"Self-consuming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed the flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming misanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by his own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is horrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you must live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor about ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... we could near them with the flight unflown, We should but find them worlds as sad as this, Or suns all self-consuming like our own Enringed by planet worlds as much amiss: 25 They wax and wane through fusion and confusion; The spheres eternal are a grand illusion, The empyrean ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... known suddenly to undo their habit, and to scourge themselves with sharp knives or razors, crying out to the horrified people, that they would not show mercy to their flesh till they whom they were addressing took pity on their own perishing souls. Nor was it to their own countrymen alone that this self-consuming charity extended; how it so happened does not appear; perhaps a certain memento close to their house was the earthly cause; but so it was, that for many years the heart of Father Paul was expanded towards a northern nation, with which, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... temperament, found Vincent's quiet self-confidence very refreshing; there was a massive repose about him, an unquestioning acceptance of the world as it was and an utter absence of intellectual effort, which afforded his friend a refuge from his own self-consuming ambition. Cranbrook had always prophesied that Harry would some day wake up and commit a grand and monumental piece of folly, but he hoped that that day was yet remote; at present it was his rich commonplaceness and his grave and comfortable ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen |
