"Oh! Are you hungry?" she [Dorothy] asked, turning to the other beast, who was just then yawning so widely that he displayed two rows of terrible tee… - L. Frank Baum

"Oh! Are you hungry?" she [Dorothy] asked, turning to the other beast, who was just then yawning so widely that he displayed two rows of terrible teeth and a mouth big enough to startle anyone.
"Dreadfully hungry," answered the Tiger, snapping his jaws together with a fierce click.
"Then why don't you eat something?" she asked.
"It's no use," said the Tiger sadly. "I've tried that, but I always get hungry again."
"Why, it is the same with me," said Dorothy. "Yet I keep on eating."
"But you eat harmless things, so it doesn't matter," replied the Tiger. "For my part, I'm a savage beast, and have an appetite for all sorts of poor little living creatures, from a chipmunk to fat babies."
"How dreadful!" said Dorothy.
"Isn't it, though?" returned the Hungry Tiger, licking his lips with his long red tongue. "Fat babies! Don't they sound delicious? But I've never eaten any, because my conscience tells me it is wrong. If I had no conscience I would probably eat the babies and then get hungry again, which would mean that I had sacrificed the poor babies for nothing. No; hungry I was born, and hungry I shall die. But I'll not have any cruel deeds on my conscience to be sorry for."
"I think you are a very good tiger," said Dorothy, patting the huge head of the beast.
"In that you are mistaken," was the reply. "I am a good beast, perhaps, but a disgracefully bad tiger. For it is the nature of tigers to be cruel and ferocious, and in refusing to eat harmless living creatures I am acting as no good tiger has ever before acted."

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About L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum (15 May 1856 – 6 May 1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator William Wallace Denslow, of one of the most popular books in American children's literature, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Lyman Frank Baum
Alternative Names: Captain Hugh Fitzgerald Suzanne Metcalf Schuyler Staunton Edith Van Dyne George Brooks Louis F. Baum Capt. Hugh Fitzgerald Pete Dugout Floyd Akers Laura Bancroft John Estes Cooke
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