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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



... dread the consequences; the odds are too great against him. The King of Prussia is still in a worse situation; for he has the Hydra to encounter; and though he may cut off a head or two, there will still be enough left to devour him at last. I have, as you know, long foretold the now approaching catastrophe; but I was Cassandra. Our affairs in the new world have a much more pleasing aspect; Guadaloupe is a great acquisition, and Quebec, which I make no doubt of, will ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... that, on account of the peculiar construction of these, inasmuch as they have plot and character like dramatic compositions, they fascinate, and this to such a degree, that youth wait for no selection, but devour promiscuously all that come in their way. Hence the conclusion is, that the effects, alleged against novels, cannot but be generally produced. We are presented also with this fact, that, on account of the high seasoning and gross stimulants they contain, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... sinners, unless it was in the countenances of the seven fat kine, which, as represented in the vestibule of St. Mark's, wear an air of the sleepiest and laziest enjoyment, while the seven lean kine, having just come up from the river, devour steaks from their bleeding haunches. There are other mosaics in the Torcello cathedral, especially those in the apsis and in one of the side chapels, which are in a beautiful spirit of art, and form the widest possible contrast to the eighteenth-century high altar, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Their flight is light and graceful, but on the ground they move with difficulty. Their call note is a hissing, twittering sound. In summer, insects are their chief food, while in winter they live principally on berries. The Wax-wing will devour in the course of twenty-four hours an amount of food equal to the weight of its own body. In Lapland is the favorite nesting ground of the Bohemian Wax-wing. The nests are deeply hidden among the boughs of pine trees, at no great ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [April, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various

... cut by these insects for miles straight through the jungle, "in the days of the Spaniards the cruel taskmasters would often tie the weak and sick slaves to trees in the depths of the forest and let these great ants devour them alive! Senores, you can never know the terrible ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... half-broken ban of silence still hanging over them, the people issued from the house. The strange man stood, leaning forward, and seemed to devour each, in turn, with his eager eyes. After the young men came the fathers of families, and lastly the old men from the gallery seats. Last of these came Henry Donnelly. In the meantime, all had seen and wondered ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... Assyria. Something of the spirit of the ancient architects of the tower of Lylax survived in those thick-set pillars with their deep-fluted trunks, whose capitals were formed by four heads of bulls, placed forehead to forehead, and bound together by knots of serpents that seemed striving to devour them, an obscure cosmogonie symbol whereof the meaning was no longer intelligible, and had descended into the tomb with the hierophants of preceding ages. The gates were neither of a square nor rounded form. They described a sort of ogive much resembling the mitre of the Magi, and by ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... who was on the point of crying. She threw herself first over the one, then over the other; then took water up in her webbed hand, and poured it over them; but all was in vain—they were dead, and dead they would remain. She knew that. Wild beasts would soon come and devour their bodies. No, that must not be; therefore she determined to dig a grave in the ground for them, but she had nothing to dig it with except the branch of a tree and both her own hands. With these she worked away until her fingers bled. She found she made so little progress, that she ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... sound of the old gate creaking on its hinges at the entrance of the avenue awoke the deep-mouthed dogs around the house, who rushed infuriate to the spot to devour the unholy intruder on the peace and privacy of the patrician O'Grady; but they recognised the old grey hack and his rider, and quietly wagged their tails and trotted back, and licked their lips ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... Professor Child and some others believe that the whole labor of the Commission for two years past had been wasted or overthrown by the recent changing policy, which had ousted them out of their promised rights and cast them out upon the merciless open jaws to devour them ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... Christ! is 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 Milton's glimpse ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... dinners out of our woods, and have eaten them on their town meeting days, for two or three days together, twice in the year, and have thrown the bones and crusts to the poor, old and ignorant, among the natives, as they had done, year after year. The missionary, as usual, might have helped them to devour the spoil, and have seen his flock degraded and abused, before his eyes. Much was also said about the pains that had been taken to educate the Marshpees, and it was averred, that, instead of going to the schools opened for them, they ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes

... problem that fifty thousand young men are at present trying to solve who find themselves in your position," he says to Rastignac. "You are a single one among this number. Judge of the efforts you have to make and of the desperateness of the struggle. You must devour each other like spiders in a pot, seeing there are not fifty thousand good places. Do you know how one gets on here? By the brilliance of genius or the adroitness of corruption one must enter the mass of men like a cannon-ball, or slip into it like the plague. Honesty ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... cannot fail to reckon the so-called "Cannibal Dionysus," and probably the Zeus of Orchomenos, Zeus Laphystius, who is explained by Suidas as "the Glutton Zeus". The cognate verb ((Greek text omitted)) means "to eat with mangling and rending," "to devour gluttonously". By Zeus Laphystius, then, men's flesh was gorged in ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... do not devour old tapestries. The reason given is that the ancient wool is so desiccated as to be no longer nutritious. A pretty argument, but not to be trusted, for I have seen moths comfortably browsing on a Burgundian hanging, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... no longer in sight. I then turned about, and pressing my knees against the sides of Sidi Habismilk, my Arabian, the fleet creature, to whom spur or lash had never been applied, would set off in the direction of the town with the speed of a whirlwind, seeming in his headlong course to devour the ground of the waste, until he had left it behind, then dashing through the elm-covered road of the Delicias, his thundering hoofs were soon heard beneath the vaulted archway of the Puerta de Xerez, and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the people stand there on the bank, waiting to see the barrier go down. Unwillingly, as the time goes on, this one, that one, hurries away for a few minutes to prepare and devour a meal, back again, breathless, upon rumour of that preparatory trembling, that strange thrilling of the ice. The grinding and ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... Pendragon have this kingdom; but thy kin shall kill him with poison; but ere he suffer death, he shall din (contest) make. Uther shall have a son, out of Cornwall he shall come, that shall be a wild boar, bristled with steel; the boar shall consume the noble burghs; he shall destroy (or devour) all the traitors with authority; he shall kill with death all thy rich kindred; he shall be man most brave, and noble in thought; hence into Rome this same shall rule; all his foes he shall fell to the ground. Sooth I have said to thee, but ...
— Brut • Layamon

... his brains in his belly, his guts in his head, an hundred oaks on his back, to devour a hundred oxen at a meal, nay more, to devour houses and towns, or as those ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... rot on Kinwulph-hill, One on the minster-tower, And one from off the castle-gate The crowen did devour. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... for Tim is a homoeopathic one. Find some other boy equally conceited, equally foolish, equally unscrupulous, and set him at Tim. I will undertake to say that—unless the two devour one another down to the very tips of their tails, like the famous Kilkenny cats—they will bring one another to reason, and ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... had grown during the last year, and was quick at work. He was full of life, and knew how to swim, to tread water, and to turn over and tumble in the strong tide. They often warned him to beware of the sharks, which seize the best swimmer, draw him down, and devour him; but such was not to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... to consult received him with a contempt which made him shed tears of rage. Provincial folks are inexorable towards fallen families. In the general opinion it was only natural that the Rougon-Macquarts should seek to devour each other; the spectators, instead of separating them, were more inclined to urge them on. Pierre, however, was at that time already beginning to purify himself of his early stains. People laughed at his roguery; some even went so far as to say that he had done ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... highland or island or broadland or lowland or shoreland, till he came to the end thereof. And so doing he suffered exceeding hunger, so that he was forced to snatch up fishes from the surface of the sea and devour them raw, for stress of famine. In such case he pushed on till in early forenoon he came to the sixth island, with trees a-growing and rills a flowing, where he landed and walked about, looking right and left, till he came ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... she said, a bacchanalian affair—she was going to place the grapes where she could look at them, and look at them until she could stand the sight no more, when she would fall on them like a wolf on the fold and devour them. She talked morbidly of the grapes—almost neurotically. But, though her fancies did not please my sense of fitness, I only laughed at her, or smiled—for she had been ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... awakened by one of the men left in camp, and he rose refreshed and ready for the journey that lay before him. A few minutes sufficed to devour a few mouthfuls of food, and then he saddled up his horse; by the time this was over he saw a large body of mounted men already assembling further down the lines. Mounting his sleek Arab steed he rode hastily over to them, and in a few minutes ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld

... good-will we picketed our horses close by the circle of wagons—where we could get to them quickly should any of Lessard's troop happen into the camp—and prepared to devour the supper Horner's good-natured cook bestirred himself to make ready. As we filled our plates and squatted under the canvas that sheltered the cook's Dutch-oven layout, a man under the hind end of the chuck-wagon propped himself on elbow and shouted greeting ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... reason is given for cats washing their faces after a meal. A cat caught a sparrow, and was about to devour it, ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... it is only the hand that takes; it is the Saviour in whom we believe who has the power. You have turned away from Him. It is not that your faith wavers, but that you are walking straight forward on the road of infidelity, and on that path you will never find a God to help, but only a devil to devour." ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... such horrible creatures as her much-coveted box contained. A demon with one huge eye right in the middle of its forehead came and glared at her, monsters with gaping mouths looked as if they would devour her, a huge snake coiled and hissed about her, and a big frog hopped and croaked ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... charity. Sir, I have walked by the way-side, and I have seen a man tread into the smallest atoms the hill of the industrious ant, and say, it stole the peasant's corn; and yet I have known that same man make long prayers and devour widows' houses. I have watched the small singing-bird, trolling its sweet song on the bough of some wild cherry-tree, and a man, whose hair was combed over his brow, whose step was slow, whose eyes appeared to seek commune with Heaven, killed that bird, and then devoured ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... He might show mankind What 'tis to be a MAN: to give, not take; To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour; To help, not crush; if needs, to die, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... victims of sexual abnormality, either physical or psychical, that more or less influences their outlook on life. Certain neurotic and hysterical men or women who lack thorough physiological training and whose own sexual disturbances have led them to devour omnivorously and unscientifically the psychopathological literature of sex by such authors as Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebing, and Freud, are probably unsafe teachers of sex-hygiene. Especially is this true of the women of ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow

... 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

... indispensably necessary to bury it a few hours after dissolution. It is remarkable, that the birds of the air fled away from the abode of men, for none were to be seen during this 174 calamitous period; the hyaenas, on the contrary, visited the cemeteries, and sought the dead bodies to devour them. I recommended Mr. Baldwin's[135] invaluable remedy of olive oil, applied according to his directions; several Jews, and some Muselmin[136], were induced to try it, and I was afterwards visited by many, to whom I had recommended it, and had given them ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... the loud whisper, ending in a laugh directed full in the teeth of another. Hence spring, in short, those numberless offences given too frequently, in public and private assemblies, by persons of weak understandings, indelicate habits, and so hungry and foul-feeding a vanity that it wants to devour whatever comes in its way. Now, if good-breeding be what we have endeavoured to prove it, how foreign, and indeed how opposite to it, must such a behaviour be! and can any man call a duke or a dutchess who wears ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... thought of having been able to entice such a man to this remote part of the world. A ludicrous, yet just image presented itself to my mind, which I expressed to the company. I compared myself to a dog who has got hold of a large piece of meat, and runs away with it to a corner, where he may devour it in peace, without any fear of others taking it from him. 'In London, Reynolds, Beauclerk, and all of them, are contending who shall enjoy Dr. Johnson's conversation. We are feasting upon ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... into a boat and, taking the oars, went gliding out after you as swiftly as the wind. I never saw mortal arm make a boat fly as he did that little skiff. And I saw him strike the monster with his oar just as his huge jaws were opened to devour you. Dear! dear; but I was frightened, and woke ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... mast instead of tying him with grass ropes less securely, and this I learned to my cost. Except for the first day, before the beast got his sea-legs on, I had no peace of mind. After that, actuated by a spirit born, maybe, of his pasturage, this incarnation of evil threatened to devour everything from flying-jib to stern-davits. He was the worst pirate I met on the whole voyage. He began depredations by eating my chart of the West Indies, in the cabin, one day, while I was about my work for'ard, thinking ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... drew back with a face alternately red and pale, with suppressed indignation. His feelings must have been dreadful, for, during the rest of his journey, he sat and regarded me with an air of such offended dignity, that I must have appeared to him like some wicked ogress, ready to devour, at one mouthful, him and his literary fame. He never opened his mouth to speak to any of us after I had made this unfortunate blunder, and I sat upon thorns, until a handsome plain carriage drove up to the coach about a mile from T., and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... those natural laws wherewith we conceive every individual to be conditioned by Nature, so as to live and act in a given way. For instance, fishes are naturally conditioned for swimming, and the greater for devouring the less; therefore fishes enjoy the water, and the greater devour the less by sovereign natural right. For it is certain that Nature, taken in the abstract, has sovereign right to do anything she can; in other words, her right is co-extensive with her power. The power of Nature is the power of God, which has sovereign right over all things; and, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... compiler, "as, praised be God, we seldom meet in Scotland with these belly-gods and voluptuaries, whilk are unnatural enough to devour their patrimony bequeathed to them by their forbears in chambering and wantonness, so that they come, with the prodigal son, to the husks and the swine-trough; and as I have the less to dreid the existence of such unnatural Neroes in mine own family to devour the substance of their ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... Medon, from the wooers proud? Com'st thou to bid the handmaids of my lord To cease their tasks, and make for them good cheer? Ill fare their wooing, and their gathering here! Would God that here this hour they all might take Their last, their latest meal! Who day by day Make here your muster, to devour and waste The substance of my son: have ye not heard When children at your fathers' knee the deeds And ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus

... pot—sent from "Home." But even if you have a sentimental fondness for "the pretty things" (as their botanical name signifies), and like to see their little white faces peeping out of the grass, this must not be carried too far. In some soils dog-daisies will soon devour ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... distant background. But, at the same time, Peter Ivanovitch was absolutely nowhere now. And this thought consoled me. Yet I saw the gigantic shadow of Russian life deepening around her like the darkness of an advancing night. It would devour her presently. I inquired after Mrs. Haldin—that other victim of ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... artistic point of view, the collection serves to demonstrate the persistent, self-denying and constant devotion to culture in France. Times may be peaceful or stormy, seasons may prove disastrous, the withered, thin and blasted ears of corn may devour the seven ears full and golden, the ship of State may be caught in a tornado and lurch alarmingly—all the same "the man in the street," "the rascal many," to quote Spenser, will have a museum in which, with wife and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the sole of thy foot ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... people. "Dost thou not recall the picture of the farmer, when the tenth of his grain is levied? Worms have destroyed half of the wheat, and the hippopotami have eaten the rest; there are swarms of rats in the fields, the grasshoppers alight there, the cattle devour, the little birds pilfer, and if the farmer lose sight for an instant of what remains upon the ground, it is carried off by robbers;* the thongs, moreover, which bind the iron and the hoe are worn out, and ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Surely the ire will awaken of one who mightily ruleth Over the Argives all: and upon him wait the Achaians. Aye is the battle the king's, when a poor man kindleth his anger: For, if but this one day he devour his indignation, Still on the morrow abideth a rage, that its end be accomplished, Deep in the soul of the king. So bethink thee, wilt thou deliver." Then unto him making answer arose swift-footed Achilles: "Fearing nought, up and open the god's will, all that is told ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... his life, or as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had griped one of the fierce snakes in each of his little fists, and strangled them to death. When he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost as big as the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. ...
— The Three Golden Apples - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... destroying us all. Humans have become so cruel, that they kill, and kill, not even for food, but for the love of murdering. I often wonder," she said, "why they and the dingoes are allowed to live on this beautiful kind earth. The Black Humans kill and devour us; but they, even, are not so terrible as the Whites, who delight in taking our lives, and torturing us just as an amusement. Every creature in the bush weeps that they should have come to take the ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... at home, reading the evening paper! Nay, were it not better to be tossing on stormy seas, driving on a lee-shore, toiling as a slave under a tropic sun, than here, with a gaping audience waiting to devour me with their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... Winterfeld ride about in personal conference with his Majesty; taking survey, through spy-glasses, of those Austrians encamped yonder on the broad back of their Zisca Hill, a couple of miles to southward. "What a set of Austrians," exclaim military critics, "to permit such junction, without effort to devour the one half or the other, in good time!" Friedrich himself, it is probable, might partly be of the same opinion; but he knew his Austrians, and had made bold to venture. Friedrich, we can observe, always got to know his man, after ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... merely of a spiritual drama in which a few souls, all equally sincere and void of offence, were concerned. That, in Maxwell's eyes, would have been already disagreeable and tragic enough. But here was this keen, spiteful crowd of London society watching for what it might devour—those hateful newspapers!—not to speak of the ordinary fool of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and for many weeks Sylvia had not eaten so hungrily. Minty's eyes continued to devour her as the guest devoured the biscuit and honey; and it required an occasional warning, "Eat your supper, Minty," from Mrs. Lem, to deliver Sylvia periodically ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... Rapture Exasperate Complacent Dimension Commensurate Preclude Cloister Turnpike Travesty Atone Incarnate Charnal Etiquette Rejuvenate Eradicate Quiet Requiem Acquiesce Ambidextrous Inoculate Divulge Proper Appropriate Omnivorous Voracious Devour Escritoire Mordant Remorse Miser Hilarious Exhilarate Rudiment Erudite Mark Marquis Libel Libretto Vague Vagabond Extravagant Souse Saucer ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... bear resort the river where they lie in wate at the crossing places of the game for the Elk and weak cattle; when they procure a subject of either they lie by the carcase and keep the wolves off untill they devour it. the bear appear to be very abundant on this part of the river. we saw a number of buffaloe Elk &c as we passed but did not detain to kill any of them. we also saw an unusual flight of white gulls about ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... knocked down during the week by the East Siders, was rebuilt, and the skillet and other utensils were brought from the nearest kitchens. Archie went to the grocery around the corner and bought five cents' worth of cakes, and then the six boys sat down in a circle and prepared to devour their home-made feast. But before they began Archie stood up. "I want to say that this will probably be my farewell dinner with the club," he said, in a low tone, "and I hope that you will appoint another ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... chickens, who live close by, are a great annoyance to Mater, and to all of us. They come shooting into the yard like little steam-engines, and snatch all they can of the dinner to which they were not invited; and, if driven away a dozen times, rush back, the first chance, to get and devour all they can. Why, they have been into the house, and eaten a pie which was set to cool, pecked at the apples, Pony's oats, and any thing they could find to eat! What would you have said then? Even Mater's children never did ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous

... was exhausted. Yet because no one power would consent to the others' proposed terms of peace, the war dragged on and on, in such feeble fashion as it could. Its misery fell almost wholly upon the unhappy peasantry. The armies of both sides lived upon the country; what they could not devour they destroyed, lest it be of use to the enemy. Germany became a desert, and its people starved amid their desolated homes. The troops, brutalized by long familiarity with suffering, tortured their captives to extort money or sometimes, it would seem, for ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... know nothing about himself anymore, to have rest, to be dead. If there only was a lightning-bolt to strike him dead! If there only was a tiger a devour him! If there only was a wine, a poison which would numb his senses, bring him forgetfulness and sleep, and no awakening from that! Was there still any kind of filth, he had not soiled himself with, a sin or foolish act he had not committed, a dreariness of the soul ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse

... as though it desired the coolness, it writhed back into the water again. And Ralph saw that it was only a beast that crept upon its prey by stealth, and that though if he had slept, or bathed in the pool, it might have drawn him in to devour him, yet that one who was wary and active need have no fear; so he went on his way; and blew out great breaths to get the foul watery smell of the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... cushion, on which he sat down. Indeed, five minutes had not passed before Maugiron appeared in a dressing-gown, with a sword in one hand and a light in the other. As he came in one of his friends said to him, "The bear is furious, he was breaking everything just now; take care he does not devour you, Maugiron." ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... is that there is nothing to report. That commonplace element which is always ready to devour all beautiful things (as the Black Pig in the Irish Mythology will finally devour the stars and gods); that commonplace element, as I say, has in its Black Piggish way devoured finally the chances of any romance in this affair; that ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... blood-stained couch, for no one dared—at least no one cared—to approach him. At meal times the cook pushed a plate of food within his reach. He usually took no notice of this until, hunger constrained him to devour a little, almost savagely. No word would he speak, but moaned continually without intermission, save when, in a burst of uncontrollable anguish, he gave vent to the terrible cry which so weighed on the spirits of ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... destroy not ourselves despairing of God's mercy. The mercy of God is immeasurable; the cogitations of men comprehend it not. In the Lord I have ever trusted; and I know that my Redeemer liveth. Far is it from me to be tempted with Satan; I am only tempted with Sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart. O God! Thou art goodness itself; Thou canst not but be good to me. O God! that art mercy itself; Thou canst not but be ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... a few inches off the ground, under the impulse of a new idea, "I vill show to you vat ve vill do. Ve vill each cot hoff von finger. Redhand, he vill begin vid de thomb, et so on till it come to me, and I vill cot hoff mine leetle finger. Each vill devour the finger of de oder, an' so've shall have von dinner vidout ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... original, quherin the north warres the south; from retineo, the north retine, the south retain; from foras, the north foran, the south forain; from regnum, the north regne, the south raigne; from cor, the north corage, the south courage; from devoro, the north devore, the south devour; from vox, the north voce, the south voice; from devoveo, the north devote, the south devoute; from guerrum, the north were, the south war; from gigas, gigantis, the north gyant, the south giaunt; from mons, montis, the north mont, the south ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... and others, that he never eats a venemous Frog till he hath first killed her, and then (as Ducks are observed to do to Frogs in Spawning time, at which time some Frogs are observed to be venemous) so throughly washt her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he may devour her without danger. And Gesner affirms, that a Polonian Gentleman did faithfully assure him, he had seen two young Geese at one time in the belly of a Pike: and hee observes, that in Spain there is no Pikes, and that the biggest are in the Lake Thracimane in ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... He loved and honoured Dickens for his rich and tender humanity, the passion of pity that suffused his soul, the lively play of his comic fancy. Endowed with a keen sense of humour, he read Mark Twain and W. W. Jacobs with gusto. As a relaxation from historical studies he would sometimes devour a bluggy story, and as he read would shout with laughter at its grotesque out-topping of probabilities. He tried his own hand at sensational yarns. I recall one of them, rich in gory incidents, with a villain who is constantly leaping from a G.W.R. express to elude ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... lay in ashes, lay in ruins; sweep away, erase, wipe out, expunge, raze; level with the dust, level with the ground; waste; atomize, vaporize. deal destruction, desolate, devastate, lay waste, ravage gut; disorganize; dismantle &c. (render useless) 645; devour, swallow up, sap, mine, blast, bomb, blow to smithereens, drop the big one, confound; exterminate, extinguish, quench, annihilate; snuff out, put out, stamp out, trample out; lay in the dust, trample in the dust; prostrate; tread under ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... firemen were hopeless. The children saw their fate. They then knelt down and commenced to sing the little hymn we have all been taught in our Sunday-school days, Oh! how sweet—: "Let others seek a home below which flames devour and waves overflow." The flames had now reached them; the stifling smoke began to pour into their little room, and they began to sink, one by one, upon the floor. A few moments more and the fire circled around them and their souls were taken into ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody

... plain sight. I took careful aim at the foremost brute, and pulled the trigger. My shot took effect, for with an unearthly scream the animal dropped, and for a few brief seconds his comrades stopped in order to devour him. At the sound of the rifle shot and the scream of the stricken wolf the horses plunged forward, all thought of fatigue gone in their overwhelming terror. The wolves were not easily to be outdistanced, though, and were soon after us again. They ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... and yet you perceive by his lamentations and outcries that he knows no more what I said than if he were in another parallel of latitude. The chap has quite mistaken my character; for if I really did intend to make a beast of myself, and devour my species, no one of the smallest knowledge of human nature would think I'd begin on a nigger! What is your opinion of the man's ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... the fruit from Hamilton and commenced to devour it. It was clear either that he was hungry or that such a luxury as an apple seldom fell to his lot. A few sentences passed, and then ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... torrents ran the country through, Flooding the roads: while on the champaign laid Were eighty thousand of the paynim crew, Cut off that day by the destroying blade: Last trooped from caverns, at the midnight hour, Villain and wolf to spoil them and devour. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... RESPECT TO THE FOOD OF FISHES, this is almost universally found in their own element. They are mostly carnivorous, though they seize upon almost anything that comes in their way: they even devour their own offspring, and manifest a particular predilection for all living creatures. Those, to which Nature has meted out mouths of the greatest capacity, would seem to pursue everything with life, and frequently engage in fierce conflicts with their prey. The ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... 'Is the alligator fond of his grandmother? Does he devour his children? Does he hanker after little niggers? Is he wholly depraved and given up to the sins of the flesh, or hath he some social and playful qualities? And, lastly, what are his habits of life?' You have ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... cannot meet their daily expenses, nor pay the cost of cultivation. In some of my old parishes the imposition takes about thirteen out of twenty sous of an income... The interest on money amounts to four per cent. a month... Tours, a prey to the terrorists who devour the department and hold all the offices, is in the most deplorable state; every family at all well-off, every merchant, every trader, is leaving it."—The veteran pillagers and murderers, the squireens, (hobereaux) of the reign of Terror, again appear and resume their fiefs. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... search of food. In the misty younger world we catch glimpses of phantom races, rising, slaying, finding food, building rude civilisations, decaying, falling under the swords of stronger hands, and passing utterly away. Man, like any other animal, has roved over the earth seeking what he might devour; and not romance and adventure, but the hunger-need, has urged him on his vast adventures. Whether a bankrupt gentleman sailing to colonise Virginia or a lean Cantonese contracting to labour on the ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... idea 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 with ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... reign, ye monarchs that divide the world, Busy rebellion ne'er will let you know Tranquillity and happiness like mine! Like gaudy ships th' obsequious billows fall, And rise again to lift you in your pride; They wait but for a storm, and then devour you; I, in my private bark already wreck'd, Like a poor merchant driven to unknown land, That had by chance pack'd up his choicest treasure In one dear casket, and sav'd only that; Since I must wander further on the shore, Thus hug my little, but my precious store, Resolv'd ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... multitude dwelt therein, but thine alone was the valour that guarded it through all that year, when by day and by night thou didst keep watch against the host of the Arabians, who went around it to devour it, with spears thirsting for blood. Thy death was not wrought by the God of war, but by the frailties of thy friends. For thy country and for all men God blessed the work of thy hand. Hail, stainless warrior! hail, thrice victorious hero! Thou livest and ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... all the appearances of the demon we must always be on our guard, and mistrust his stratagems and malice. St. Peter[104] tells us that Satan is always roaming round about us, like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And St. Paul, in more places than one,[105] warns us to mistrust the snares of the devil, and to hold ourselves ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... me. How or where she got it I do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of Webster's "blue-back" spelling-book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as "ab," "ba," "ca," "da." I began at once to devour this book, and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet, so I tried in all the ways I could think of to learn it—all of course without a teacher, for I could find ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... in—probably a rational decision on his part. Meanwhile he is having a hard time of it between friends and foes. His enemies have spoiled a great part of his crop, and what they have left his defenders threaten to devour. ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything. ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... spores of Agarics which are devoured by flies, however, though returned in their dung in an apparently perfect state, are quite effete. It is, we believe, principally by the Syrphidae, which devour pollen, that fungus spores ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... those husky-dogs last night could devour all our camp kit without disturbing us, to-night they might swallow us ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... dear and pretty little wife Alix [whom] I love so much; 3 Irish, father mother and son [fice]; lastly Mario, whom you knew, with Celeste, formerly lady's maid to Marianne—who is now my sister-in-law.... If I knew better how to write I would tell you our adventures the alligators tried to devour us. We barely escaped perishing in Lake Chicot and many other things.... At last we arrived at a pretty village St. Martinville called also little Paris and full of barons, marquises, counts and countesses[2] that were an offense to my nose ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... man, rushing across the room, snatching the paper from his mother's hand, and with starting eyes fixed upon the paragraph that she hastily pointed out, seeming to devour ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... knowledge that, barring accidents, we ought to reach Rouen by half-past five, we ventured to devour a wayside ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... watching till a laggard—a young calf or an old bull, for instance—may fall out; then they dart upon it and tear it to pieces. They accompany parties of sportsmen or travellers, prowl round deserted camps, and devour the fragments they find there. At times they will enter a camp during the night, and seize lumps of meat on which the emigrants calculated for their morning meal. These robberies sometimes exasperate the victims, and, growing less saving of their powder and shot, they pursue them ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... of the Tartars. They indifferently feed on the flesh of those animals that have been killed for the table, or have died of disease. Horseflesh, which in every age and country has been proscribed by the civilized nations of Europe and Asia, they devour with peculiar greediness; and this singular taste facilitates the success of their military operations. The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... across the shifting drifts has been most likely to steal unawares upon the heedless flocks of ptarmigan and snow-bunting. In the one case protective colouring preserves the animal from himself being devoured; in the other case it enables him the more easily to devour others. And since 'Eat or be eaten' is the shrill sentence of Nature upon all animal life, the final result is the unbroken whiteness of the arctic fauna in all its developments ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... an insult!" he fiercely declared, glaring at the little plebe as if he longed to devour him. "Such an insinuation is an insult! Do you mean to say that I had anything to do ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... dreamer, so many hours did he stand looking, looking,—only looking,—as eyes have a right to do that see well and not altogether as others see. Happily for him, the days of his childhood were times of peace, and he did not behold, as his father had done, the torches light up the street and the flames devour ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee

... again. It disappeared utterly. Nor can it be said that it deserved a kinder fate. Its only interest now is for those who care to know the humour of men's minds in those prae-revolutionary days, when they could devour a long political and commercial history as if it had been a novel or a play, and when the turn of men's interests made of such a book "the Bible of two worlds ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... firm. Her father might be as charmingly erratic as he chose; but he must sterilize his hands, before he came into the drawing-room. And upon that one point of domestic discipline his guests rested in placid confidence, sure that, as long as Olive was at the helm, they could devour the Keltridge dinners in reasonable surety of not ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... What way did the Sons of Tuireann get their death but going questing 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. ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... sort of oyster, which commonly lies open on the shore. "Fearful," he says, "of putting in their paws, lest the oyster should close and crush them, they insert a stone as a wedge within the shell. This prevents it from closing, and they then drag out their prey, and devour it at leisure." ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown

... leave right away. But they hold out your first month's pay for your passage over, and by that time the tropics has its grip on ye. Ye're surrounded by a ragin' forest full of disreputable beasts—lions and baboons and anacondas—waitin' to devour ye. The sun strikes ye hard, and melts the marrow in your bones. Ye get similar to the lettuce-eaters the poetry-book speaks about. Ye forget the elevated sintiments of life, such as patriotism, revenge, disturbances ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... subtlety to hesitate to accept money from a human being like yourself when you are in need. Why and to what purpose do you think the human herd unites itself into some form of society? Is it mutually to devour and rob one another or mutually to help one another? I know you will tell me that it is otherwise, but I answer you that that is precisely why we have so much evil in this world. And once we recognize a thing as evil we ought to shun ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... deer skirting the sides until they reach the end, to which the savages hotly pursue them, with bow and arrow in hand ready to let fly. On reaching the end of the triangle they begin to shout and imitate wolves, [164] which are numerous, and which devour the deer. The deer, hearing this frightful noise, are constrained to enter the retreat by the little opening, whither they are very hotly pursued by arrow shots. Having entered this retreat, which is so well closed and fastened that they can by no possibility get out, they are ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain

... was the common talk on both sides, painful and revolting. I could not help saying to them, as the cars were coming up, and we were parting, "But, if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... beg Brother Angelo to give them something to eat; but he replied to them with severe reproaches: "What! robbers, evil-doers, assassins, have you not only no shame for stealing the goods of others, but you would farther devour the alms of the servants of God, you who are not worthy to live, and who have respect neither for men nor for God your Creator. Depart, and let me never ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... wars the best devour! Brother, we will think of thee, In the fight a very tower, When we join in revelry! When the Grecian ships were fired, By thine arm was safety brought; Yet the man by craft inspired [25] Won the spoils thy valor sought. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and cream you shall eat with us here! O the turtle soup and lobster sallads we shall devour with you there! O the old books we shall peruse here! O the new nonsense we shall trifle with over there! O Sir T. Browne!—here. O Mr. Hood and Mr. Jerdan there! ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... the dark are grey — Whilst we stayed at Loff-Loming, he and our two squires went three or four days churning among the wild men of the mountings; a parcel of selvidges that lie in caves among the rocks, devour young children, speak Velch, but the vords are different. Our ladies would not part with Mr Clinker, because he is so stout and so pyehouse, that he fears neither man nor devils, if so be as they don't take him by surprise. — Indeed, he was once so flurried by an operition, that he had like ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... 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

... man taste, he falls struck as though by poison. Also there are other springs, whose gushing waters are said to resemble the quality of the bowl of Ceres. There are also fires, which, though they cannot consume linen, yet devour so fluent a thing as water. Also there is a rock, which flies over mountain-steeps, not from any outward impulse, but of its innate ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... around, he was just in time to strike down with his clubbed gun a big gray form that leaped at him with gleaming fangs. This lucky stroke probably saved Joe's life, for the rest of the pack stopped to devour their comrade, thus giving Joe time to get safely into the branches of a tree. The wolves, now with bloody mouths and glaring eyeballs, surrounded the tree and let out howls of such fierceness that they made Joe tremble even though he knew that he was safe for the present. ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... did they descend, a living carpet, or rather pall, upon fields, crops, gardens, copses, groves, orchards, vineyards, olive woods, orangeries, palm plantations, and the deep forests, sparing nothing within their reach, and where there was nothing to devour, lying helpless in drifts, or crawling forward obstinately, as they best might, with the hope of prey. They could spare their hundred thousand soldiers twice or thrice over, and not miss them; their masses filled the bottoms of the ravines and hollow ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... paid for; the pension has been paid; and money, since the investigation of the accounts of those who farm the revenue, is scarce. Besides, admitting that I pay this time, how can I do so on another occasion? When kings have tasted money, they are like tigers who have tasted flesh, they devour everything. The day will arrive—must arrive—when I shall have to say, 'Impossible, sire,' and on that very day I am a ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the fierce animal, the traveler jumps into a well with no water in it; but at the bottom of this well he sees a dragon waiting with open mouth to devour him. And the unhappy man, not daring to go out lest he should be the prey of the beast, not daring to jump to the bottom lest he should be devoured by the dragon, clings to the branches of a wild bush which grows out of one of the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... exclaimed Ella, suddenly, who had during the last few sentences been unconsciously leaning forward, as though to devour each syllable as it was uttered, and who now resumed her former position with a long drawn breath. "In the negative say ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... whom I might devour like a raging lion. I sought foemen worthy of my steel. I leaped into the arena and blew my challenge to the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... back through a sudden interstice in the heaving mass. The draught reminded her more keenly of her little ones huddled together in the fireless garret at home. Ah! what a happy night was in store. She must not let them devour the two loaves to-night; that would be criminal extravagance. No, one would suffice for the banquet, the other must be carefully put by. "To-morrow is also a day," as the old grandmother used to say in her quaint jargon. But the banquet was not to be spread as fast as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... yet," he said; "ere Tippoo can seize his prize, we will raise around his ears a storm which would drive the God of War from the arms of the Goddess of Beauty. The trap shall close its fangs upon this Indian tiger, ere he has time to devour the bait which enticed him into ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... stark naked in the open fields, which is the greatest shame our Laws do allot to the most infamous Criminals, by laying them open to the view of all upon the highways: Yea, in their opinion it was a great unhappiness, if either Birds or Beasts did not devour their Carcases; and they commonly made an estimate of the Felicity of these poor Bodies, according as they were sooner or later made a prey of. Concerning these, they resolved that they must needs have been very bad indeed, since even the beasts themselves would not touch them; which caused ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... The bull begins with the words, "Arise, O Lord, and avenge thy cause." It proceeds to invoke St. Peter, St. Paul, the whole body of the saints, and the Church. A wild boar had broken into the vineyard of the Lord, a wild beast was there seeking to devour, etc. Of the heresy against which it was directed, the Pope, as he states, had additional reason to complain, since the Germans, among whom it had broken out, had always been regarded by him with such tender ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... extraordinary folly, though he soon sought to make capital out of the arrest by comparing the behaviour of our officers and their orderlies with "South Sea savages dancing around a prisoner that they are about to devour."[579] After a short detention at Ross Cottage, when he declined the Governor's offer that he should return to Longwood, the secretary was sent to the Cape, and thence made his way to France, where a judicious editing of his "Memoirs" and "Journal" gained ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... have been made, in order to give a passage to the Chimney-sweeper; but I shall show hereafter how a passage for the Chimney-sweeper may be contrived without leaving the throat of the Chimney of such enormous dimensions as to swallow up and devour all the warm air of the room, instead of merely giving a passage to the smoke and heated vapour which rise from the fire, for which last purpose alone it ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... the reason," said Parlamente. "Understand that a lustful man is always timorous, and the fear that he had of being surprised and robbed of his prey led him, wolf-like, to carry off his lamb that he might devour it at his ease." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... we find the dead as it were living: in books we foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are methodized; the rights of peace proceed from books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. Satan never ceases to devour those whom he generates, insomuch that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion, if God had not provided mortals with a remedy in books. Alexander, the ruler of the world; Julius[2] the invader of the world and the city, the first who in unity ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey

... man recognises that this is in a weakly state, he will not then want to apply it to questions of the greatest moment. As it is, men who are not fit to swallow even a morsel, buy whole treatises and try to devour them. Accordingly they either vomit them up again, or suffer from indigestion, whence come gripings, fluxions, and fevers. Whereas they should have stopped to consider ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus

... immediately after their birth, and then throw them into the river, or expose them in the streets—by far the most horrible proceeding of the two, on account of the number of swine and houseless dogs, who fall upon, and voraciously devour, their prey. The most frequent victims are the female infants, as parents esteem themselves fortunate in possessing a large number of male children, the latter being bound to support them in their old age; ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... if thy heart yearns for strange things like a sick woman, I go, even if the ghosts devour me.' ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard



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



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