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Starvation   Listen
noun
Starvation  n.  The act of starving, or the state of being starved. Note: This word was first used, according to Horace Walpole, by Henry Dundas, the first Lord Melville, in a speech on American affairs in 1775, which obtained for him the nickname of Starvation Dundas. "Starvation, we are also told, belongs to the class of 'vile compounds' from being a mongrel; as if English were not full of mongrels, and as if it would not be in distressing straits without them."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Starvation" Quotes from Famous Books



... they always characterise as a squandering of resources, and call it profusion and prodigality. The productive expenditure of that which might, without encroaching upon capital, be expended unproductively, is called saving, economy, frugality. Want, misery, and starvation, are described as the lot of a nation which annually employs less and less of its labour and resources in production; growing comfort and opulence as the result of an annual increase in the quantity of ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... article of food they had in store), he at once retired and was soon in the sweet land of dreams. The children soon joined their father and the poor woman sat thinking how they could save their dear children from starvation. Suddenly out upon the night air rang the cry of a crane. Instantly the pet crane awoke, stepped outside and answered the call. The crane which had given the cry was the father of the pet crane, and learning from Mr. Fox ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... can be operated on starvation budgets but, more often than not, the quality of teaching suffers. Likewise the schools of a town reflect the capacity and ability of those in charge. To judge this, make it a point to meet the local school superintendent. If there is a parent-teachers association, a frank discussion with ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley

... seemingly without origin, parentage, or kindred tie,—a lonesome, squalid, bloodless thing, which the great monster, London, seemed to have spawned forth of its own self; one of its sickly, miserable, rickety offspring, whom it puts out at nurse to Penury, at school to Starvation, and, finally, and literally, gives them stones for bread, with the option of the gallows or the dunghill when the desperate offspring calls on the giant ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... almost a tragedy. It matters little to know how it came about; she accepted Astrardente with his dukedom, his great wealth, and his evil past, on the day when she left the convent where she had been educated; she did it to save her father from ruin, almost from starvation; she was seventeen, years of age; she was told that the world was bad, and she resolved to begin her life by a heroic sacrifice; she took the step heroically, and no human being had ever heard her complain. Five years had elapsed since then, and her father—for whom she had ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... occurs in chronic intestinal catarrh, in high fever, and during starvation. Chemical and microscopic tests and examinations are often of great importance in diagnosis, but require ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... apprehension fell from his eyes. He started up, and again tried the walls of his prison, but they were too steep, and too slippery, to permit exit, and at last, with desperate calmness, he resigned himself to his fate, and awaited such result as Providence might send. The thought of starvation and freezing to death passed through his mind, but he was too fully convinced of the complicity of the black to believe he was ignorant of his condition, and satisfied that, however tricky, he intended no serious harm. There was comfort ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... dealt with) in which at a later date they cut their throats in the matter of machinery; for if the second of the two reformers of whom I am about to speak had had his way—or rather the way that he professed to have—the whole race would have died of starvation within a twelve-month. Happily common sense, though she is by nature the gentlest creature living, when she feels the knife at her throat, is apt to develop unexpected powers of resistance, and ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler

... air. This slow death substituted for violent death was, indeed, denounced as very great cruelty. To die of hunger in nine days like Count Ugolino is a more cruel fate than to be burnt to death in half an hour like Giordano Bruno; but to die of starvation of the spirit in a term of years is the most cruel of all the punishments hitherto devised for the castigation ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... had been an added misery to a household struggling with want. His education was of the slightest; at twelve years of age he was already supporting himself, or, one would say, keeping himself above the point of starvation; and at three-and-twenty—the age when Wilfrid Athel is entering upon life in the joy of freedom—was ludicrously bankrupt, a petty business he had established being sold up for a debt something short of as many pounds as he had years. He drifted into indefinite mercantile clerkships, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... of a trinket for his women-folk is the only saving as an insurance for the poor against famine and starvation for a rainless day."—A Native Writer in "The Times ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... the Gleam's "Kiddie" have been hurled out of existence in a moment as it were by the mad speed of a motor's wheels,—and a fragile "toy" terrier, the mere whim of dog-breeders and plaything for fanciful women, be plucked from starvation and death as though the great forces of creation deemed it more worth cherishing than a human being! For the murder of Lord Wrotham, Helmsley found excuse,—for the death of Tom there was ample natural cause,—but for the wanton killing ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... since Moses tried to lead the Children of Israel out of bondage. Take these strikers, for instance. I believe in the right to strike. I believe that they ought to have every possible protection. I believe that their families ought to be provided for in order to take the weapon of starvation out of the hands of the capitalists. I'd give them as fair a field as it is in my power to provide, and anybody would think that they would be satisfied with simple fairness. But, no, what they are trying to do is not to strike for themselves, but to strike at somebody ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... person to give his assent to this bill. On that occasion a mob of silk-weavers and others, from Spitalfields, went to St. James's Palace with black flags and other symptoms of mourning and distress, to present a petition, complaining that they were reduced to a state of starvation by the importation of French silks. Both houses of parliament were surrounded by them, where they insulted various members, and even terrified the lords into an adjournment. In the evening they attacked Bedford-house, and began to pull down the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Next morning we started through a deep canyon which eventually opened into a beautiful valley where we saw houses made of adobe. The fields were covered with cattle. This was the first civilization we saw since leaving Salt Lake. Starvation had almost overtaken us and we besought the owner to sell us an ox and we had a feast and appeased our hunger. We had lost all accounting of time until we came here. We camped for the night, and next morning we started for Los ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen, who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys taken from school and college. For a while the victims were silent, and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager rustle when some clerk came out and ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... saying the gods will provide. It has been getting so much worse these past few weeks that it seems now as if my stomach were as empty as a rich man's brain. Why, even the rats have deserted our cottage, and there's nothing left for poor Tabby, while old Blackfoot is nearly dead from starvation." ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... in the trenches and the camps before Sevastopol. Here are men of the Horse Artillery whose batteries have lost their horses; and here are cavalrymen dismounted, whether by reason of warlike misadventure or the sheer starvation of horseflesh. And since folks must do something for their bread in campaigning times, as at more peaceful seasons, the rules and regulations of special branches of the military service are cast aside, and men of every arm are working in the trenches together. A crowd of vagabonds we ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... much sickness and many deaths from starvation and hardship, for all of which I was held responsible, and until the laboring-people swore at and ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... shown, symptoms of oxygen starvation.... The big canal cacti were hollow, and in their interiors they maintained reserves of oxygen for their own use. More than once, such a cactus had saved a Martian traveler's life when ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay

... all that can ever come to you. Do you know what you are guilty of? You are guilty of soul-suicide. What is the suicide of the body to the suicide of the soul? What is the crime of the poor broken creature who only chooses death and the grave before starvation or shame, compared to the sin of the wretched woman who murders her soul for sake of the lusts and vanities of the world? The law of man may punish, the one, but the vengeance of God ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... that profess to be drawn from Scripture. These are all right and good in their place. But sure I am that a robust and firm grasp of the gospel, 'which is the grace of God,' is not possible with a starvation diet of Scripture. And so I would say, try to get hold of the depth and width ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... as from other evidence which it is not necessary to detail in this place, it may be seen that the causes assigned by physiologists, and the plans proposed by cultivators for the production of double flowers, are reducible to three heads, which may be classed under Plethora, Starvation, and Sterility. These three seem inconsistent one with the other, but are not so much so as they at ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... $100, and ordered to leave the colony within thirty days, and was sentenced to pay beside $15 for every day he should be absent from public worship before his departure—evidently that he might be compelled to listen to pulpit denunciations of his wickedness in saving from starvation two fellow-human beings who worshipped God in a different fashion from their persecutors. The exile was denied an asylum in Plymouth, and followed the example of Roger Williams by seeking a refuge among the Indians, who treated him kindly. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... prairie, hunting buffaloes, fighting the Indians, camping out at night under a deluge of rain, and other scenes by which their journey was marked; but we must pass to the following account of the feelings which attend starvation, which we copy for its intrinsic interest, and as an instance of the fearful extremities to which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... robbed ourselves for the sake of saving up something for life. Just think of it: desiring to make of myself a valuable man, I have underrated my individuality in every way possible. In order to study, and not die of starvation, I have for six years in succession taught blockheads how to read and write, and had to bear a mass of abominations at the hands of various papas and mammas, who humiliated me without any constraint. Earning my bread and tea, I could not, I had not the time to earn my shoes, and I had ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... you are called upon to lynch us, we are accused falsely of sabotage and strikes, we are blamed for all the woes and misfortunes that the people are suffering, although we have been striving indefatigably and uninterruptedly, and are still striving, to save the Russian people from the horrors of starvation. Notwithstanding all that we are bearing as citizens of unhappy Russia, we have not for one hour abandoned our heavy and responsible work of supplying the Army and population ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... how the crown dealt with the most serious complaints of the natives; and even had justice been awarded to the complainant, the right of eviction was in the hands of the nearest noble, and the unfortunate tenant would have his choice between starvation in the woods or marauding on the highways, having neither the dernier resort of a workhouse ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... and eat his fill of shellfish, never one of them less than six inches long, and many twice that size. It is little wonder that the gold crazed men refused to listen while my master warned them that the day might come when they would be hungry to the verge of starvation. ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis

... he said. "I don't know what to do; it is as if my head were going wrong. If I had lost a lot of money through a bad debt it would be different, but it is not that: the business has been going down bit by bit. There is nothing before us but starvation." ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... me with scant courtesy, and no work was to be got. I took a little room, paying for it day by day, and in the meantime I fed on those loathsome pea-nuts, buying a handful in the street now and then. And I assure you I looked starvation in ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... plainly, were left in the captain's room for her to partake of when and as she saw proper; for she would touch nothing that he brought, in his presence, nor would she have done so at any other time, could she have lived without food; it was only to be preserved from starvation, that she forced herself to eat in ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... worth half a dozen of the accomplished word-master, the ingenious versifier of Norman and Italian tales: the third a learned and irreproachable minister of the Church of England, and one of the greatest poets of the last century, who after several narrow escapes from starvation both in England and Wales, died master of a paltry school at New Brunswick, in North America, ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... wait until famine did its work little suited the spirit of the Spaniards. The process would assuredly be a long one, for men who fought so stoutly would resist starvation with equal tenacity; besides, the duration of the siege was already beginning to excite discontent among the allies, whose wars were generally of very short duration. The Spaniards, too, were suffering from severe illness brought on by fatigue, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... to get aboard an American ship. I was cast away on the coast of France—made my way to the first religious house that I could hear of, where I luckily found an Irishman, who saved me from starvation, and who sent me on from convent to convent, till I got to Paris, where your honour met me on that bridge, just when I was looking for Miss Dora's house. And that's all I've got to tell," ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... Marchdale's reasoning is coldly and horribly correct, when he says that there is danger in setting this youth free; but, I am about to leave this place, and not to show myself for some time, and I cannot reconcile myself to inflicting upon him the horror of a death by starvation, which must ensue." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... squid; and within him rose again all the old hatred and fear of these people from whom he had desired to extract full payment for the black days of need he had endured, for the want, the squalor, the starvation he ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... Peter said, "but I tell you the rations would be small even for fourteen days. We've calkilated according to how much we eat when we've plenty of meat, but without meat it'd be only a starvation ration to each. Fortunately we've fish-hooks and lines, and by making holes in the ice we can get as many fish as we like. Waal, we can live on them alone, if need be, and an ounce or two of flour, made into cakes, will be enough to ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... and so to paint much better pictures than before. He felt, he said, that he had a hold now where before he had only a sight. However this may be, he had got on so well for a while that he wrote at last, that, if I was willing to share his poverty, it would not, he thought, be absolute starvation; and I was, of course, perfectly content. I can't put in words—indeed I dare not, for fear of writing what would be, if not unladylike, at least uncharitable—my contempt for those women who, loving a man, hesitate to run every risk with him. Of course, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... in the heat of frenzied passion, and so the prisoner must go unpunished.' My learned friend argued not so, when he appeared in this place against the murder Wiley; poor, ignorant, and half-witted; who with his eyes starting from his head with starvation, entered a farmer's house, and in the extremity of his suffering demanded bread. And on being told by the woman of the house to take himself off to the nearest tavern and get bread, caught up a carving knife and stabbed her to the heart, seized ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... starvation in a granary. You may be lost in the midst of this abundance which Christ has provided for you. And the difference between really possessing salvation and not possessing it, lies very largely in the difference between saying 'us' and 'me.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... scarcity of fodder that most of the cattle perished in that country. In 1249, the Baltic Sea between Russia, Norway and Sweden remained frozen for many months, and communication was kept up by sleighs. In 1339, there was such a terrific winter in England, that vast numbers of people died of starvation and exposure. In 1409, the river Danube was frozen from its sources to its mouth in ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... issued a decree, which forbade the admission of any Megarian on Attic soil, and also all trade with that people. The Megarians, who obtained all their provisions from Athens, were thus almost reduced to starvation. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... his southern flank, and they had steadily pressed him back toward the James River on the north. In that direction there was no thoroughfare for him. Neither was there now in any other. Continual battling had depleted his army until it numbered now scarcely more than ten thousand men all told, and starvation had weakened these so greatly that only the heroism of despair enabled them to fight or ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... the morning after her arrival, MacNair appeared, accompanied by a hundred or more dejected and woe-begone Indians. Despite the fact that Chloe had known them only as fierce roisterers she was forced to admit that they looked harmless and peaceful enough, under the chastening effect of a week of starvation. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... comforts; the woe in these terrible years 1839, 1840, and 1841 seemed to fall wholly upon the poor. It is impossible even faintly to picture the state of distress which prevailed in Manchester at that time. Whole families went through a gradual starvation; John Barton saw them starve, saw fathers and mothers and children die of low, putrid fever in foetid cellars, and cursed the rich men who never extended a helping ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... releasing our prisoners held there. When within four miles of the place, they were met by a flag of truce, evidently to gain time. This was not recognized by the 7th, who charged the place, but only in time to see the train moving out with the mass of skeletons caused by starvation. Some eighty-four of our men which beggered all description, not being able to be removed, were left ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin

... was doubled under him, and if he had not been instantly killed by the fall, he must have been so disabled that he could not move. In that lonely place, he would call for help in vain, so he may have perished by the terrible death of starvation the death he had thought to mete out to ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... even where men and women had allowed themselves, by idleness or carelessness, to sink into actual poverty, it was better to give them temporary relief at the public expense than allow them to take up with the ways of crime, or leave them to pay the penalty of their wrongdoings by death from starvation. But it was strictly laid down that a healthy system of public relief was to help men and women for a time, in order that they might be able to help themselves once again, as soon as possible, and to make provision for those who had done their work ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... in others far below the average of mankind. The elder Cato, who, though not a philosopher, was a model of philosophers, was conspicuous for his inhumanity to his slaves. Brutus was one of the most extortionate usurers of his time, and several citizens of Salamis died of starvation, imprisoned because they could not pay the sum he demanded. No one eulogised more eloquently the austere simplicity of life which stoicism advocated than Sallust, who in a corrupt age was notorious for ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... to fill; yet the whole party could scarcely, I believe, muster two dollars of ready money. Their boxes were full of valuables, arms, clothes, pipes, slippers, sweetmeats, and other 'notions,' but nothing short of starvation would have induced them to pledge the smallest article." [114] Foreseeing the advantage of their company, Burton sagaciously lent each of them a little money at high interest, not for the sake of profit, but ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... rivals, to be won by the side with the longer purse. Nor was it simply a fight between an independent manufacturer and a firm fed with Government bounties. Mr. Quinn's rival could count on an unlimited supply of labour at starvation wages, while he had to hire men and women at the market value of their services. He had been sorry for the two girls when they got into the train. Now he felt almost glad that they were leaving Ireland. It appeared that they had certainly chosen ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... studded with diamonds and rubies, which contained Alice's photograph. The one memento of her that he had kept, even when the pangs of starvation were upon him. He brought it from its resting-place next ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... owners on the conclusion of peace, whereas those which had voluntarily surrendered might be retained. Accordingly he sent a herald, and summoned the Plataeans to surrender, promising that they should have a fair trial by Spartan judges; and they, being actually on the point of starvation, accepted the terms offered, and laid down their arms. They were kept in custody and supplied with food until the judges, five in number, arrived from Sparta. On the arrival of the judges no express charge was made against them, but they were called up one by one, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... We were among the Riolama mountains at last, and Rima kept with us, apparently expecting great things. I expected nothing, for reasons to be stated by and by. My belief was that the only important thing that could happen to us would be starvation. ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... more than a quarter of the Piegan tribe of the Blackfeet, which then numbered about twenty-five or twenty-six hundred, died from starvation. It had been reported to the Indian Bureau that the Blackfeet were practically self-supporting and needed few supplies. As a consequence of this report, appropriations for them were small. The statement ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... who was condemned to twelve years' hard labour, came out with consumption contracted through the rigour of his imprisonment. Many others were reduced to such weakness through starvation that they had to be ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... on various homes in the village. Salmon or meat must also be provided for their dogs. This is no small item, and often taxes the resources of a village to the utmost. I have known of a village so poor after a period of prolonged hospitality that it was reduced to starvation rations for ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes

... saw the King lavishing his gold in this fashion, they naturally thought that sooner or later the royal treasuries must give out, the gold come to an end, and the King—who was evidently a man of his word—die of starvation. But, though months and years passed by, every day, just a quarter of an hour before breakfast-time, the servants came out of the palace with baskets and baskets of gold; and as the crowds dispersed they could see the King sitting down to his breakfast ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... Now and then a reckless and adventurous proprietor undertakes to make a day's journey alone through his establishment. He is never heard of afterwards,—or, if found, is discovered in a remote angle or loft, in a state of insensibility from bewilderment and starvation. If it were not for an occasional negro, who, instigated by charitable motives or love of money, slouches about from room to room with an empty coal-scuttle as an excuse for his intrusions, a gentleman stopping ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... same mammal, goes into the ladies' department and remains there until starvation drives her out. Then the real ladies have about thirteen seconds apiece ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... conversation with him, I saw the poor man's daughter-who was his only daughter, so far as I am aware, and who lived with him-going to church, dressed like a fine lady. That struck me as being a very deplorable state of matters. Here were a family who were on the verge of starvation, and unable to get medical comforts for their dying parent, and yet the daughter, who was a knitter, was I might almost ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... day and every hour you become conscious of the border line between life and death. Every vital function is more or less checked. You can feel yourself shrinking. And your soul, which was to be cured and improved, is instead put on a starvation diet—pushed back a thousand years into outlived ages. You are not permitted to read anything but what was written for the savages who took part in the migration of the peoples. You hear of nothing but what will never happen in ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... over the hopes. And such, I apprehend, to be the condition of the laboring poor in countries where slavery does not exist. If not exposed to present suffering, there is continual apprehension for the future—for themselves—for their children—of sickness and want, if not of actual starvation. They expect to improve their circumstances! Would any person of ordinary candor, say that there is one in a hundred of them, who does not well know, that with all the exertion he can make, it is out of his power materially to improve his circumstances? I speak not so ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Ferrara, their sole ally. Should Chioggia fall, the Genoese fleet would enter the lagoons, and would sail, by the great channel through the flats, from Chioggia to Venice; and their light galleys could overrun the whole of the lagoons, and cut off all communication with the mainland, and starvation would rapidly stare the ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... fruit-growers; let us begin to treat our fruit trees as we do our hogs and our hens, and see if we can not be favored with corresponding results. It is doubtless true that many of the diseases to which our trees are subject are caused by starvation, or by improper feeding; and a sickly tree is much more certain to be attacked by ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... God, millions of other persons were engaged in the same occupation. Agonised mothers were beseeching God to spare their dear children; wives were imploring him to restore the bread-winner of the family to health; entombed miners were praying in the dark depths of coalpits, and slowly perishing of starvation; shipwrecked sailors were asking for the help that never came. Providence could not, apparently, take on too much business at once, and while Stanley's fate trembled in the balance the rest of mankind might ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... answer a heavy charge as to that enormous amount of pleasureless work—work that tries every muscle of the body and every atom of the brain, and which is done without pleasure and without aim—work which everybody who has to do with tries to shuffle off in the speediest way that dread of starvation or ruin will ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... in the State of Ch'in, his followers, owing to a stoppage of food supply, became so weak and ill that not one of them could stand. Tsz-lu, with indignation pictured on his countenance, exclaimed, "And is a gentleman to suffer starvation?" ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... Avon was not incidental; it was the logical effect of definite mental causes. It was the orderly sequence of an endless train of hatred of man for man, bred of greed and the fear of starvation. And starvation is the externalized human belief that life is at the caprice of intelligent matter. But that is an infraction of the first Commandment, given when the human race was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... can be found described in many novels. It was a squalid and miserable life among ruined gamblers, spendthrifts, profligates, broken down merchants, bankrupt tradesmen, and helpless women of all classes. Unless one had allowances from friends, starvation might be the end. In one at least the common hall had shelves ranged round the walls for the reception of beds: everything was carried on in the same room, living, sleeping, eating, cooking. And into such a place as this the unhappy debtor was thrust, there ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... in which a man might die. Murder was only one of them. Radiation, disease, toxic gases that lingered and drifted on the once-innocent winds, and—finally—the most efficient destroyer of them all: starvation. ...
— The Next Logical Step • Benjamin William Bova

... breast. It was the voice of Master Gibbs, lying there on a low iron settle in the noisome dungeon, with not a ray of light to cheer him, and only a jug of water and some weevily biscuit to save him from starvation. All through the day and during the long, long hours of the awful night, in pain and suffering from his lopped-off limb and bruises, had he lain on his hard bed with clenched hands, blaspheming and impotently raging ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... were also called to arms, and the soldiers cheerfully took their places in the ranks; glad that the matter was to be brought to an issue at once, as they thought that a victory would, at least, put an end to the state of starvation in which they had for some time been kept. The French had, by this time, learned how impossible it was to surmount the obstacles in front of that portion of the allies' line occupied by the Spaniards. They therefore neglected these altogether, and Sebastiani advanced against the ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... they were all ruined, poor folk, with nothing to look forward to but starvation until long months hence the harvest came again for those who would live to gather it. Also they were convinced that we, the white magician and the prophet of their enemy the Child, had brought this disaster on them. Had it not been ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... would give Poor Law relief to anybody, anywhere, anyhow. Putting this nonsense aside, I have observed a suspicious tendency in the champions to divide into two parties; the one, contending that there are no deserving Poor who prefer death by slow starvation and bitter weather, to the mercies of some Relieving Officers and some Union Houses; the other, admitting that there are such Poor, but denying that they have any cause or reason for what they do. The records in our newspapers, the late exposure by THE LANCET, and the common sense and senses ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... the authorities of the town. All the sons of the Sultan of the place came to salute me; I gave them each a little sugar, and off they went highly pleased. Provisions now poured in at such a rate, that after the starvation of the desert I became nauseated at their sight. These were sent by the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... it would be useless for him to go to the palace again, and he went into the fields and tried to earn his bread as a laborer. He was not used to work, however, and but for the kindness of the very poorest he would have died of starvation. He wandered miserably from place to place until he fell in with some blind beggars who had been deserted by their guide. Joyfully he accepted their offer to take ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... not touch on here enabled my brother to obtain for me a legal separation, and when everything was arranged, I found myself guardian of my little daughter, and possessor of a small monthly income sufficient for respectable starvation. With a great price I had obtained my freedom, but—I was free. Home, friends, social position, were the price demanded and paid, and, being free, I wondered what to do with my freedom. I could have ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... angel had not quite forgotten him; Heaven had not intended that he should die by thirst and starvation in that isolated cabin, and served him in a ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... in the black emptiness of space. After reading the manual on lifeboat operation there was but one course open. I selected the nearest G-type star, set the controls on automatic, and went into cold sleep. There was nothing else to do. If I remained awake I would be dead of oxygen starvation long before I reached a habitable world. The only alternative was the half-death of frozen sleep and the long wait until the boat came within range of the ...
— The Issahar Artifacts • Jesse Franklin Bone

... of money payments by their landlords, such contracts being permitted by the State and enforced by the local authorities and by custom and public opinion; that is to say, the breach by a peasant would reduce him to starvation, as no one would supply him with the necessaries of life. As nearly as we have been able to ascertain, about one-third of the whole peasantry are owners of their holdings without hypothecation, are doing well, and buying up additional land; about the same proportion are in possession ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... execrated us whole-heartedly as murderers of women and children, oblivious of the fact that the victims of the submarine campaign were far less numerous than the women and children killed by the English blockade, and that death by drowning is no more dreadful than slow starvation. Everyone naturally realizes his own misfortunes more vividly than those of others, and the Lusitania incident first brought home to the United States the horrors of war, and convinced all her people that a flagrant injury had been done them. On my departure from ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... at the child showed me that it was on the verge of death by starvation, and this was confirmed by the moans of the mother, who begged me for humanity's sake to give her money with which to provide food for the child, even though I let her, herself, starve. You know, ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler

... a pregnant phrase. Bravo! let me write it down; Hold it with a hopeful gaze, Gauge it with a fretful frown; Tune it to my lyric lyre . . . Ah! upon starvation's brink, How the words are dark and dire: It is ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... bear. Upon his advice, they said, had they abandoned a most fruitful land, and instead of enjoying the great fortune promised to them, they were now wandering about in misery, suffering thirst from lack of water, and were apprehensive of dying of starvation in case the supply of manna should cease. When these and similar abuses were uttered against Moses, one out of the people stepped forth and exhorted them not so soon to forget the many benefactions they had known from Moses, and not to despair of God's aid and support. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... creatures kindly cared for; yet what a piteous place was their nursery! Some of the recent arrivals looked as if ill-usage had been exhausted upon them before they were brought hither. Blows and drugs and starvation had been tried upon them, but, with the tenacity of infancy, they clung to life. They would not die;—well, then, they should live to regret it. Some of them lay on the floor, deformed and helpless; the older ones formed a little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... his fingers over his abdomen and rubbed his fingertips together. "We're not sure. Thus far, it looks as though death was caused by oxygen starvation ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett

... He could recall her coming back next day, wild-eyed with hunger and the fever; the officers had refused her relief because her bare legs were not wholly shrunken to the bone. "While there's a calf on the shank, there's no starvation," they had explained to her. The girl died without profiting by this official apothegm. The boy found it burned ineffaceably upon his brain. Now, after a lapse of more than forty years, it seemed the thing that he ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... schooners in company. There we were, in that memorable spring of a certain year in the late seventies, dodging to and fro, baffled on every tack, and with our stores running down to sweepings of bread-lockers and scrapings of sugar-casks. It was just like the East Wind's nature to inflict starvation upon the bodies of unoffending sailors, while he corrupted their simple souls by an exasperation leading to outbursts of profanity as lurid as his blood-red sunrises. They were followed by gray days under the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a slab of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... individual sacrifices by personal attention to the sufferers, and other efforts for their relief, but nothing short of a law to give the poor of Ireland the right to claim support from the owners of the soil, before they are reduced to starvation, will effectually meet the evil, or be any security ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... The carriage stopped in front of a palatial residence. At this moment a poor beggar woman rushed to the side of the carriage, and gently seizing the lady by the hand, exclaimed, "For the love of God give me something to save my poor sick children from starvation. You are rich; I am your poor sister, for God is our ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... have been unhappy if I had stayed away. It is the leaving the poor child that grieves me. She is in a fearful state, between sore throat, starvation, and blows." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Little did he know that the beautiful fields of Italy were being left to be overgrown with weeds and over-run with wild beasts; that the children had never heard of God; that the poor were dying of starvation. To him the world was a happy place, where one played and had a good time, and where people loved Christ and obeyed His words. But some day he was to learn the truth. For God was going to use the boy Benedict to do more than any one man has ever done to civilize the world. This story I'm ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay

... cargo we were in mid-ocean, and there was nothing for it but to carry me to the States. Still, to earn my passage, I was made cabin-boy to a ruffianly captain, and once more tasted the early delights of childhood, viz., kicks, curses, and starvation. When the ship arrived in New York I was turned adrift in the city without a penny or ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume

... cream, butter, and eggs; so we bought two cows, and also a small flock of sheep, that we might always be sure of mutton—either fresh or salted. This did not afford a great variety of menus, but it was better than starvation. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... fount of begging letters. Another forces him to set up manufactories for all the lucifer-match girls of the parish. Woman's imaginativeness, woman's fancy, woman's indifference to fact exhausts itself in "sensational cases," and revels in starvation and death. But we must turn to a brighter side of her activity. Ritualism is the great modern result of the parson's wife, though, with a base ingratitude to the rock from which they were hewn, Ritualists hoist ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... he replied, pitying more and more the starvation of mind and longing to bring to it ...
— Polly of the Circus • Margaret Mayo

... and gazed at the speaker as if fascinated. She was endeavouring to readjust her perspective. Vanity in women assumed many strange shapes. There were those who bartered honour for the right to live and in order that they might escape starvation. These were pitiful. There were some who bought jewels at the price of shame, and others who sold body and soul for an hour in the limelight. These were unworthy of pity. But what of those who offered themselves, like ghawazi ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... month or more Tog was lost to sight; but an epidemic had so reduced the number of serviceable dogs that he was often in Jim Grimm's mind. Jim very heartily declared that Tog should have a berth with the team if starvation drove him back; not that he loved Tog, said he, but that he needed him. But Tog seemed to be doing well enough in the wilderness. He did not soon return. Once they saw him. It was when Jim and Jimmie were bound home from Laughing Cove. Of a sudden ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan

... to her dingy lodgings repeated itself. She felt very humble yet triumphant. More than ever did she regard him as a god who had raised her, by a touch, from despair and starvation to hope and plenty, and in her revulsion of gratitude she could have taken both his hands and passionately kissed them. And yet she was proudly conscious of something within her, unconquerably feminine, which had touched his godship ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... Cicero learned that under his predecessor in Cilicia, this same Scaptius had secured an appointment as prefect of Cyprus, and backed by his official power, to collect money due his company, had shut up the members of the Salaminian common council in their town hall until five of them died of starvation. In domestic politics the companies played an equally important role. The relations which existed between the "interests" and political leaders were as close in ancient times as they are to-day, and corporations were as unpartisan ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... attempt to change the face of Europe, they failed, the time not being ripe; the misery and the wretchedness of the epoch, the degradation of the masses of the population, the horrible poverty, the shameful starvation, all these were the rocks on which split, and was broken up into foam, the spiritual wave of which those two personages were the crest. The karma of that, for the one whom we know of as H.P.B., ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... starvation! Arise, ye wretched of the earth, For justice thunders condemnation, A better world's in birth. No more tradition's chains shall bind us, Arise, ye slaves! no more in thrall! The earth shall rise on new foundations, We have been naught, ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... punishment that is meted out to such by all governments, thousands of their own people were perishing for the want of something to eat - not inhuman or hard-hearted, but simply do not see how they can prevent it. There is no law by which they can stop starvation. The legislator in a monarchy knows that poverty is inseparable from that form of government and ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... that the West Indians would suffer even more than the Americans. Time showed his wisdom. Terrible sufferings came upon the West Indies for lack of the supplies they had been accustomed to import, and between 1780 and 1787 as many as 15,000 slaves perished from starvation. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... economize our resources to the utmost and make all the speed we could. Yet, do as we might, it was evident that, unless we could obtain a supply of food and water from some passing ship we should have to put ourselves on a starvation allowance. I was, however, much less concerned for myself and the others, than for Angela. Accustomed as she had been to a gentle, uneventful, happy life, the catastrophe of Quipai, the anxieties we had lately ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall

... bellowed to each other from hill to hill; even those miserable brutes, the sheep, frisked in an ungainly way when anything startled them. At all the little mountain-farms and holdings young Doyles and Donohoes were catching their horses, lean after the winter's starvation, and loading the pack-saddles for their five-months' trip out to the borders of Queensland, from shearing-shed to shearing-shed, A couple of months before they started, they would write to the squatters for whom they ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... bring out heroism. So does pestilence and famine. Read Defoe's account of the Plague of London. How men and women left their safe homes, to serve in the pest-houses, knowing that sooner or later they were doomed. Read of the mothers in India who die of slow starvation, never allowing a morsel of food to pass their lips so that they may save up their own small daily portion to add it to their children's. Why don't we pray to God not to withhold from us His precious medicine of pestilence and famine? So is shipwreck a fine school for ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... the mainland as quickly as possible, and make use of his knowledge of the cure for the Gray Plague. He didn't want to kill the man; he couldn't free him; yet if he left him strapped to the chair, he'd surely die of starvation. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... token of the pleasant rustic life of man, such as in my youth I remembered to have looked down upon from the Red Tower. Beneath me the city of Thorn lay grimly quiescent, like a beast of prey which has eaten all its neighbors, and must now die of starvation because there are no ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... more about the garden by Fanny's side, he began to recover his old appearance, and the soft bloom came back to his cheek again, and the light to his blue eye. But still his health gave most serious cause for apprehension; weeks of semi-starvation, bad air, sickness, and neglect, followed by two nights of exposure and wet, had at last undermined the remarkable strength of his constitution, and the Trevors soon became aware of the painful fact that he was sinking to the grave, and had ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... provisions. The buffalo meat we had salted had long been exhausted, part of it having turned bad; and besides one cask of pork, which proved to be almost rancid, a couple of pounds of flour with a few other trifling articles, not a particle of food remained in the ship. Starvation stared ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... cried and protested that the boy was all he had to love in the wide world; he himself was growing feeble, and without the lad's help at the business nothing could be done—starvation would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... have him in the neighborhood of Bent's Fort, for their own selfish motives, had misinformed him that first summer out, as to the lay of the country, hoping thereby to mislead him and his company into the mountains, where they would get snowed in and die of starvation. ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... preferred bread and honey. Nor did he allow the free use of every kind of vegetable; for beans, and I believe every species of pulse, were omitted. Water was his only drink. He lived, it is said, to the age of eighty; and even then did not perish from disease or old age, but from starvation in a place where he had sought a retreat from ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott

... flow of commerce has ceased and my people are faced with famine. The terrors of starvation with its consequences of disease and violence menace the unoffending civilian population—the aged, the infirm, ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... resolution. Its tide is next to resistless. Days of drunkenness succeed, months of self-denial are lost, and deplorable results follow everywhere. Wives are driven to desperation, mothers to despair, children to want. Demoralization, starvation, damnation follow. Friends are separated, homes are desolated, and souls are driven to hell itself, and yet people will talk lightly, and even jokingly of the very thing which leads to these terrible losses and sufferings—out ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... "Starvation in Prussia!" he cried, looking about him. "Nothing to eat or drink?—and my throat on fire! Well, what's the matter? The devil is always meddling in our affairs. There's my old Descoings in bed, looking at me with her eyes as big ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... undecided enough how to proceed. I might pass out into the open country north of the town, but if I did so I should probably either die of starvation or get killed as a Japanese straggler. I began to think my best course would be to return to the port, and take my chance of getting away in some small vessel. First of all, however, I resolved to ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan

... unusual circumstances. It was ascertained at the post-mortem that there was not a particle of food in his stomach, although he was found to be not without money. And his frame was simply worn out. Suicide was spoken of, but you'll agree with me that deliberate starvation is, to say the least, an uncommon form of suicide. An ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... Trombin had already expressed it twice with longing and regret. So far as mere hunger and thirst went, they could satisfy themselves with bread, salt fish and cheese, and a draught of water. They were not such imprudent gentlemen as to risk absolute starvation in their native city, where they could get no credit, and though they often lived riotously for months together, they invariably set aside a sum which would furnish them with the merest necessities for a considerable time. There ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... hobnobbing with an attorney-general, would, if his dinner agreed with him, confirm the decree and make it final. During this suspense the ineffably mean uniform that had been masquerading as a man was visited by an idea, and wrote a letter to Mrs. Lynch-Blosse depicting himself as on the brink of starvation and consumption, and begging for some money. The woman's pity was aroused. She had once fancied for a brief while, with the undeveloped heart of girlhood, that she liked this empty, tinkling symbol of a man. She wrote him a kind letter enclosing the money. It takes but little ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various



Words linked to "Starvation" :   privation, starve, hunger, deprivation



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