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Devour   /dɪvˈaʊər/   Listen
Devour

verb
(past & past part. devoured; pres. part. devouring)
1.
Destroy completely.
2.
Enjoy avidly.
3.
Eat immoderately.  Synonyms: consume, down, go through.
4.
Eat greedily.  Synonyms: guttle, pig, raven.



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"Devour" Quotes from Famous Books



... to convince him of his danger, and then he perceived that the lady, who called herself daughter to an Indian king, was a hogress, wife to one of those savage demons called hogress, who live in remote places, and make use of a thousand wiles to surprise and devour passengers; so that the prince, being thus frightened, mounted his horse as soon ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... war against Texas, and expressed his firm conviction that we should see the Comanche Indians on the streets of Mexico one of these days; at which savage tribe he appeared to have a most devout horror; describing to a gaping audience the manner in which he had seen a party of them devour ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... almost vertically below us and past us and up towards the valley of the Meien Reuss. There were one or two Utopians cutting and packing the flowery mountain grass in the carefully levelled and irrigated meadows by means of swift, light machines that ran on things like feet and seemed to devour the herbage, and there were many children and a woman or so, going to and fro among the houses near at hand. I guessed a central building towards the high road must be the school from which these children were coming. I noted the health ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... to save. The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld, His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld. Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power. Seek him to-day, and find in every land. No fire consumes him, neither floods devour; Immortal through the lamp ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... and Sampson generalised; he plunged from the seaside novel into the sea of fiction. He rechristened that joyous art Feckshin, and lashed its living professors. "You devour their three volumes greedily," said he, "but after your meal you feel as empty as a drum; there is no leading idea in 'um; now there always is—in Moliere; and he comprehended the midicine of his age. But what fundamental truth d'our novelists iver convey? All they ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... spines Always eats sweetmeats when it dines, 'Tis very fond of chocolate-creams, And munches candy in its dreams. The little ones, as may be seen, On brandy-balls are very keen, And peppermints they will devour, And lemon-drops eat ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... organisation in freedom and in action, not on paper? They shout 'a hundred million heads'; that may be only a metaphor; but why be afraid of it if, with the slow day-dream on paper, despotism in the course of some hundred years will devour not a hundred but five hundred million heads? Take note too that an incurable invalid will not be cured whatever prescriptions are written for him on paper. On the contrary, if there is delay, he will grow so corrupt that he will infect ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... nimble feet, and presently stood down on the shore, near the edge of the stream, while the colonel, on the bank above the eddy, played the fish that had taken his bait and sought to depart with it to some watery fastness to devour it at his leisure. But the hook ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... through some small string of the Week, are formed into pretty round and uniform heads, very much resembling the form of hooded Mushroms, which, being by any means expos'd to the fresh Air, or that air which encompasses the flame, they are presently lick'd up and devour'd by it, and vanish. ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... give us half the strength we could draw from the zeal of loyal allies whose gratitude we had won. [39] If we forget those who are toiling for us now, pursuing our foes, slaying them, and fighting wherever they resist, if they see that we sit down to enjoy ourselves and devour our meal before we know how it goes with them, I fear we shall cut a sorry figure in their eyes, and our strength will turn to weakness through lack of friends. The true banquet for us is to study the wants of those who have run the risk and done the ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon

... from this, and still more from what follows: for the most formidable threat remains. To the picture of Catholic students seceding to Trinity and the Queen's Colleges, the memorialists add this darkest stroke of all: 'They will, in the solitude of their own homes, unaided by any guiding advice, devour the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell; works innocuous if studied under a professor who would point out the difference between established facts and erroneous inferences, but which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... quantity of wine against his own inclination, he proposed a counter-challenge in the way of eating, and made the following ludicrous and original proposal to the company,—that two or three legs of mutton should be prepared, and he would then contest the point of who could devour most meat; and certainly it seems as reasonable to compel people to eat, as to compel them to drink, beyond the ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... surface of the wall, where it is held in place by radiating threads. This conical surface is continued by a tube which runs into a hole in the wall. At the end is the dining-room to which the Spider retires to devour at ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... refusal, though they were afraid to go alone; so we ordered them to shove off, and proceeded on our voyage, leaving the slain peccaries to become the food of jaguars and pumas, or armadilloes and vultures,—which, before the nest day's sun arose, would devour the whole ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... dislike of the Ulema, and not to affect their standing in Islam. They are the most broad-minded and tolerant of all. There are also the performances of the Rif[a]'ites or "howling dervishes." In ecstasy they cut themselves with knives; eat live coals and glass, handle red-hot iron and devour serpents. They profess miraculous healing powers, and the head of the Sa'dites, a sub-order, used, in Cairo, to ride over the bodies of his dervishes without hurting them, the so-called D[o]seh (dausa). These different abilities ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... supervision of the gardener were withdrawn, and the antagonistic influences of the general cosmic process were no longer sedulously warded off, or counteracted. The walls and gates would decay; quadrupedal and bipedal intruders would devour and tread down the useful and beautiful plants; birds, insects, blight, and mildew would work their will; the seeds of the native plants, carried by winds or other agencies, would immigrate, and in virtue of their long-earned special ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... at Brackenfield by an early post. They were inspected first by the house mistresses, and delivered immediately after breakfast to the girls, who generally flew out into the quadrangle or the grounds to devour them. Mrs. Anderson made it a rule to write to Marjorie and Dona alternately, and they would hand over their news to each other. On Tuesday morning Marjorie received the usual letter in her mother's handwriting, but to her surprise noticed that the postmark ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... goose!" exclaimed he, "I wanted to have split the tree in order to get a little wood for my kitchen, for the little food which we use is soon burnt up with great faggots, not like what you rough greedy people devour! I had driven the wedge in properly, and everything was going on well, when the smooth wood flew upward, and the tree closed so suddenly together, that I could not draw my beautiful beard out; and here it sticks, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... of the excitements, the glories of life on great ranches in the West? Any bright boy will "devour" the books of this series, once he has made a start ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane

... piece of meat at once secures its submission and capture. Singular how partial they are to raw meat, and more singular to see the expert way in which they catch up the meat with the claws of either leg, and hold it from them while they devour it piecemeal. I saw the other evening an old bird pounce on a field-mouse, kill it, and then bring and cleverly fix the victim firmly between the two forks of a branch and pull it in pieces. It consumed but ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... legal, and therefore ought to be admitted. What the law gave, the law has taken away. Blessed be the dispensers of law! Excellent cider! open another bottle, will you, and, I beseech, hasten dinner, if you would not see me devour the table." ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... Did you ever feel the sensation of the waves rushing and roaring over you, as if full of triumph at having captured a human being to drag down into their depths and devour? ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... were hidden—I would wonder in what play he figured, and what immortal legend justified his attitude and strange apparel! And then to go within, to announce yourself as an intending purchaser, and, closely watched, be suffered to undo those bundles and breathlessly devour those pages of gesticulating villains, epileptic combats, bosky forests, palaces and war-ships, frowning fortresses and prison vaults—it was a giddy joy. That shop, which was dark and smelt of Bibles, was a loadstone rock ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but you would not possibly renew your complaint if you reviewed your practise. Tho reading makes a scholar, yet every scholar is not a philosopher, nor every philosopher a wise man. It cost you twenty years to devour all the volumes on one side of your library; you came out a great critic in Latin and Greek, in the Oriental tongues, in history and chronology; but you were not satisfied. You confest that these were the literae nihil sanantes, and you wanted more time to acquire other knowledge. You have ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... was a flight from two pursuing wolves, of which one, the Fenris wolf, was fated one day to catch and devour the moon. The German, like the Greek, dreaded nothing more than the eclipse of sun or moon, and connected it with the destruction of all things and the end of the world. In the moon spots he saw a human form carrying a hare or a stick or an axe ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... the room with him still, by the piano, at that very moment, ready to be kissed and won, the idea of her material existence, of her being alive, would sweep over him with so violent an intoxication that, with eyes starting from his head and jaws that parted as though to devour her, he would fling himself upon this Botticelli maiden and kiss and bite her cheeks. And then, as soon as he had left the house, not without returning to kiss her once again, because he had forgotten to take away with him, in memory, some detail of her fragrance or of her features, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... of genetic affinity. Thus in birds and mammals alike there is a direct association of herbivorous habit with great relative length of gut. The explanation of this, no doubt, is simply that the vegetable matter which such creatures devour is in a form which requires not only prolonged digestive action, but, from the intimate admixture of indigestible material, a very large absorbing surface. In piscivorous birds and mammals, the gut is very long, with a thick wall and a relatively small calibre, whilst there is a general ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... them. Women are yet alive who tell they were taken away when in childbed to nurse fairy children, a lingering voracious image of them being left in their place (like their reflection in a mirror), which (as if it were some insatiable spirit in an assumed body) made first semblance to devour the meats that it cunningly carried by, and then left the carcass as if it expired and departed thence by a natural and common death. The child and fire, with food and all other necessaries, are set before the nurse how soon she enters, but she neither perceives any passage out, nor sees what those ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... sideways into a chair. After a little time, I felt somewhat better, and succeeded in reaching the cupboard where, usually, I keep brandy and biscuits. I poured myself out a little of the stimulant, and drank it off. Then, taking a handful of biscuits, I returned to my chair, and began to devour them, ravenously. I was vaguely surprised at my hunger. I felt as though I had eaten nothing for an uncountably ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson

... with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... not on, for you cannot carry life along with you:—In search of thy daily bread, whether thou exertest thyself, or whether thou dost not, the God of Majesty and Glory will equally provide it. Wert thou to walk into the mouth of a tiger or lion, he could not devour thee, unless by the ordinance of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... skimmed off as fast as it rises; the wax is then poured into flat vessels and allowed to cool, when it becomes hard and brittle, and has a metallic sound when struck. The cakes thus formed are of a deep green color, and are sold at the same price as tallow. The wild pigs devour these berries when they come in their way, and ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... of metempsychosis in India and the beautiful precept of ahimsa or not injuring living things is not, as Europeans imagine, founded on the fear of eating one's grandparents but rather on the humane and enlightened feeling that all life is one and that men who devour beasts are not much above the level of the beasts who devour one another. The feeling has grown stronger with time. In the Vedas animal sacrifices are prescribed and they are even now used in the ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... "good-bye," the steamer gradually disappears from sight. My friend has "a bad headache" from all the excitement of the morning. I guide him carefully between the cases and barrels the steamer has brought, and deposit him in his bunk; then I retire to my own quarters to devour my mail. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... who have this aptitude—dogs keen of scent, swift of foot to pursue, and strong of limb to fight. And as spirit is the foundation of courage, such natures, whether of men or animals, will be full of spirit. But these spirited natures are apt to bite and devour one another; the union of gentleness to friends and fierceness against enemies appears to be an impossibility, and the guardian of a State requires both qualities. Who then can be a guardian? The image of the dog suggests an answer. ...
— The Republic • Plato

... stealing arises only from hence; there is another cause of it more peculiar to England.'—'What is that?' said the Cardinal.—'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men, and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men the abbots, not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... feed them: an unwounded victim, for most of them are without a sting; a live victim, but steeped in the torpor of the coming transformations and thus delivered without defence to the grub that is to devour it. ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... Whether he's all alone or in a club. Of stupid books which seem to us a bore, The Bookworm will devour the very core. Did Solomon or somebody affirm The early reed-bird catches ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells

... about in the anomalous condition of neither ghost nor genuine mortal, came suddenly upon what he took for a huge animal in wait to devour. He was not terrified, for he was accustomed to such things, and thought at first it was not of this world: he had no doubt of the reality of his visions, even when he knew they were invisible to others, and even in his waking moments had begun to believe in them as much as in the things then ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... the clouds and sky. I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woful condition I was in; that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enables him to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than I could be within ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... first to plunge in was a boy of twelve years of age, and he was immediately seized by a large alligator, and carried along under water. My informant and others followed in a canoe, and ultimately recovered the body, but life was extinct. The alligator cannot devour its prey beneath the water, but crawls on land with it after he has drowned it. They are said to catch wild pigs in the forest near the river by half burying themselves in the ground. The pigs come rooting amongst the soil, the alligator never moves until one gets within its reach, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... pleasure of that fine old fellow; he was in and out of the windows of his room twenty times, enjoying the sight of these poor wretches, all attired in their best, cramming themselves and their brats with as much as they could devour, and snatching a day of relaxation and happiness. After a certain time the women departed, but the park gates were thrown open: all who chose came in, and walked about the shrubbery and up to the windows of the house. At night there was a great display of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... were clean dispersed; Second went Pontus' spoils and for the third,— Ebro-land,—weets it well gold-rolling Tage. Fear him the Gallias? Him the Britons' fear? 20 Why cherish this ill-wight? what 'vails he do? Save fat paternal heritage devour? Lost ye for such a name, O puissant pair (Father ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... after a cooking spit at the bidding of Lugh of the Long Hand! And if a spit was worthy of the death of heroes, what should the man be worth that is skilled in turning it? What is the difference between man and beast? Beast and bird devour what they find and have no power to change it. But we are Druids of those mysteries, having magic and virtue to turn hard grain to tender cakes, and the very skin of a grunting pig to crackling causing quarrels among champions, and it singing upon the coals. A ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... and even from leaves, and upon plants and in plants there are lice and grubs which are accordant with them. Of flying insects, too, there are such as appear in houses, fields, and woods, which arise in like manner in summer, with no oviform matters sufficient to account for them; also such as devour meadows and lawns, and in some hot localities fill and infest the air; besides those that swim and fly unseen in filthy waters, wines becoming sour, and pestilential air. These facts of observation support those who say that the odors, effluvia, and exhalations ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the Rats devour'd our brother? Was not a Prophet murdered by a Lyon? King Herod died of Lice, wormes doe eate us all; The Rats are wormes, then let the Rats eate me. ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... God's Church, he was met by the scornful question: "Are the Christians of the churches any better than we? Christians own the grim tenements in which we live, the saloons and brothels by which we are surrounded, which devour our children. Christians own the establishments which pay us starvation wages; profit by politics, and take toll from our very vice; evade the laws and reap millions, while we are sent to jail. Is their God a God who will lift us ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... at the floor. "What a miserable race these men are!" he muttered. "One must devour them in order not be devoured by them. Well, then," he added, in a loud voice, "you may try it. Let us turn the weapons which the fanatical queen has sharpened against us, against herself. But the accusations must ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... every ingenuous child. Schoolboys, indeed, might, if they chose, in play-hours, gloat over the "Seven Champions of Christendom," or Lempriere's gods and goddesses; girls might, perhaps, be allowed to devour by stealth a few fairy tales, or the "Arabian Nights;" but it was only by connivance that their longings were satisfied from the scraps of Moslemism, Paganism—anywhere but from Christianity. Protestantism had nothing to ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... deliberately awakened him!" She gave him a startled glance, her eyes appealing for mercy, but he went on relentlessly. "Yes, after the manner of women since the world began, you lured him on and on! Is it my fault—or yours—if he devour us both?" ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... play with her jaws; a fresh retreat of the males, who do the best they can to flourish their own pincers. The Osmiae have a strange way of declaring their passion: with that fearsome gnashing of their mandibles, the lovers look as though they meant to devour each other. It suggests the thumps affected by our yokels in their ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... now in great trouble; for the more they wandered, the deeper they went into the forest. Night now fell, and there arose a high wind, which filled them with fear. They fancied they heard on every side the howling of wolves coming to devour them. They scarce dared to speak or turn their heads. Then it rained very hard, which wetted them to the skin. Their feet slipped at every step, and they fell into the mud, covering their hands with it so that they knew not ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault

... this maw, this vast unhide-bound corps. To whom the incestuous mother thus replied. Thou therefore on these herbs, and fruits, and flowers, Feed first; on each beast next, and fish, and fowl; No homely morsels! and, whatever thing The sithe of Time mows down, devour unspared; Till I, in Man residing, through the race, His thoughts, his looks, words, actions, all infect; And season him thy last and sweetest prey. This said, they both betook them several ways, Both to destroy, or ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... fantastic similes and expressions of which I can give only the spirit. "Leaving a Pozieres, which, as you doubtless know, unless you are a bloody staff-officer, is a place where the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, where he leaves his victims' entrails hanging on to barbed wire, and where the bodies of your friends and mine lie decomposing in muddy holes—you know the place?—I put my legs across the colonel's ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... were going to make a journey through the woods or along wild country, where they expected to find snakes, they would take with them several hogs, and drive these grunting creatures in front of them. Hogs are very fond of eating snakes, and as they went along they would devour all they met with. It did not matter to the hogs whether the snakes were poisonous or harmless, they ate them all the same; for even the most venomous rattlesnake has but little chance against a porker in ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton

... did not fulfil the agreement entered into with Maximo Gomez at Zanjon, nor that made with Aguinaldo at Biac-na-bato. Spain is a nation always more ready to promise than to perform. But ask for friars, soldiers, and State dependents to come and devour our wealth, and instantly you will get them. Spain has nothing else to give, and God grant she will keep what she has. Spain will flatter you under the present circumstances, but do not be deceived. Submit every fawning offer to your conscience. Remember the executions of the innocents, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... died out like a fire for lack of fuel. This cause will account for the decay of the great cities of Ceylon. The population gone, the wind and the rain would howl through the deserted dwellings, the white ants would devour the supporting beams, the elephants would rub their colossal forms against the already tottering houses, and decay would proceed with a rapidity unknown in a cooler clime. As the seed germinates in a few hours in a ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... grow too long, and thus he is thrown into the position you now see him. This mule belongs to a class that is raised to a considerable extent, and prized very highly in Pennsylvania. In the army they were of very little use except to devour forage. ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley

... portrait, but as I do not remember her, I cannot judge whether it is like herself or not," he said, handing the picture to Mr. Underwood, who seemed almost to devour it with his eyes, though he spoke no word and not a muscle moved ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... identified with the swallow. In China, so ravenous is the monster for this delicacy, that anyone who has eaten of swallows should avoid crossing the water, lest the dragon whose home is in the deep should devour the traveller to secure the dainty morsel of swallow. But those who pray for rain use swallows to attract the beneficent deity. Even in England swallows flying low are believed to be omens of coming rain—a tale which is about as reliable as the Chinese variant of ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... my horse run for our safety. What I wished, but hardly hoped or expected, happened immediately after. The wolf did not mind me in the least, but took a leap over me, and falling furiously on the horse, began instantly to tear and devour the hind part of the poor animal, which ran the faster for his pain and terror. Thus unnoticed and safe myself, I lifted my head slyly up, and with horror I beheld that the wolf had ate his way into the horse's body. It was not long before he had fairly forced ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... the Spirit, and she prayed the Lord to reveal to her the enemy whom she had to withstand. Thereupon a huge dragon, appearing before her, rushed forward to devour her, but she made the sign of the cross and he disappeared. Then, in order to seduce her, the devil assumed the form of a man. He came to her gently, took her hands in his and said: "Margaret, what you have done sufficeth." But she seized him ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... become ingrained if attention is called to them, because of that curious spirit of opposition which characterises little children, and because of their susceptibility to suggestion. Some children will constantly pluck out hairs and eat them, or will devour particles of fluff drawn from the blankets. Others will seize every opportunity to eat unpleasant things, such as earth, sand, mud, or dirt of any sort. All tricks of this sort are best neglected and treated by attracting the child's attention to other things. In adult life they ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... conveyed the idea of a serpent's suppleness and strength; and as the hungry, watchful eyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively with that inward warning of danger which is conveyed to man, as to inferior animals, in the very aspect of the creatures that sting or devour. At my movement the man inclined his head in the submissive Eastern salutation, and spoke in his foreign tongue, softly, humbly, fawningly, to judge by ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... British soldiery the swine, In whose gross forms the fiends, exercised, flew? Oh! watch them through the ages, they pursue The noble and devour all things Divine. Look! they illustrate horrors, which prove true The Hell, which ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... must throw it up.' This threat had little effect, for on 13th December we find Murray still coaxing his dilatory author, telling him with justice that there were passages in his book 'equal to Defoe.' The very printer, Mr. Woodfall, joined in the chase. 'The public is quite prepared to devour your book,' he wrote, which was unhappily not the case. Nor was Ford a happier prophet, although a true friend when he wrote—'I am sure it will be the book of the year when it is brought forth.'[172] The activity of Mrs. Borrow in this matter of the publication of Lavengro is ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... the stranger lying on the bison skin with his eyes closed and his mouth open. With an angry growl he trotted in the same sidelong fashion across the space, and pushing his nose under Jack's legs gave him a smart bite, just below the knee, as though he meant to devour him, and concluded that was the best part of his anatomy on ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... probably do not, although they may be too polite to show it—interest other people, is the rarest wisdom of all. Most people will never, never learn it. And the more people love their own affairs, the more they seek the world for listeners whom, as it were, they may devour. They usually have hundreds of intimates, and boast at Christmas of having sent off a thousand cards! As a matter of fact, they very probably have not one real friend. But that does not trouble them. They don't require friendship. They only need, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... small flocks of only five or six birds. They feed in the morning, chiefly on plants, but they also devour small animals and reptiles. By midday their stomachs are full, and they rest or play, leaping in circles over the sand, regardless of the blazing sun or the heated ground. Then they drink and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... themselves. In some sheltered spot the survivors of the victims remain and increase till they begin to send out colonies again. In some species, such as the mice in La Plata, and the beasts and birds which devour them, there is an alternation of increase and decrease, to be accounted for in this way. But permanent disturbances of equilibrium sometimes occur. The rabbit in Australia, having found a virgin soil, multiplied for some time almost ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... similarly ravaged and desolated by the ruthless heathens, monasteries were burned, monks were killed or captured, and the emperor, Charles the Fat, was boldly defied. When Charles brought against the plunderers an army large enough to devour them, he was afraid to strike a blow against them, and preferred to buy them off with a ransom of two thousand pounds of gold and silver, all he got in return being their promise to ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... of this animal used to be a subject of conversation among the Indians, especially when in the woods a hunting. I have also heard them say to their children when crying: 'Hush! the naked bear will hear you, be upon you, and devour you,'" ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... advanced cautiously towards the prostrate brute, Mashune droning an improvised Zulu song as he went, about how Macumazahn, the hunter of hunters, whose eyes are open by night as well as by day, put his hand down the lion's stomach when it came to devour him and pulled out his heart by the roots, &c., &c., by way of expressing his satisfaction, in his hyperbolical Zulu way, at the turn ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard

... be sullied by a mortal's wound? or that the lost sword—for what without thee could Juturna avail?—should be restored to Turnus and swell the force of the vanquished? Forbear now, I pray, and bend to our entreaties; let not the pain thus devour thee in silence, and distress so often flood back on me from thy sweet lips. The end is come. Thou hast had power to hunt the Trojans over land or wave, to kindle accursed war, to put the house in mourning, and plunge the bridal in grief: further attempt I forbid ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... Brother. 'It is only the wolves; I have heard them moving about in the snow for some time. They are growing very wild, now that the winter drives them from the mountains. They broke into a fold last night and carried off many sheep, and if we are not careful they will devour everything.' ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... called for this reason scavengers, which means that they do the business for which scavengers are employed. Vultures are very greedy and ravenous; they will often eat so much that they are not able to move or fly, but sit quite stupidly and insensible. One of them will often, at a single meal, devour the entire body of an albatross (bones and all), which is a bird nearly as large as the vulture itself. They will smell a dead carcass at a very great distance, and will ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... to destroy them. According to the accounts of the missionaries, they, as well as the Antes and Chunchos, are still cannibals, and undertake warlike expeditions for the purpose of capturing prisoners, whom they devour. After the rainy season, when the Simirinches, the Amapuahas, or Consbos, hunt in the western forests, they often fall into the hands of the Casibos, who imitate in perfection the cries of the forest animals, so that the hunters are treacherously misled, and being captured, are carried ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... state of Persian morality or a conspicuous lack of Persian ingenuity. They ought to manage it as the conscientious Indians do. In time of famine these gentle creatures never disgrace themselves by feasting upon each other: they permit their dogs to devour the dead, and then they ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... is generally an indication of voracity. Traces of it may be found in Homer, and other writers who have described ancient manners. The same practice has also been observed among the people of Otaheite; who occasionally devour vast ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... O God," he read, "for man goeth about to devour me: he is daily fighting and troubling me. . . . They daily mistake my words: all that they imagine is to do me evil. They hold all together and keep themselves close. . . . Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths; smite the jaw-bones of the lions, O Lord: ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... with washes of crimson. There was no motion in either body or limbs—no more than in that of the counterfeit form that was near. Dead was the yellow hunter—dead! The hot flame that licked his arm, preparing to devour it, gave him no pain. Fire stirs ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... custom of the pagans to bind their sacrifices to the Dragon alive to a tree near his cave at night. At sunrise he would come out and devour them. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... about despatching her, when Leolyn with difficulty mounts to the clock, pushes forward the hand and it strikes one—the demon appears, seizes the count in his claws—the earth opens, and the demon carries him down, in the same manner that an alligator or shark carries down a puppy dog, to devour him ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... held her at arms length, while his eyes seemed to devour her. She could not repress the tears, and when he saw them, he drew ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... drag away the rabbit, but failing in that, with an angry yowl, with quick jerks and rending of her powerful jaws began to try to force the rabbit free from the entangling root, which done, she could carry it into the forest to devour at leisure. The ease with which those claws and teeth rent asunder the yielding flesh was an instructive sight for Wilbur, but the fact that the wild-cat should dare to go on striving to free her prey instead of slinking away in fright made the boy angry. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... But really, I would rather not have it buried here, lest some wild beast should come and devour it... Yet it ought to be committed only ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... together during the amatory season. When that is over the male tiger betakes him again to his solitary predatory life, and the tigress becomes, if possible, fiercer than he is, and buries herself in the gloomiest recesses of the jungle. When the young are born, the male tiger has often been known to devour his offspring, and at this time they are very savage and quarrelsome. Old G., a planter in Purneah, once came across a pair engaged in deadly combat. They writhed and struggled on the ground, the male tiger striking tremendous blows on the chest and flanks of his consort, and tearing her ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the 20th of March, 1810, an event which set the pencils of our pictorial satirists once more in motion, and the young heir and his father were complimented by Rowlandson in a rough caricature, published by Tegg on the 9th of April, 1811, as Boney the Second, the little Babboon [sic] created to devour ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... such as "the heavens rent" (i. 10) and "devour houses" (xii. 40). There are little redundancies in which the author repeats his thoughts with a fresh shade of meaning, as "at even, when the sun did set" (i. 32); "he looked steadfastly, and was restored, and saw all things clearly" (viii. 25); "all that ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... and Mercury and Vulcan scowl, the hills hide their heads and the valleys tremble beneath the storm, so did the youth of Mountjoy quake and cower that evening as it raised its eyes and beheld those three gloomy heroes devour their beef and drink their swipes. No one ventured to ask how they had fared, or wherefore they looked sad; but they knew something had happened. The little boys gazed with awe- struck wonder at the heroes who ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... eat anywhere in the district he will find it. Little tufts of bunch-grass growing concealed under the edges of the brush, he will search out. If he cannot get grass, he knows how to rustle for the browse of small bushes. Bullet would devour sage-brush, when he could get nothing else; and I have even known him philosophically to fill up on dry pine-needles. There is no nutrition in dry pine-needles, but Bullet got a satisfyingly full belly. On the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... if we take a really comfortable trip of a couple of months' duration, and Bart's chief is willing to allow him a three months' absence, as it will be his first real vacation since we were married six years ago, it will devour the entire sum that we have saved for improving ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... us out so mentally poor that we have nothing to furnish but a cold hash of other people's sermons. Our haystack is large enough for all the sheep that come round it, and there is no need of our taking a single forkful from any other barrack. By all means use all the books you can get at, but devour them, chew them fine and digest them, till they become a part of the blood and bone of your own nature. There is no harm in delivering an oration or sermon belonging to some one else provided you so announce it. Quotation marks are cheap, and let us not be afraid to use them. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... moment the luxurious vagrant, in the midst of its careless sports, and voluptuous banquet, became entangled in a web woven by a great black spider, which sat with eager impatience waiting until it had wound itself into the toils by its fruitless exertions, that he might seize and devour his prey. The heart of Adakar melted with pity; starting up from the spot where he was reclining, he gently seized the little glittering captive and rescued it from the fangs of the spider, which at the same instant disappeared among the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... to take charge of all her eggs, or when there is a deficiency of bee bread to nourish the young, (See chapter on Pollen,) or when, for any reason, she judges it not best to deposit them in cells, she stands upon a comb, and simply extrudes them from her oviduct, and the workers devour them as fast as they are laid! This I have repeatedly witnessed in my observing hives, and admired the sagacity of the queen in economizing her necessary work after this fashion, instead of laboriously depositing the eggs in cells where they are not wanted. What a difference between her wise management ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... This, too, evidently a polywog, was blind, with whitened discs for eyes, but it slid along at a rapid rate because of its size. Maget's gun was empty; he turned so flee, but the polywog stopped and sniffed at the thick blood of its fellow. Then, to Maget's relief, it began to hungrily devour its companion. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... wither'd flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd! Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour, Is worthy blame. O, let it not be hild Poor women's faults, that they are so fulfill'd With men's abuses! those proud lords, to blame, Make weak-made ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... burst forth afresh: "Never, never, never will that happen! Neither years nor decades would efface the wrong inflicted upon me to-day. But oh, how I hate him who makes this shameful demand—yes, though you devour me with your eyes—hate him, hate him! I do so even more ardently than I loved him! And you? Why should you conceal it? From kindness to me? Perhaps so! Yet no, no, no! Speak freely! Yes, you must, must tell him so to his face! Do it in my name, abused, ill-treated ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... whoever did such things would be viewed with suspicion. An eclipse, a shooting star, a solitary boulder on the heath, a strange animal, or a Chinaman in the street, calls for explanation; and among some nations, eclipses have been explained by supposing a dragon to devour the sun or moon; solitary boulders, as the missiles of a giant; and so on. Such explanations, plainly, are attempts to regard rare phenomena as similar to others that are better known; a snake having been seen to swallow a rabbit, a bigger one may swallow ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... subpoenas is proved by the case of one Johns, who was very rightly committed to the Fleet in 1772, it appearing by affidavit that he had compelled the poor wretch who sought to serve him with a subpoena to devour both the parchment and the wax seal of the court, and had then, after kicking him so savagely as to make him insensible, ordered his body to be cast into the river. No amount of irritation could justify such conduct. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... every existing thing that possesses life and more or less of consciousness. "Brother Wolf" St. Francis of Assisi called the poor wolf that feels a painful hunger for the sheep, and feels, too, perhaps, the pain of having to devour them; and this brotherhood reveals to us the Fatherhood of God, reveals to us that God is a Father and that He exists. And as a Father He ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... churchyard, unable to return the services which Edmee has done him. Do not laugh at what I say, young man; it is the voice of God that is speaking. Look at the heavens. The stars live in peace, and nothing disturbs their eternal order. The great do not devour the small, and none fling themselves upon their neighbours. Now, a day will come when the same order will reign among men. The wicked will be swept away by the breath of the Lord. Strengthen your legs, Seigneur Mauprat, that you may stand firm to support Edmee. It is Patience that ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... treated on, and I began to look after books which might better enable me to understand his discourse. Those which mingled devotion with science were most agreeable to me, particularly Port Royal's Oratory, and I began to read or rather to devour them. One fell into my hands written by Father Lami, called 'Entretiens sur les Sciences', which was a kind of introduction to the knowledge of those books it treated of. I read it over a hundred times, and resolved to make this my guide; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... Kukuanas, keeper of the Great Road (Solomon's Road), beloved of the Strange Ones who sit in silence at the mountains yonder (the Three Witches), Calf of the Black Cow, Elephant whose tread shakes the earth, Terror of the evil-doer, Ostrich whose feet devour the desert, huge One, black One, wise One, king from generation to generation! these are the words of Twala: 'I will have mercy and be satisfied with a little blood. One in every ten shall die, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... to burn Upper Toulgas, which was a constant menace to our security, as we had no men to occupy it with sufficient numbers to make a defense and the small outposts there were tempting morsels for the enemy to devour. Many were reluctant to stay there, and it was nervous work on the black nights when the wind, dismal and weird, moaned through the encompassing forest, every shadow a crouching Bolshevik. Often the order came through to the main village to "stand to," because ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... heart, when his own meal is ready, goes to the door of his igloo or tupic and calls out, "O-yook, O-yook," which means warm food, and all the men and boys gather in, each with a knife in his hand, and without further ceremony they fall to and devour what is set before them. The largest part of an Inuit's food is, however, eaten raw. These o-yooks are merely festal occasions, though they occur several times a day, and may happen at any hour ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... glorious—it is aroused by something beyond the physical. Observe her nostril! There is simple, delightful animal sensuality for you! Look also at the convex curve below the underlip—she will bite off the cherry whether it is hers by right or another's, and devour it ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn

... certain well-known uncanny places. A more dangerous demon is heard in the crackling of the dry leaves of the date-tree in the night wind; and some trees are haunted by a vampire, who will drag you up and devour you, if you venture near them in the darkness.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii. Supplement, p. 4.) See also the same author's work Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, 2nd ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... is safe (from news reporters) Our mortal life is but a string of guesses at the future Played so long with other men's characters and good name Progress should be by a spiral movement Public which must have a slain reputation to devour Reasonable to pay our debts rather than to repudiate them Recall of a foreign minister for alleged misconduct in office Shall Slavery die, or the great Republic? Suicide is confession The nation is ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger

... too. Aunt Mimy used to sell herbs, and she rose from that to taking care of the sick, and so on, till once Dr. Sprague having proved that death came through her ignorance, she had to abandon some branches of her art; and she was generally roaming round the neighborhood, seeking whom she could devour in the others. And so she came into our house just at dinner-time, and mother asked her to sit by, and then mentioned Cousin Stephen, and she went up to see him, and so ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... than a foot or two. But near akin as they are to the trout, they are still nearer to the terrible Pirai, {218b} of the Orinocquan waters, the larger of which snap off the legs of swimming ducks and the fingers of unwary boatmen, while the smaller surround the rash bather, and devour him piecemeal till he drowns, torn by a thousand tiny wounds, in water purpled with his own blood. These little fellows prove their kindred with the Pirai by merely nibbling at the bather's skin, making him tingle from head to foot, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Devour" :   relish, bask, destroy, savour, enjoy, ruin, eat, savor



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