"Avid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preliminary work of approaching these facts it will be well to explain how it can be that so wide and serious an error should have been made by practically all men. The reason is simply that they were men. They were males, avid saw ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... him with this good humour the troubles of his life, Paul recalled the tirade of Felicia that day when Bohemians had been mentioned, and all that she had said to Jenkins of their lofty courage, avid of privations and trials. He thought also of Aline's passion for her beloved Paris, of which he himself was only acquainted, for his part, with the unwholesome eccentricities, while the great city hid in its recesses so many unknown ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... visionary superstition, an eloquence and energy that mastered all he approached, a blind enthusiasm that mastered himself; luxury and abstinence, sternness and susceptibility, pride to the great, humility to the low; the most devoted patriotism and the most avid desire of personal power. As few men undertake great and desperate designs without strong animal spirits, so it may be observed, that with most who have risen to eminence over the herd, there is an aptness, at times, to ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... took Elizabeth's letters from his pocket and read them, to get, if possible, some new light on her character, it was Clara's face that his eyes sought, as he glanced over the top of the sheet. Ah, Florian, with one girl's love-letter in your hands, and the face of another held in that avid gaze, can you be the bashful banker-bachelor who could not discuss the new style of ladies' figures with Mrs. Hunter! And as we thus moralize, the train sweeps on and on, and into Bellevale, where Judge Blodgett waits upon the platform ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... of the first heavy snow neither Paul nor Mary ventured out to school, but Ham's avid hunger for education lost no coveted day of the term. When his morning work was ended, wrapped in patched mackinaw and traveling on snowshoes, he made the trip across the white slopes, where only the pines were green, and came back ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... night before, and afterward to see the road-houses, whose dancing is so painfully proper early in the evening. Polly Roberts had come into the most notorious of them at eleven, chaperoning a party, which included Aileen Lawton, a girl as restless and avid of excitement as herself. Rex Roberts and several other young men had been in attendance, and Polly had begged Ruyler to stay on and let his wife ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... hungrily without ceremony, wiping their fingers on the towel she had spread for a cloth. As they munched they swapped their news—his failure at selling the ledge, her success in "The Zingara." He listened to that with avid attention. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... him often and had liked his hearty ways, his gay spirits, and his fine upstanding figure, but he had been as one who passed by with salutations. Now, suddenly, she was conscious that he was a man to be desired. She saw his wistful eyes, his avid lips, his great shoulders. The woman in her awoke to a knowledge of her needs. Upon such a shoulder might a woman weep, from such eyes might a woman gather dreams; to allay such torment as his might a woman give all she had to give. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... word now. "Actually, any one of them would possibly do, but we have a head start with Esperanto. Some years ago both Jack and I became avid Esperantists, being naive enough in those days to think an international language would ultimately solve all man's problems. And both Homer and Isobel seem to have a working knowledge of ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... quiet trance of delight; she had never spoken a word since she had first found a chink in the awning, but had watched with avid eyes the moving panorama of houses, gardens, trees, flowers, carriages, horses, passengers, nursemaids, perambulators, and children. It was all a perfect feast to the long-imprisoned eyes, and the more charming from the dreamy silence ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his brusque deposition on the telegraph table—by carrying him tenderly to the buffet; and there—to the impolitely over-obvious amusement of the buffetiere—purchasing cream without stint for the allaying of his famishings. To his feasting the Shah de Perse went with the avid energy begotten of his bag-compelled long fast. Dipping his little red tongue deep into the saucer, he lapped with a vigour that all cream-splattered his little black nose. Yet his admirable little cat manners were ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... readiness to adopt and assimilate the positive elements of a movement which was essentially destructive. In this respect they displayed a remarkable degree of open-mindedness and receptivity. They showed themselves avid of every contribution which they could glean from any source to the work of national reorganization, and even in Teutonized Bolshevism they apparently found helpful hints of timely innovations. One may safely hazard the prediction that these adaptations, however little they may ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... his endeavors. And if you ask me, after I have colored a colorless statement, to bias an unbiased one, I shall refuse. I am not taking sides. Each of them was following his own likings—not the worst of rules for a growing and avid organism. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... is the ponderous formality that sometimes obtains. The teacher solemnly calls the roll, although she can see at a glance that there are no absentees. This is exceedingly irksome to wide-awake boys and girls who are avid for variety. The same monotonous calling of the roll day after day with no semblance of variation induces in them a sort of mental dyspepsia for which they seek an antidote in what the teacher denominates disorder. This so-called disorder betokens ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... weeks I absorbed "material" at every pore, careless of other duties, thinking only of this world, avid for the truth, yet selecting my facts as every artist must, until, at last, measurably content I announced my intention to return to the railway. "We have tickets to Seattle," I said to Stouch, "and we must ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... it is the most honourable of reasons. You have done chivalrously. In this, at least, you have done that which would be not unworthy of Perion de la Foret." A woman never avid for strained subtleties, it may be that she never understood, quite, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... forlorn creature drew nearer, until I put out a cautious hand and stroked his ears. He dodged affrightedly, but presently crept back again. Soon his head was against my knee, and he was devouring my hand with avid caresses. Some time, before his abandonment on the island, he had been a well-brought-up and petted animal. Months or years of wild life had estranged him from humanity, yet at the human touch the old ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... to teach the girl English without forcing it upon her as a task. She varied the instruction with lessons in sewing and deportment, nor once did she let Meriem guess that it was not all play. Nor was this difficult, since the girl was avid to learn. Then there were pretty dresses to be made to take the place of the single leopard skin and in this she found the child as responsive and enthusiastic as any civilized miss of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Avid for sensation, he peoples the remoteness of forest and mountain with malign and destructive creatures, whence has grown up an extensive and astonishing literature of snake ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... course, of Billy, who was in her confidence—the whole business became more and more puzzling. Caroline, her susceptibility to vicarious distress being augmented by the sensitiveness of her own emotional state, yearned and prayed over her alternately. Betty, avid of excitement, spent her days in the pleasurable anticipation of a dramatic bankruptcy. It was on Dick, however, that the actual strain came. He saw Nancy growing paler and more ethereal each day, on her feet from morning till night manipulating the affairs of an enterprise that seemed to be ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... convincing glance. I saw instead with hot, hot eyes the old castle at home, the green fields about the brook, and the grey hills rising from them; and the terrace, and Kit coming to meet us, Kit with white face and parted lips and avid eyes that questioned us! And we with no comfort to give her, no lover to ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... here!" muttered the telephone girl, and watched his approach, with its faint limp, over the top of her desk. Behind, from his cage, the elevator man was staring with avid interest. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... tingling with modernity. Its stores, its music-halls, its "movie" theatres, and its hotels glitter with the nervous intensity of a spirit avid of ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... front of us, standing on the edge of the gutter, was a little, ancient, distinguished dame, who had been watching the scene with quick, avid eyes. She turned her fierce, scornful face up to the Colonel, and said, "Yes, sir! You are right. It's a show, just a show, for the townsmen. Yet I remember that, thirty years ago, the fathers of these spiritless curs ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... of the alfalfa crops, he spent the moments otherwise lost in carving pebbles he found about him with rare gestures and profiles, either of his own face or body which he knew well, or the grace of other bodies and faces he had seen. He was always the young eye on things, an avid eye sure of the wonder about to escape from every living thing where light or shadow fell upon them gently. He was a sure, unquestionable, and in this sense a perfect poet, and possessed the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... few niggardly thousands from them, and handsome bequests usually go to their younger children; yet the bulk of the big gambler's treasure passes intact to one who will most probably guard with avid custody the alleged ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... the dice rattled in the boxes; those who stood around pressed closer round the gamesters; hot, avid faces, covered with sweat and grime, peered ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and revolutions, we might say that individual tyranny, which was weak and therefore easily overthrown, has been replaced by collective tyrannies, which are very strong and difficult to destroy. To a people avid of equality and habituated to hold its Governments responsible for every event individual tyranny seemed insupportable, while a collective tyranny is readily endured, although ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... always draws screams of laughter from the spectators. The whole ends with a vivid but very comic representation of the avid consumption ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... all about. A little later, for I was a slow learner, I began to practise the same method with the sense of smell, and still later with the sense of taste. I said to myself, "I will no longer permit the avid and eager eye to steal away my whole attention. I will learn to enjoy more completely all the varied ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... impatient retort and strolled to a table by the fire where Sybil and her father were sipping long tumblers of hot milk, while Geoff gulped home-made lemonade with avid enjoyment. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... she was avid of sympathy, did not crave an expression of it from her husband—for her temperament was of the morbid kind that is happiest when it is most miserable. Her heart had fed upon the sustenance of her brain until ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... stones out of the palms of their hands. The stones glittered green and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an insatiable hunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell of the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I have seen into other people's hells also, and saw in one an infernal Peter, who had a black face and white lips, and who weighed on a curious double scales not only the evil ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... plush chairs were wrenched out for weapons, blood ran over the parquet floor of the drawing room and the steps of the stairs, and people with pierced sides and broken heads fell down into the dirt near the street entrance, to the feral, avid delight of Jennka, who, with burning eyes, with happy laughter, went into the thickest of the melee, slapped herself on the hips, swore and sicked them on, while her mates were squealing from fear and hiding ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... surmisings among professors, are tokens of a carnal mind, injurious to spiritual peace, and abominable to God. The envious, discontented, and malicious, are the devil's working tools. If such die unsubdued by divine grace, they plunge themselves into the bottomless pit. True wisdom avid strife and contention, is moderate in doubtful opinions, patient and cautious in ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... burning things, avid like beasts of prey. But the restored apricot-colored pillars are not afraid of their impending fury—fury of a beast baffled by a tricky little woman, almost it seems to me; and still less afraid are the white pillars, and the brilliant paintings ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens |
