"Avidity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... quite thrilling—I took it in with avidity. "And if she dies without doing anything, what becomes of the money?" ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... 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
... facts, one would have perfect conditions for reasoning. Thus we see that effectiveness in reasoning demands an extensive array of facts. Accordingly, in your courses of study you must read with avidity. When you are given a list of readings in a course, some of which are required and some optional, read both sets, and every new fact thus secured will make you better able to ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... marks of royal encouragement were given to settle the country over the mountains; that the suspension of this encouragement, by the proclamation of October 1763, was merely temporary, untill the lands were purchased from the natives;—that the avidity to settle these lands was so great, that large settlements were made thereon, before they were purchased;—that although the settlers were daily exposed to the cruelties of the savages, neither a military force, nor repeated ...
— 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
... he 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 society ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... Squire Headlong caught with avidity at this suggestion, and as he had always a store of gunpowder in the house, he insisted on commencing operations immediately. Accordingly, he bounded back to the house and speedily returned, accompanied by the little butler and half a dozen servants and labourers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... ought to convince you that your duty is to live!' When pressed to eat or to live, no one listens unwillingly, and the lady, thirsty after an abstinence of several days, finally permitted her obstinacy to be overcome; nor did she take her fill of nourishment with less avidity than had the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... poisoned, Joe," said the doctor quietly; and I immediately drank some, when the prisoner took the pannikin and drank with avidity, his companions then turning their ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... by the romantic aid of a rope ladder; and if dirt 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Would that all the largesses of former kings had been as well bestowed! How those largesses had been bestowed none knew better than some of the austere patriots who harangued so loudly against the avidity of Montague. If there is, it was said, a House in England which has been gorged with undeserved riches by the prodigality of weak sovereigns, it is the House of Bath. Does it lie in the mouth of a son ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sight of Dagobert, the pale and flabby eyelids of Rodin were suddenly distended, as if all the blood in his body had flowed towards the head. Then the socius threw himself upon the casket, with the haste of ferocious rage and avidity, as if he were resolved to cover it with his body, and defend it at the peril of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... singsonged on and on. Then a 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
... perhaps, she erred: from not having been early accustomed to flattery, she did not receive it with quite sufficient nonchalance. The adoration paid to her in her triple capacity by crowds of worshippers only increased the avidity of her taste for incense, to receive which she would now and then stoop lower than became a goddess. She had not yet been suspected of a real partiality for any of her admirers, though she was accused of giving each just as much encouragement as was necessary to turn ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... and general paraphernalia of war are too tempting to pallet and brush, not to be seized on with avidity and reproduced with marvellous truth; but it is more agreeable to pass over accurate representations of the Irish zouave, with Celtic features, not purely classical in outline, glowing defiantly under the red cap of the Arab, and Teutonic cavalrymen, clinging ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... character and achievements, were her especial delight. Plutarch's Lives, that book which, more than any other, appears to be the incentive of early genius, was hid beneath her pillow, and read and re-read with tireless avidity. Those illustrious heroes of antiquity became the companions of her solitude and of her hourly thoughts. She adored them and loved them as her own most intimate personal friends. Her character became insensibly molded to their forms, and she was inspired with restless enthusiasm ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 their ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... best were troubled and surprised by the craving for excitement which now took possession of her, the avidity with which she gratified it, regardless of time, health, and money. All day she hurried here and there, driving, shopping, sight-seeing, or entertaining guests at home. Night brought no cessation of her dissipation, for when balls, masquerades, and concerts failed, there still remained ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... humbling disclosure of Northern cowardice and treachery, contained in these letters, they are destined to exert a powerful influence upon the public mind. They will constitute one of the most striking pages in the history of our times. They will be read with avidity in the North and in the South, and throughout Europe. Apart from the interest excited by the subjects under discussion, and viewed only as literary productions, they may be ranked among the highest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... inevitably to a mention of food, and this excited their appetites still more. They decided to cease their conversation, and calling to mind the copy of the "Moscow News" which they had found, they began to read it with avidity. ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... embarrassed by this demand, knowing the sufferings inflicted on the other parts of the island by the avidity of the Spaniards for gold. He replied that he had been apprised that gold was the great object for which the white men had come to their island, and that a tribute was paid in it by some of his fellow-caciques; but that in no part of his territories was gold to be found; and his ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... His avidity to heap up riches was not alone confined to the thousand different means, with which he was furnished by his authority, and the situation in which he was placed: his whole pursuit was gain: he was naturally fond of gaming; but he ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... circumstances, and quite as prevalent, though not, perhaps, equally hurtful, in great cities as in the smallest village. The same people who in London delight in the perusal of newspapers of the most libellous description, and who read with avidity every publication which attacks private character, will, when removed into a congenial sphere, pick their neighbours to pieces; an amusement which cannot be enjoyed in the metropolis, where happily we do not know the names of the parties who occupy ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... 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 money belonged to the Crown, ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... dressed women and handsomely appointed girls. Mrs. Wentworth received them all with that graciousness that was her native manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated at her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon's. Gordon had fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the hostess, and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among the visitors who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he might find the face ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... cries the thin voice of Garrigou's bell, and this time the unlucky priest, abandoning himself to the demon of gluttony, rushes through the missal, devouring its pages with all the avidity of an overcharged appetite. Frantically he bows; arises; makes the signs of the cross, goes through the genuflexions, abbreviates all his gestures, the sooner to be finished. Scarcely does he extend ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... control, and hence stories involving a large element of imagination retain their charm at this stage. The myth, and longer and more involved fairy tales, such as Ruskin's King of the Golden River, Hawthorne's Wonder Book, and Kingsley's Greek Heroes, are read with avidity. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... 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 praised the flavor ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the table, he moistened the wounded man's lips, and in a short time had the satisfaction of seeing him revive a little and in a faint whisper ask for a drink. Carey raised his head a little, and half a glassful was swallowed with avidity. This was reviving, and the doctor was soon able to ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... certain plants can be strongly attracted towards a pipette which is filled with malic acid—crowding around and into it with avidity. ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... ten miles, the valley opened a little to an oak and pine bottom, through which ran rivulets closely bordered with rushes, on which our half-starved horses fell with avidity; and here we made our encampment. Here the roaring torrent has already become a river, and we had descended to an elevation ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... had put her into possession of this providential accoutrement. She had confessed her predicament to Madame Bordier, who, after assuring herself that Hermia was not an escaping criminal, had entered with grace and even some avidity upon the bargain. Hermia wanted a blouse, skirt and hat somewhat worn. But in the act of searching in the garret of the wine-shop among the effects of a departed relative the great discovery had been made. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... I confess we did not feel much appetite for the repast, and some would not eat it at all; but our scruples soon gave way beneath the pangs of hunger, and at supper every man of the party ate heartily of it, and afterwards each one claimed his share of the mess with great avidity. The country to the north and north-west—the course we intended to pursue—looking very rugged and broken, we were discouraged from proceeding further this day, as the weak state of our horses prevented us making almost any progress. We therefore camped ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... embraced the 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 the ill conduct of the insurgents ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... never-failing source of information, as his knowledge of life and manners enabled him to start those subjects of which she was most ignorant; and her mind, copious for the admission and intelligent for the arrangement of knowledge, received all new ideas with avidity. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... milking the pretty white cow while Agnella prepared the supper. At the moment she was placing some good soup and a plate of cream upon the table, she saw an enormous toad devouring with avidity some cherries which had been put on the ground in ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... character, overstepping, as it does, the barriers erected by modern systems to the further progress of knowledge, a few words of explanation may not be inappropriate. Early imbued with a desire to understand the causes of natural phenomena, the author devoured with avidity the interpretations contained in the elementary works of orthodox science, until reason and observation rendered him dissatisfied with the repast. To him it appeared that there was an evident tendency in scholastic instruction, to make the knowledge of nature inaccessible to the many, that the ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... I saw near-by 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 utterly under ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... office as a clerk. I refuse. He insists, and tells me, moreover, a number of little pleasant traits of my unfitness to do anything, so that I interrupt him by hinting that I might possibly break stones on the highway. He seizes the project with avidity, and offers to supply me with a hammer for my work. All fact, on my honour! I am neither adding to nor concealing. I am relating what occurred little more than an hour ago, and I have forgotten nothing of the interview. He, as I said, offers to give me a stone-hammer. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... became a student of the Italian language, and writes to a friend: 'I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of my lips in the stream of these (the classical) languages, but in proportion to my years have swallowed the most copious draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others; nor has Athens itself been able to confine me to the transparent waves of its Ilissus, nor ancient Rome to the banks of its Tiber, so as to prevent my visiting ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... ordinary hay or straw. After being mixed with the pulp for about twelve hours, fermentation commences, and this soon renders the most mouldy hay palatable, and animals eat with avidity that which they would otherwise reject. This fermentation softens the straw, makes it more palatable, and puts it in a state to assimilate more readily with the other food. In this respect I think the pulper ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... acted up to them! It is a suspicious congregation too (though perhaps not singularly so, for I have perceived others do the same), because whenever their priest names a chapter and verse for any text he may choose to insert in his discourse, instantly and with avidity each and all turn over the leaves of their Bibles, to see if it be really in the identical spot mentioned, or whether their pastor has been lying. This action may not be altogether suspicion; it may be also thought of as a safety-valve for their ennui, the ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... 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 across ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... replies greatly exasperated the parliament of Turin; they continued, with more avidity than ever, to kidnap such Waldenses as did not act with proper precaution, who were sure to suffer the most cruel deaths. Among these, it unfortunately happened, that they got hold of Jeffery Varnagle, minister of Angrogne, whom they committed ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... this monastery!" he said with avidity. "You've never spared any one, and the holier the place, the more chance of its suffering from your loving-kindness and angelic sweetness. Why do you come here? What do you want with the monks here, allow me to ask you? What is Hecuba to you or you to Hecuba? ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... It was heartbreaking, as we three prisoners sat bound and held down by guards, to see the Lamas and officers handle all our things so roughly that they spoiled nearly all they touched. Particularly disgusting was their avidity when, in searching the pockets of the coat I wore daily, and which I had not put on that morning, they found a quantity of silver coins, some eight hundred rupees in all. Officers, Lamas, and soldiers made a grab for the money, and when order was re-established only ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... good bed of ashes, a hole is scooped in them, and in it is deposited the haunch or other portion. When sufficiently done, it is taken out, the ashes are knocked away, and then—no civilized man, whose appetite has never been sharpened by open-air exposure in the woods, can understand the keen avidity with which the delicious viand ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... none that we could spare for you to take over to your doin's. The old woman has got some popcorn candy and rag dolls hid in the clothes chest, and we allow to give Christmas a little whirl of our own in a insignificant sort of style. No, I couldn't, with any degree of avidity, seem to fall in with the idea of lettin' none of 'em go. Thank you ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... sorciere, whom he consulted in my presence; and she told him that he was doomed to possess it, but that first of all he must cross water. She cautioned him likewise against an enemy, which he supposes must be the canon of Saint James. I have often heard people speak of the avidity of the Swiss for money, and here is a proof of it. I would not undergo what Benedict has suffered in these last journeys of his, to possess all the ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... interests made him a citizen of eighteenth-century Europe, as a whole, and he strove steadily to bear the intellectual light of that urbane age to his native country, then backward in culture. Holberg—professor, scholar, and philosopher—seized with avidity the opportunity to write comedy, not from a desire to display his own versatility, or from an absorbing devotion to the drama as a form of art, but because he believed that through his plays he could fulfil most completely what he conceived ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... is, however, the best listener. I mean Mr. Northcote, the painter. Painters by their profession are not bound to shine in conversation, and they shine the more. He lends his ear to an observation, as if you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it with as much avidity and earnestness, as if it interested himself personally. If he repeats an old remark or story, it is with the same freshness and point as for the first time. It always arises out of the occasion, and has the stamp ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... continued war and interrupted peace for centuries. It held united under its vast sway, states decrepit with the oldest of civilisations, and peoples hardly out of primitive barbarism. It exploited with avidity the intelligence, the laboriousness, the science of the former; the physical force, the war-valour and the daring of the latter; it absorbed the vices, the habits, the ideas of the Hellenised Orient, and transfused them in the untamed Occident. Taking ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... the Siouan tribes, games of chance were played habitually and with great avidity, both men and women becoming so absorbed as to forget avocations and food, mothers even neglecting their children; for, as among other primitive peoples, the charm of hazard was greater than among the enlightened. The games were not specially distinctive, and ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... order to lay broad foundations of material well-being for the society of the future. The worst of these justifications is, that they are generally addressed to the very people engaged, body and soul, in the movement in question; at all events, that they are always seized with the greatest avidity by these people, and taken by them as quite justifying their life; and that thus they tend to harden them in their sins. Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune-making and exaggerated industrialism, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... memory of the past returned to her, her existence was as the existence of a new-born babe, spent alternately in taking food and sleep. Food she took with eager avidity after her long starvation, and then sank back again into ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... republican National Assembly? These gentlemen did not notice, or did not want to notice, that Napoleon utilized the 29th of January, 1849, to cause a part of the troops to file before him in front of the Tuileries, and that he seized with avidity this very first open exercise of the military against the parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula. The allied royalists ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... came near him, he rushed at it with a fierce snarl, like that of a dog, and tried to bite it. When any cooked meat was put near him, he rejected it in disgust; but when raw meat was offered, he seized it with avidity, put it upon the ground, under his hands, like a dog, and ate it with evident pleasure. He would not let any one come near while he was eating, but he made no objection to a dog's coming and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... took place during a certain month in the Gulf of Satalia (on the coast of Pamphylia). There appeared a great and black dragon which came in clouds, and let down his head into the water, whilst his tail seemed turned to the sky; and the dragon drew the water to him by drinking, with such avidity, that, if any ship, even though laden with men or any other heavy articles, had been near him when drinking, it would nevertheless have been sucked up and carried on high. In order however to avoid this danger, it is necessary, when people see it, at once to make ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... was dragged from his literary and forensic life to accept the office of a governor of a province. It was forced upon him,—an honor to him without a charm. Had he been venal and unscrupulous, he would have seized it with avidity. He was too conscientious to enrich himself by public corruption, as other Senators did, and unless he could accumulate a fortune the command of a distant province was an honorable exile. He was fifty-six years of age when he became Proconsul of Cilicia, an Eastern province; and all ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... many hopes had no regular education. She was never at school. Her mother's teaching and her own avidity for information were almost her only means of instruction. Mrs. Browne was a woman of high acquirements, both intellectual and moral, eminently adapted for the training of so sensitive a mind. For a time the child was taught French, English grammar, and the ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... The avidity with which iron unites with oxygene, or vital air, in which process much heat is given out from the combining materials, is shewn by a curious experiment of M. Ingenhouz. A fine iron wire twisted spirally is fixed to a cork, on the ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... sweet not to be swallowed with avidity by me. Too late I remembered that I was already enslaved by inextricable obligations. It was easy to have hidden this impediment from the eyes of my companion, but here my integrity refused to yield. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to have known how to value him; as patrons very often pass for wits, by esteeming those that are so." And from another authority we learn, that the engraved copies of Dryden's portrait were bought up with avidity on the Continent.[3] ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... upon this last point that I seized with most avidity. I was tired of trying to steer a course for myself, with no compass to go by. I was tired of incessantly travelling along roads which seemed to lead to nothing but blind-ends. To change the figure to one I used not infrequently ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Scandinavia are very intelligent, not only the inhabitants of the cities, but of the most remote rural districts. Their education goes far beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic. The peasant learns with avidity. His mental faculties are ever on the alert. He takes a deep interest in the public welfare and no mean part in all political and local affairs. More than half of the Storthing is made up of members of this rank in life. Not unfrequently they attend its sessions clad in the ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... single week, and even in a single day, were rife; and they had excited his greed with a strange power. He had witnessed, too, the effect of these stories upon the minds of the humble people of Sevenoaks. They were uneasy in their poverty, and were in the habit of reading with avidity all the accounts that emanated from the new center of speculation. The monsters of the sea had long been chased into the ice, and the whalers had returned with scantier fares year after year; but ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books, particularly those in Plutarch's Lives, and in Jacob Cats's Book of Emblems, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a Dutch woman, had brought from Holland. When he was only eight years old he read with great avidity a book called The Jesuits Perspective, an architectural, not a religious work, and made himself so completely master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other treatise on the ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... representation by Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, John Forster, Marston, Wilkie Collins, and other men of prominent intellectual distinction, has given a remarkable prestige to this play, independent of its actual merits. It can not fail to be sought with avidity, both from interest in the occasion, and the popularity of the author. Nor is it altogether unworthy of his great reputation. The construction of the plot shows his usual fertility of resource, and the dialogue, which is various and spirited, is managed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... far short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, and turns it into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with avidity as the spolia opima of this sort of mental warfare, and furnish out labour for another half-day. The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without weariness; nor would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of a century has passed since the incidents of this true story closed. It has not vanished from the memories of South Carolinians, though the printed pages which once told it have been gradually withdrawn from sight. The intense avidity which at first grasped at every incident of the great insurrectionary plot was succeeded by a distaste for the memory of the tale; and the official reports which told what slaves had once planned and dared have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... swiftly springing up, gazing round instantly after his fortunate conqueror, descried on the wide sunny plain neither him nor his shadow, for which he sought with especial avidity. For that I was myself entirely shadowless he had no leisure to remark, nor could he imagine such a thing. Having convinced himself that every trace had vanished, he turned his hand against himself and tore his hair in great despair. To me, however, the acquired treasure had given the power and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... 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 ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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
... hunger was before, but now he seized that disgusting loaf and ate it with avidity, and while doing so he dressed himself, but without having a chance to wash his lacerations, the blood of which had ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... ... "There are abundant indications that this epidemic is now rife in the community. The extraordinary vote polled by a Socialistic candidate for President, in a time of general prosperity, seems to evidence this, as does the avidity with which many intelligent people read in a cheap 'penny dreadful' magazine the incoherent, self-contradictory, and self-incriminating articles of a notorious frenzied fakir, who, like a crazed Malay, is wildly running amuck, and, without rhyme or reason, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Progress and Poverty, brought him from obscurity to prominence in six years, and by 1885 had "formed a noteworthy epoch in the history of economic thought." The success of Bellamy's utopian romance proved the avidity of the reading public. Parkman and Bancroft, of the older generation, Henry Adams, McMaster, and Rhodes, of the younger, led the way through history to an understanding of American conditions. Economics, sociology, and government were beginning ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... hard, high cloud, I have seen him, like a wizened robber sheik of the sea, 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 order of the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... meal, is baked with the fine, and bright scales run through the bread.{81} This bread, with its ashes and bran, would disgust and choke a northern man, but it is quite liked by the slaves. They eat it with avidity, and are more concerned about the quantity than about the quality. They are far too scantily provided for, and are worked too steadily, to be much concerned for the quality of their food. The few minutes allowed them at dinner time, after partaking ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... reference to the tonic port, until one day I noticed that our cat (who had recently lost her kittens) seemed in a poor state of health. I gave it a few spoonfuls of the tonic port in a little milk. It drank it with avidity, somewhat to my surprise. I had one or two little things to do in the garden after that, and when I came back Eliza said that the cat had become so very strange in its manner that she had thought it best to lock it ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... there, as the slight they have put upon our offered friendship is very disreputable to us, and, of course, hurtful to our affairs elsewhere. I think they are short-sighted, and do not look very far into futurity, or they would seize with avidity so excellent an opportunity of securing a neighbor's friendship, which may hereafter be of great consequence ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... eagerly, and he drank the half-glassful more given to him with the greatest of avidity, closed his eyes directly after, and dropped off into a ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... considered to be the speciality of himself and his friend Sandars. The middle, originally an article upon some not strictly political topic, had grown in their hands into a kind of lay sermon. For such literature the British public has shown a considerable avidity ever since the days of Addison. In spite of occasional disavowals, it really loves a sermon, and is glad to hear preachers who are not bound by the proprieties of the religious pulpit. Some essayists, like ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... "Family Herald Supplements", "Young Ladies' Journals", and such publications, and the young girl took to them with avidity, surprised at the new world into which they took her; for Charlotte Yonge and Louisa Alcott and Miss Wetherall had hitherto formed ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... many young girls incapable of appreciating the painful sacrifices by which the honest man who does them the honor of marrying them, has obtained opulence; young girls eager for the enjoyments of luxury, ignorant of our laws, ignorant of our manners, claim with avidity the empire which their beauty yields them, and show themselves quite ready to turn away from the genuine utterances of the heart, while they readily listen to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... ball supper, where it is often impossible in England to prevail upon the ladies to taste a morsel, you may see these delicate females of France, regale themselves with dressed dishes, swallow, with incredible avidity, repeated bowls of strong soup, and after a short interval, sit down to potations of hot punch, strong enough to admit of being set on fire. Nothing can certainly be more destructive of all ideas of feminine delicacy, than to see a beautiful woman with ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 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 ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... and began to be held twice a week; and when the mother observed with what avidity the young people listened to the speeches of her son and the Little Russian, to the interesting stories of Sashenka, Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich, and the other people from the city, she forgot her fears and shook her head sadly as she recalled the ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... dine at Delmonico's and go to the Empire to see Ethel Barrymore, accepted with avidity, had stirred Joan to immediate action. She had hailed a taxi, said, "You'll see me in an hour, Marty," and disappeared with a quick injunction to have whatever she ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... 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 ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of Gama, and the return of his ships laden not only with the commodities peculiar to the coast of Malabar, but with many of the richer and rarer productions of the eastern parts of India, stimulated the Portuguese to enter on this new career with avidity and ardour, both military and commercial. It fortunately happened that Emanuel, who was king of Portugal at this period, was a man of great intelligence and grasp of mind, capable of forming plans with ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... soldier of the Union, during that war. The descriptions of the prison are especially truthful, for in them the author briefly tells what he himself saw. One of the best war stories ever written. Boys will read it with avidity. ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... there was something particular in the way, gave the order sharply to the man, who retired directly, and returned in a few minutes with another bearing a vessel of some pleasant, cool drink, of which Ned partook with avidity. ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... 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 again even to their limited capacities that certain parts of butchers' meat ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... were sent early to Rome to the house of C. Aculeo, a learned jurisconsult, married to a sister of Helvia; and attended—with their cousins, the sons of Aculeo—the best schools in the city.[2] The young Marcus shewed extraordinary ability from the first, and that avidity for reading and study which never forsook him. As a young man he diligently attended the chambers of renowned jurisconsults, especially those of the elder and younger Scaevola, Crassus, and Antonius, and soon found that his calling ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Contrast the 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 ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... a judicious economy. How to raise a fresh supply of money was now the question, and one most difficult to be answered. But an unexpected stroke of good fortune was in store for us. Strolling into the bar-room of the principal hotel, I saw a play-bill stuck up on the wall. This I read with avidity; and then, to my great satisfaction, I became aware of the fact that an old friend of mine, one Bill Pratt, a travelling actor and manager, had "just arrived in Lancaster with a talented company of comedians, who would that evening have the honor of appearing ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... five hundred millions of paper had been of such advantage, five hundred millions additional would be of still greater advantage. This was the grand error of the Regent, and which Law did not attempt to dispel. The extraordinary avidity of the people kept up the delusion; and the higher the price of Indian and Mississippi stock, the more billets de banque were issued to keep pace with it. The edifice thus reared might not unaptly be compared to the gorgeous palace erected by Potemkin, that princely barbarian of Russia, to surprise ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... correctly surmising the intentions of his own immediate opponents, but also in the opinions which he gave regarding the movements of the grand armies. He sought all the information which could however remotely affect his interests and designs with untiring avidity, and the novel and ingenious expedients he sometimes resorted to in order to obtain it, would perhaps furnish materials for the most interesting chapter of his history. It was a common saying among his men, that "no lawyer can cross-examine like General Morgan," and indeed the skill with which ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... for an analysis of Daudet such as Sainte-Beuve would have undertaken with avidity; they are more abundant indeed than for any other contemporary French man of letters even in these days of unhesitating self-revelation; and they are also of an absolutely impregnable authenticity. M. Ernest Daudet has written a whole volume to tell us all about his ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... 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
... Constitution in Church and State.'" Being asked what difference there was between the two toasts, he said, "Why, Sir, you may be sure he meant something." Yet when the life of that prelate, prefixed to his sermons by Dr. Porteus and Dr. Stinton his chaplains, first came out, he read it with the utmost avidity, and said, "It is a life well written, and that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... constantly pass between friends on the topics of the hour or their own affairs. It is charitable to conjecture that their writers never imagined that they could be exposed in print, or would not be burned as soon as read. And yet, with what avidity are they conned and discussed! Look at the letters of Lord Byron, Moore, and Campbell. How much brainless twattle do they contain, amid a few grains of wit and humor. What mere commonplace! Editors may as well publish every word a man says, as what he writes familiarly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... of England and of France have, in truth, made little use of manuscript researches. Life is very short for long histories; and those who rage with an avidity of fame or profit will gladly taste the fruit which they cannot mature. Researches too remotely sought after, or too slowly acquired, or too fully detailed, would be so many obstructions in the smooth texture of a narrative. Our theoretical historians write from some particular and preconceived ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... the ascetic character were likewise augmented by his studious disposition. This began very early in life, and continued till the end. "My father," he says, "destined me . . . to the study of polite literature, which I embraced with such avidity, that from the twelfth year of my age I hardly ever retired to rest from my studies till midnight; which was the first source of injury to my eyes, to the natural weakness of which were added frequent ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... brief time the newsboys were out with extras. Then everybody read with the utmost avidity ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... himself at chess, and from his avidity to find an opponent Alcuin may have been induced to test conclusions of chess skill with him. On his visit to England in 793 Alcuin brought his knowledge with him and he is the least unlikely person to have noticed chess and to have ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... those other uncouth sounds and echoes which will sometimes strike the ear so strangely amidst the profound stillness of woodland solitudes. These may have startled some melancholy imaginations, may have been exaggerated by the love for the marvellous, and listened to with that avidity with which we devour whatever is fearful and mysterious. The universal currency of these superstitious fancies and the grave record made of them by one of the learned men of the day are strongly ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... the very moderate duties imposed upon their trade by the new Chinese tariff,—all and each of them must take the consequences of their conduct; and they may rest assured, that the Chinese will always be ready to seize with avidity the slightest opportunity afforded them for charging foreigners with a breach of the Treaty. We must hope that foreigners resorting to China for the purposes of trade, or merely as travellers in search of health or of strange sights, will be sufficiently aware of the ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... A second glance showed its enormously thick fore-legs, and the claws of its feet turned in, so that it walked on the sides of its soles. Oken and St Hilaire would have said that it was "all extremity." A cup, with the contents of one or two eggs, was brought, and it sucked them with great avidity, every now and then darting from its small mouth a very long tongue, which looked like a great, black worm, whisking about in the custard. One of its showmen told us that it had attacked the woman of the house the preceding day, and had scratched her arm. Whether this was true or grossly ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... clustered before me, commonplace and insignificant as most of them were; the trembling forms of the excited servants crowded into a far corner; and the still more disagreeable aspect of the pale-faced, seedy reporter, seated at a small table and writing with a ghoul-like avidity that made my flesh creep, were each and all as fixed an element in the remarkable scene before me as the splendor of the surroundings which made their presence such a ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... same meaning, side by side. But, unfortunately for the scholar who undertakes to prove the question, the Romans were in this island four hundred years, colonised it partly, and partly gave it their own form of civilisation. As before mentioned, the inhabitants adopted with avidity the Roman dress, language, and literature. That language must therefore be supposed to have entered deeply into the composition of the present Cumrian tongue. The sceptical examiner may therefore reasonably object, that any similarity between the two languages might have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... reason, but we see such instances every day. The passion of play is not artificial; it must have existed in certain minds from the beginning; at least some must have been so constituted that they yield at once to the attraction, and enter with avidity into a pursuit in which other men can never ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... variety in appearance. Composed of rogues of the worst order from every quarter of the world, it might be said to present, in its general aspect of numerical importance, the very sublime of degradation. Confident in their rude union of common avidity, these worthy citizens vented their insolence on all objects, and in every direction, with a careless impartiality which would have shamed the most victorious efforts of modern mobs. The hubbub of voices was perfectly fearful. The coarse execrations of drunken ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... by a Circuit, they reach quite to the boundaries of the Cattans. A region so vast, the Chaucians do not only possess but fill; a people of all the Germans the most noble, such as would rather maintain their grandeur by justice than violence. They live in repose, retired from broils abroad, void of avidity to possess more, free from a spirit of domineering over others. They provoke no wars, they ravage no countries, they pursue no plunder. Of their bravery and power, the chief evidence arises from hence, that, without wronging ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... is eulogized by Fuller as producing superior dogs for the sport; and in Grimsby bull-baiting was pursued with such avidity, that, to increase its importance, and prevent the possibility of its falling into disuse, it was made the subject of an official regulation of the magistracy. It had been practised within the borough from time immemorial, but ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... eminence more unstable, or more dangerous to its possessor, than that of a pacha. Nothing, perhaps, affords us more convincing proof of the risk which men will incur, to obtain a temporary authority over their fellow-creatures, than the avidity with which this office is accepted from the sultan; who, within the memory of the new occupant, has consigned scores of his predecessors to the bowstring. It would almost appear, as if the despot but elevated a head from the crowd, that he might obtain ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... received better treatment at this time than at any other period during the existence of the colony. There was a general relaxation of the severe laws that had been so rigidly enforced. They took great interest in public meetings, devoured with avidity every scrap of news regarding the movements of the Tory forces, listened with rapt attention to the patriotic conversations of their masters, and when the storm-cloud of war broke were as eager to fight for the independence of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... 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 she did ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... he said was a treasure here. When we descried him from above, he had a most eremitical appearance; and on our return told us, he had been so much engaged by Gataker, that he had never missed us. His avidity for variety of books, while we were in Col, was frequently expressed; and he often complained that so few were within his reach. Upon which I observed to him, that it was strange he should complain of want of books, when he could at any time ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... its influence over my husband's mind, his small portion of remaining regard for me visibly decayed. We now had horses, a phaeton and ponies; and my fashions in dress were followed with flattering avidity. My house was thronged with visitors, and my morning levees were crowded so that I could scarcely find a quiet hour for study. My brother by this ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... upon Wraxall's "Memoirs of the House of Valois," and, reading it with great avidity, determined to write an historical novel, of which the heroine should be Francoise de Foix, the beautiful Countess de Chateaubriand. At this enterprise I now set eagerly to work, the abundant production of doggerel suffering no diminution from ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... great-grandson, Louis XV, was but five years old, so Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, became Regent. During the last years of Louis XIV's life the court had resented more or less the gloom cast over it by the influence of Madame de Maintenon, and turned with avidity to the new ruler. He was a vain and selfish man, feeling none of the responsibilities of his position, and living chiefly for pleasure. The change in decoration had been foreshadowed in the closing years of the previous reign, and it is often hard to say whether a piece of furniture ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... in circulation. Though regular in the irregularity of its publication, the subscribers seem to have become accustomed to the delay, and when it did make its appearance it was read with eagerness and avidity. The interest and variety of its contents, and the skill of the editor in the arrangement of his materials, made ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... she knew, her late mistress's sister lived, Mrs. O'Connett, formerly Miss Sophia Pratt. Mrs. O'Connett, a young widow, had just lost her only child, a boy about the age of the little one rescued from the cruel seas. She seized on him with feverish avidity, adopted him as her own, quitted the place for another Anglo-French town where she was not previously known, taught the child to call her "Mamma," and had never let it transpire that the boy was not hers. But now, after the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... 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
... bread from the lake came to shore. The farmer devoured it with great avidity, and on the following day he was successful in his pursuit and caught the fair damsels. After a little conversation with them, he commanded courage sufficient to make proposals of marriage to one of them. She consented to accept them on the condition that he would distinguish her from ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... the thunder and the sea, the frightful avidity of animal life and the loveliness of flowers are so many hints of the God who made them, how much more obviously are the things of humanity analogues of the things of God? And among all such things, the union of man and woman takes the highest place and ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... was produced, and he fell to with avidity, but he saw they were in no mood for frivolity, and he did not ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the keenness of love the last leaves fall from the trees—she watched with the keen avidity of love for the white snow and the wail of wintery winds, for the long, dark nights and gray, cold dawn. Each one brought her nearer and nearer; every day was a pain past and a nearer joy. Welcome to the nipping frost and the ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... of which Americans are so fond should not be kept in copper vessels, for carbonic acid (which is the gas present) dissolves this metal with great avidity. From three-hundredths to one-tenth of a grain of copper per gallon has been found in aerated lemonade, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... help feeling how careful we should be, how we inculcate anything like abstract and philosophical ideas to youth. Allowing them to be in themselves correct, still they are dangerous as sharp instruments are in the hands of a child;—allowing them to be erroneous, they are seized upon with an avidity by young and ardent minds, and are not to be eradicated without the greatest difficulty, and very often not until they have accomplished ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... behind a large folio upon 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: though but little Greek, only some of Anacreon ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... But, they reasoned, the quantity of the money for which this faith stood pledged already exceeded the demands of commerce, and hence its value was proportionably reduced. Add to this the arts of open and secret enemies, the avidity of professed friends, and the scarcity of foreign commodities, and it is easy to account for the depreciation. "The consequences were equally obvious and alarming,"—"depravity of morals, decay of public virtue, a precarious supply for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... room to room with the curiosity and avidity of a child, touching everything, testing the softness of the pillows, peeping into scrolls which he did not understand, tossing them aside, smelling at the perfumes in the dead woman's rooms, and the medicines she had used. He showed his teeth with delight when he found in her trunks ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sorrows of the characters she personated. For her the cup of fame was not mantling with the wine of delight which reddens the lips and "maketh glad the heart." The costly pearl she had dissolved in it had not sweetened the draught; but it was intoxicating, and she drank it with feverish avidity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... a little piteous, too, to see with what avidity he seized upon any news of the Duke, and how his natural inclinations and those consonant with his religion strove with his new-found loyalty to a bastard. A week or two later we had news of the attempt made by my Lord Shaftesbury to injure the Duke of York's cause ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... a sudden depression in the market at the time might, however, account for much of this, although it is well known that brokers and speculators on the American continent engage in the pursuit with the avidity ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... prices of wine, spirits, and porter, proceeded not only from their scarcity, but from the great avidity with which they were procured by the generality of the people in these settlements, with whom money was of so little value, that the purchaser had been often known (instead of asking) to name himself a price for the article ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... man's; he has been able to perceive the benefits of regular industry; his head has proved as clear in the apprehension of the distinction between right and wrong as that of the more highly cultivated moralist; and he receives the fundamental truths of the gospel with an avidity, and applies them—at least to the lives and characters of his neighbors—with a keenness, which show him to be not far behind the rest of mankind in sensibility and acuteness. Without referring to the testimony of the ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... visit me at the Chateau de Clagny, my favourite country-seat, and there I caused a sumptuous collation to be served to them in accordance with their tastes. Plain roast meat they ate with avidity; other dishes seemed to inspire them with distrust,—they looked closely at them, and then went off ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... mercantile pursuits. He received a very liberal education from his father, whom, we are told, perceived in his son a strong inclination for philosophical studies, and who purchased for Zeno the writings of the Socratic philosophers; which were studied with avidity, and which undoubtedly exercised a considerable influence over his future thinkings. When about thirty years of age, he made a trading voyage from Cittius to Athens, with a very valuable cargo of Phoenician purple, but was unfortunately shipwrecked on the coast of Greece, and the whole of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... said, were refused a place in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. However this may be, Collinson published them in a separate volume, under the title of New Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America. They were read with avidity, and soon translated into different languages. A very incorrect French translation fell into the hands of the celebrated Buffon, who, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which the work labored, was much pleased with it, and repeated the experiments with success. He prevailed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up to. He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate by the stridency of ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... from the past to infuse into the future. His songs, so soft and tender, and yet so redolent of manliness and hope, inspired the ambition to compose a minstrelsy as wild and vigorous as themselves. They were read and learned and sung with an avidity and ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... in an address to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1872. Mr. Skey's experiments disproved the view generally held that gold is unaffected by sulphur or sulphuretted hydrogen gas, and showed that these elements combined with avidity, and that the gold thus treated resisted amalgamation with mercury. Mr. Skey proved the act of absorption of sulphur by gold to be a chemical act, and that electricity was generated in sufficient quantity and intensity ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged with avidity into the theological review. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... between such people and those whose chief sustenance is farinaceous food, is very striking and worthy of especial notice. In the East, and in Polynesia, literature and Christian doctrines are seized upon with avidity. But in vain were the most earnest labors of the best men to introduce reading and writing among the American Indians until they had first been taught to grow corn and to ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... by the most delicate amongst us to be excellent. A few willows, whose tops were seen peeping through the snow in the bottom of the valley, were quickly grubbed, the tents pitched, and supper cooked, and devoured with avidity. This was the sixth day since we had had a good meal; the tripe de roche, even where we got enough, only serving to allay the pangs of hunger for a short time. After supper, two of the hunters went in pursuit of the herd, but could not get near ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... continued to be the man who shared his time between his rifle and his plough. The numerous buffalo were butchered with an endless avidity by the men who now appeared upon the range. As the great herds regularly migrated southward with each winter's snows, they were met by the settlers along the lower railway lines and in a brutal commerce were killed in thousands and in millions. ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... keep up this celibate existence? And why do these elements alone refuse all fellowship, while the atoms of all the other seventy-odd known elements seek out mates under proper conditions with unvarying avidity? ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 tears, an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all over the country before daybreak, and, marvelous anomaly, which took Richard Hardie by surprise, they oiled the waves, the panic abated from that hour. The holders of country notes took the 1 pound B. E. notes as cash with avidity. The very sight of them piled on a counter stopped a run in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... new doctrine with avidity. In the acute letter of criticism which, while still at the Sorbonne, he addressed to Buffon, he pointedly urged it as the first objection to that writer's theory of the formation and movements of the planets, that any attempt ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... 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 ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan |
