The Devouring Quotes

What benefits new books bring us! I would like a basket full of books telling the youth of images which fall from heaven for me every day. This desire is natural. This prodigy is easy. For, up there, in heaven, isn't paradise an immense library?

But it is not sufficient to receive; one must welcome. One must, say the pedagogue and the dietician in the same voice, 'assimilate.' In order to do that, we are advised not to read too fast and to be careful not to swallow too large a bite. We are told to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible, the better to solve them. Yes, chew well, drink a little at a time, savor poems line by line. All these precepts are well and good. But one precept orders them. One first needs a good desire to eat, drink and read. One must want to read a lot, read more, always read.

Thus, in the morning, before the books piled high on my table, to the god of reading, I say my prayer of the devouring reader: 'Give us this day our daily hunger . . .'" - Gaston Bachelard, "Introduction", The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, Pages 25-26 ~ Gaston Bachelard

No, I have to lure him out, like a will-o'-the-wisp, tease him deeper and deeper into the forest until he is lost and doomed. Without the forest or the doom - just the luring. Like a Venus flytrap that says I am a delicious flower come taste me and then snap! Devour. Without the devouring. Well, maybe a little devouring. ~ Laini Taylor

When darkness comes and eats the light,
bury your fears on sorry night.
Because in the winter's darkest hours,
comes the feasting of the Vours.
You cannot see it, the life they stole.
Your body's there, but not your soul. ~ Simon Holt

What you told me was that the love of beauty is like a sickness, as all the devouring love inside a person. I stood there right in front of you and ate one of the crayons you had handed me. For when you love you do not care. ~ Charlotte Sorel

Oh, yet come back, come back to me, beloved; for I repent me of my choice! Come back, and we will creep away together, to some dark and silent grave where the devouring army shall not find us; and we will lay us down there, locked in one another's arms, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep. ~ Voynich E. L. (Ethel Lillian 1864-1960

Freshman year. We made it. And with only one body possession and one accidental death to our names ~ Simon Holt

Your heart gives you your power, Regina. Follow it, fight with it, and you cannot be defeated ~ Simon Holt

What undermines my heart is the devouring force which lies hidden in the universe of nature and which creates nothing that does not destroy its neighbour and itself. And so I reel in fear, the energies of heaven and earth weaving around me. And all I see is an eternally devouring, eternally regurgitating monster. 21 ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Lusty blacksmiths and naughty princesses. Now that's scary ~ Simon Holt

Good.I need you to be scared.Very,very scared.And then you'll never be scared again. ~ Simon Holt

Time is the great doctor of your life. You have to respect the doctor. The devouring self is the patient. Listen to the doctor. ~ Ruben Papian

Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. How terrible is the doom of the wicked! The little kindling of God's wrath kills them. What shall the eternal burnings be? Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall abide with everlasting burnings? There is a land of thick darkness and despair where dwells the undying worm, which in its ceaseless folds does crush the spirits of the damned. There is a fire quickly burning, that dries up the very marrow of body and soul and yet destroys them not. There also is the pit that knows no bottom, the hopeless falling without a thought of ever coming to an end. There is a land where souls linger in eternal death and yet they never die - crushed, but not annihilated - broken, but not destroyed. Forever, forever, forever, is the ceaseless wave which rolls its fresh tide of fire upon a shore of agony, whose years are as countless as the sands of the sea. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Women, he would say, are not Muses. Muses are Muses. To confuse one with the other is to mistake the Devouring Void for the Seminal Light. Earthly Women and the Muses are ancient, sworn enemies. The battlefield is the Creative Male. On the one side is the encampment of Discordia, of Diana, of Venus located in his Heart and in his Groin. On the other is the Bastion of Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia and Urania, in his Brain and in his Mind. The Muses are tolerant and understanding of border raids, skirmishes, and harassing maneuvers. Throughout the history of the Male Light, there have been few painters, few writers, who have not had a She Who Must Be Accommodated. For some it was their mothers. For many their wives, their mistresses, their girlfriends. For many it was their daughters, a favourite waitress, a stripper, a whore. To the Muses, they are all one. Mother, whore, wife, daughter, stripper, waitress, mistress, girlfriend. ~ Dave Sim

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle. From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While" to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted. I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn't nearly so important; it comes in its own time. ~ Eudora Welty

In the National Geographic movie of my twisted mind, the lion had just leaped on the gazelle, pinned it to the ground and mounted it from behind. Apparently, the devouring could wait. I should point out that these little flights of fancy on my part often involved extremely improbable animal pairings. I blamed cartoons. ~ Delphine Dryden

The Swamp of Despond is that place set before the narrow gate where true and false pilgrims alike are assaulted by their own internal corruption and pollution. The dirt and scum that has attached itself to our hearts and minds is agitated and revealed by both the workings of a guilty conscience and the devouring avarice of the enemy of our souls.The ~ John Bunyan

What? Quinn's one of them? I just thought he was an a*shole! ~ Simon Holt

We want something desperately and we try to force the universe to give it up before it is ready. We want everything now. That is the devouring self. ~ Ruben Papian

If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who best promote life do not have life for their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal, something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife and failure and the devouring jaws of Time. ~ Bertrand Russell

My love for peanut butter is so deep that I can't look at a jar without devouring it! ~ Monica DiNatale

I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn't find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied. ~ Naomi Novik

Then love-devouring Death do what he dare. ~ William Shakespeare

Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes - you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous ... I can't see how I can go on living away from you - these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old - you are a thousand years old.
Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. ~ Henry Miller

Fear masquerades as a "just cause" while devouring all forms of freedom and dignity. ~ Katy Tackes

Bringing up a child and caring for a sick person have this in common: both require an energy that is not really yours. You are instilled with it by them, by their eager love, their expectant fear. And they clamor for it as though scenting fresh meat. I sometimes feel that motherhood is a black hole. Whatever you put in is never enough, and you've no idea where it goes. At other times, though, I feel like a vampire feeding off her own child. Devouring his enthusiasm in order to carry on believing in life. ~ Andres Neuman

[O]ne could see by his face that he was not reading but devouring, with barely any time to chew. ~ Anton Chekhov

Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. ~ Haruki Murakami

I hate it, find it hideous, loathsome. I have built it up to a devouring, malicious monster. I am letting it ruin my whole life. My reason is leaving me, and I want to get out of this. ~ Sylvia Plath

If you teach a wolf how to hunt, it will reward you by devouring you. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

When he died, I felt like a dark, devouring force had been stilled at last. I wore his death like wings. ~ Thomas H. Cook

He rose up like a languid god after devouring a bountiful feast. ~ Paula Quinn

When I was 13 or 14, I started devouring novels; literature took quite a while to take me over, but it caught up just in time to save me from becoming a mathematician. ~ Mark Haddon

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

She kisses like a sweet devouring, and I don't know where to touch her because I want all of her. ~ John Green

I lean in this time, and she doesn't turn away. It's cold, and our lips are dry, noses a little wet, foreheads sweaty beneath wool hats. I can't touch her face, even though I want to, because I'm wearing gloves. But God, when her lips come apart, everything turns warm and her sugar sweet breath is in my mouth, and I probably taste like hot dogs but I don't care. She kisses like a sweet devouring, and I don't know where to touch her because I want all of her. I want to touch her knees and hips and her stomach and her back and her everything, but we're encased in all these clothes, so we're just two marshmallows bumping against each other, and she smiles at me while still kissing because she knows how ridiculous it is, too. ~ John Green

There is no point in delaying crying. Sadness is like having a vicious alligator around. You can ignore it for only so long before it begins devouring things and you have to pay attention. ~ Lemony Snicket

It's torture, what he's doing. I can't see. I don't know. But his mouth is fully on me now, tongue doing whatever it does, flicking and licking, sucking and fucking, completely devouring me, like he's starving. ~ J.M. Darhower

Religious fanaticism and hatred are a world-devouring fire, whose violence none can quench. ~ Bahaullah

I was very strict on that point. No devouring classmates." Jeremy rolled his eyes. "Other parents warn their kids not to talk to strangers. I had to warn mine not to eat them. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Secrets are festering parasites to a relationship, devouring their hosts from within, leaving behind a empty hollow husk of what once was. ~ Mark W. Boyer

Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator! ~ Cornelia Funke

If there's one thing I've learned in life, if there's one rule I live by, it's never to regret what's happened. Understand by all means, but never regret - it's such a devouring pastime and one that leads nowhere. ~ Alan Goodwin

There's a void inside me, a blank that's slowly expanding, devouring what's left of who I am. I can hear it happening. I'm totally lost, my identity dying. ~ Haruki Murakami

Devouring Time and envious Age, all things yield to you; and with lingering death you destroy, step by step, with venomed tooth whatever you attack. ~ Ovid

Beware, lion's lady, for your predator is hungry tonight. He may not wait long before devouring you." "Devouring me?" she asked, challenge gleaming in her eyes. "What if I devour him first? ~ Shelly Thacker

And before that, there was, oh, I don't know, editors experiencing demonic possessions and devouring lagging midlist writers. It's always something. ~ John Scalzi

She was terrifying in her beauty, bright like a devouring star. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Cannibals are devouring senators. ~ Arlen Specter

Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you. ~ Anais Nin