"Predatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Volga flows through the Steppe, the great Asiatic grass desert extending from the Caucasus to the frontier of China. The wild tenants of this wilderness, the various tribes of Tartars, once the terror of East and West, were like a vast ocean of human beings swayed to and fro by nomadic and predatory instincts, which for centuries threatened to overwhelm and efface every ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... from the classical appellation of the tribe, as the French word Lisieux is clearly derived from them. In the early portion of Norman history, Lisieux is mentioned as having felt the vengeance of these invaders, during one of their predatory excursions from the Bessin, about the year 877. It was shortly afterwards sacked by Rollo himself, when that conqueror, elated with the capture of Bayeux, was on his march to take possession of the capital of Neustria. But the territory of ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... not yet submitted to the bit and bridle of civilization—and they can be numbered on the fingers of one's two hands—Borneo is the most intractable. Of all the regions which the predatory European has claimed for his own, it is the least submissive, the least civilized, the least exploited and the least known. Its interior remains as untamed as before the first white man set foot on its shores four hundred years ago. The exploits of those bold and hardy spirits—explorers, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... want done, especially with regard to the Red Flag, predatory capital, predatory labor, and the fifty-cent dollar cannot be done by the President for them, and they are not going to do it themselves lonesomely and individually by yearning, or by standing around three thousand miles apart or in any other ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... predatory; the short-clawed ones never were. Not long ago I read a magazine story about a black bear which killed a moose with seven-foot horns. There never was a black bear ever killed any moose, and there never was any moose with horns that wide. Such ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... bergamot and vervain. His nostrils quivered, his face had taken on an odd pinched look, for all that he smiled as over some occult jest. Graciosa was a little frightened by his bearing, which was both furtive and predatory. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... meagre undergrowth, which served little better purpose than to partially conceal them. About this bluff a ring of savages had formed. Low-type savages of smallish stature, and of little better intelligence than the predatory creatures who ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... out of house and home; drain, drain to the dregs; gut, dry, exhaust, swallow up; absorb &c. (suck in) 296; draw off; suck the blood of, suck like a leech. retake, resume; recover &c. 775. Adj. taking &c.v.; privative[obs3], prehensile; predaceous, predal[obs3], predatory, predatorial[obs3]; lupine, rapacious, raptorial; ravenous; parasitic. bereft &c. 776. Adv. at one fell swoop. Phr. give an inch ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... enter and watch operations. The old woman pauses and looks up as she cracks an egg on the edge of a plate, and then assents, willingly enough, but with unmistakable astonishment. She is used to predatory raids of visitors but evidently not to this inquiring spirit. Yet purposeful travel, we might tell her, is hundred-eyed and has glances for just such matters as this. It seeks out cities and scenery and history; but it seeks out life no less. We are gaining impressions which cannot be drawn from ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... rebuke of his unceremonious relative, who was always the man of stern reality—too big to be dazzled by mouldy records of kingly blood. Neither did pomp or ceremony attract him, except in so far as it might serve the purpose of making an impression on others. Bourrienne, a shameless predatory traitor, has said in his memoirs that when the seat of government was removed from the Luxembourg to the Tuileries, the First Consul said to him, "You are very lucky; you are not obliged to make a spectacle of yourself. I have ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... not undertaken entirely for the benefit of her larvae. The suspicion was worth experimental confirmation. At the time I was interested in another question also: I wanted to study, absolutely at leisure, the methods by which the various predatory species dealt with their victims. In the case of Philanthus I made use of the improvised cage already described; and Philanthus it was who furnished me with my first data on the subject. She responded to my hopes with such energy that I thought ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... caught sight of one or more of the sought-for fish, I would cease paddling, and bait my hook; and first carefully looking to see if there were any predatory leather-jackets or many-coloured wrasse in sight, would lower away, the hook soon touching the bottom, as I always used a small sinker of coral stone. This was necessary only because of the number of other fish about—bass, trevally, and greedy sea-pike, with teeth ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... naturalist often hesitates before picking them off, so closely do they resemble pieces of bird's dung. Kirby and Spence mention the small beetle Onthophilus sulcatus as being like the seed of an umbelliferous plant; and another small weevil, which is much persecuted by predatory beetles of the genus Harpalus, is of the exact colour of loamy soil, and was found to be particularly abundant in loam pits. Mr. Bates mentions a small beetle (Chlamys pilula) which was undistinguishable by the eye from the dung of caterpillars, while ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Augusta County, Virginia," responded Washington, his indomitable spirit rising superior to all discouragements. "Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... well away from the head; the mouth was thin-lipped and mobile. Alaire tried to read that bronzed visage, with little success until she closed her eyes and regarded the mental image. Then she found the answer: Law had the face and the head of a hunter. The alert ears, the watchful eyes, the predatory nose were like those of some hunting animal. Yes, that was decidedly the strongest impression he gave. And yet in his face there was nothing animal in a bad sense. Certainly it showed no grossness. The man was wild, untamed, rather than sensual, and despite his careless ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the beasts, Perseus and Andromeda, Ceres drawn by dragons, Bacchus and Ariadne by panthers, and finally the education of Achilles. Then followed a ballet of the famous lovers of ancient times, with a troop of nymphs, which was interrupted by an attack of predatory centaurs, who in their turn were vanquished and put to flight by Hercules. The fact, in itself a trifle, may be mentioned as characteristic of the taste of the time, that the human beings who at ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Prospero. The French were resolute, powerful, and rapacious, and treated the red men with inhumanity. The Indians, unable to contend with their oppressors by open force, fled to their mountain fastnesses, and commenced an obstinate predatory warfare upon the whites, murdering without discrimination all whom they found defenceless. This led to a bloody and protracted struggle for the mastery; and a reenforcement of troops having been sent from France to aid the infant colony, it was decided, after mature ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... regarding losses to farmers of the United States due to insect and bird enemies, predatory animals, ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... interesting—the predatory type, I should think," she replied. "I'll bet it's true to life—the artist is too much of a fool to have created that expression," Stefan went on. "Jove, I should like to meet her, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... Recognised Blessing.—There are some large predatory birds which destroy the lives of many game birds and others of the weaker species. On game farms, therefore, an unpleasant but necessary task is the shooting or trapping of Hawks and Owls. At first ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... tend camels in the hills; but when the Turcomans discovered my abilities as a barber and a surgeon, I became a general favourite, and gained the confidence of the chief of the tribe himself. Finally, he determined to permit me to accompany him on a predatory excursion into Persia—a permission which I hoped would lead to my escaping. I was the more ready to do so, in that I secretly possessed fifty ducats. These had been concealed by my master, Osman Aga, in his turban at the outset of his journey. The turban had been taken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... fall into the hands of the Peshwa's {the prime minister and real ruler of the Maratha kingdom} people, and although the Peshwa was nominally an ally of the Company, his subjects—a lawless, turbulent, predatory race—were not likely to be specially friendly to a solitary English lad. A half-felt hope that he might be able to reach Suwarndrug, lately captured by Commodore James, was dashed by the news that that fort had been handed over by him to the Marathas. Moreover, such ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... Count, inherited in an unmodified degree the more predatory and uncivilized instincts of his forefathers. Illiterate, brutal, and cunning, the thin veneer laid by the nineteenth century upon his coarse-grained nature was apt to rub off on the very slightest friction, bringing the original savage ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... his brother's house he had been greatly occupied with his own plans—requests for money (invariably refused) schemes for making money, plots to frighten his brother out of one or other of his possessions. He had been frankly predatory, and that plain, quiet girl his niece had been pleasant company but no more. Now she was suddenly of the first importance. She would in all probability inherit a considerable sum. How much there might be in that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Davie, with a patriotism worthy of perpetual remembrance, disposed of the estate acquired from his uncle, and thus raised funds to equip the troops. With this force, he proceeded to the southwestern portion of the State and protected it from the predatory incursions of the British and Tories. Charleston having surrendered on the 12th of May, 1780, and Tarleton's butchery of Colonel Buford's regiment, in the Waxhaws, on the 29th, induced General Rutherford to order out the militia in mass, to oppose the advance of the conquerors. ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... bodies of Mantatees had altered their routes. One portion of them went eastward, towards the country from which they had been driven by the Zoolus, and another, it appears, took possession of the country near the sources of the Orange River, where for many years they carried on a predatory warfare with the tribes in that district. At last a portion of them were incorporated, and settled down on that part which is now known as the Mantatee new country; the remainder made an irruption into the eastern Caffre country, where they were ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... outbreak of the war. Turkey, through Enver, who had imported from the Fatherland a band of military "instructors" under Liman von Sanders, became the ame damnee of Germany. In Persia every warlike and predatory tribe was courted by the Teuton intruder, and the German mission at Teheran, as well as the Consulates in the chief towns of the Shahdom, became centres of agitation against Britain and Russia and branches of ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to be agreeable to his visitors; but he was too unfavourable a contrast to his gifted sister to win much grace in Cornelia's eyes. Agias, who was living with Cleomenes, nominally for the purpose of learning the latter's business, preparatory to becoming a partner on capital to come from his predatory cousin, as a matter of fact spent a great part of his time at the palace also, dancing attendance upon his Roman friends. Pratinas, indeed, was on hand, not really to distress them, but to vex by the mere knowledge of his presence. Cornelia met the Greek with a stony haughtiness that chilled ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... heard in the heavy sands beneath the shore, the foremost horseman of the party thus held discourse. Those that followed were likewise armed, and to all appearance were followers or retainers of the chief, who had been with them upon some foray or predatory excursion. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... wouldn't suggest such things," he said, a little testily. "I was just trying to get all thought of this most perilous voyage out of my mind, with the help of a novel here. From which do you seriously consider we have most to fear," he went on, "mines, submarines, or predatory vessels of the type of ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... philosophical and humanly ethical? It violates every instinct and canon of natural law, which is for the preservation of life at all hazards. This is simply the human idea of 'murder.' Animals kill one another for food, or in rivalry, or in blind ferocity of predatory disposition; but there is not a particle of evidence that they 'commit murder' for ulterior ends. It is questionable whether they comprehend the condition called death, or its nature, in any ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... laws, cropping out at fairly regular intervals. These laws, usually given under the pretext of safeguarding the morals of the people and accompanied by similar euphonious phrases were, like modern prohibitions, vicious and virulent effusions of the predatory instinct in mankind. We cannot give a chronological list of them here, and are citing them merely to illustrate the difficulty confronting the ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... ahead. He towered above the others. He kept his eyes to the front. Ralph followed. At intervals, he pulled himself up and peered into the sky or dropped and tried to pierce the untranslatable distance; all this with the quiet, furtive, prowling movements of some predatory beast. Next came Honey, whistling under his breath and all the time whistling the same tune. Billy and Pete, walking side by side, tailed the procession. At times, those two caught themselves at the beginning of shuddering fits, but always by a supreme ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... the worst kind of a guerilla; and you will find his letter on the subject in the second volume of Irving's life of him, chapter XLI. In case of being further pressed he said, "We must then retire to Augusta county, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for safety and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered we must ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... accounted for the delay by the fact that wolves had been unusually troublesome this year, and when Stepan suggested that the wolves were two-legged ones, did not appear to relish the joke. For the man was a Tunguse, a race noted for its predatory instincts and partiality for deer-meat. Reindeer in these parts cost only from twelve to fifteen roubles apiece, but farther north they fetch forty to fifty roubles each, and the loss of many is ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and penetrated the designs, of the Romans. He perceived, that the numbers of the enemy were continually increasing: and, as he understood their intention of attacking his rear, as soon as the scarcity of forage should oblige him to remove his camp, he recalled to their standard his predatory detachments, which covered the adjacent country. As soon as they descried the flaming beacons, they obeyed, with incredible speed, the signal of their leader: the camp was filled with the martial crowd of Barbarians; their impatient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... patronage to the other journal; it was patent to that journal that the "shekels" of Senator X really animated the spirit of the Fathers. Yet all agreed it was a great and good and perfect government,—subject only to the predatory incursions of a Hydra-headed monster known as a "Ring." The Ring's origin was wrapped in secrecy, its fecundity was alarming; but although its rapacity was preternatural, its digestion was perfect and easy. It circumvolved all affairs in an atmosphere ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... James River and captured and burned Richmond. To face this new enemy, to which the militia of the State were deemed inadequate, Washington detached a brigade under the command of Lafayette from the Northern army, supposing the movement, like the previous one, a mere predatory expedition, which could be held in check by this number of troops; and upon news that General Phillips, with reinforcements, had joined Arnold, he further despatched a second brigade ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... if the exploiters who have carried mankind to the very brink of ruin had not prevented every forward step of the laboring masses, if they had not instigated plots and murders and called to their aid armed help from outside to maintain or restore their predatory privileges. Civil war is forced upon the laboring classes by their arch-enemies. The working class must answer blow for blow, if it will not renounce its own object and its own future which is, at the same time, the ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... State troops and some companies of militia, was ordered to take post at Orangeburg, to cover the country from the inroads of the loyalists from Charleston. Pickens, in the meantime, with his regiments, traversed the border country, keeping in awe the Indians, and suppressing the predatory movements of the Tories. About the 1st November, the separate commands of Marion and Sumter crossed the rivers, and advanced in the direction of the enemy. The latter soon fell in with Cunningham's loyalists in force, and found it prudent ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part of the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory war raged along the line which separated the domain of William from that of James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Belford, so that, what with his tall, lean person, his long neck, his stooping shoulders, and his yellow face stained upon one side an indigo blue by some premature explosion of gunpowder—what with all this and a prodigious hooked beak of a nose, he exactly resembled some hungry predatory bird of prey meditating a pounce upon an unsuspecting victim. At last, finding his voice, and rapping the ferrule of his ivory-headed cane upon the floor to emphasize his declamation, he cried out: "What! What! What! Is this the way to offer a welcome to a brother new returned ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... necessarily improve or progress. On the contrary during enormous periods of time it deteriorates. Both progress and deterioration are of course purely human valuations. But according to our valuation of good and evil it may be said that during those epochs when the malicious, the predatory, the centripetal tendency in life predominates over the creative and centrifugal tendency, there is deterioration and degeneracy; and during the epochs when the latter overcomes the former ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... of this place, and the American authorities in its immediate vicinity, to abstain from mutual hostilities, which was strictly observed during the war, to the mutual advantage of both parties; who were thereby delivered from the horrors of a predatory, murderous warfare, equally ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... may have made on my unguarded heart was immediately dispelled. Thus subtly and vigilantly my house-keeper kept the outer gates of the citadel, and shooed away a possible mistress as effectually as she dispersed the predatory hens ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... home, where it is collected in our most important ports. The distance of the United States from Europe and the well-known promptitude, ardor, and courage of the people in defense of their country happily diminish the probability of invasion. Nevertheless, to guard against sudden and predatory incursions the situation of some of our principal seaports demands your consideration. And as our country is vulnerable in other interests besides those of its commerce, you will seriously deliberate whether the means of general defense ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 4) of Volume 1: John Adams • Edited by James D. Richardson
... She has found a creed to vindicate the human brute, and the next generation—mark my words—will be predatory. Within twenty years we shall be told that it is inevitable the weak should suffer to enrich the strong; we shall accept the assurance, and our poets will hymn ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... relieved for his midday meal. He was relieved by An-ina, assisted by Julyman. Oolak stood by with his club, ready for any display of the predatory instincts ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... was perceived to be an evil, and could never at any time be mistaken for a healthful symptom. And because circumstances tended to suspend its progress. The habits of these unhappy persons being at first wholly predatory, the laws proclaimed a sort of crusade against them, and great and inhuman riddance was made by the executioner. Foreign service opened a drain in the succeeding reigns: many also were drawn off by the spirit of maritime adventure, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... Khan, a leader of predatory horse, has been justly described as 'one of the most atrocious villains that India ever produced'. He first came into notice in 1804, as an officer in Holkar's service, and in the following year opposed Lord Lake at Bharatpur. A treaty made with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and is able to satisfy their needs. More effective than any moral house- cleaning in securing the tenure of an administration is its efficiency in promoting better living and working conditions, improving opportunities for recreation and education, or loosening the clutch of the predatory "interests." Moreover, the politician must be a good mixer, willing to work with those who do not share his idealism, good- natured and conciliatory, ready to postpone the accomplishment of much that he has at heart in order to get something done. As organization ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... that the colonel had made all arrangements, and that for the previous two days he had been planning a predatory ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... Manley studied the man himself, the detective type. He was about five feet eight, broad-shouldered out of proportion to that height, but thin. He had an uncommonly good forehead, a square, strong chin, a hooked nose and thin, set lips, which gave him a rather predatory air, belied rather by his pleasant blue eyes. The sun wrinkles round their corners and his sallow complexion gave Mr. Manley the impression that he had spent some years in the tropics ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... the loose provisions brought from the Post could last but a little time, and the journey was like to be long. The travellers were to be forced from now on, just as are the wolves, the eagles, the hawks, the carcajous, and other predatory creatures of the woods, to give their first thoughts to the day's sustenance. All other considerations gave way to this. This was the first, the daily tribute to be wrested from the stubborn grasp of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... considered as of a different race, and of course as of one less to be considered, than that of their conquerors. Such was the laxity of the times on the subject of injustice to the people of this hemisphere, that the predatory expeditions of Drake and others against the wealthy occupants of the more southern countries, seem to have left no spots on their escutcheons; and the honors and favors of Queen Elizabeth had been liberally ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... earliest reasons why war ought to exist, is because under any mode of suppressing war, virtually it will exist. Banish war as now administered, and it will revolve upon us in a worse shape, that is, in a shape of predatory and ruffian war, more and more licentious, as it enjoys no privilege or sufferance, by the supposition, under the national laws. Will the causes of war die away because war is forbidden? Certainly not; and the only result of the prohibition ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... find it difficult to accept the theory that this has only been of value as a guard-house to the richer country down below, and that these frequent cities have been so many fortresses to hold off the wild and predatory men of the south. But whatever be their explanation, be it a fierce neighbour, or be it a climatic change, there they stand, these grim and silent cities, and up on the hills you can see the graves of their people, like the port-holes of a man-of-war. It is through this weird, dead country ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... attacked the caravans of Arabia, and especially all belonging to Mecca (the city which had rejected him), until all the various tribes acknowledged the religion of the Prophet, for they were easily converted to a faith which flattered their predatory inclinations and promised them future immunities. The first cavalcade which entered Medina with spoils made Mussulmans of all the inhabitants, and gave Mohammed the control of the city. The battle of Moat gave him a ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... again broke out in Italy; and the English and other predatory troops contributed much to spread its ravages. It extended to many places; but most of all ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... honest felowship, their trade the first art of lawfull acquisition or purchase, for at those daies robbery was a manner of purchase. So saith Aristotle in his bookes of the Politiques, and that pasturage was before tillage, or fishing or fowling, or any other predatory art or cheuisance. And all this may be true, for before there was a shepheard keeper of his owne, or of some other bodies flocke, there was none owner in the world, quick cattel being the first property of any forreine possession. I say forreine, because alway men claimed property in ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... red-beaked puffin or sea-parrots, which build their nests in the crevices and upon the ledges of the most inaccessible cliffs, and at the report of a pistol fly in clouds which fairly darken the air. Besides these predatory and aquatic birds, there are many others which are not so gregarious in their habits, and which, consequently, attract less notice. Among these are the common barn and chimney swallows, crows, ravens, magpies, thrushes, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... species has its law; if the Geotrupes remain faithful to filth, although experience shows that they can accommodate themselves equally well to the putrefaction of decayed leaves; if the predatory species—the Cerceris, the Sphex, the Ammophila—resort only to one species of quarry to nourish their larvae, although these same larvae accept all indifferently, it is on account of those superior economic ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... from the river Bechelo to the highlands of Shoa, and from the Nile to the lowland inhabited by the Adails. Though retaining most of the characteristics of their race, they adopted many of the customs of the people they conquered. They lost in great measure their predatory and pastoral habits, tilled the soil, built permanent dwellings, and to a certain, extent adopted in their dress, food, and mode of life the usages of the ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... seen afterwards, in the account of the West India Islands, and the Continent of Guiana, that there are many warlike tribes of Caribs, or Caraibs, constantly engaged in predatory warfare; whose women, when their husbands are absent in search of prisoners for food, take arms for the protection of themselves and children; whence they have been reported as nations ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... consumption of negroes by the sea-voyage the only item suggested by the annual number actually landed. We should have to include all the people maimed and killed in the predatory excursions of native chiefs or Christian kidnappers to procure their cargoes. A village was not always surprised without resistance. The most barbarous tribes would defend their liberty. We can never know the numbers slain in wars which were deliberately undertaken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... labor, multiplied by the breaking up of new cottonfields, and in due time by the reopening of the slave-trade, will go to purchase arms, to construct fortresses, to fit out navies. The old Saracens, fanatics for a religion which professed to grow by conquest, were a nation of predatory and migrating warriors. The Southern people, fanatics for a system essentially aggressive, conquering, wasting, which cannot remain stationary, but must grow by alternate appropriations of labor and of land, will come to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... men of wisdom and genius are the true fathers of the Fatherland, not the groups of predatory men. True fathers would die for their children. To me it has been blasphemy, when the nations of the past have called themselves Fatherlands. I would have the peasants fathered by men who realize that the peasants are the strength and salt of the earth; men who ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... oar remained on board her; she was only a derelict, heavy and water-logged, drifting before the waves. Some fishermen hastily put off in their little boats to salvage their booty, but, seeing men alive and ready to defend their property, they changed their predatory designs into offers ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Palestine—events which may have been due to the advance of another wave of Northern colonists upon the shores of Crete. One more glimpse of the dying sea-power of the Cretan race, now itself disorganized and predatory, is given us by the Golenischeff papyrus, which tells, among other adventures of the unfortunate Wen-Amon, envoy of Her-hor, the priest-King of Upper Egypt (circa 1100 B.C.), how the Egyptian ambassador was threatened ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... by one of those mysterious laws that govern boydom, the two were inseparable companions, waging open war on all adjoining neighborhoods, engaging in predatory expeditions in their own, and, when interest in ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... of English had its immediate triumph. The countryside had expected that she would chatter Italian like a predatory organ-grinder, but around this picturesque naivete they clustered as they would around a lost child. Jessica Folsom met the architect's eyes triumphantly, but he edged to her side and bent to whiff the roses, muttering, "The worst is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... known only to the smart operators. True enough, a few men have gained fairly high rank by dint of what the late Mr. Justice Holmes called "the instinct for the jugular"—a feeling for when to jump, where to press and how to slash in order to achieve somewhat predatory personal ends. That will occasionally happen in any walk of life. But from Washington, Wayne, and Jones down to Eisenhower, Vandegrift, and Nimitz, the men best loved by the American people for their military successes were also men with greatness of soul. In short, they were ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... the opposing generals did little else than fortify their positions and watch each other. A year passed in virtual inaction on both sides, except that the British carried on a series of devastating predatory raids in New England along the coast of Long Island Sound, in New York State (with the savage aid of the Indians), in New Jersey, and in the South,—there making a more formal movement and seizing the coast of Georgia ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... mere predatory excursions, which occupied, for a few weeks at a time, the English forces which could be detached from New York. "We march up and down the country," said Cornwallis, not overmuch pleased, "stealing tobacco." As early as 1779, on the 8th of May, the Raisonnable, sixty-four, five smaller ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... are few, and that is well, for the American article answers almost exactly to the vagrant and criminal tribes of India, being a predatory ruffian who knows too much to work. 'Bad place to beg in after dark—on a farm—very—is Vermont. Gypsies pitch their camp by the river in the spring, and cooper horses in the manner of their tribe. They have the gypsy look and ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... as in the past, to do much to check the audacity of their hostile neighbors, and, in the last resort, to furnish re-enforcements of the most effective and economical sort to the troops operating against predatory bands. ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... treasure of conviction that Becky was innocent of Lord Steyne. I leave it to any gentleman who has had the great opportunity to look in familiarly upon the outer and upper fringes of the world of unclassed and predatory women and the noble lords that abound thereamong. Let him read over again that famous scene where Becky writes her scorn upon Steyne's forehead in the noble blood of that aristocratic wolf. Then let him give his decision, as an honest juryman upon his ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... perceived that in another part of the pier two ladies and a little boy were gathered with something of the same wistfulness. The little boy indeed happened to look round for a moment, upon which, with the keenness of the predatory age, he recognised in our young man a source of pleasures from which he lately had been weaned. He bounded forward with irrepressible cries of "Geegee!" and Peter lifted him aloft for an embrace. On putting him down the pilgrim from Jersey Villas stood confronted with a sensibly severe ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... old-fashioned church and steeple, rises among a tuft of trees, occupying the ridge of an eminence to the south of Edinburgh. At a quarter of a mile's distance is a clumsy square tower, the residence of the Laird of Liberton, who, in former times, with the habits of the predatory chivalry of Germany, is said frequently to have annoyed the city of Edinburgh, by intercepting the supplies and merchandise which came to the town from ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... are by predatory enemies our herdsmen must indeed be warriors or we should have no herds, and you may be assured they get plenty of fighting. Then there is our constant need of workers in the mines. The Gatholians consider themselves a race of warriors and as such prefer not to labor in the mines. ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "HOGGIL NAM BO," etc. (that is, We come through snow-drift to drive the prey), the shrilling sounds of which had often struck the vales of the Lennox with terror. [It is the family-march of the M'Farlanes, a warlike and predatory clan, who inhabited the western banks of Loch-Lomond. See WAVERLY, Note XV.] The troops advanced with the nimble alacrity of mountaineers, and were soon involved in the dangerous pass, through which Ranald acted as their guide, going before them with a select party, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... embarrassed state; and this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbors is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale, "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that when he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required, he was to take ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... strange enough to think of the laws that govern the breeding, nesting, and nurture of birds at all, especially when one considers all the accidents that so often make the toil futile, like the stealing of eggs by other birds, and the predatory incursions of foes. One would expect a law, framed by omnipotence, to be invariable, not hampered by all kinds of difficulties that omnipotence, one might have thought, could have provided against. And then comes this further strange variation in the law, in the case of this single family of birds, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... enable him—should the king opportunely die—to seize upon the vacant throne of Poland;—that he had numerous and powerful friends among the nobility;—that he had already drawn together his Lithuanians, under pretence of protecting the frontier from the incursion of predatory bands;—that he intended immediately to place himself at their head, and march towards Cracow. Now, if at this moment the throne should suddenly become vacant, what power on earth could prevent him from ascending it, and claiming the hand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... that impulse to defined circumstances is wanting. Much, too, of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to a simple want of imagination which prevents us from adequately realising the sufferings of others. The predatory, envious and ferocious feelings that disturb mankind operate unrestrained through the animal world, though man's superior intelligence gives his desires a special character and a greatly increased scope, and introduces them into ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... however, instead of giving chase to the number of wild horses—here called mustangs—that are scattered over the extensive prairies in the neighbourhood of the lakes, they adopt a much lazier method of supplying their larder. This is, to make predatory excursions across the mountains, and to drive off a large herd of tame horses, belonging to some poor ranchero, at a time; these they slaughter, and subsist on as long as the flesh lasts, when they set out again on a similar expedition. Sometimes ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... shadows of that far remote infancy of the world where from cave-dweller and mere predatory animal man by slow degrees moved toward a higher development, the story of woman goes side by side with his. For neither is there record beyond the scattered implements of the stone age and the rude ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... got. Just about the time that she began to reckon we were hardware men a mandatory hand would be laid upon us, and before we had time to defend ourselves against the hardware charge, the lady would be wafted off in the arms of some predatory youth who ought to have been at ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... brilliant hues. It was an animal of the lizard species; and if any lizard could be considered beautiful, this one might have been so called. But the hideous, half-human form of these animals, their piercing looks, their stealthy and predatory habits, and, above all, the knowledge that the bite of several of their species is poisonous, combine to render them objects that excite disgust and awe, rather ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the Recorder of Birmingham from being carried into effect; but to something or other of the kind he proposes, society must come at last, if it wish to save itself from being everlastingly worried and plundered by a habitually predatory class. In the Prison Report to which we have above referred, mention is made of a single family of thieves, consisting of fifteen individuals, who cost the country L.26,000 before they were got rid of. Is not such a fact ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... grip on that fellow's throat in less than forty-eight hours." He looked down mechanically at his withered hands, lean and yellow like the talons of a bird, and lifted his accipitral profile with a predatory alertness. "I didn't sleep very well the last part of the night, but I thought it all out. I sha'n't care whether I get there before or after judgment is rendered; all I want is to get there before he has a chance to clear out. I think ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... man was no more of a tenderfoot than Runnion; on the contrary, he had the bearing of one to whom new countries are old, who had trod the edge of things all his life. There was a hint of the meat-eating animal about him; his nose was keen and hawk-like, his walk and movements those of the predatory beast, and as he passed by, Burrell observed that his eyes were of a peculiar cruelty that went well with his thin lips. He was older by far than Runnion, but, while the latter was mean-visaged and swaggering, the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... were greeted with the spectacle of all his enemies, the fireman included, taking to their heels in wild flight. As the little girls and urchins had melted away before the Simpson gang, so was melting away the Simpson gang before some new and correspondingly awe-inspiring group of predatory creatures. ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... wage earner the housing problem is not so easily nor so successfully solved. He is usually between the devil of the speculative builder and the deep sea of the predatory landlord, each intent upon taking from him the limit that the law allows and giving him as little as possible for his money. Going down the scale of indigence we find an itinerancy amounting almost to homelessness, or houses so abject that they are an ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... however, had withdrawn from personally exerting himself in the suppression of the insurgents, Owyn Glyndowr still carried on a kind of desultory warfare, rallying from time to time his scattered and dispirited adherents, heading them in predatory incursions upon the property of his enemies, laying violent hands on the persons of those who resisted his authority, and depriving them of their liberty or their lives, as best suited his own views of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... them to protect their borders, and encouraged their young men in brigandage in order to keep them in practice. Might not these plain lessons have been used as a warning to the people of modern Germany to discourage their predatory propensities and their habits of devastation and to hold them back from their relapse into the Schrecklichkeit of savage warfare? George Meredith says a good thing in 'Diana of the Crossways': 'Before you can civilize ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... alligator or crocodile. If we imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could take refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what a terrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And so far as zoological science goes we must, at least, admit that such a ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... company of the regiment to Camp La Pena, about sixty or seventy miles east of Fort Duncan, in a section of country that had for some time past been subjected to raids by the Lipan and Comanche Indians. Our outpost at La Pena was intended as a protection against the predatory incursions of these savages, so almost constant scouting became a daily occupation. This enabled me soon to become familiar with and make maps of the surrounding country, and, through constant association ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... stick as not to be able to dance like her sister and having to be dependent on her. There was something hideously immoral and disconcerting about this success. But then there always is. Prue was whisked from the ranks of the resentful poor to those of the predatory rich. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... 'Let goo!' he said imperiously, and, throwing himself round, while one foot slipped into the water, he caught her hand, with its thin predatory fingers, and pulled the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mighty column, by your valiant hand Taken and kept entire, more praise has shed On you, than if the predatory band Had routed by your single valour bled, Of all who flocked to fat Ravenna's land, Or masterless, without a banner fled, Of Arragon, Castile, or of Navarre; When vain was lance ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... at this art, and there is no need to mention any of the scores of pungent sayings which he added to the language and which are in daily use. President Roosevelt was no whit behind in this regard. All recognize and remember the many phrases to which he gave birth or currency: "predatory wealth," "bull moose," "hit the line hard," "weasel words," "my hat is in the ring," and so on. He took a humorous delight in mystifying the public with recondite allusions, sending everyone to the dictionary to look out "Byzantine logothete," and to ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... from long experience. In New York there are no elderly hackmen; but in Boston they abound, and I cannot believe they would be capable of bad faith with travellers. In fact, I doubt if this class is anywhere as predatory as it is painted; but in Boston it appears to have the public honor in its keeping. I do not mean that it was less mature, less self- respectful in Portsmouth, where we were next to arrive; more so it could not be; an equal sense of safety, of ease, began with it in both places, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... New Mexico and Arizona were, probably, fugitives from more fertile lands, whence they had been expelled by the ancestors of the bloodthirsty and cruel Apaches. The country to which they came, and where they made a final stand against their predatory foes, was well adapted to defense. For hundreds of square miles the land is cleft with chasms, and dotted with peculiar, isolated table-lands hundreds of feet in height, with almost perfectly level surfaces and precipitous sides. ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... and the captain of the banditti are two very different persons," returned Stephano. "The magistrate protects you from those over whom he has control: and I, on my side, guaranty you against the predatory visits of those over whom I exercise command. But ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... kicked off, and the ball sailed high and far. As it settled in its downward flight, I saw a lithe, tall shadow of a man racing toward it, and I recognized my boy. I'd lost his position for the moment, but I knew that hungry, predatory stride which devoured the yards as if he were a thing of the wind. He was off with the ball in the hollow of his arm, right back into the heart of his enemies, dodging, darting, leaping, twisting, always advancing. They tore his interference ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... used to roam, in the Asiatic and European wilderness, because it was not necessary to the discussion in which I am engaged. Their geographical position assimilated them to each other in their wildness, their love of wandering, their pastoral occupations, their predatory habits, their security from attack, and the suddenness and the transitoriness of their conquests, even though they descend from our first parent by different lines. However, there is no need of any reserve or hesitation in speaking of the three first ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... purchase with your entire manhood some supposed facility of spiritual contemplation and depth of insight into the Infinite, or if you intend to become a Brahmin, and seek in your navel the dyspeptic divinity who there wields his sceptre, while your despised body is given up to the predatory ravages of genus pediculus, well and good. Follow your hest, go on and conquer the [Greek: gnosis] and when you have got it, just inform me what it looks like, and whether you will be more able to make use of it than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various |
