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Ravening   Listen
Ravening

adjective
1.
Living by preying on other animals especially by catching living prey.  Synonyms: predatory, rapacious, raptorial, vulturine, vulturous.  "The rapacious wolf" , "Raptorial birds" , "Ravening wolves" , "A vulturine taste for offal"
2.
Excessively greedy and grasping.  Synonyms: rapacious, voracious.  "Ravening creditors" , "Paying taxes to voracious governments"
3.
Devouring or craving food in great quantities.  Synonyms: edacious, esurient, rapacious, ravenous, voracious, wolfish.  "A rapacious appetite" , "Ravenous as wolves" , "Voracious sharks"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ravening" Quotes from Famous Books



... Company had bitten off more than they could chew in a few big deals of late and had been badly pinched; in fact, to such an extent did Matt ponder on the possibility of the company's going into the hands of the receiver, leaving his thirty thousand dollars to disappear into the ravening maw of the Blue Star Navigation Company, that he forgot to send Cappy his check for nine thousand dollars the day it was due. And the next morning Cappy himself called up and, in a voice that seemed to come straight from a cold-storage ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... blood to each other. Blood is shed in order to furnish pride and vanity with the means of their gratification. The avarice of the rulers, and their shedding of blood, are put together in Ezek. xxii. 13; comp. ver. 27: "Her princes are in the midst thereof like wolves ravening the prey, shedding blood, destroying souls, to get dishonest gain." Bloodguiltiness those too incur who deprive the poor of the necessary means of support, Mic. iii. 2, 3. The comparison of [Pg 22] chap. i. 15: "Your hands are full of blood," and of ver. 21: "But now murderers," ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... the time of contest approached, he was full of political talk, and he had found no ears to appreciate it. Now he had seized on Lewis, and the younger man had lent him polite attention though inwardly full of ravening and bitterness. ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... book of beasts. Who knows what might have come out next? A tiger perhaps. And ravening for its prey as likely ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... come down quickly to a little thing like the rally and give the signal to feed all the five hundred people, who by that time were nice, polite, ravening wolves, for Jasper had uncovered the turkey-pit to keep them from getting too brown while the lambs caught ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... of superior numbers, but he, once we had gone in, was bound to see the thing through to the end. And see it through he did! why, I tell you that the men down in Froeschwiller were no longer human beings; they were ravening wolves devouring one another. For near two hours the gutters ran red with blood. All the same, however, we had to knuckle under in the end. And to think that after it was all over they should come and tell us that we had whipped the Bavarians over ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... an even sameness; the intense cold, the heartless wind which augments tenfold the chill of the temperature, the air thick and dark with stinging flakes rushing by in an endless cloud. A drifting, freezing, shifting eternity of snow, driven by a ravening gale which sweeps the desolate, bald wastes of ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... the efforts of the French from without, and effectually barricaded it against further assaults. Over and through the loopholed wall of the courtyard, the English garrison now kept up a deadly fire of musketry, which was fiercely answered by the French, who swarmed round the curtilage like ravening wolves. Shells, too, from their batteries, were falling fast into the besieged place, one of which set part of the mansion and some of the out-buildings on fire. Graham, who was at this time standing near ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... but he was saved from any further need of self-defence or explanation, for at this moment the door of the office was broken rudely open and there entered like a hurricane a veritable fury in female form—a whirlwind, a tornado, a ravening wolf into a fold of lambs. This formidable apparition, which proved to be none other than the wife of the suspected Myers, amid a volley of abuse and oaths delivered in the choicest Billingsgate, pounced down on her ill-used husband, denounced ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... workers of iniquity.' There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when indeed the righteous shall shine as the sun, but the wicked are sent into everlasting fire. For many shall arrive in My name, outwardly, indeed, clothed in sheep-skins, but inwardly being ravening wolves. Ye shall know them from their works, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler

... Starbuck gazing over the side, and following with his eyes the receding boat—"canst thou yet ring boldly to that sight?—lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by them, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?—For when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... I observed the characteristics of Coriander's African gorilla with new interest. He performed wonderfully well; it was difficult to realize that the hairy, ravening, agile, and grotesquely-moving beast, from which every visitor shrank back aghast, was only jolly Jack Gale serving out his hard servitude for an anticipated bride, very much after the ancient fashion of ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... But took a little of the day, A little of the colored sky, And of the joy that would not stay He wove a song that cannot die. Then, then — the unfathomable shame; The one last wrong arose from out the flame, The ravening hate that hated not was hurled Bidding the radiant love once more beware, Bringing one more loneliness on the world, And one more blindness in the unseen air. Nor may the smooth regret, the pitying oath Shed on such utter bitter any leaven. Only the pleading flowers that knew them both Hold all ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... flattening to the floor, crawled backwards, inch by inch; it was slavering, and there was a ravening madness in ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... in Trees, Grass, and such flowers, as grow by the production of Nature, without the help of Art; many and several sorts of Beads we saw, who were not so much wild as in other Countries; whether it were as having enough to satiate themselves without ravening upon others, or that they never before saw the sight of man, nor heard the report of murdering Guns, I leave it to others to determine. Some Trees bearing wild Fruits we also saw, and of those some whereof we tailed, which ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville

... he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived—as every wolf must live—to hunt, to eat, and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... volume runs that subtle questioning of the cruel, predatory side of nature which suggests the general title of the book. In certain cases it is the picture of savage nature ravening for food—for death to preserve life; in others it is the secret symbolism of woods and waters prophesying of evils and misadventures to come. All this does not mean, however, that Mr. Roberts is either pessimistic or morbid—it is nature in his books after all, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... of Jesus, who, in His Sermon on the Mount, warned his hearers to "beware of false prophets which come to you in sheeps' clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves," and we reflect how applicable are the words in modern times. Everywhere, one must beware the snares and deceit of the servants of Satan, who, with pleasing outward appearance, entrap their victims. It is a delight and a satisfaction, then, ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... golden ship. The fraction of a second later, the starboard half-dozen chemical-explosive rockets swung furiously around the ship's hull and streaked after their brothers. They moved in utterly silent, straight-lined, ravening ferocity toward their target. Baird thought irrelevantly of the vapor trails of an atmosphere-liner ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... certainly appear akin to the modern Greek and Slavonic vampire, "a corpse imbued with a kind of half-life," and with eyes gleaming like live coals.{73} They are, however, even more closely related to the werewolf, a man who is supposed to change into a wolf and go about ravening. It is to be noted that "man-wolves" ([Greek: lykanthropoi]) is the very name given to the Kallikantzaroi in southern Greece, and that the word Kallikantzaros itself has been conjecturally derived by Bernhard Schmidt from two Turkish ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... in his own tongue. "It is none other!" With a hand of great rejoicing, he stirred the unconscious Sheik—over whom the sand was already sifting as the now ravening simoom lashed ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... flash, rushing wave, descending spray, creaking timbers, with instinctive ravening of ocean's hungry hordes, are luring, friendly greetings compared to merciless clamor of ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee

... dinner after the fashion of the ancients and the rest. No: Peregrine Pickle can never be thrown to the wolves, even to the most respectable and moral of these animals in the most imposing as well as ravening of attitudes. English ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... Turner has obtained several legends of this sort from the Eskimo of the Ungava district in Labrador. In one of these, wolves are the gaunt and hungry children of a woman who had not wherewithal to feed her numerous progeny, and so they were turned into ravening beasts of prey; in another the raven and the loon were children, whom their father sought to paint, and the loon's spots are evidence of the attempt to this day; in a third the sea-pigeons or guillemots are children who were changed into these birds ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... shivering and shrinking in the shallow waters, and had longed for her sake to have her strike out boldly into the deep. But even if he had been ever so able to tell her, she would not have understood till she had fought her way through those ravening breakers, beyond them, ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... that day it happened he felt the same old surge of anger and despair twenty years old now, felt the ray-gun bucking hard against his unaccustomed fist, heard the hiss of its deadly charge ravening into a face he hated. He could not be sorry, even now, for that first man he had killed. But in the smoke of that killing had gone up the columned house and the future he might have had, the boy himself—lost as ...
— Song in a Minor Key • Catherine Lucille Moore

... rather hotly, for I did not relish her amazement, "you will oblige me by not speaking of these ladies as the 'lamb' and 'the other one.' I might gather from your remarks that I am a sort of ravening wolf, instead of a well-meaning gentleman who is merely exercising the privilege of selecting a wife. But," I said, checking myself, for I was ashamed of my explosion, "I shall be magnanimous enough to believe that you are delighted with my choice, and that ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field

... had indeed fallen victim to misplaced confidence, and had been craftily lured into this den of ravening wild beasts, why all this confusion and mad skurry? Why had not the traitor first made sure of his victim? Why such a ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... who fears God that they are estranged from me, and from Christ my God, whose ambassador I am—these patricides, fratricides, and ravening wolves, who devour the people of the Lord as if they were bread; as it is said: "The wicked have dissipated thy law," wherein in these latter times Ireland has been well and prosperously planted and instructed. Thanks ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... and drive the vivid colour from the virginal transparent face, and stamp the smiling mouth into pale, breathless lines of Fear. That night in the tavern on the veld had branded a child with premature knowledge of the ferocious, ravening, devouring Beast that lies in Man concealed. Again she felt the scorching breath of lust upon her; she quailed under the intolerable touch; she shook like a reed in the brutal hands of the evil, dominating power that would brook no resistance and knew ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... living in filth and defiling everything they touch, with the head and breast of a woman, the wings and claws of a bird, and a face pale with hunger, the personification of whirlwinds and storms, conceived of as merely ravening, wasting powers. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... of your enemies' garrison, Who is the worst for your witty comparison?" Said Cormac: "Not hard to tell! A man with a satirist's nameless audacity; A man with a slave-woman's shameless pugnacity; One with a dirty dog's careless up-bound, The conscience thereto of a ravening hound. Like a stately noble he answers all speakers From a memory full as a Chronicle-maker's, With the suave behaviour of Abbot or Prior, Yet the blasphemous tongue of a horse-thief liar And he wise as false in every grey hair, Violent, garrulous, devil-may-care. When he cries, 'The case is ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... hills, or heaving high Their giant bowsprits to the wandering heavens, Labouring in vain to return, struggling to lock Their far-flung ranks anew, but drifting still To leeward, driven by the ever-increasing storm Straight for the dark North Sea. Hard by there lurched One gorgeous galleon on the ravening shoals, Feeding the white maw of the famished waves With gold and purple webs from kingly looms And spilth of world-wide empires. Howard, still Planning to pluck the Armada plume by plume, Swooped down upon that prey and swiftly engaged Her desperate guns; while Drake, our ocean-king, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... fact was, he could not have disguised it, even if he had tried. The fever of artistic creation was upon him—all the old desires and the old exhausting joys. His genius had been lying idle, like a lion in a thicket, and now it had sprung forth ravening. For months he had not handled a brush; for months his mind had deliberately avoided the question of painting, being content with the observation only of beauty. A week ago, if he had deliberately asked himself whether he would ever paint again, ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... these mountain slopes to destroy him! With the pack at his doors, he did as he had told them he would do. Though they hurried swiftly into the great valleys to colonize them—where oceans had been—they were like ravening beasts, and gave my grandfather no thanks. Our people have always fought against progress, have always been disparaging of its advocates! When the first Sarka discovered the Secret they would have destroyed him, though he made ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... these matters to men who are capable of judging. All I say is that the church holds enough for me, that I shall never learn half she has to teach, and that within her fold is safety. Outside pastures may be pleasant to the eye; but who knows what ravening wolves may not be lurking there in the disguise of harmless sheep? The devil himself can appear in the guise of an angel of light; therefore it behoves us to walk with all wariness, and to commit ourselves into the keeping of those whom God has set over ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... alas, brigandage in all its forms is the rule in the eternal conflict of living things! From the lowest to the highest, every producer is exploited by the unproductive. Man himself, whose exceptional rank ought to raise him above such baseness, excels in this ravening lust. He says to himself that business means getting hold of other people's cash, even as the Gnat says to herself that business means getting hold of the Halictus' honey. And, to play the brigand to better purpose, he invents war, the art of killing ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... truth," the old woman admitted; "but Merenra is chief commander over Pa-Ramesu and how shall thine appeal to the Pharaoh pass beyond Merenra if he see fit to humor this ravening lord with a breach of the law? The message summoning him in haste to Pithom before the order could be fulfilled was all that saved thee. And if Merenra return ere thou art safely gone, thou ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... and welt 'em, with the water to our waist, For the driving pitch is dropping and the drouth is gasping "Haste"! Here a dam and there a jam, that is grabbed by grinning rocks, Gnawed by the teeth of the ravening ledge that slavers at our flocks; Twenty a month for daring Death—for fighting from dawn to dark— Twenty and grub and a place to sleep in God's great public park; We roofless go, with the cook's bateau to follow our hungry crew— A billion ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... her own, and the day of their delivery had dawned. This was the only sacred cause; this was the great, the just revolution. It must triumph, it must sweep everything before it; it must exact from the other, the brutal, blood-stained, ravening race, the last particle of expiation! It would be the greatest change the world had seen; it would be a new era for the human family, and the names of those who had helped to show the way and lead the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... ominous groan of the severe shock which occurred at about half-past two o'clock Wednesday morning. To the terrified people it was like the growl of some ravening beast rushing upon them, and a long wailing cry blended with the horrible roar as it swept under and over them, then died away in ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... dreaded happened. A vast mountain of green water lifted up its bulk and fell upon us in a ravening cataract. I clutched at Masters, but trying to save him and myself handicapped me badly. The strength of that mass of water was terrible. It seemed to snatch at everything with giant hands, and drag all with it. It tossed a hen-coop high, and carried it through ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... confusion of her mind, resulting from her training and inexperience, she feared that if all her kin insisted on her marriage, and gave such reasons as had been urged upon her, she must be married. She was sorely perplexed. Could the Yankees be such ravening wolves as her uncle and cousin represented them to be? Certainly one was not, but then he might be different from the others because he had been to ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... more than the Power, or rather Command to Teach. For the first, which is to chase away Wolves, that is, Haeretiques, the place hee quoteth is (Matth. 7.15.) "Beware of false Prophets which come to you in Sheeps clothing, but inwardly are ravening Wolves." But neither are Haeretiques false Prophets, or at all Prophets: nor (admitting Haeretiques for the Wolves there meant,) were the Apostles commanded to kill them, or if they were Kings, to depose them; but to beware of, fly, and avoid them: nor was ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... As the prevailing patience of meek Light, Who, with the invincible tenderness of peace, Wins it to be a portion of herself? 65 Why art thou made a god of, thou, who hast The never-sleeping terror at thy heart, That birthright of all tyrants, worse to bear Than this thy ravening bird on which I smile? Thou swear'st to free me, if I will unfold 70 What kind of doom it is whose omen flits Across thy heart, as o'er a troop of doves The fearful shadow of the kite. What need To know that truth whose knowledge cannot save? Evil its errand hath, as well ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... thrilled, enthused, given new courage; the message that the Americans had stopped the Germans at Chateau Thierry, electrified Paris. Strong men wept as they realized that the forces of the Great Republic, able and brave, stood between France and the ravening wolf of Germany. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... region between delirium and consciousness, when the face slipped from me like a fading light, I called out eagerly that love was a phantom; for her God of love had left me to the blind gods that crush, to the storm and the dark and the ravening wolves. ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... ever stop it!" asked Sylvia despairingly, seeing wherever she looked nothing but that ravening, fiery leap of the flames, feeling that terrible hot breath on ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... open, his teeth apart, and that malicious grin wrinkling all but his smouldering feral eyes. I turned my back on him without a word and descended to the deck. I had not a notion what was to be done, but I knew better than to trust to the ravening mercies of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... play the part of a bleating sheep "admiring his reflection in the crystal stream," and that he cannot even have recourse to the expedient, now exhausted, to make it appear that either France or Russia are ravening wolves in search of adventure. But the role of a sheep sits badly on William, and the mot d'ordre, which he dictates is so evidently opposed to the condition of affairs for which he is responsible, that Messrs. ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam

... all, one's sympathies went out to a person who was not to be met in either of these sets; to the girl who had not sold herself, but was struggling for a living in the midst of this ravening corruption. There were thousands of self-respecting women, even on the stage; Toodles herself had been among them, she told Montague. "I kept straight for a long time," she said, laughing cheerfully—"and on ten dollars ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... who, scattering tares Amid the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares. And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower Ever in covert ambuscade concealed, But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek, Like roaring lion, whom he may devour, And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak, Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath, And lulled by agony's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... wherein he slept between the cliffs, and shook himself and went galloping abroad and overturned the mountains that hid the golden ball, and bit the earth beneath them and hurled their crags about and covered himself with rocks and fallen hills, and went back ravening and growling into the soul of the earth, and there lay down and slept again for a hundred years. And the golden ball rolled free, passing under the shattered earth, and so rolled back to Pegana; and Limpang Tung came home to the onyx step and ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... that hellishly wanton globe remain a bore. Instead, it spread. That devil's brew ate into and dissolved everything it touched like a stream of boiling water being poured into a loosely-heaped pile of granulated sugar. By the time the ravening sphere had reached the second floor, the entire roof of the building was gone and the writhing, racing flood of corruption had flowed down the outer walls and across the street, engulfing and transforming sidewalks, ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... themselves against that War System by which the peace of nations is placed in such constant jeopardy. They are right; for nobody suffers in war as the working-man, whether in property or in person. For him war is a ravening monster, devouring his substance, and changing him from citizen to military serf. As victim of the War System he ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner

... for man's free thought to walk alone, A lamp to lead him far from shrine and throne On ways untrodden where his fathers trod Ere earth's heart withered at a high priest's nod And all men's mouths that made not prayer made moan. From bonds and torments and the ravening flame Surely thy spirit of sense rose up to greet Lucretius, where such only spirits meet, And walk with him apart till Shelley came To make the heaven of heavens more heavenly sweet And mix with yours a third ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... between these execrable and ravening birds of night and prey, Helen and her boy-lover were thus conversing in the garden; while the autumn sun—for it was in the second week of October—broke pleasantly through the yellowing leaves of the tranquil shrubs, and the flowers, which ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mind works clearly; it rises and rebukes this surging pain that breaks upon it like waves upon a reef. Folly! If a girl's name were indeed at the mercy of such chances, why should one care—take any trouble? Would such a ravening world be ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... dominion! Within your spirit's arms I stay me fast Against the fell Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell; And claim my right in you, most hardly won, Of chaste fidelity upon the chaste: Hold me and hold by me, lest both should fall (O in high escalade high companion!) Even in the breach of Heaven's assaulted wall. Like to a wind-sown sapling grow I from The clift, Sweet, ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... man from the salting-tub only as a ravening wolf to devour my sheep? Your wisdom is adorable; but your ways are dark, and ...
— The Miracle Of The Great St. Nicolas - 1920 • Anatole France

... frantically at her favourite's tail: Lyveden leapt to his feet and, cramming his pipe into a pocket, flung himself forward: the mistress of the inn and her maid crowded each other in the doorway, emitting cries of distress: and the now ravening flurry of brown and white raged snarling and whirling upon the brick pavement with all the finished frightfulness of ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... the work, if it may be dignified by such a term, spoliation is perhaps a better one. Now we know that the violin has been separated and left so, being merely tied up, and been in that dirty little den of ravening wolves or tinker dealers for nobody knows how long, with the rays of the sun falling on it for many days; the result is as we see, the back has contracted and drawn the ribs in to some extent, it is glue-bound, we will set it ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... then the pastoral poem which is misliked? for perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over. Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometime out of Melibeus's mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords, or ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest? Sometimes, under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, it can include the whole considerations of wrong-doing and patience. ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... the close of the ages, it hath been decreed, Shall perish and vanish each weak god of men, And the world shall be purged with ravening fire." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... "'Full fifty warriors bold and true Fell as becomes the brave; And whom the arrow spared, the spear Reaped for the ravening grave. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... once began between the prince and the brute. It soon ended. Springing agilely behind the ravening monster, Theseus, with a swinging stroke of his blade, cut off one of its legs at the knee. As the man-brute fell prone, and lay bellowing with pain, a thrust through the back reached its heart, and all peril from the Minotaur was at ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... single scion of a noble family. There were no men trained to military operations. It was a city of artisans and tradesmen, and the Spaniards expected scarcely more than a show of resistance from a foe so ignoble. As well might the sheep resist a pack of ravening wolves as the men of the counting-house and workshop resist the best trained soldiers of Europe. But nobly, nay, up to the highest heroic pitch of human nature, did the citizens behave! They had to endure a siege in its most dreary form—that of a blockade. Instead of attempting to storm ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... unhappy, view. Opposing winds may stop thy luckless way, And spread fell famine through the suffering crew, Canst thou endure th' extreme of raging Thirst 45 Which soon may scorch thy throat, ah! thoughtless Youth! Or ravening hunger canst thou bear which erst On its own flesh hath ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... clergy should know that the intellect of the Nineteenth Century needs no, guardian. They should cease to regard themselves as shepherds defending flocks of weak, silly and fearful sheep from the claws and teeth of ravening wolves. By this time they should know that the religion of the ignorant and brutal Past no longer satisfies the heart and brain; that the miracles have become contemptible; that the "evidences" have ceased to convince; that the spirit of investigation ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... ill-natured and cankered disposition this," said he one night, when sitting by the ingle with his drowsy helpmate, watching the sputtering billets devoured, one after another, by the ravening flame: "'Tis an ill-natured disposition that is abroad, I say, that will neither let a man go about his own business, nor grant him a few honest junkets these moonlight nights. I might have throttled a hare or so, or a brace of rabbits; or what dost think, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... have got a breakfas' notice," interrupted Dr. Chubb. He and the Byrd had come into the room as hungry as ravening wolves. ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... cloyed will, That satiate yet unsatisfied desire, that tub Both filled and running, ravening first the lamb, Longs after for ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... Knight, or thou diest;" and with that the cruel monster sprang upon him to accomplish his end. Still Sir Lancelot would not yield, nor sue to him for quarter, but flew on his enemy like the ravening wolf to his prey. Then were they seen hurtling together like wild bulls—Sir Lancelot holding fast his adversary's sword, so that in vain he attempted to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... partisanship. Early love has fallen away, and lukewarmness has taken its place. Unlimited enthusiasm has given place to limited stolidity. Disloyalty, overawed at first into quietude, has lifted its head among us, and waxes wroth and ravening. There are dissensions at home worse than the guns of our foes. Some that did run well have faltered; some signal-lights have gone shamefully out, and some are lurid with a baleful glare. But unto this end were we born, and for this cause came we into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... declared Amelia Boggs sternly. "A false step and you are lost! The ravening sea is below you. Feel the spray ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr

... in the rocks 82 and shall bear a ravening lion, Strong and fierce to devour, who the knees of many shall loosen. Ponder this well in your minds, I bid you, Corinthians, whose dwelling Lies about fair Peirene's spring and in ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... power on the long Nevian way! For that oven-girdled fortress was powered to withstand any conceivable assault; but the Boise's power and momentum were now inconceivable, and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly ravening cylinder of ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... quite certain that Colonel Osborne had no premeditated evil intention when he allowed himself to become the intimate friend of his old friend's daughter. There was nothing fiendish in his nature. He was not a man who boasted of his conquests. He was not a ravening wolf going about seeking whom he might devour, and determined to devour whatever might come in his way; but he liked that which was pleasant; and of all pleasant things the company of a pretty clever woman was to him the pleasantest. ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... You had no premonition of this glorious war in which the Tricolor and the Union Jack would advance together against the ravening black eagle of Germany, and the Stars and ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... spirit is heightened to fury. Then, like wolves ravening in a black fog, whom mad malice of hunger hath driven blindly forth, and their cubs left behind await with throats unslaked; through the weapons of the enemy we march to certain death, and hold our way straight into the town. Night's sheltering shadow ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... on her whole face was the exulting smile of cruelty which shed its baleful light over it, resolving the whole contest, as it were, and its object—the murder of her step-mother—into the fierce play of some beautiful vampire that was ravening for the blood of its ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... has become a den of thieves, given over to the ravening wolves of rebellion and dissent, the penniless soldiery who would bring down all men's fortunes to their own level, seize all, eat and drink all, and trample crown and peerage in the mire. They have slain him, reverend mother, this impious herd—they gave him the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... however, a great display of attendants, inasmuch as he had a whole retinue of myrmidons at his beck and call; and these, as before observed, were well paid. They were the crows that followed the vultures, and picked the bones of the spoil when their ravening masters had ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... us suppose that fifty novels are produced per day in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, and other large cities together, which I believe to be a low estimate. Not counting Sundays and Bank holidays, this will give us rather more than 75,000 newly created souls a year—cannibal souls, ravening for the brains of men and women similar to the brains that gave them birth, and each able to devour as many brains as it can catch. It is no good saying that nearly all are short-lived, dying in six months like summer flies. The ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... as much sorrow in my preaching as this one does—of love I feel not much, of preaching I do more than enough. They accuse me of being rabid and revengeful; I fear that I have done too little. I should have pulled the wool[76] much harder for the ravening wolves, who never cease to rend the Scripture, to poison and pervert it to the great injury of the poor, forsaken sheep of Christ. If I had only loved them enough I should have dealt quite differently with the pope and his Romanists, who with their laws and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea: Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred, Nor may sight or fear discern what evil stars may be. Dark as death and white as snow the sea-swell scowls and shines, Heaves and yearns and pants for prey, from ravening lip to lip, Strong in rage of rapturous anguish, lines on hurtling lines, Ranks on charging ranks, that break and rend the battling ship. All the night is mad and murderous: who shall front the night? Not ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... apparently decided they had taken no part in the affair, and bestowed on them a faint, dry smile as he settled himself into his seat. At the bend of the road he had not deigned another look on the men who had been ravening to lynch him. He drove away as carelessly as if he alone were the only human being within miles, and the partners gave ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... shameful. At first the garrison shut the gates in the very faces of the human wolves who clamored for food and shelter. Discipline having been restored, the guard was admitted. The stores were ample for a fortnight's rations to all survivors; but the ravening mob could not be restrained, and the distribution was so irregular that precious supplies were tumbled into the streets; in the end it was discovered that the guard had secured sustenance for a fortnight, while the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... that seek your prey; With strong wings ravening through the skies by night; Spirits and stars that hold one choral way; O light of heaven, and thou the heavenlier light Aflame above the souls of men that sway All generations of all years with might; O sunrise of the repossessing day, And sunrise of all-renovating right; And thou, ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... many of the trail's most indomitable. They could face hardship and danger, the blizzards, the rapids, nature savage and ravening; but when it came to craft, graft and the duplicity of their fellow men they were ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... the offender, weeping with Moses and Samuel over the people, beeing sory with the Emperour, that they know how to write sentences of condemnation) These delight in cruelty, the brand of the Malignant Church; feede their eyes with Massacres, as the Queene-mother. No diet so pleasing to these ravening wolves, as the warme blood of the sheepe. These are they that cry fire and fagot, away with them, not worthy to live, their very mercies are cruelty: especially in their owne cause, they heat the fornace seaven times hotter ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... Roman legion had no sooner returned home in joy and triumph, than their former foes, like hungry and ravening wolves, rushing with greedy jaws upon the fold which is left without a shepherd, and wafted both by the strength of oarsmen and the blowing wind, break through the boundaries, and spread slaughter on every side, and ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas

... passed with fearful rapidity to a state of corruption, by avarice and luxury, equally without example. Never in their character did they belie the legend that their first founder was suckled, not at the breast of woman, but of a ravening she-wolf. They were the tragedians of the world's history, who exhibited many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... that griefe, Which hath abridg'd whole numbers numberlesse Of hart-surcharging deplorations. She shall have due and Christian funerall, And rest in peace amongst her auncestors. As for our bodies, they shall be inter'd, In ravening mawes, of Ravens, Puttockes, Crowes, Of tatlin[g] Magpies, and deathes harbingers, That wilbe glutted with winde-shaken limmes Of blood-delighting hatefull murtherers. And yet these many winged sepulchers, Shall turne to earth, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... lust, And treachery with treachery, and for blood Blood shall be shed. Therefore let loose the flood Of our pent passion; break her gates in, raze The walls of her, cumber her pleasant ways With dead men; set on havoc, sate with spoil Men ravening; get corn and wine and oil, Women to clasp in love, gold, silken things, Harness of flashing bronze, swords, meed of kings, Chariots and horses swifter than the wind Which, coursing Ida, leaves ruin behind Of snapt tall trees: not faster shall they fall Than Trojan spears once we are on the wall. ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... you say so, good Master Nowell," replied the rector. "I have done my best, I assure you, to keep my small and widely-scattered flock together, and to save them from the ravening wolves and cunning foxes that infest the country; and if now and then some sheep have gone astray, or a poor lamb, as in the instance of Mary Baldwyn, hath fallen a victim, I am scarcely to blame for the mischance. Rather let ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... hard-boiled eggs, cold bacon, veal, ham, crabs and shrimps, cheese, butter, cold suet-puddings and treacle, gooseberry-tarts, cherry-tarts, butter, bread, more sausages, and yet again pork-pies! They devoured the provisions like ravening beasts, stolidly, silently, earnestly, in large mouthfuls which they shoved down their throats unmasticated. The intelligent foreigner seeing them thus dispose of their food would have understood why England ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham

... Duke, I cried out against the horror. But being no more than a boy, I was stricken to silence by the hand of a man-at-arms. Then I saw Hans Pulitz cast loose. I saw him seized by one man—even by the Red Axe—raised high in the air, and flung over the barriers among the ravening and leaping blood-hounds. I heard the hideous noises that followed—the yells of a man fighting for his life in a place of fiends. I shut my ears with my hands, yet could I not shut out that clangor of hell. I shut my eyes, closer than you have shut them for me now. I fled, I knew not ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... to a halt we were glad to get off and stretch our legs,—we stretched them a whole lot more than we intended before the night was out,—for we had to hike about four miles with full pack and then climb a long steep hill. We had nothing to eat all day and we were just like ravening wolves, but after we reached camp we had to wait for the cooks to prepare some "mulligan" (stewed beef) and tea; then we were lined up and bundled into our tents, about ten men in each. Next morning ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... poem which is misliked? {46} For, perchance, where the hedge is lowest, they will soonest leap over. Is the poor pipe disdained, which sometimes, out of Melibaeus's mouth, can show the misery of people under hard lords and ravening soldiers? And again, by Tityrus, what blessedness is derived to them that lie lowest from the goodness of them that sit highest? Sometimes under the pretty tales of wolves and sheep, can include the whole considerations of wrong doing and patience; sometimes show, that contentions for trifles ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... in the belief that she was to enjoy a free lunch, my beloved yoke-fellow, who is just now very hot upon economy, forewent her breakfast and arrived upon your threshold faint and ravening, you will conceive the emotion with which she hailed the realization that that same hunger which she had encouraged could only be appeased at ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... he advanced upon the men (and these ravening for his blood), viewing their lowering faces and brandished steel with his calm, dispassionate gaze and very proud and upright for all his bodily weakness; pausing beside me, he threw up his hand ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... sick by deep mysterious law. Our beauteous warriors, lithe of limb and strong, Fierce to avenge their own and others' wrong, What gasping terror smites their battle song When, night-birds gathering near the dawn of day, Or wolves in chorus ravening for the prey, They burst upon the sleeping Chippeway;[11] Their women wail whose hated fingers dare To reap the harvest of our midnight hair; Swifter than eagles, as a panther fleet, A hungry panther seeking for his meat, So swift and ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... they brought you in here, mon enfant, and laid you on the paillasse where Felicite used to sleep. You looked very white, and stricken down, like one of God's lambs attacked by the ravening wolf. Your eyes were closed and you were blissfully unconscious. I was taken before the governor of the prison, and he told me that you would share the cell with me for a time, and that I was to watch you ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... her child, to screen it from the cold; Her vesture scant, her bonnet crushed and torn; A thin shawl doth her baby dear enfold. And so she 'bides the ruthless gale of morn, Which almost to her heart hath sent its cold. And now she, sudden, darts a ravening look, As one, with new hot bread, goes past the nook; And, as the tempting load is onward borne, She weeps. God help thee, helpless one, forlorn! God ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... by and admired the satisfaction the rest were giving. When these had been dispatched for steak, for broiled white-fish of the lakes,—noblest and delicatest of the fish that swim,—for broiled chicken, for fried potatoes, for mums, for whatever the lawless fancy, and ravening appetites of the wayfarers could suggest, this fifth waiter remained to tempt them to further excess, and vainly proposed some kind of eggs,—fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... birds and the ravening beasts, with instincts in accord, gather around the quarry killed for them. There is a grand feast—a banquet for all; and they have no need to quarrel over it. But they do—the birds having to stand back till the beasts ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... the remains of the body of the little one sinking through the water and dashed for it. Colin could have shouted with triumph in the hope that vengeance would be served out upon the orcas, but he was not prepared for the next turn in the tragedy. Like a pack of ravening wolves the killers hurled themselves at the mother whale, three of them at one time fastening themselves with a rending grip upon the soft lower lip, others striking viciously with their rows of sharp teeth at her eyes. The issue was not in doubt for ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... After it had passed safely through that ordeal, it was duly washed, signed with Thorns holy hammer, and solemnly received into the family. If it were a weakly boy, and still more often, if it were a girl, no matter whether she were strong or weak, the infant was exposed to die by ravening beasts, or the inclemency of the climate. Many instances occur of children so exposed, who, saved by some kindly neighbour, and fostered beneath a stranger's roof, thus contracted ties reckoned ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous

... wandered a little, while he was remembering the Jews and the heathen and the missionaries, in the customary phrases, felt their hearts dimly moved when he asked that his house might be kept from the power of darkness and the ravening wolves of sin, kept in unbroken purity and peace, holy and undefiled. The potent sincerity of his love came upon them. They believed with his faith; ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... between huge space armadas were but skirmishes in the galactic war, as the invincible aliens savagely advanced and the Earth team hurled bolt after bolt of pure ravening energy—until it appeared that the universe itself might end in one final flare of furious ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... shall see it. The Plague will come and come swiftly, but it shall not touch thee; many shall die in their sins; thou shalt live on with thine. A brute thou art, and with brutes thou shalt herd; thou shalt howl as a ravening wolf, and as such men shall hunt thee from their doors. Thou shalt seek death, even as Cain sought and found it not, because of the mark of the Lord. Thou art damned, thrice damned; thy speech shall go from thee, thy sight fail thee, ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... discover the man in whom Margaret took such an interest. As soon as they saw Mr. Thornton, they set up a yell,—to call it not human is nothing,—it was as the demoniac desire of some terrible wild beast for the food that is withheld from his ravening. Even he drew hack for a moment, dismayed at the intensity ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... with those dear mothers who have been made the recipients of so large a blessing—that of seeing the precious lambs of the flock gathered into the fold of the Good Shepherd. Oh, may the prayer of faith ever encircle them in this only safe retreat from the ravening wolves and the hungry ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... was now full of ravening passengers. And as Elkhart with infinite shyness approached, the ravening passengers formed in files in the corridors, and their dignity was jerked about by the speed of the icy train, and they waited and waited, like mendicants at the kitchen entrance of a big restaurant. And ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... fact must be kept in view always. Once lost sight of, and trade competition substituted for competition in serving the interests of the sick, medical and pharmacal practice will become an ignoble scrabble for wealth, in which the sick become victims of avarice and greed. Better set free a pack of ravening wolves in a community than to change the end of medical practice to a commercial one, for physicians and pharmacists would soon degenerate into quacks and charlatans, and take shameful advantage of ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen

... hope to do so in all yonder chaos? And how! oh, how! could an army—in full retreat—leaving women and wounded soldiers to the mercy of a ravening foe—compel them to remain in the city it was itself evacuating?" A sweet and melodious dignity was in all the questions, but eyes shone, brows arched, lips hung apart and bonnet-feathers and hat-feathers, capes and flounces, ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... in the tableau described. The buzzards, obedient to their customary habit—not nocturnal—take departure from the spot, and wing their way to their usual roosting place. Different do the coyotes. These stay. Night is the time best suited to their ravening instincts. The darkness may give them a better opportunity to assail that thing of spherical shape, which by shouts, and scowling glances, has so ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... battle must have braced himself for the coming conflict, knowing all that was imported by that terrible name. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, the galleon lay becalmed in the middle of furious and ravening foes, the succour promised by Doria was ten miles away; they saw no movement which indicated help, and the odds against them were heavy indeed. But all the nervousness was not on one side, for the Galleon ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... except for the dead, and the misery of the dog moved her—his restlessness, his whining, the channels that tears had worn under his faithful eyes. She would have liked to take him up in her arms and comfort him; but once when her pity moved her to attempt it, the dog ran at her ravening. The husband cried out: 'Has he hurt you, my Love?' and was for stringing him up. But some compunction stirred in her, and she saved him from the rope, though she made no more attempts ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... in the night by the ravening of a pack of wolves at the carcass of the slain moose, which lay within twenty rods of the snow camp. They were growling and snapping as they tore the meat from the bones. Solomon rose ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... o' millinery, an' any little attention you can show me will be gratefully received—gratefully. I don't mind admitting to you, young man, for you look pure and uncorrupted, that I am terribly afraid of men. They are wicked, heartless creatures. I feel that I might more safely trust myself with ravening wolves than with men in general, but you are different. You ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... hunt to-day The book-worm, ravening beast of prey! Produced by parent Earth, at odds (As Fame reports it) with the gods. Him frantic Hunger wildly drives Against a thousand authors' lives: Through all the fields of Wit he flies; Dreadful his head with clustering eyes, With horns ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... thieves"), and more completely escape the pangs of conscience, than under the surveillance of village life. In a hundred ways there are increased opportunities for doing evil with impunity. [Footnote: Cf. E. A. Ross, Sin and Society, pp. 32: "The popular symbol for the criminal is a ravening wolf; but alas, few latter day crimes can be dramatized with a wolf and a lamb as the cast! Your up-to-date criminal presses the button of a social mechanism, and at the other end of the land or the year innocent lives are snuffed out. As society grows complex, it can be harmed in more ways. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... Cork, on the beautiful Blackwater. The other notable Undertakers were the Hides, Butchers, Wirths, Berklys, Trenchards, Thorntons, Bourchers, Billingsleys, &c., &c. Some of these grants, especially Raleigh's, fell in the next reign into the ravening maw of Richard Boyle, the so-called "great Earl of Cork"—probably the most pious hypocrite to be found in the long roll of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... said, "to the thieves and outlaws of these woods, when I supposed such banditti to belong to their bands; I might as justly have confounded the foxes of these brakes with the ravening wolves of France. Tell me, dogs—is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at? Is it too much that two Saxons, myself and the noble Athelstane, should hold land in the country which was once the patrimony of our race?—Put us then to death, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... repulsion is lost in astonishment and delight at the marvellous fidelity with which the sculptor has rendered these links in the great chain of animal life. Their (as we call it) savage eagerness, their almost blind rage for their appointed food, the tenacity with which they clutch and the ravening anxiety (caused by the dread of losing their prey) with which they tear the flesh of their victims, is portrayed to the life. We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip—death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... you have conceived that fire! You have not, as a Yankee would say, the most distant conception of the small end of a notion of what it was! A hundred brawny arms, accustomed to wield the broad axe, had lent their aid to rear the mighty pile and feed the ravening flame. ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... and complains bitterly of the ecclesiastical innovations then in vogue. His accusation is no less forcible, though less well known, than Laud's Defence in his Star Chamber speech; and if he did call the bishops "limbs of the Beast," "ravening wolves," and so forth, the language of Laud's party against the Puritans was not one whit more refined. So convinced was Burton of the justice of his cause, that he declared that all the time he stood in the pillory he thought himself "in heaven, and in a state of glory and triumph if any such ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer



Words linked to "Ravening" :   acquisitive, gluttonous, aggressive, vulturine



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