshing. This palm-tree, with its large shining leaves, folded like a fan, preserves a beautiful ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the country over the mountains; that the suspension of this encouragement, by the proclamation of October 1763, was merely temporary, untill the lands were purchased from the natives;—that the avidity to settle these lands was so great, that large settlements were made thereon, before they were purchased;—that although the settlers were daily exposed to the cruelties of the savages, neither a military force, nor repeated proclamations could induce them ...
— Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations on the Petition of the Honourable Thomas Walpole, Benjamin Franklin, John Sargent, and Samuel Wharton, Esquires, and their Associates • Great Britain Board of Trade
... commerce bore down those speculative objections. The East India commodities were so essential for animating all other branches of trade, and for completing the commercial circle, that all nations contended for it with the greatest avidity. The English company flourished under this exportation for a very long series of years. The nation was considerably benefited both in trade and in revenue; and the dividends of the proprietors were often high, and always sufficient to keep ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and ways of wronging girls, Jerry," she said slowly. I couldn't see her face, of course, but I knew that her eyes must have been searching him sidelong under their lashes with peculiar avidity. "Of course, I don't say that there was anything wrong, but you'll admit that Una's hunting you out the way ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... welcomed Julian's advances with avidity, nestled into his arms, but when he walked toward Valentine, struggled to escape and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... since his arrival in Peru had been of inestimable value to him, and he had made the very utmost of it; he therefore felt confident of his ability to carry through his task to the satisfaction of his employers and with credit to himself, and he entered upon it with avidity and keen enjoyment. Moreover, he was tactful, and possessed the happy knack of managing those under him in such a way that he was able to extract the very last ounce of work from them without offending their susceptibilities, or causing them to feel that ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the occasion of her asking him a question of this kind that he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. "You are always snatching at information," he said; "you will never consent ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... containing which "guoties-cumque sitit oeger, large bibit." When I have recalled the humane common-sense of Captain Cook in the matter of preventing this disease; when I have heard my friend, Mr. Dana, describing the avidity with which the scurvy-stricken sailors snuffed up the earthy fragrance of fresh raw potatoes, the food which was to supply the elements wanting to their spongy tissues, I have recognized that the perfection of art is often a return ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have said it would appear that there is not at present any great literary movement in Holland; but on the contrary, there is great literary activity. The number of books published is incredible, and it is marvellous with what avidity they are read. Every town, every religious sect, every society, has its review or newspaper. Besides this, there is a multitude of foreign books: English novels are in the hands of all; French works ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... done this than the watchers saw him start upright again. He was undoubtedly devouring the thrilling news item on the front page with "avidity"—-at least, that was what Jim Pettigrew would have called it, had he been at his favorite job of "writing up" the doings of Scranton ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... without crack or flaw, twenty perfectly new and symmetrically straight nails, and one jack-knife. This being agreed to, the articles were at once handed over; the native receiving them with great avidity, and in the absence of clothing, using his mouth as a pocket to put the nails in. Two of them, however, were first made to take the place of a pair of ear-ornaments, curiously fashioned out of bits ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Michigan cavalry was recruited under the title of "Copeland's Mounted Riflemen." One of the most picturesque figures in America before the war was John C. Fremont, known as "The Pathfinder," whose "Narrative," in the fifties, was read by boys with the same avidity that they displayed in the perusal of the "Arabian Nights." Fremont had a regiment of "Mounted Riflemen" in the Mexican war, though it served in California, and the youthful imagination of those days idealized it into a corps d'elite, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... heavy rain the whole country is covered with a bright green carpet, but in summer, and, indeed, most of the year, the short scrub which here takes the place of grass is sombre in tint. Nevertheless cattle devour these apparently withered shrubs with avidity and thrive upon them. Again, when the warm tints of the setting sun flood the whole expanse of desert, there is a short-lived beauty in the rugged kopjes with all their fantastic outlines sharply silhouetted against the glowing sky. The farms on the Karroo, and, in fact, ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... say this work will be found the most circumstantial, and assuredly the most authentic, upon the subject of which it treats, of all that have yet been presented to the public of Great Britain. The press has been prolific in fabulous writings upon these times, which have been devoured with avidity. I hope John Bull is not so devoted to gilded foreign fictions as to spurn the unadorned truth from one of his downright countrywomen: and let me advise him en passant, not to treat us beauties ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... departure in every direction in order to reach a complete understanding of his subject. From each and every detail one is driven to consider the whole; the only thing that matters is that one go to work in the right way, with strength, intelligence, and avidity. Let one choose several different points of departure, working through from each of them to the whole, and one will grasp the whole all the more surely, and comprehend the wealth of detail all the more fully. Accordingly, by sinking ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... voting for William C. Ruger of Onondaga, and he now caused it to be understood that under no circumstances would Grace be acceptable. The merchant's name once upon the list, however, the Boss snapped it up with avidity, while the Germans muttered because three of the five city candidates were Irishmen. Thus the campaign ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... necessary for making the plans to scale before the teacher in manual training would allow him to take up the work of construction. The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. Under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. He secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... for any possible hurt to his vanity. He could have owned them as his at any moment, had he chosen to do so. He did not read criticisms of his books, but was satisfied, as one of his friends observed, "to accept the intense avidity with which his novels are read, the enormous and continued sale of his works, as a sufficient commendation of them."[398] In the case of Byron, as always when the public approved the works of one of his brother authors, he considered ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... qualities could be appreciated as well as felt in an almost equal degree by all classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted to him because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters with which they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands were reading him with no less avidity because he introduced them to passages of nature and life of which they before knew nothing, but of the truth of which their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them. Only to genius are so revealed the affinities and sympathies of high and low, in ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... for the avidity with which he sought knowledge, and his honesty was outraged at an early age, being punished by his father for telling the truth of goods on sale, thereby losing a purchaser. Again his soul revolted when at Marseilles in 1799, where ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... which will be read with avidity, as it ought to be, it is so brightly and frankly written, and with such evident knowledge of the temperaments and habits, the friendships and enmities of schoolboys."—New ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... is curious to note what most interests visitors in certain departments. Straight University sends large numbers of imaginary letters written by pupils from various parts of the world. The visiting public read these letters with as much avidity as if the innocent epistles were real letters, and the neat manuscripts are already well thumbed. One of the best letters, all things considered, is from a pupil from Honduras, who has only been studying English two years. His letter, signed ...
— The American Missionary—Volume 39, No. 02, February, 1885 • Various
... proved that while the elementary gases and their mixtures, including among the latter the earth's atmosphere, were almost as pervious as a vacuum to ordinary radiant heat, the compound gases were one and all absorbers, some of them taking up with intense avidity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... little dog ran up to her and dropped his bread at her feet; she picked it up and ate it with avidity. Soon she looked quite recovered, and Cherry, delighted, was trotting back again to his kennel, when he heard loud cries, and saw a young girl dragged by four men to the door of the palace, which they were trying to compel her to enter. Oh, how ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... FREIHERR VON (1757-1807), Prussian soldier and military writer, and brother of General Count F.W. Buelow, entered the Prussian army in 1773. Routine work proved distasteful to him, and he read with avidity the works of the chevalier Folard and other theoretical writers on war, and of Rousseau. After sixteen years' service he left Prussia, and endeavoured without success to obtain a commission in the Austrian army. He then returned to Prussia, and for some time managed a theatrical company. The ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Atanekerdluk—a flora rich in species and wonderfully preserved in type—and the Miocene flora of Spitzenburg, to the southernmost limits of vegetation on the globe, science has reached out her hands for materials, and gathered them with as much success as avidity. And all scientific botanists agree in referring these fossilized forms from the high northern latitudes, to the Miocene period—one so remote that we can form no adequate conception of it, except as time may be ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... proffered terms of amnesty, and may be deemed fit objects of example; that the friends to peace and good government were not in need of that aid and countenance which they ought always to receive, and, I trust, ever will receive, against the vicious and turbulent, I should have caught with avidity the opportunity of restoring the militia to their families and homes. But succeeding intelligence has tended to manifest the necessity of what has been done, it being now confessed by those who were not inclined to exaggerate ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... shortly these: Mike had, among the other gossip of the place, heard frequent tales of the immense wealth and great parsimony of the doctor, and of his anxiety to amass money on all occasions, and the avidity with which even the smallest trifle was added to his gains. He accordingly resolved to amuse himself at the expense of this trait, and proceeded thus. Boring a hole in a halfpenny, he attached a long string to it, and having dropped it on the doctor's ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... happened. And yet it was plain that it was still in their thoughts, from the joy with which they resumed their lives, the pleasant life from day to day, which is never truly valued until it is endangered. As usual when danger is past, they gulped it down with renewed avidity. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... first portioned out; but from the impatience of some of the women to get at the liver, a general scramble took place for it, and it was snatched in pieces, and, without the slightest process of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... pa's room, Des," said the girl. He shook the carving-knife at her, at which gesture she said "Pooh!" and applied herself to the roast mutton with avidity. They all ate largely, especially the girl, whose wide mouth was filled with splendid teeth. Mrs. Somers made a motion with her glass for Murphy to bring her the wine, and pouring a teaspoonful, held it to her mouth, as if she were practicing drinking ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... are seldom read except by children and maiden Gy-ei. The most interesting works of a purely literary character are those of explorations and travels into other regions of this nether world, which are generally written by young emigrants, and are read with great avidity by the relations and friends they ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in connection with translations from the Spanish and German, and with original pieces which immediately took their place among the favorite poems of every household, they could not be expected to attract general attention. But scholars read them with avidity, for they found in them the first successful solution of one of the great problems of literature,—Can poetry pass from one language into another without losing its distinctive characteristics of form and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... house for the improvement of my daughter, but even distinguished with particular marks of confidence and favour, little thinking he had either inclination or capacity to debauch the sentiments of my child. I was rejoiced beyond measure to see with what alacrity she received his lessons, with what avidity she listened to his discourse, which was always equally moral, instructing, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... corrupt the citizens in order to gain them over to their masters, to the great prejudice of the republic and fomenting of the parties, &c. And should they only diffuse among a nation, formerly plain, frugal, and virtuous, a taste for luxury, avidity for money, and the manners of courts, these would be more than sufficient for wise and provident rulers to dismiss them."—Book IV. ch. v. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... long-benighted beings. They had never dreamed of a God of love; their only notion of a superior power was one which inspired them with awe and terror. I have frequently observed that the unsophisticated minds of savages grasp the simple and glorious truths of the gospel with an avidity and a power of comprehension which would be surprising to those who have been accustomed week after week and year after year to set the same truths before those to whom they are familiar. As I heard Mr Bent and Vihala ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... innumerable means of hearing news of his Majesty; but I am persuaded that, had she received each day one hundred letters from those near the Emperor, she would have read and reread them with the same avidity. ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... letter further reveals that our early colonists cherished their worldly possessions fully as fondly as their descendants, who pursue with avidity the chase after the dollar. And when it came to the question of the slave's spiritual welfare, or the master's temporal prosperity, the master did not hesitate to show which he considered of the most importance. For, as Mr. Taylor writes, when it was rumored in 1719 that the General ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... deposited me and my suite, consisting of a black servant, named "Mac," and a little girl, in safety in the midst of my many packages, not altogether satisfied with my prospects; for the rain was falling heavily and steadily, and the Gatun porters were possessing themselves of my luggage with that same avidity which distinguishes their brethren on the pier of Calais or the quays of Pera. There are two species of individuals whom I have found alike wherever my travels have carried me—the reader can guess ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... laying snares and traps, they are seldom without large supplies of game and flesh of wild animals of all kinds. They keep the dried bodies of a variety of birds for medical purposes; mongoose, squirrels and flying-foxes they eat with avidity as articles of luxury. Spirituous liquors and intoxicating drugs are indulged in to a large extent, and chiefs of clans assume the title of Bhangi or drinkers of hemp (bhang) as a mark of honour.... In lying, thieving ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... her the fly-leaf of his guide-book. She stood looking at him and scratching her chin with the pencil. "Is it not for sale?" he asked. And as she still stood reflecting, and looking at him with an eye which, in spite of her desire to treat this avidity of patronage as a very old story, betrayed an almost touching incredulity, he was afraid he had offended her. She simply trying to look indifferent, and wondering how far she might go. "I haven't made a mistake—pas insulte, no?" her interlocutor continued. "Don't ...
— The American • Henry James
... throwing out a hook baited with fame. An ambitious youth let go all he had and seized the baited hook with singular avidity. It inspired him with inward hope, and he became so engaged in thinking of his golden future that he followed whither the gentle drawing led him, until he also reached the questionable ground of the World. There he became still further entangled until he was ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... of her asking him a question of this kind that he charged her, with a humorous emphasis in which, also, if she had been curious in the matter, she might have detected a spark of restless ardor, with having an insatiable avidity for facts. "You are always snatching at information," he said; "you will never consent to have ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... accord with Peck's; nor, for want of knowing his mother, can we guess why king Richard was more secret on the birth of this son (if Peck's Richard Plantagenet was truly so) than on those of his other natural children. Perhaps the truest remark that can be made on this whole story is, that the avidity with which our historians swallowed one gross ill-concocted legend, prevented them from desiring or daring to sift a single part of it. If crumbs of truth are mingled with it, at least they are now undistinguishable in such a mass of ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... and of almost every family of note were in their keeping. They glided from one Protestant country to another under innumerable disguises, as gay Cavaliers, as simple rustics, as Puritan preachers. They wandered to countries which neither mercantile avidity nor liberal curiosity had ever impelled any stranger to explore. They were to be found in the garb of Mandarins, superintending the observatory at Pekin. They were to be found, spade in hand, teaching the rudiments of agriculture to the savages of Paraguay. Yet, whatever ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Vaucanson was still more remarkable. It was of the size of life, and so perfect an imitation of the living animal that all the spectators were deceived. It executed, says Brewster, all the natural movements and gestures, it ate and drank with avidity, performed all the quick motions of the head and throat which are peculiar to the duck, and like it muddled the water which it drank with its bill. It produced also the sound of quacking in the most natural manner. In the anatomical structure the artist exhibited the highest skill. Every bone ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in his poems that he grows old "daily learning something new." Or again in my own case, it was only when an old man that I became acquainted with Greek literature, which in fact I absorbed with such avidity—in my yearning to quench, as it were, a long-continued thirst—that I became acquainted with the very facts which you see me now using as precedents. When I heard what Socrates had done about the lyre I should have liked for my part ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the indoor nor the outdoor splendor, nor all the personal comforts they enjoyed, made this favored band of colored people forgetful of the brethren they had left in bondage. Every word about John Brown was sought for and read with avidity. When he was first taken captive, Chloe said: "The angel that let Peter out o' prison ha'n't growed old an' hard o' hearing. If we prays loud enough, he'll go and open the doors for ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity for ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Rebel camp ground. Traces of their occupancy were found not only in their depredations in the neighborhood destructive of railroad bridges, but also in letters and wall-paper envelopes adorned with the lantern-jawed phiz of Jefferson Davis. The latter were sought after with avidity as soon as ranks were broken and tents pitched; the more eagerly perhaps for the reason that during the greater part of their previous month of service they had been frequently within sound of rebel cannon, although but once under their fire. During the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... and ultimately to the entire person. They were devoid of shame, and yielded to this inspection without the slightest manifestation of offended modesty. At first they were indifferent to cooked food, and would chase and catch and eat the grasshoppers and lizards with the avidity of wild turkeys, and seemed, as those fowls, to relish these ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... too few men of sense and respectability among them. They had no good committee men; not enough to bear down the current of vice and folly. We dread the contagion of bad example. Some of our men soon resorted to their detestable gambling tables; and pursued their old vices with astonishing avidity. We seriously expostulated with our companions, on their returning to the pernicious practice of gambling, after they had had the virtue of refraining on board the Crown Prince; and our advice induced nearly all of them to renounce the destructive practice. I had read, but never saw convincing ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... gratified, if our book is not bought up with quite so much avidity by those high-bred epicures, who are unhappily so much more nice than wise, that they cannot eat any thing dressed by an English cook; and vote it barbarously unrefined and intolerably ungenteel, to endure the sight of the best bill ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... 1847 to 1853, Sir James Brooke was very popular in England. The story of his first occupation of Sarawak, published in his journals, and the cruizes of her Majesty's ships in those eastern seas—the Dido and the Samarang—were read with avidity, and furnished the English public with a romance which had all the charm of novelty. However difficult and inconvenient it might be for the English Government to recognize a native State under an English rajah, who was at the same time a subject of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... hold a distinguished place in connection with those valuable institutions. He is the son of a private banker in Huddersfield. When at school he was presented, as a prize, with a copy of Dr. Franklin's Essays and Letters. He perused the book with avidity. It implanted in his mind the germs of many useful thoughts, and exercised a powerful influence in giving a practical character to his life. Huddersfield is a busy manufacturing town. Although workmen were well paid for their labour, ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... wonder in Waddy next morning, and much argument. Neighbours discussed the sensation with avidity. Mrs. Sloan, uncombed and in early morning deshabille, with an apron thrown over her head, carried the news to Mrs. Justin's back fence, and Mrs. Justin ran with it to the back fence of Mrs. McKnight, and Mrs. McKnight spread the tidings as far as the house ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... binary compounds as a class with the quaternary compounds as a class. The molecules constituting oxides (whether alkaline or acid or neutral) chlorides, sulphurets, &c. are relatively small; and, combining with great avidity, form stable compounds. On the other hand, the molecules constituting nitrogenous bodies are relatively vast and are chemically inert; and such combinations as their simpler types enter into, cannot withstand disturbing forces. Now a like difference is seen if we contrast with one another ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... their production. While they were thus employed the postman's knock was heard, and a letter was brought in from the far-away Australian exiles. The period at which these monthly missives arrived were moments of intense anxiety, and the letter was seized upon with eager avidity. It was from Gertrude to her mother, as all these letters were; but in such a production they had a joint property, and it was hardly possible to say who first mastered ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... part, was not yet alive to her position. She saw she had lost the canoe, and she looked forward with something less than avidity to her next interview with Mr Bloomfield; but she had no idea that she was imprisoned, for she knew of the ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Philosophy of the Unconditioned," which I came upon, by chance, in an odd volume of the Edinburgh Review. The latter was certainly strange reading for a boy, and I could not possibly have understood a great deal of it;[37] nevertheless I devoured it with avidity, and it stamped upon my mind the strong conviction that, on even the most solemn and important of questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders real ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... told him all her tale, and, telling it, seemed to relieve her mind while her tired body rested. Dick listened with earnest avidity. He lost not the slightest change in her expression as she spoke. He was shocked when he heard of her father; he was grieved when he imagined how she must have felt when the news came to her; he was angry ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... of surpassing my seniors, and the hope of exposing their ignorance, stimulated me to inquiry, and roused me to application. The books which I had reported lost to my father, were handed out from the bottom of my chest, and read with avidity: many others I borrowed from the officers, whom I must do the justice to say, not only lent them with cheerfulness, but offered me the use of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... saw-grass, grows plentifully in places, and is sometimes used as food for cattle when grass is scarce. In its natural state it is inaccessible to cattle because of its hard and thorny exterior. To make it available it is cut down and quartered with a hoe, when the hungry cattle eat it with avidity. Where the plant grows thickly one man can cut enough in one day to feed several ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... was disturbed to note that there began to appear in various publications—especially M——'s, which was flourishing greatly for the moment—stories which while exhibiting much of the deftness and repression as well as an avidity for the true color of things, still showed what I had at first feared they might: a decided compromise. That curse of all American fiction, the necessarily happy ending, had been impressed on him—by whom? To my sincere ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... good as his word, and the account appeared. The press throughout the country seized with avidity on any thing that helped to fill its columns. No one appeared disposed to inquire into the truth of the account, or after the character of the original authority. It was in print, and that struck the great majority of the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... the hostile preparations were concerted with the dark and perfidious artifice of an illegal conspiracy. The people of Thessalonica were treacherously invited, in the name of their sovereign, to the games of the Circus; and such was their insatiate avidity for those amusements, that every consideration of fear, or suspicion, was disregarded by the numerous spectators. As soon as the assembly was complete, the soldiers, who had secretly been posted round the Circus, received the signal, not of the races, but of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... tray with an enormous jug of hot water and a glass followed Lady Nottingham, for she was one of those people who seem to keep permanently young by always doing the latest thing. Just now there was a revival of hot-water drinking, and with avidity (as if it tasted nice) ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... inquiry (already too long) by any reflections on the avidity with which this passage of the MS. has been seized, and made the groundwork of charges against Henry of "unfilial conduct," "unnatural rebellion" towards his father, and "the unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," with other hard words and harder surmises; because we ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... is covered with trees, some of which are of enormous size; and between them, the underwood springs up so thick, that the swamp is, in many parts, absolutely impervious. It abounds also with cane-reeds, and with long rich grass, on which cattle feed with great avidity, and become fat in a short time. In the interior of the swamp, large herds of wild cattle are found; the offspring, probably, of animals which have at different times been lost, or turned out to feed. Bears, wolves, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... meantime been preparing some venison steaks, which, with some cakes from the oven, were devoured by the Indian with the same avidity with which he had swallowed the broth. But although the food considerably revived him, he still showed evident signs of exhaustion; so Rachel, placing a buffalo robe in the corner of the room, invited him to lie down and rest. He staggered ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... the country got tired of its long fit of sulks; trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened—a current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... markets for retail trade, they are not very nice in the quality or condition of their fish; and enormous conger eels, which would be instantly rejected by the middling, or even lower classes in England, are, at Dieppe, bought with avidity and relished with glee. A few francs will procure a dish of fish large enough for a dozen people. The quays are constantly crowded, but there seems to be more of bustle than of business. The town is certainly picturesque, notwithstanding the houses are very little more than a century ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... be any proof of sincerity, the man was savage as a Sioux. I had the pleasure of his acquaintance; he appeared grossly stupid, not in his perfect wits, and interested in nothing but small change; for that he had a great avidity. In the course of time he proved to be a chicken-stealer, and vanished from his perch; and perhaps from the first he was no true votary of forest freedom, but an ingenious, theatrically-minded beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only stock-in-trade to beg withal. The choice of his ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... carrying the gold, she suddenly gave a piercing cry, and let fall the packages, the covers of which broke as they fell, and the coins were scattered about the room. Her father stood at the parlor door; the avidity ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... Those who saw him every day never ventured to believe that they quite ever understood him, so various and so peculiar were the aspects he exhibited even here at home. Those who attempted to study him were as much perplexed as charmed. The avidity with which a cheap book, easily read, professing to give personal recollections of such a man, would be seized upon by the mass of reading people, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is repeatedly affirmed, the New Testament touches but lightly upon the duties of self-regard. To be occupied constantly with the thought of one's self is a symptom of morbid egoism rather than of healthy personality. The avidity of self-improvement and even zeal for religion may become a refined form of selfishness. We must be willing at times to renounce our personal comfort, to restrain our zest for intellectual and aesthetic enjoyment, to be content to be less ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... returned with a fresh trayful; and Toad, pitching into the toast with avidity, his spirits quite restored to their usual level, told her about the boat-house, and the fish-pond, and the old walled kitchen-garden; and about the pig-styes and the stables, and the pigeon-house and the hen-house; and about the dairy, and the wash-house, and the china-cupboards, and the linen-presses ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... smallest particle, which produces a most exhilarating effect; in less then ten minutes he tastes again and again, always increasing the quantity; and in half an hour he has a gum-stick of condensed snow, which he masticates with avidity, and replaces with assiduity the moment that it has melted away. But his thirst is not allayed in the slightest degree; he is as hot as ever, and still perspires; his mouth is in flames, and he is driven to the necessity of quenching them with snow, which adds fuel ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... the spirit of the life in which she moved; so that she no longer shocked any one's religious feelings by acts forbidden by the Puritan idea of Sunday, or failed in any of the exterior proprieties of religious life. She also read and studied with avidity the English Bible, which came to her with the novelty of a wholly new book in a new language; nor was she without a certain artistic appreciation of the austere precision and gravity of the religious life by which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... making the plans to scale before the teacher in manual training would allow him to take up the work of construction. The boy had always lacked interest in both arithmetic and drawing, and consequently was dull in them. Under the new incentive, however, he took hold of them with such avidity that he soon surpassed all the remainder of the class, and was able to make his calculations and drawings within a term. He secured his automobile a few months later, and still retained his interest in arithmetic ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... cattle can trample them, and spread them so that they will be but a few inches in depth. If piled in heaps they will quickly heat; but even then, if not too much decayed, cattle will eat them with avidity. Cabbages are hardy plants, and loose heads will stand a good deal of freezing and thawing without serious injury. They are not generally injured with the thermometer 16 deg. below freezing. The waste, after the seed ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... appearance not revealing the undeveloped depths of his nature. He made the acquaintance of some of the students at Yale College, and of the Rev. E. W. Dwight. These friends becoming interested in his welfare, offered to teach him. He accepted their aid with avidity, and made wonderful progress, at the same time becoming more and more lovable ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... of the dry (we cannot call them high) grounds: the swamps, with which this coast abounds, are still more fruitful, and abundantly compensate the avidity and barrenness of the soil around them. They bear rice in such plenty, especially the marsh about New Orleans, "That the inhabitants reap the greatest advantage from it, and reckon it the manna of the land." [Footnote: Dumont, I. 15.] It was such marshes on the ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... three-sided in form, with sharp angles, similar in shape to beech-mast, whence the name from the Ger. Buchweizen, beechwheat. Buckwheat is grown in Great Britain only to supply food for pheasants and to feed poultry, which devour the seeds with avidity. In the northern countries of Europe, however, the seeds are employed as human food, chiefly in the form of cakes, which when baked thin have an agreeable taste, with a darkish somewhat violet colour. The meal of buckwheat is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... hung to her belt, kept that for himself and, stretching his arm across the straw, gave the bowl to Zackrist, who had watched it with the longing, ravenous eyes of a starving wolf, and seized it with rabid avidity. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... plan. Many powerful impressions and arguments, instinctive, critical, or moral, combine to teach that in the wreck of matter the spirit emerges, deathless, from the closing waves of decay. The confirmation of that truth becomes irresistible when we see how reason and conscience, with delighted avidity, seize upon its adaptedness alike to the brightest features and the darkest defects of the present life, whose imperfect symmetries and segments are harmoniously filled out by the adjusting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... bellicose disposition on the part of the cactuses is a tolerably easy one to guess. Fodder is rare in the desert. The starving herbivores that find themselves from time to time belated on the confines of such thirsty regions would seize with avidity upon any succulent plant which offered them food and drink at once in their last extremity. Fancy the joy with which a lost caravan, dying of hunger and thirst in the byways of Sahara, would hail a great bed of melons, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shrill-voiced, fire at any hour, night or day. Aeroplanes rarely go up at night; and when no aeroplanes are up, Archibald has no interest in the war. But he is alert at the first flush of dawn, on the look-out for game with the avidity of a pointer dog; for aviators are ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and eaten saturated with the pot liquor. Pot liquor is a favourite soup. I have known cottagers actually apply at farmers' kitchens not only for the pot liquor in which meat has been soddened, but for the water in which potatoes have been boiled—potato liquor—and sup it up with avidity. And this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a relish. They never buy anything but bacon; never butchers' meat. Philanthropic ladies, to my knowledge, have demonstrated over and over ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honore held a glass of water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted. The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... and as nature was not to be thwarted of her purpose by big guns and tarry sailors, the little fellow came along in due course. We are anxious that he may live, for it is wonderful what tricks and antics sailors can train a lamb to, not the least being the avidity with which, after a few lessons, he makes his number at the grog tub at the sound of ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... his eyes fixed as in a trance, looked like a little black silhouette against a scarlet background. His mouth opened in intense delight, and his eyes were perfectly round. He seemed to be drinking in the heat and the light with the greatest avidity, while outside the snow had begun to ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... his education, the examples set before him, the ideas with which he has been inspired in early life, been suitable to make him contract this habit of repressing his desires? Have not all these things rather contributed to induce him to seek with avidity, to make him actually desire those objects which you say he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... life and death of their own subjects, the principal families of the city and country cantons took advantage of these circumstances to open fountains of wealth for themselves. The desire of the kings to enlist valiant Swiss favored the avidity of the council lords, as did the wish of the young men to get booty. In spite of the positive prohibition of the magistrates, thousands of young men often enlisted in foreign service, where most of them perished miserably, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... would have perished had not a superannuated buffalo bull that had just come from the Cimarron River, where he had gone to quench his thirst, suddenly appeared, to be immediately killed and the contents of his stomach swallowed with avidity. It is recorded that one of those who partook of the nauseous liquid said afterward, "nothing had ever passed his lips which gave him such exquisite delight as his first draught of that ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... source of penetrating and persistent social influence all the more significant because the readers are little conscious of what they receive from their reading. Into the most remote places the paper goes and is received with avidity. The appeal is to human interest and is based upon the entire hierarchy of instincts. No agency more successfully socializes. It affords a mental connection with distant places that is a good antidote for the physical loneliness in the country, which many living there experience. ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... with the growth of civilization—poverty—civilized poverty. Oh, 'tis a frightful thing, this well-born, well-bred poverty! There is a pauper state, which, loathsome as it is to look upon, yet brings with it a callousness to endure all inflictions, and a recklessness that can seize with avidity whatever coarse fragments of pleasure the day or the hour may afford. But this poverty applies itself to nerves strung for the subtlest happiness. No torpor here; no moments of rash and unscrupulous gratification—unreflected on, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... fact which astonished them. Although he had returned with avidity to all the devotional habits in which he had been trained, yet he always expressed himself unfit to receive the Holy Communion, and delayed to make that formal confession of his sins, which the religious habits of the age imposed ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... historians; but as they did not pretend to think them weighty, nor to approve them in repeating them, it must not be imputed to me either, that I have any intention of authorizing. For instance, what I have related of the manes, or lares; of the evocation of souls after the death of the body; of the avidity of these souls to suck the blood of the immolated animals, of the shape of the soul separated from the body, of the inquietude of souls which have no rest until their bodies are under ground; of those superstitious statues of wax which are devoted ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity. "And if she dies without doing anything, what becomes of ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... From the earliest times there are many such records. Borellus cites an instance, and there are many others, of pregnant women eating excrement with apparent relish. Tulpius, Sennert, Langius, van Swieten, a Castro, and several others report depraved appetites. Several writers have seen avidity for human flesh in such females. Fournier knew a woman with an appetite for the blood of her husband. She gently cut him while he lay asleep by her side and sucked blood from the wounds—a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the sight of a beautiful male model of a young Turk smoking, with his dress open in front, showing much of the breast and below the waist. He became familiar with pictures, admired the male figures of Italian martyrs, and the full, rich forms of the Antinous, and he read with avidity the Arabian Nights and other Oriental tales, translations from the classics, Suetonius, Petronius, etc. He drew naked models in life schools, and delighted in male ballet-dancers. As a child, he used to perform in private theatricals; he excelled in female ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... often sacrificed at the shrine of vanity: and while the noble distinctions of cultivated intellect and solid piety are neglected, the ostentatious decoration of exterior polish is sought with useless and guilty avidity. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... and tell yourselves, 'All is well in Him.' Beware of pursuing even the public good with overmuch violence and avidity, for fear something of cruelty mar your integrity. Rather should your desire of universal loving-kindness have the unction of a prayer and the soft fervour ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... interrupted the negro, seizing at once, with the avidity of ignorance, on the little oversight of his adversary, in confounding the outer harbour of Newport with the wilder anchorage below, and with the usual indifference of all similar people to the more material matter of whether the objection was at all germain to the point in controversy; ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... Spaniards increased, of course, the drama of the situation. At the period of their advent Huasca was obtaining the worst of the struggle, and, seeing the possibility of salvation in the arrival of the newcomers, he sent to these beseeching their help. It can be imagined with what avidity Pizarro seized upon this pretext to enter into the domestic affairs of the nation. Atahualpa unconsciously helped to play the fate of the unfortunate Inca race still further into the hands of the Spaniards. Learning of the warlike might of the white man, he also sent ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... sight to see some of the famishing cattle rushing after the men who were employed in thus supplying the poor animals with the means of sustaining life. The cattle ate the boughs and the bark with the greatest avidity, and the bushman's axe as it felled the she-oak was music to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... love of women. Tachibana Hiromi was one of the leading literati of his era. He rendered into most academical terms the Emperor's intentions towards Mototsune. From time immemorial it has always been a canon of Japanese etiquette not to receive anything with avidity. Mototsune declined the rescript; the Emperor directed Hiromi to re-write it. Thus far the procedure had been normal. But Hiromi's second draft ran thus: "You have toiled for the welfare of the country. You have aided me in accordance with the late sovereign's will. You ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... pearls of equal value to those I had given Grace, but she refused to receive them; and now, she asked for these very pearls, which, intrinsically, were not half the value of the sum I had informed Mr. Hardinge Grace had requested me to expend in purchasing a memorial. This avidity to possess these pearls—for so it struck me—was difficult to account for, Grace having owned divers other ornaments that were more costly, and which she had much oftener worn. I confess, I had thought of attempting to persuade Lucy to receive my own necklace as the memorial of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... complete explanation of this unpleasant survival. So scandalous is the interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin merchant and the procurer,[12] ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... The first sole and complete translation was furnished recently by Mr. John Payne, whose "Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night" is dedicated to Captain Burton. Mr. Payne printed 500 copies for private circulation, a mere drop in the ocean. His edition was instantly absorbed, clutched with avidity, and is unprocurable—unless, as has happened several times, a stray copy finds its way into the market, and is snatched up at a fancy price. It so happened that Mr. Payne and Captain Burton applied themselves to the same task quite unconscious of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Prince away to be kept a prisoner until the day for the celebration. The room to which he was conducted was comfortable, and he soon had a plenteous supper laid out before him, of which he partook with great avidity. Having finished his meal, he sat down to reflect upon his condition, but feeling very sleepy, and remembering that he would have a whole day of leisure, to-morrow, for such reflections, he concluded to go to bed. Before doing so, however, he wished to make all secure ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... similar occasions had often been the cause of signal victories. On purpose to recall his troops to their duty, Carvajal ordered a false alarm to be sounded, which occasioned the return of the greater part of his men; but so strong was their avidity for spoil that most part of the night was spent before they all ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... better for me to return to them empty-handed than to leave them so long without the comfort of my presence, when the fascination of the scene again seized me and I found myself lingering to mark its conclusion with an avidity which can only be explained by my sudden and intense consciousness of what it all might mean to her whose witness I had ...
— The House in the Mist • Anna Katharine Green
... when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people, living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were unwilling to lay it down after once commencing it. The first story,—"The Two Voices, or the Shadow and the Shadowless,"—is a sweet thing, as is also the one entitled, "The Diamond Fountain." Indeed, the whole number, and there are ten, will be read with avidity. Their moral is as pure as their style ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... hardships against every human ill, had yet never experienced or been habituated to prosperity. Accordingly, excess of good fortune and unrestrained indulgence were the ruin of men whom no severity of distress had subdued; and so much the more completely, in proportion to the avidity with which they plunged into pleasures to which they were unaccustomed. For sleep, wine, feasting, women, baths, and ease, which custom rendered more seductive day by day, so completely unnerved both mind and body, that from henceforth their past victories ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... an upper shelf in his father's shop, he climbed up to search for them. There were no apples; but the large folio proved to be Petrarch, whom he had seen mentioned in some preface, as one of the restorers of learning. His curiosity having been thus excited, he sat down with avidity, and read a great part of the book. What he read during these two years he told me, was not works of mere amusement, 'not voyages and travels, but all literature, Sir, all ancient writers, all manly: ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... excessive fear which prevails among us of offending public opinion. It is shown in the very extravagances of our costume and decoration, in our lavish expenditures upon house and equipage. It is shown in the avidity with which every new work is bought and read which pretends to lay down the laws that govern the behavior of circles supposed to be, par excellence, polite. It is shown in the fact, that, next to calling a man a liar, the most offensive and stinging of all ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... to his darlings he thought a woman the worst, and had therefore seized with avidity the chance of making that room a hidden one, the possibility of which he had spied almost the moment he first ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... court together. Competitors would improve their volleying, and the double, instead of being the dreary, monotonous affair it is now, especially for the base-liner, would be varied and instructive. I am sure referees would welcome the change with avidity. The much-dreaded, interminable ladies' double event would be a thing of the past. If we played the double with the new formation, perhaps we should succeed in re-establishing the event at Wimbledon! But it is very difficult to ...
— Lawn Tennis for Ladies • Mrs. Lambert Chambers
... question, and one most difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would that evening have the honor of appearing before the ladies and gentlemen of ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... chapters in the subsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me in some of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As his subsequent volumes successively made their appearance, I read them with avidity, but, when he reached the subject of Social Science, with varying feelings. The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. But the fifth, containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm; which the ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... the concentration of these interests in so great a degree, in and around Boston, renders the capital of the State an eligible site for such an undertaking. Indeed, considering the peculiar genius of our busy population for the Practical Arts, and marking their avidity in the study of scientific facts and principles tending to explain or advance them, we see a special and most striking fitness in the establishment of such an Institution among them, and we gather a confident assurance of its preeminent utility and success. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... beyond, rising in superb splendour from a pearly haze, the innumerable towers of Manhattan floated and gleamed before my eyes. Irresistibly there came to me a memory of Turner's Venetian masterpieces, and I knew that even that great magician would have seized upon the scene before me with avidity, would have delighted in the fairy-like threads of the bridges, the poetic groupings of the vast buildings, and the innumerable fenestrations of the campanili. One by one half-forgotten fragments of Byron came back to me as I looked out ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the present be truce or peace, it will allow time to mature the conditions of the alliance between France and the two empires, always supposed to be on the carpet. It is thought to be obstructed by the avidity of the Emperor, who would swallow a good part of Turkey, Silesia, Bavaria, and the rights of the Germanic body. To the two or three first articles, France might consent, receiving in gratification a well rounded portion of the Austrian ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... themselves with avidity into the new pastime, and still in existence are the little cards which they had printed in jest announcing that this new profession was "Carried on at Cannon Hall and Grosvenor Square." Mrs Stanhope apparently viewed the occupation with equanimity, save when it became the recreation ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... really be amusing were it not so painfully apparent. A good press-agent will, for a fee, give one as much publicity and newspaper popularity as that enjoyed by a duke, and most amazing is it that such paragraphs are swallowed with keen avidity by Suburbia. ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... to restore the golden age upon earth,* to deliver it from the dominion of evil, and restore men to the empire of good, peace, and happiness. The people seized and cherished these ideas with so much the more avidity, as they found in them a consolation under that deplorable state of suffering into which they had been plunged by the devastations of successive conquests, and the barbarous despotism of their governments. This conformity between ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... sometimes said: "There are some who amass riches with as much avidity as if they were to live forever; others are as careless about their possessions as if they were ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... Boston and previously cited. The New York Times became Russell's most vicious critic, labelling him "Bull Run Russell," a name which stuck, and beginning its first article on his sins "The terrible epistle has been read with quite as much avidity as an average President's message. We scarcely exaggerate the fact when we say, the first and foremost thought on the minds of a very large portion of our people after the repulse at Bull's Run was, what will Russell ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... day after day in the paper, this golden domesday-book, the lists of rich people who ate terrapin together, or danced together in lace frills and white cravats afterwards, and to read it with avidity, is what might be done in some world of satire. But in a hard-working, sensible, Yankee world! You might say that nobody does read it, but the column of the newspaper which is devoted to this narrative, contrasted with the few paragraphs ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... seized the occasion with inartistic avidity. She had hardly addressed us as yet. At the sound of the magic passport, she pricked up her ears, and turned to me suddenly. "Burma?" she said, as if to conceal the true reason for her change of front. "Burma? I had a cousin there once. He was ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... food of earth-worms, while certain other leaves are eaten by them, but not with avidity. When these two kinds of leaves are given to worms, they will carefully select the favorite food and will ignore the other, thus unmistakably evincing conscious choice. Their avoidance of light is probably the result of conscious ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... Everywhere they were seen eating, those intruders—in the restaurants, the eating-houses, the inns, the taverns, the stalls, and even in the streets. They gorged themselves with flesh, fish, game, truffles, pastry, and especially with fruit. They drank with an avidity equal to their appetite, and always ordered the most expensive wines, in the hope of finding in them some enjoyment hitherto unknown, and seemed quite astonished when they were disappointed. Superficial observers did not know what to think of this menagerie without bounds ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with its myths and mythology. He told me that he had so far defined seven hundred different spirits and was not sure that he had got to the end of them. The publication of Mr. Barton's research is awaited with some avidity by the Americans living in the Province, as enabling them to have a better control of the people through their ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... called the father of the madrigal (despite the fact that madrigals were written before he was born), became chapel master of St. Mark's, Venice, in 1527. He seized with avidity the suggestion offered by the existence of two organs in the cathedral and wrote great works "for two choruses of four voices each, so that the choruses could answer each other across the church. He paid much less attention to rigid canonic style ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... its natural longing for a personal existence after the bodily death, certainly seized upon the belief in Resurrection with avidity. It had its roots partly in the individual consciousness, partly in the communal. For the Resurrection was closely connected with such hopes as those expressed in Ezekiel's vision of the re-animation of Israel's dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii.). Thus popular theology adopted many ideas based on ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... privately prepared on their questions; but the teacher desired Lord John Russell to write down any number of questions which he wished to have given to the toys to solve, from his own mind. Lord John wrote down two or three problems, and I was amused at the zeal and avidity with which the boys seized upon and mastered them. Young England was evidently wide awake, and the prime minister himself was not to catch them, napping. The little fellows' eyes-glistened as they rattled off their solutions. As I know nothing about mathematics, I was all the more ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... burning brands. To tend and drive oxen, plough, sow, plant Indian corn and pumpkins, and raise potatoe-hills, are among some of the young emigrant's accomplishments. His relaxations are but comparatively few, but they are seized with a relish and avidity that give ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... prominent eyes had followed these preparations for his comfort with avidity, but now, the handsome character of his surroundings being fully disclosed to him, he was filled with uncontrollable envy. Silently he filled his glass, by no means stinting the amount of alcohol, gulped down half the contents of the tumbler, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St. Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for ingenuity. The unimaginative "Anglaise" proved better than the Parisienne's fears: she sat literally ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Proserpine's Fete Champetre, is one of the most unjustifiable performances he ever read. The severity with which certain characters are handled is quite shocking: and as there are many descriptions in it too warmly coloured for female delicacy, the shameful avidity with which this piece is bought by all people of fashion is a reproach on the taste of the times, and a disgrace to the delicacy of the age." Here you see the two strongest inducements are held forth; first, that nobody ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... well as the terms of the agreement made with them, by the kind consent of Colonel Rigby were now entered in the Consular Office books, as a security to both parties, and a precaution against disputes on the way. Any one who saw the grateful avidity with which they took the money, and the warmth with which they pledged themselves to serve me faithfully through all dangers and difficulties, would, had he had no dealings with such men before, have thought that I had ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... remains of their theory? Two possibilities. First, the murderer may have done the deed without entering. If so, it is clear that he must have made use of the partly-opened window. This seems so likely that they will seize upon it with avidity. At first they will suggest that the assassin reached in at the window and struck his victim as he sat by it. This, they will urge, accounts for our not finding the weapon, and they will be so sure that this is the correct solution of the problem that I shall probably have to point out to them ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... interrupt the keen pleasure he was again receiving from Lucian, inspiring at the moment a humorous self-dialogue with Charon. "Happily," said this philosopher, "on retiring from the world I found my taste for reading return, even with greater avidity." We find GIBBON, after the close of his History, returning with an appetite as keen to "a full repast on Homer and Aristophanes, and involving himself in the philosophic maze of the writings of Plato." ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... pay her compliments, while his soul sickened at the avidity with which she swallowed them. He asked himself if it would not be better to put an end to this impossible state of things by telling her he was in love with Anne. But when he glanced at the little fragile figure beside ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowed by an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows, pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently, with appalling avidity, veiled ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... parts, good looks and good spirits, it has a right to be, and I easily forgive it if it be really youth. Still it is a question of degree, and what stuck out of Jasper Nettlepoint (if one felt that sort of thing) was that his egotism had a hardness, his love of his own way an avidity. These elements were jaunty and prosperous, they were accustomed to triumph. He was fond, very fond, of women; they were necessary to him and that was in his type; but he was not in the least in love with Grace Mavis. Among the reflections I quickly made this ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Castilian tongue. Before setting out for Rome he had so applied himself to the worn little grammar which the proprietor of the bookstall in Seville had loaned him, that he was able to make translations with comparative fluency. In the seminary he plunged into it with avidity; and when he returned from his journey with the Papal Legate he began in earnest his translation of the Testament. This, like so much of the boy's work and writing, was done secretly and in spare moments. And his zeal ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... very fat deer. No sooner had he laid his spoil on the floor of his cabin, than the mysterious females, exclaiming, "Behold! what a fine, fat animal!" immediately ran up, and pulled off pieces of the whitest fat, which they ate with great avidity. As this is esteemed the choicest part of the animal, and is generally, by Indian courtesy, left to the share of the master of the lodge, such conduct appeared very strange to the hunter. Supposing, however, that ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the finest of all the types," he said presently, "One can grasp that man's character so thoroughly! There is no pity in him,—no sentiment—there is merely an insatiable avidity to break open the great treasure-house of Life by fair means or foul! It is very terrible—but ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterward, I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk, I had counted forty-eight more;—when I arrived at the rag. There ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Dr. Johnson's avidity for a variety of books. Improbability of a Highland tradition. Dr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... enthusiasm, the absurdities of folly, and the blunders of ignorance; the contrast of characters and the clash of opinions, the scandalous anecdotes of the day, related with sprightly malice, and listened to with equally malicious avidity,—all these, in my days of health and happiness, had power to surprise, or amuse, or provoke me. I could mingle then in the conflict of minds; and hear my part with smiles in the social circle; though the next moment, perhaps, I might contemn myself and others: ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Squire Headlong caught with avidity at this suggestion; and, as he had always a store of gunpowder in the house, for the accommodation of himself and his shooting visitors, and for the supply of a small battery of cannon, which he kept for his ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... account of the prejudice which ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority of the kingdom was vested.[**] The opposition made to the intended resumption prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the indignities to which the king was willing to submit, in order to gratify the avidity of his foreign favorites. About the same time he published in England the sentence of excommunication, pronounced against the emperor Frederic, his brother-in-law;[***] and said in excuse, that, being the pope's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Campbell—a puff which illustrates almost better than anything else Defoe's extraordinary ingenuity in putting a respectable face upon the most disreputable materials—he had another proof of the avidity with which people run to hear marvels. He followed up this clue with A System of Magic, or a History of the Black Art; The Secrets of the Invisible World disclosed, or a Universal History of Apparitions; and a humorous History of the Devil, in which last work he subjected Paradise Lost, to ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... misconstrue the tone adopted by the English press and the English public in the province, if they do not find some means of resisting the heavy blow and great discouragement which is aimed at them.' Such passages were read with avidity in the colony, and construed to mean that sympathy would be extended from influential quarters at home to those who sought to annul the obnoxious decision of the local Legislature, whatever might be the means to which they resorted for the attainment of that end. It may be ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... approach and re-enter our foul and disgusting place of confinement. The pieces of turf which we carried on board were sought for by our fellow prisoners, with the greatest avidity, every fragment being passed by them from hand to hand, and its smell inhaled as if it had been a fragrant rose. * * * The first of the crew of the Chance to die was a lad named Palmer, about twelve years of age, and the youngest ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sense that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men's selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic relief. She went very far, keeping in the lonely places, unveiling her face to the splendid light, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... to the crowns of the Empire and of Poland. The first project was destined to be soon abandoned. It was reserved neither for Charles nor Philip to divert the succession in Germany from the numerous offspring of Maximilian; yet it is instructive to observe the unprincipled avidity with which the prize was sought by both. Each was willing to effect its purchase by abjuring what were supposed his most cherished principles. Philip of Spain, whose mission was to extirpate heresy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with each other to come at the troughs. Excessive thirst made many of them furious; others, being too weak to contend for the water, endeavoured to quench their thirst by devouring the black mud from the gutters near the wells, which they did with great avidity, though it was commonly fatal ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... above him and below. He was going along this path without looking back, without a thought for those he left behind, without a single word to cheer him on his way, walking as Dr. Martineau had sometimes watched him walking, without haste or avidity, walking as a man might along some great picture gallery with which he was perhaps even over familiar. His hands would be in his pockets, his indifferent eyes upon the clouds about him. And as he strolled along that path, the darkness closed ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... his speech, yet the extreme quiet of Lucy's manner reassured him; and when he perceived that she resumed, though languidly, her wonted avocations, he felt but little doubt of her soon overcoming the remembrance of what he hoped was but a girlish and fleeting fancy. He yielded, with avidity, to her proposal to return to Warlock; and in the same week as that in which Lucy had received her lover's mysterious letter, the father and daughter commenced ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... demoralizing mode of amusement to our country! Degrading to the greatest degree, it is nevertheless pursued with avidity by all classes of people; and large bets are often depending on these brutal exercises. Gentlemen, noblemen, and even ladies, are, on such occasions, mixed with the most degraded part of the community. ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... Payne for fifteen guineas. [Bibl. Farm. No. 5993.] The opinion Dr. Farmer entertained of their rarity may be given in his own words: "The Two Tomes, which Tom Rawlinson would have called justa volumina, are almost annihilated. Mr. Ames, who searched after books of this sort with the utmost avidity, most certainly had not seen them, when he published his Typographical Antiquities, as appears from his blunders about them: and possibly I myself might have remained in the same predicament, had I not been favoured with a copy by my generous friend, Mr. Lort." Essay on the ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... Schiller wrote no more plays for some nine years, being occupied in the interval chiefly with history and philosophy. His dramatic work had interested him more especially in the sixteenth century. At Dresden he began to read history with great avidity and found it very appetizing. What he most cared for, evidently, was not the annals of warfare or the growth of institutions, but the psychology of the great man. He was an ardent lover of freedom, both political and intellectual, and took keen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... time young Watson heard her sing a spell was thrown round his fancy which led to all the rest. The same might be said of her, for when her husband, then a stranger, poured forth, in one of their evening meetings, the great rich volume of his voice, she ceased to sing that she might listen with avidity. It was not long after that before Kern mustered courage to ask "Miss Buggone, mout I hab de pleasure ob 'companyin' you home?" Not many months elapsed before he accompanied her home to stay, with ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... MISS WILLOUGHBY will not be comforted, and there is a coldness between them for the rest of the day. MISS SUSAN is not so abashed as she ought to be. She returns, and partakes with avidity ...
— Quality Street - A Comedy • J. M. Barrie
... a strange race between the prophet and Susannah for the acquisition of knowledge. They learned out of all sorts of lesson-books, not on any sound principle of work, but with avidity. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
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