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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



... hail; An inmate in the casual shed, On transient pity's bounty fed, Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale! Beasts of the forest have their savage homes, But He, who should imperial purple wear, Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head! His wretched refuge, dark despair, While ravening wrongs and woes pursue, And distant far the faithful few ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... absolutely black in its hideous agony as jealousy. The other mental pains of this life may last longer, but there is none that cuts down deeper, that possesses such a ravening tooth, while ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... and lips of Melicent, that I have loved so long, I do not hunger for you now. Yet, as a dying man, I cry to the clean soul of Melicent—the only adversary that in all my lifetime I who was once Demetrios could never conquer. A ravening beast was I, and as a beast I raged to see you so unlike me. And now, a dying beast, I cry to you, but not for love, since that is overpast. I cry for pity that I have not earned, for pardon which I have not merited. Conquered and impotent, I cry to you, O soul of Melicent, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... carrying the three kingdoms captive at his feet in a triumphal car driven by the devil over the body of liberty, and the decapitated Charles I. The state of the people is emblematized by a bird flying from its cage to be devoured by a hawk; and sheep breaking from the fold to be set on by ravening wolves. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... 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 tree bring forth good fruit. Every ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong

... vapor. Half the Niccola's port broadside plunged toward the 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 in ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... dark waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed, have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth, and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... sir, but first I must beg you to take charge of my clothes for me, for I intend to leave them with you. Why I have these fits of yawning I cannot tell: maybe they are sent as a punishment for my misdeeds; but, whatever the reason, the facts are that when I have yawned three times I become a ravening wolf and fly at men's throats." As he finished speaking he yawned a second time and howled again as before. The Innkeeper, believing every word he said, and terrified at the prospect of being confronted with a wolf, got up hastily and started to run indoors; but the Thief caught ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... 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 ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... 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 ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... slave, but an impossibility to do aught except gratify the resistless craving at any and every cost. All will-power has gone, all moral resistance has departed, and in its place is a gnawing, clamorous, ravening desire. The vitiated body, full of indescribable and mysterious pain, the still more tortured mind, sinking under a burden of remorse, guilt, fear, and awful imagery, both unite in one desperate, incessant demand ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... seemed to have no windows, and the roar of the New York street outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive. The walls were hung with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor was spread with rugs. With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on a kind of dais, sat a woman—a woman whose eyes sought his in a steady regard which flashed a thrill through his whole body ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... even the 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 cannot be stopped ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll

... that the fire Bakes every blemish out, and sweats away Each useless humour, or that the heat unlocks New passages and secret pores, whereby Their life-juice to the tender blades may win; Or that it hardens more and helps to bind The gaping veins, lest penetrating showers, Or fierce sun's ravening might, or searching blast Of the keen north should sear them. Well, I wot, He serves the fields who with his harrow breaks The sluggish clods, and hurdles osier-twined Hales o'er them; from the far Olympian height Him golden Ceres not in vain regards; And he, who having ploughed the fallow plain ...
— The Georgics • Virgil

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

... his hand if he were bold enough to grasp them. Prisoners of war suffered horrible tortures, being hung up by their feet and hands in the hope that their friends would ransom them the sooner. Villages were burned down, and wolves howled near the haunts of men, seeking food to appease their ravening hunger. It was said that fierce beasts gnawed through the walls of houses and devoured little children in their cradles. Italy was rent by a conflict which divided one province from another, and even placed inhabitants of the same town on opposite sides and ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... you all full? there comes a ravening kite, That both at quick, at dead, at all will smite. He shall, he must; ay, and by'r Lady, may Command me to give over holiday, And set wide open what you would ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... Sir, what are you talking about, and what a resolution you are going to take. Just cast a glance on the ins and outs of justice, look at the number of appeals, of stages of jurisdiction; how many embarrassing procedures; how many ravening wolves through whose claws you will have to pass; serjeants, solicitors, counsel, registrars, substitutes, recorders, judges and their clerks. There is not one of these who, for the merest trifle, couldn't knock over the best case in the ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere

... God, A staff 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 ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... through either throat From the hot horror of its northern nest That double-headed pest; So, triple-crowned with fear and fraud and shame, He of whom treason came, The herdsman of the Gadarean swine; So all his ravening kine, Made fat with poisonous pasture; so not we, Mother, beholding thee. Make answer, O the crown of all our slain, Ye that were one, being twain, Twain brethren, twin-born to the second birth, Chosen out of all our earth To be the prophesying stars that say How hard is night on day, Stars in ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Thracians' coming. So when they saw Argo being rowed near the island, straightway crowding in multitude from the gates of Myrine and clad in their harness of war, they poured forth to the beach like ravening Thyiades: for they deemed that the Thracians were come; and with them Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, donned her father's harness. And they streamed down speechless with dismay; such fear ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... know dass not a pullite question!" But she was ravening for its answer, and I said I had bought it for twenty-five cents. They laughed with delight. Yet, when I told Sidney she might have it, her thanks were but two words, which her lips seemed to drop unconsciously while ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable

... his excitement. The 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 ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... "Snake-in-the-grass," because he secretes himself in shady places, waiting his opportunity to sting without your knowing how or by whom it was done. In fine, he has been named a "Hypocrite," who comes to you in "sheep's clothing," but is in truth a "ravening wolf." ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... be believed that the statesman whose upright patriotism, moderation, and nobleness of purpose thus breathed through every word spoken by him in public or whispered to friends was already held up by a herd of ravening slanderers to obloquy as a traitor and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... would say, "I hate to call your friends names, but really he's a perfect scamp, and underneath all his fine manners he is no better than a wolf ravening for ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... sports of the woods and waters, even a Puritan could find occasional and proper diversion without entering into frivolous and sinful amusement. The wolf, most hated and most destructive of all the beasts of the woods, a "ravening runnagadore," was a proper prey. Wolves were caught in pits, in log pens, in traps; they were also hooked on mackerel hooks bound in an ugly bunch and dipped in tallow, to which they were toled by dead carcasses. The swamps were "beat ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... 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. Sometimes show, that ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Chafis One and Two were asleep at the moment, dreaming wistful dreams of conical Ciriimian cities spearing up to a soft and plum-colored sky. The Zid raged into their communal rest cell, smashed them down from their gimbaled sleeping perches and, with the ravening blood-hunger of its kind, devoured them before they could wake enough ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee

... them much happier; though, according to the theory of us civilized folks, it ought to. They lead an easy life,—easy, in a savage way; though breaking up dog-fights does keep them pretty tolerably busy. To-day (Aug. 7) we had a perfect dog-war. Three or four of the ravening, howling curs assaulted Guard under the very flap of our tent. Donovan caught up a musket, and, running out, pinned one of them down with the bayonet, and held him for some seconds. On letting him up, the dog ran off howling, with the blood streaming out of him. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... thou senceless false lewd spirit, maister of devils, miserable creature, tempter of men, deceaver of bad angels, captaine of heretiques, father of lyes, fatuous bestial ninnie, drunkard, infernal theefe, wicked serpent, ravening woolfe, leane hunger-bitten impure sow, seely beast, truculent beast, cruel beast, bloody beast, beast of all blasts, the most bestiall acherontall spirit, smoakie spirit, Tartareus spirit!"[4] Whether this objurgation terminates from loss of breath on the ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... 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 a minute. No creature ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... thee our tribes, we fear for thee and these who are with thee, for their name is legion and they are various in form and fashion, figure and favour. Some of us are heads sans bodies and others bodies sans heads, and others again are in the likeness of wild beasts and ravening lions. However, if this be thy will, there is no help but we first show thee those of us who are like unto wild beasts. But, O our lord, what wouldst thou of us at this present?" Quoth Hasan, "I would have you carry me forthwith to the city of Baghdad, me and my wife ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... a deliberate absence of gusto which would have simply astounded any understanding observer who could have seen it. The other seven dogs were blissfully unconscious of anything under heaven outside their own ravening lust of flesh. In a temperature well below zero, the lure of fresh-killed meat at the end of fourteen hundred miles of solid pulling, and five or six weeks of fish rations, is a force the strength of which cannot easily be conceived by livers of the sheltered ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... "Eat, ravening wolf, so that I may bring you alive to the lord of Spychow." Such were the words of inducement to stimulate Zygfried's appetite. At first Zygfried resolved to starve himself to death; but when be heard the announcement that in such case Hlawa ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... all too late. Even if he had yielded in his ravening frenzy—for his beard was like a mad dog's jowl—even if he would have owned that for the first time in his life he had found his master, it was ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... youth. As we watch and learn from the terrible tragedy of nature, as we realize more and more the baseness and depravity of human life, our faith becomes stronger that beauty, truth, righteousness, are eternal and cannot be born only that they may perish; that man is not "a wild and ravening beast held in check only by the bonds of civilization," but is a divine and immortal being. Our vision gradually opens and we learn more clearly that all which we once took for pleasure and for pain are unreal, visionary ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... he from glory sprang and burned aloud, 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 Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... intolerable. "Yes—there I am! I was really at the bottom of it," she declared; "I don't know what possessed me—but I planned for him, I goaded him on." With which, however, the next moment, she took herself up. "Or, rather, I DO know what possessed me—for wasn't he beset with ravening women, right and left, and didn't he, quite pathetically, appeal for protection, didn't he, quite charmingly, show one how he needed and desired it? Maggie," she thus lucidly continued, "couldn't, with a new life of her own, give herself up to doing ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... Morel! 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 Stripes ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... and heady in her enjoyment. It exhilarated the schoolmaster, and he lavished stick after stick on the ravening flames. The maple hardened into coals brighter than its own panoply of autumn; the delicate bark of the birch flared ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... horrible monster, who is blackened with every crime at which humanity shudders, who had no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, no gleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy picture of his ravening life, was beloved and worshipped as few men have been since the world has stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuine unpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his edifying death,—this monkish vampire breathing his last with his ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... scorched by the sun; also, as 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 ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... fireside liberty should be by every possible means extirpated; therefore did Christ institute shepherds to drive his wandering sheep back into the fold of the true Church; thus only can we guard the lambs against the ravening wolves, and prevent their being carried away from the flock of Christ to the flock of Belial. Liberty of religion, or of conscience, as they call it, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... power can any man endure to dwell with it. History is a nightmare of horrors; we relish it, because we love pictures, and because all that man has suffered is to man rich in interest. But make real to yourself the vision of every blood-stained page—stand in the presence of the ravening conqueror, the savage tyrant—tread the stones of the dungeon and of the torture-room—feel the fire of the stake—hear the cries of that multitude which no man can number, the victims of calamity, of oppression, of fierce injustice in its myriad forms, in every land, in every age—and what ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... you let that ravening beast trot by your side?' asked Constance. She was looking more than ever like ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... outcry 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 with haughty gesture ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... watch of the night is the one before the dawn, and relief is often nearest us when we least expect it. All this gloomy nonsense was suddenly dispelled, and the fact that really and truly, and behind this philosophical arras, we were all inwardly ravening for stories was most satisfactorily established by the incontinent manner in which we flung ourselves into the arms of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, to whom we could almost have raised a statue in the market-place for ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... the Molimo answered, rubbing his chin, "for in such matters even a Matabele generally keeps faith, and you may remember he promised you life for life. However, they are here ravening like lions round the walls, and that is why we carried you up to the top of the hill, that you might ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... what I 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, ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various

... compares Himself to a poor outcast and exile amid these forests of Gilead: "Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion."[49] But having been exalted on the cross as a suffering Saviour, He is now exalted on the throne as a glorious King. "God hath highly EXALTED Him;"[50]—angels exalt Him—seraphs adore Him—saints ...
— The Cities of Refuge: or, The Name of Jesus - A Sunday book for the young • John Ross Macduff

... the 'sheets of fire'; and they that, at intervals almost more overwhelming, sink back into darkness and silence. Nor yet is even this all; but, as those incessant references to wolf and tiger made us see humanity 'reeling back into the beast' and ravening against itself, so in the storm we seem to see Nature herself convulsed by the same horrible passions; ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... 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

... though these words suddenly opened a whole new world around me—a world I had heard about for years, but never entered. And the tone in which he had used the word "capitalist!" I had almost to glance around to make sure that there were no ravening ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... 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 ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... what it is to be half-starved for many days—to feel that all my thoughts and intellectual exertions, hour by hour, were all becoming centered on one subject—how to get something to eat. I felt what it was to be wolfish and even ravening; and I noted, step by step, in myself, how a strange sagacity grew within me—an art of detecting food. It was during the American war, and there were thousands of us pitifully starved. When we came near some log hut I began at once to surmise, if I saw a flour sack lying about, that there was a ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it lying. Shelley ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... an instant he was on his back and the ravening pack were about him in a ring. In that lurid firelight their fangs gleamed like ivory as they flashed, here and there, over his body and throat, and their fierce eyes blazed with pale-blue fire,—the mark and sign of the blood madness of the ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... went together one green way Till April dying made free the world for May; And on his guide suddenly Love's face turned, And in his blind eyes burned Hard light and heat of laughter; and like flame That opens in a mountain's ravening mouth To blear and sear the sunlight from the south, His mute mouth opened, and his first word came: 'Knowest thou me now by name?' And all his stature waxed immeasurable, As of one shadowing heaven ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... next few days 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 ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... hunger very deep, and ravening; the very body's body crying out with a hunger more frightening, more profound than stomach or throat or even the mind; redder than death, ...
— Look! We Have Come Through! • D. H. Lawrence

... hanging rock to sleep: 15 And with him thousand phantoms join'd, Who prompt to deeds accursed the mind: And those, the fiends, who, near allied, O'er Nature's wounds, and wrecks, preside; Whilst Vengeance, in the lurid air, 20 Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare: On whom that ravening[15] brood of Fate, Who lap the blood of sorrow, wait: Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see, And look not madly ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... 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 to ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... behalf of these poor waifs and have them conveyed to some place of safety; or he would entrust them to the care of fellow-prisoners also left behind on account of old age; in no case must they be left to ravening dogs and wolves. In this way he won the goodwill not only of those who heard tell of these doings but of the prisoners themselves. And whenever he brought over a city to his side, he set the citizens free from the harsher service of a bondsman to his lord, imposing the gentler obedience ...
— Agesilaus • Xenophon

... but scant help, I am not far off. Even here, where I stand, there is need of aid, and nowhere is a force or a chosen band of warriors ready for battle wanted more. Already the hard edges and the spear-points have cleft my shield in splinters, and the ravening steel has rent and devoured its portions bit by bit in the battle. The first of these things testifies to and avows itself. Seeing is better than telling, eyesight faithfuller than hearing. For of the broken ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... 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 should ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... pleasure) 829. Adj. desirous; desiring &c. v.; inclined &c. (willing) 602; partial to; fain, wishful, optative[obs3]; anxious, wistful, curious; at a loss for, sedulous, solicitous. craving, hungry, sharp-set, peckish[obs3], ravening, with an empty stomach, esurient[obs3], lickerish[obs3], thirsty, athirst, parched with thirst, pinched with hunger, famished, dry, drouthy[obs3]; hungry as a hunter, hungry as a hawk, hungry as a horse, hungry as a church mouse, hungry ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... it up the far side and crashing into the heavily barred oak doors of the great mills. A crushing hail of bullets fell upon them, and their leaders went down; but the mass wavered not. Those within the buildings knew that they would become carrion in the maws of the ravening wolves outside, and fought with a courage fed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... he studied through his almost opaque defenses that indescribably ravening fireball, that esuriently rapacious monstrosity which might very well have come from the deepest pit of the hottest hell of mythology, felt strongly inclined to agree with Carlowitz. It didn't seem possible that anything could get any worse than that ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... 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 ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... them, And smoothed his yellow foam, And gently rocked the cradle That bore the fate of Rome. The ravening she-wolf knew them, And licked them o'er and o'er, And gave them of her own fierce milk, Rich with raw flesh and gore. Twenty winters, twenty springs, Since then have rolled away; And to-day the dead are living: The ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of two brothers, sons of the same father, who grew up in the same home and were deeply attached to each other. It happened that the older wandered away and fell into the power of an evil magician, who changed him into a ravening wolf. The younger mourned his loss, and treasured in his heart the image of the brother as he had been in the days before the wicked spell fell upon him. Impelled by his longing, he at last went out into the world to find his brother, and if possible to redeem him. ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler

... prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... that, 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 an ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... over and behind it all ran the tumult of the elements; behind it the sea, where it picked up on the Bight out there beyond our eyes; above it the wind, scouring the channels of the crowded roofs and flinging out to meet the waters, like a ravening and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Edinburgh. On the 17th, he wrote to Clarinda: "Your hopes, your fears, your cares, my love, are mine; so don't mind them. I will take you in my hand through the dreary wilds of this world, and scare away the ravening bird or beast that would annoy you." Again, on the 21st: "Will you open, with satisfaction and delight, a letter from a man who loves you, who has loved you, and who will love you, to death, through death, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... my child. And the all-merciful God was gracious unto us, and caused us often and gladly to pray, for we had a steadfast hope, believing that the cross we had seen in the heavens would now soon pass away from us, and that the ravening wolf would receive his reward when the honourable high court had read through the acta, and should come to the excellent defensio which Dom. Syndicus had constructed for my child. Wherefore I began to be of good cheer again, especially when ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... many wounds, they reached the end of the ledge and clambered to the top. Here but three or four of the giant crustaceans tried to follow them. These were easily speared from above, and hurled back disabled among their ravening kin. And the whole swarm, apparently forgetting their intended victims as soon as they were out of reach, fell to fighting hideously among themselves over the convulsed bodies of these wounded. The lower ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... springs, and storms 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 ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... 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 ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... them into the desolation where they now seemed to be content to grind out treasure for their masters, and to starve when those masters did not find it profitable to employ them. It was as if a flock of foolish sheep placed themselves under the protection of a pack of ravening wolves. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... mouthful to each, yet the poor fellows devoured it with the greed of ravening wolves, and carefully licked their fingers when it was done. The little cabin-boy had three portions allotted to him, because Charlie Brooke and Dick Darvall added their allowance to his without allowing him to be aware ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... the gnarled branches of the willow—up into which Stern had fairly flung her, and where he had himself clambered with the beasts ravening at his legs—the two sole survivors of the human race watched the glowering eyes ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... for my wits to grapple with. I leave 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 ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Closed on the prey, and for one woman's sake Troy trodden by the Argive monster lies— The foal, the shielded band that leapt the wall, What time with autumn sank the Pleiades. Yea, o'er the fencing wall a lion sprang Ravening, and lapped his ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... down and hear," said Ridley. "Featherstone cannot go till he has spoken with you, and he ought to depart betimes, lest the Gilsland folk and all the rest of them be ravening ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

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

... girls are leaping and bounding and careering into their lusty life. All manner of novel temptations beset them,—perils by night and perils by day,—perils in the house and by the way. Their fierce and hungry young souls, rioting in awakening consciousness, ravening for pleasure, strong and tumultuous, snatch eagerly at every bait. They want then a mother able to curb, and guide, and rule them; and only a mother who commands their respect can do this. Let them see her sought for her social worth,—let them see that she is familiar with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... the wise-wife, and took the cup again; Night-long had she brewed that witch-drink and laboured not in vain. For therein was the creeping venom, and hearts of things that prey On the hidden lives of ocean, and never look on day; And the heart of the ravening wood-wolf and the hunger-blinded beast And the spent slaked heart of the wild-fire the guileful cup increased: But huge words of ancient evil about its rim were scored, The curse and the eyeless craving of ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... 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 squadrons would be the brightest ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... scene on board the Andromeda, enabled him to construct a picture of events as they were. And his blood boiled when he thought of Iris, snatched many times from death, only to face it once more in the ravening ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... which wolf will make the first dash, and how many the cow will put out of business before she goes under herself. Don't be offended if I say that you look more capable of portraying woolly white lambs at play than ravening wolves measuring the strength of their quarry. I must confess I was looking for the—er ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... the Hunger come. It began as a little gnawing doubt and disappointment. It grew to a devastating, ravening starvation of the heart, for sign or sight or word of Io Welland. It drove him out of his withered seclusion, to seek Miss Van Arsdale, in the hope of hearing Io's name spoken. But Miss Van Arsdale scarcely referred to Io. She watched Banneker ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... earth fell, Grendel departed To visit the lofty hall, now that the warlike Danes After the gladsome feast nightly slept in it. A fair troop of warrior-thanes guarding it found he; Heedlessly sleeping, they recked not of sorrow. The demon of evil, the grim wight unholy, With his fierce ravening, greedily grasped them, Seized in their slumbering thirty right manly thanes; Thence he withdrew again, proud of his lifeless prey, Home to his hiding-place, bearing his booty, In peace to ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... this field. Fain would I know thee safe and well, though lost To us; fain therefore send thee hence, in peace To seek thy father, not seek single fights In vain;—but who can keep the lion's cub From ravening, and who govern Rustum's son? Go, I will grant thee what thy heart desires." So said he, and dropp'd Sohrab's hand, and left His bed, and the warm rugs whereon he lay; And o'er his chilly limbs his woollen coat ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... the 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 college ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... path, outyelling the bearded aguaratos in the trees; and I stand paralysed, my blood curdled in my veins. His huge, hairy arms are round me; his foul, hot breath is on my skin; he will tear my liver out with his great green teeth to satisfy his raging hunger. Ah, no, he cannot harm me! For every ravening beast, every cold-blooded, venomous thing, and even the frightful Curupita, half brute and half devil, that shared the forest with her, loved and worshipped Rima, and that mournful burden I carried, her ashes, was a talisman to save me. He has ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... things;[9] so that the hour of the time and the sweet season were occasion of good hope to me concerning that wild beast with the dappled skin. But not so that the sight which appeared to me of a lion did not give me fear. He seemed to be coming against me, with head high and with ravening hunger, so that it seemed that the air was affrighted at him. And a she-wolf, who with all cravings seemed laden in her meagreness, and already had made folk to live forlorn,—she caused me so much heaviness, with the fear that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... death's and truth's unlocking time, When far within the spirit's hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things— A bulk of silence in a mask of sound— When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth, and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place,—'twas then my heart, Deep in the ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... 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.

... two mice are closely followed by two sleek cats, who keep them well covered, and plainly await the time when Eve's amiable indiscretion shall assign them their natural prey. In the third tapestry the deed has been done, the apple had been eaten. The beasts are ravening in the background. Adam, already clad, is engaged in fastening a picturesque girdle of leaves around the unrepentant Eve,—for all the world like a modern husband fastening his wife's gown,—while she for the first time gathers up her long fair hair. Her attitude is ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... we that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears; Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn with our fears; Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky like a fleece; Then, when our dread was the greatest, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... narrow, locked gates. Never had I seen brutes so large and fierce; the mastiffs of Thibet were but as lap-dogs compared to them. They were red and black, smooth-coated and with a blood-hound head, and the moment they saw us they came ravening and leaping at the bars as an angry wave leaps ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard



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



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