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Literary notes about omnivorous (AI summary)

The term "omnivorous" has been employed in literature to evoke a sense of boundless, indiscriminate consumption—whether it be of ideas, sensations, or even souls. For instance, in Freud's work, it describes a descent into baseness associated with a lower social standing [1], while Whitman uses it to illustrate his insatiable hunger for diverse literary experiences [2]. Joyce transforms the word into a vivid image of the forest itself, suggesting a kind of voracious sensuality [3]. In more straightforward characterizations, Herzl labels someone as an omnivorous reader [4], and Santayana even uses the term metaphorically in the context of love, contrasting it with exclusivity [5]. Coleridge, on the other hand, employs the word to depict the ruthless, all-consuming nature of a tyrant's vindictiveness [6]. This variety showcases the rich flexibility of the term in capturing the essence of total consumption across different realms of human experience.
  1. Savages are the more omnivorous the lower they stand in the social scale.
    — from Totem and Taboo by Sigmund Freud
  2. A most omnivorous novel-reader, these and later years, devour'd everything I could get.
    — from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman
  3. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry.
    — from Ulysses by James Joyce
  4. He was an omnivorous reader.
    — from The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl
  5. To be omnivorous is one pole of true love: to be exclusive is the other.
    — from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
  6. For the late tyrant's vindictive appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc d'Enghien
    — from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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