Avidly Quotes & Sayings

Philately is normally a boys' hobby but for some reason it was in vogue at my junior school. Between the ages of eight and ten I collected avidly. I'd pore over my Stanley Gibbons book, obsessively checking my collection's value. I always hoped I'd stumble across a really valuable one, a Penny Black or an Inverted Jenny, but it wasn't to be. — Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Listen amply.
Listen aptly.
Listen avidly.
Listen amiably. — Matshona Dhliwayo

It was the Oats that read avidly and always remembered those passages which cast doubt on the literal truth of the Book of Om - and nudged him and said, if this isn't true, what can you believe? — Terry Pratchett

From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical physics and determined to become a theoretical physicist. I had no real idea what that meant, but it seemed incredibly exciting to spend one's life attempting to find the secrets of the universe by using one's mind. — David Gross

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. — Walter Isaacson

Another reason to watch him avidly for he might pull himself out of
the pool, his whole body slick and those shorts plastered on him was not a sight to see. It was a
sight to prove there was a God and that God might just be Tate. — Kristen Ashley

Yes my love, because Eden, I have loved you avidly from the first moment I saw you and I will love you completely with all that I am until the day I die. — Rachel Higginson

THE BOY RODE ALONG THROUGH THE DESERT FOR SEVERAL hours, listening avidly to what his heart had to say. It was his heart that would tell him where his treasure was hidden. "Where your treasure is, there also will be your heart," the alchemist had told him. But his heart was speaking of other things. — Paulo Coelho

Syrian monk, Isaac of Niniveh: Many are avidly seeking but they alone find who remain in continual silence. ... Every man who delights in a multitude of words, even though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be a lover of silence. Silence like the sunlight will illuminate you in God and will deliver you from the phantoms of ignorance. Silence will unite you to God himself. ... More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this "something" that is born of silence. If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence ... after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence. — Thomas Merton

I have always loved and avidly read the novels of Jack London, Jules Verne and Ernest Hemingway. The characters depicted in their books, who are brave and resourceful people embarking on exciting adventures, definitely shaped my inner self and nourished my love for the outdoors. — Vladimir Putin

He was wondering at the unreality of ideas, at the fading radiance of existence, and at the little absorptions that were creeping avidly into his life, like rats into a ruined house — F Scott Fitzgerald

Everybody goes the wrong way, everything is confused, chaotic, disorderly. But nobody is ever lost or hurt, nothing is stolen, no blows are exchanged. It is a kind of ferment which is created by reason of the fact that for a Greek every event, no matter how stale, is always unique. He is always doing the same thing for the first time: he is curious, avidly curious, and experimental. He experiments for the sake of experimenting, not to establish a better or more efficient way of doing things. — Henry Miller

Did you kiss?" asked Hermione briskly.
Ron sat up so fast that he sent his ink bottle flying all over the rug. Disregarding this completely he stared avidly at Harry.
"Well?" he demanded.
Harry looked from Ron's expression of mingled curiosity and hilarity to Hermione's slight frown, and nodded.
"HA!"
Ron made a triumphant gesture with his fist an went into a raucous peal of laughter that made several timid-looking second years over beside the window jump. A reluctant grin spread over Harry's face as he watched Ron rolling around on the hearthrug. Hermione gave Ron a look of deep disgust and returned to her letter. — J.K. Rowling

Like many of you, I've always been slightly obsessed with vampires, dating back to the prime-time series 'Dark Shadows,' which I followed avidly as a kid. — Bill Condon

How fickle is my young male heart as it avidly jumps from love to love — Ben Mitchell

The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard the question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter's answer. — J.M. Barrie

Tristran sat at the top of the spire of cloud and wondered why none of the heroes of the penny dreadfuls he used to read so avidly were ever hungry. His stomach rumbled, and his hand hurt him so.

Adventures are all very well in their place, he thought, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.

Still, he was alive, and the wind was in his hair, and the cloud was scudding through the sky like a galleon at full sail. Looking out over the world from above, he could never remember feeling so alive as he did at that moment. There was a skyness to the sky and a nowness to the world that he had never seen or felt or realized before.

He understood that he was, in some way, above his problems, just as he was above the world. — Neil Gaiman

At the centre of all these noble races we cannot fail to see the blond beast of prey, the magnificent blond beast avidly prowling round for spoil and victory; this hidden centre needs release from time to time, the beast must out again, must return to the wild: - Roman, Arabian, Germanic, Japanese nobility, Homeric heroes, Scandinavian Vikings - in this requirement they are all alike. It was the noble races which left the concept of 'barbarian' in their traces wherever they went; even their highest culture betrays the fact that they were conscious of this and indeed proud of it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought, and humbly accepted. — Ronald Reagan

I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do. — Audre Lorde

Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightening storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that. — Mary Oliver

I read the newspaper avidly.
It is my one form of continuous fiction. — Aneurin Bevan

The resurrection is our awakening from the dream, our return to right-mindedness, and thus our deliverance from hell ... We recognized how avidly we drill the nails into our own hands and feet holding on to earthly interpretation of things when a choice to do otherwise would release us and make us happy. — Marianne Williamson

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it. — Joyce Carol Oates

Silas talks about San Francisco, so avidly that I think he's trying to fill the air with words before it can be consumed with awkward silences. I don't know why I feel those silences lurking all around us, but every time Silas and I make eye contact, I can sense them there, waiting to slip in and make me blush. I try to avoid his eyes, stealing glances at his arched brows and bow-shaped lips whenever he's looking away. — Jackson Pearce

It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play ... today's children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games. — Marie Winn

I had escaped the snare of certitude that I welcomed so avidly at first and entered, via the name of Jesus, the wide and comprehensive company of Jesus. — Eugene H. Peterson

The job [at the Manhattan Institute] gives me a platform where I can focus on the themes that I explored in both Gusher of Lies and Power Hungry: that the myths about "green" energy are largely just that, myths; that hydrocarbons are here to stay; and that if we are going to pursue the best "no regrets" policy with regard to energy, then we should be avidly promoting natural gas and nuclear energy. — Robert Bryce

Learn avidly. Question repeatedly what you have learned. Analyze it carefully. Then put what you have learned into practice intelligently. — Edward Cocker

The Beijing government avidly asserts its control over matters of reincarnation as a way of securing the loyalty and political complexion of influential Tibetan figures. — Evan Osnos

Now, it has been independently shown that people hate to lose something more than they enjoy gaining it. For example, they don't mind paying for something with a credit card even when told there is a discount for cash, but they hate paying the same amount if they are told there is a surcharge for using credit. As a result, people will often refuse to gamble for an expected profit (they turn down bets such as "Heads, you win $120; tails, you pay $100), but they will gamble to avoid an expected loss (such as "Heads, you no longer owe $120; tails, you now owe an additional $100"). (This kind of behavior drives economists crazy, but is avidly studied by investment firms hoping to turn it to their advantage.) The combination of people's loss aversion with the effects of framing explains the paradoxical result: the "gain" metaphor made the doctors risk-averse; the "loss" metaphor made them gamblers. — Steven Pinker

In the morning and in the evening and at night in his dreams, this street was filled with constantly bustling traffic, which seen from above seemed like a continually self-replenishing mixture of distorted human figures and of the roofs of all sorts of vehicles, constantly scattered by new arrivals, out of which there arose a new, stronger, wilder mixture of noise, dust, and smells, and, catching and penetrating it all, a powerful light that was continually dispersed, carried away, and avidly refracted by the mass of objects that made such a physical impression on one's dazzled eye that it seemed as if a glass pane, hanging over the street and converging everything, were being smashed again and again with the utmost force. — Franz Kafka

I was an avidly pro-life governor; I'm an avidly pro-life individual. As a pro-life Republican, I am in favor of having the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. — Mitt Romney

I am a passionate reader, having been tutored very early by my mother. I avidly devoured all books on chemistry that I could find. Formal chemistry at school seemed boring by comparison, and my performance was routine. In contrast, I did spectacularly well in mathematics and sailed through classes and exams with ease. — Richard J. Roberts

Authors are magpies, echoing each other's words and seizing avidly on anything that glitters. — Bergen Evans

At the bottom of all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

No one is more avidly curious about other people's doings than those persons whom they do not concern. — Victor Hugo

Life is like a cup of coffee: The more avidly you drink of it, the sooner you reach the dregs. — J.M. Barrie

Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values. — Albert Mohler