Quotations and Authors:
I confess, when I went into arms at the beginning of this war, I never troubled myself to examine sides: I was glad to hear the drums beat for soldiers, as if I had been a mere Swiss, that had not cared which side went up or down, so I had my pay. I went as eagerly and blindly about my business, as the meanest wretch that ‘listed in the army; nor had I the least compassionate thought for the miseries of my native country, till after the fight at Edgehill. I had known as much, and perhaps more than most in the army, what it was to have an enemy ranging in the bowels of a kingdom; I had seen the most flourishing provinces of Germany reduced to perfect deserts, and the voracious Crabats, with inhuman barbarity, quenching the fires of the plundered villages with the blood of the inhabitants. Whether this had hardened me against the natural tenderness which I afterwards found return upon me, or not, I cannot tell; but I reflected upon myself afterwards with a great deal of trouble, for the unconcernedness of my temper at the approaching ruin of my native country.
Memoirs of a Cavalier Defoe, Daniel 1720
Secondly, that what is commonly called love, namely, the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh, is by no means that passion for which I here contend. This is indeed more properly hunger; and as no glutton is ashamed to apply the word love to his appetite, and to say he LOVES such and such dishes; so may the lover of this kind, with equal propriety, say, he HUNGERS after such and such women.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling Fielding, Henry 1749
Voracious in Fielding.
Let us suppose that nature has bestowed on the human race such profuse ABUNDANCE of all EXTERNAL conveniencies, that, without any uncertainty in the event, without any care or industry on our part, every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want, or luxurious imagination wish or desire. His natural beauty, we shall suppose, surpasses all acquired ornaments: the perpetual clemency of the seasons renders useless all clothes or covering: the raw herbage affords him the most delicious fare; the clear fountain, the richest beverage. No laborious occupation required: no tillage: no navigation. Music, poetry, and contemplation form his sole business: conversation, mirth, and friendship his sole amusement. It seems evident that, in such a happy state, every other social virtue would flourish, and receive tenfold increase; but the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of. For what purpose make apartition of goods, where every one has already more than enough? Why give rise to property, where there cannot possibly be any injury Why call this object MINE, when upon the seizing of it by another, I need but stretch out my hand to possess myself to what is equally valuable? Justice, in that case, being totally useless, would be an idle ceremonial, and could never possibly have place in the catalogue of virtues.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals Hume, David 1751
Pavement slippery, people sneezing,
Lords in ermine, beggars freezing ;
Titled gluttons dainties carving,
Genius in a arret starvin.
Lofty mansions, warm and spacious ;
Courtiers cringing and voracious ;
Misers scarce the wretched heeding ;
Gallant soldiers fighting, bleeding.Wives who laugh at passive spouses ;
Theatres, and meeting-houses ;
Balls, where simpering misses languish ;
Hospitals, and groans of anguish.
Arts and sciences bewailing ;
Commerce drooping, credit failing ;
Placemen mocking subjects loyal ;
-Separations, weddings royal.Authors who can’t earn a dinner ;
Many a subtle rogue a winner ;
Fugitives for shelter seeking ;
Misers hoarding, tradesmen breaking.
Taste and talents quite deserted ;
All the laws of truth perverted ;
Arrogance o’er merit soaring ;
Merit silently deploring
Ladies gambling night and morning ;
Fools the works of genius scorning ;
Ancient dames for girls mistaken ;
Youthful damsels quite forsaken.Some in luxury delighting ;
More in talking than in fighting ;
Lovers old, and beaux decrepid ;
Lordlings empty and insipid.
Poets, painters, and musicians ;
Lawyers, doctors, politicians :
Pamphlets, newspapers, and odes.
Seeking fame by different roads.Gallant souls with empty purses ;
Generals only fit for nurses ;
School-boys, smit with martial spirit,
Taking place of veteran merit.
Honest men who can t get places,
Knaves who show unblushing faces –Ruin hasten’d, peace retarded ;
The Poetical Works of Mary Robinson Robinson, Mary 1800
Candour spurn* d, and art rewarded.
…and there, amongst ruined bits of walls and rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept the day through. He had slept in the shadow of the mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle of the gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appearing like a tiny black speck in the blue, stooped, circling prudently with a stealthiness of flight
Nostromo Conrad, Joseph 1904
startling in a bird of that great size. The shadow of his pearly-white body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of rubbish within three yards of that man, lying as still as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck, craned his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied colouring, with an air of voracious anxiety towards the promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then, sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled himself to wait.
What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of
Ulysses Joyce, James 1920
amnesia?
Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat. Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of paper.
What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?
The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon
repletion.
Now had her glut of vengeance left her grey
Of blood, who in her entrails fiercely tore
To clutch and squeeze her snakes; herself the more
Devitalizing: red washer Auroral ray;
Desired if but to paint her pallid hue.
The passion for that young horizon red,
Which dowered her with the flags, the blazing fame,
Like dotage of the past-meridian dame
For some bright Sungod adolescent, swelled
Insatiate, to the voracious grew,
The glutton’s inward raveners bred;Till she, mankind’s most dreaded, most abhorred,
Poems Meredith, George 1909
Witless in her demands on Fortune, asked,
As by the weaving Fates impelled,
To have the thing most loathed, the iron lord,
Controller and chastiser, under Victory masked.