And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam. - John Collier
One of the characteristics of modern political life is its professionalization, such that it attracts mainly the kind of people with so great an avidity for power and self-importance that they do not mind very much the humiliations of the public exposure to which they are inevitably subjected. - Theodore Dalrymple