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More "Malevolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conclusion when a queer sound behind me made me spin round as if I had been struck. Sonia, who had risen to her feet, was standing and facing me; her whole attitude suggestive of a highly-annoyed tigress. I don't think I have ever seen such a malevolent expression on any human being's face in my life. For an instance we stood staring at each other without speaking, and then quite suddenly I realized what was ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... envious man, Thomas. I confess that I am afraid of the envious man, when he is so envious as you are. Whilst you contemplated the works of a gifted rival, and whilst you heard that rival's praises, and especially whilst you met his humble glance as he put that card away, your countenance was so malevolent as to be terrific. Thomas, I have heard of the envy of them that follows the Fine-Art line, but I never believed it could be what yours is. I wish you well, but I take my leave of you. And if you should ever got into trouble through knifeing—or say, garotting—a ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... we should be missing it in not seeing him again, if that is possible. Nothing but a poison-storm brought him the first time, and it is not certain that even in such an emergency would he come again uncalled." "I think," said Ayrault, "as none of the spirits here are malevolent, they would warn us of danger if they could. The bishop's spirit seems to have been the only one with sufficiently developed power to reappear as a man. I therefore suggest that to-morrow we try to make him feel our thought and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... burnouses, drawn over their heads, making them look more like a party of old crones than stalwart Arabs habituated to war and the chase; or I might have taken them for the witches in "Macbeth" discussing their malevolent designs. On one side were the ruined walls of the Roman town, with a tall monument rising above them; in front were the tents, spread beneath a few sparsely scattered palm-trees; while beyond could be seen the boundless Desert, the crescent moon casting a pale light over ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... much of his money was gone, and he had to do what he didn't want to do. The money instead of making things easier had messed them into an enraging tangle. Life always went against him—he saw the past as governed by a malevolent fate whose business had been a continual creating of ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the river. Algernon Blackwood, in one of his superb tales of fantasy (in the volume called "The Listener") has told a fascinating gruesome story of the Danube, describing a sedgy, sandy, desolate region below the Hungarian border where malevolent inhuman forces were apparent and resented mortal intrusion. But we cannot testify to anything sinister in the bright water of the Danube in the flow of its lovely youth, above Sigmaringen. And if there were any evil influences, surely at Sigmaringen (the ancient home ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Statius ascertained himself on his arrival. For he was present when certain persons at my house gave vent to some complaints on that very subject, and had the opportunity of perceiving that the observations of the malevolent were being directed at himself especially. But it used to annoy me most when I was told that he had greater influence with you, than your sober time of life and the wisdom of a governor required. How many people, do you suppose, have ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... 1807, and related his experiences to Mariner, describes them as always friendly to strangers. Probably they took the Pandora for a god-ship, and since the Immortals of their Pantheon are generally malevolent, they left their women behind, and flourished weapons to scare the gods into good behaviour. In 1807 they had forgotten the visit, perhaps because it had brought them no calamity to inspire the native poets. Hamilton relates an incident quite in keeping with the character of ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... to be seized. Or darting one on the other for a moment, then both breaking away too soon. Did never two dart at each other, seize, and cling, and ever after be one? Love! It had spoiled her father's life, and Daphne Wing's; never came when it was wanted; always came when it was not. Malevolent wanderer, alighting here, there; tiring of the spirit before it tired of the body; or of the body before it tired of the spirit. Better to have nothing to do with it—far better! If one never loved, one would ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Spain, that he had been compelled by the influence of Cortes to associate Sandoval with himself in the government, contrary to his inclination, and to the detriment of his majesties service. By the same conveyance, a string of malevolent falsehoods were transmitted against the general; as that he had poisoned Garay, De Leon, and Aguilar; that he had endeavoured to administer arsenic in cheese-cakes to a great number of people at a feast; that he was plotting the deaths of the veedor and factor Chirinos and Salazar, then in jail; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... soon awakens the malevolent passions as the facility of gratification. The courts of law would never be so crowded with petty, vexatious, and disgraceful suits were it not for the herds of pettifoggers. These tamper with the passions of the poorer and more ignorant classes; who, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... have ambled into the doctor's barnyard and turned herself, for he had no memory of guiding her. A paralyzed conviction of another anti-climax had gripped him. He remembered turning into the road with a haunting sense of eyes upon him—Adam's eyes, piercing and bright with malevolent amusement. The chart! The hints! The will! The cunning of him! What would he tell Hughie and Hannah and Hetty? What would he tell Joan? What was there to tell save that he had put two and two together and made five, a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... question at the centuriate assembly, all orders and individuals pressing it on, in fact, with all the forces at its command. Nor is it the case that I afterwards made any pretension, or am making any at this day, which can justly offend anyone, even the most malevolent: my only effort is that I may not fail either my friends or those more remotely connected with me in either active service, or counsel, or personal exertion. This course of life perhaps offends those who fix their eyes on the glitter and show of my professional position, ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... thou, O vision bright, That glimmered through the radiant night And gently hovered o'er my head? Was it not thou who thus didst stoop To whisper comfort, love and hope? Who art thou? Guardian angel sent Or torturer malevolent? Doubt and uncertainty decide: All this may be an empty dream, Delusions of a mind untried, Providence otherwise may deem— Then be it so! My destiny From henceforth I confide to thee! Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour And thy protection I implore. Imagine! Here alone am I! No one my anguish ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... stood together for a moment, speechless, carried away out of themselves. Then the door was suddenly opened. The woman stood there, sour and withered; behind her, a hard-featured man, official, malevolent. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... staff, why had no more been heard of it? And what had Winter and Furneaux meant by hinting that far wider issues were bound up with the affair than the authorities were yet at liberty to divulge? The attack on Forbes, sinister and malevolent in its scope and purpose, was, in a sense, open warfare. But it was impossible to guess what part, if any, the official representatives of China filled in the fray. Were they active allies of Scotland Yard or did they hold what is known in the law courts as a watching brief? He ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... not accuse the Superintendent of Schools of malevolent intentions, but I could honestly have affirmed that of all the divisions and subdivisions of my empire the first class in Geography was the one least calculated to shine on ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... By the most ingenious and fiendish combinations possible for a human being to contrive, you wrecked my fortune and with it my hopes. You drove me ignominiously from Paris; in Rome you caused me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dantes, low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... penalized, were punished. The sterile were put to death. There grew up a religion and a priesthood, ceremonials, sacrifices and rituals. And they had their god, in the shape of this lizard thing. Of course, like most other gods, it was more of a malevolent creature than anything else. Gods generally are if you will consider a little. I don't care what creed or religion gets the upper hand, it's Fear that becomes the power. Look around and see ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... even his worst enemies cannot deny that he has taken more old ladies and gentlemen to Paddington who wanted to go to the Bank, and more old ladies and gentlemen to the Bank who wanted to go to Paddington, than any six men on the road; and however much malevolent spirits may pretend to doubt the accuracy of the statement, they well know it to be an established fact, that he has forcibly conveyed a variety of ancient persons of either sex, to both places, who had not the slightest or most distant intention ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Demos, not malevolent at the last, but to Adela none the less something to be fled from, something which excited thoughts of horrible possibilities, in its very good-humour and its praise of her a sound ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... of their cheating, a word never mentioned in well-bred society. A suspicion of such conduct, even, would be tantamount to treason, and a violation of the rules that regulate the conduct of ladies and gentlemen. It was far from all our thoughts, and the devil alone could entertain so malevolent an idea. Be that as it may, as a matter of philosophy, the onlooker sees most of the game, and as I was an onlooker this ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... that her face was full of pain, as though she had revisited some scene connected with sorrowful memories. There was even a slight drawing back in her attitude, as if she feared to go on, and meet some ghost. What could it be? Then the malevolent sprite who was near him just now whispered: "It is an Italian garden, she has seen such before in other lands; perhaps the man is an Italian—he looks dark enough." So instead of feeling solicitous and gentle with whatever caused her pain—for ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... again excessively, and remained silent, pressing her finger against her teeth, and gazing into the fire. I watched her a few moments with a feeling of malevolent gratification; then, moving towards the door, I calmly asked if she ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... have thought of a better word. Through the panelled glass he glimpsed the black metal sheathe of the monster out there, the shapeless crouching and malevolent winking lights, and he felt himself going to pieces inside with a sudden shaking crumble; he hated himself for it but he couldn't stop it; his hands clenched until ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... of a child. Like magic the lines from beneath her eyes seemed to have vanished. Lady Carey watched her with pale cheeks and malevolent expression. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a black fellow at my elbow that he really had never met with any, but that his grandfather had found the little implements and tools belonging to this diminutive race of subterraneous spirits. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent, the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men, dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing. ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... it were, to contribute to the prolongation of human life. Spirits were supposed to have the dominion of air, fire, earth, and water; they were divided into distinct classes, and particular services ascribed to each. The malevolent spirits were opposed and counteracted by various means of prevention: the good and tutelary were obliged to submit to n sort of gentle, involuntary servitude. From invisible beings were expected and demanded visible means of assistance—riches, health, friends, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... province, whilst your Excellency has so much to do in that under your immediate superintendence: I am convinced that in all I have done, I have acted in conformity with the true interests of His Majesty and his people, and am in no degree under any apprehension that the malevolent aspersions of self-interested or disappointed individuals will have the least influence on any candid mind, when a real statement of facts shall be ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... that had no doubt leagued itself with the women, who were at once tried on the charge of witchcraft, convicted, and sentenced to death at the stake, while a watch was to be set on the infants, so early orphaned, lest they, too, should show signs of malevolent possession. The whole tribe, seventeen hundred in number, assembled to see the execution, but hardly were the fires alight when a sound like thunder rolled beneath their feet, and with a hideous crack and groan the earth opened and nearly every soul was engulfed in a fathomless and smoking ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... populous city. As one with an innocent yet cardinal part in the unleashing of this dire menace, I want to describe how the exposure of this threatening menace affected me as I looked upon its menacing and malevolent ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... conception: it is Nature at work in her sleep amongst the silent hills: mysterious, indeed, but doing no evil. Here it is the earth as conceived by the mediaeval mind, the earth to which the coming of the White Christ had banished all the gods of the older world, there to become the malevolent, malignant divinities of the new world, and believed in as such by the first adherents of the new religion. Frederick was a Christian, mediaeval style, and he implicitly believes that Ortrud can call up wicked spirits, and by their aid weave enchantments when ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... programme, and for an instant his face had blazed with the suppressed rage in him. He had bowed and swaggered away with a malicious sneer. Her judgment told her it was folly to connect this man with the absence of her lover, but that look of malevolent triumph had none the less shaken her heart. What had he meant? It seemed less a threat for the future than a gloating over some ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... an ugly, malevolent look came over her face, she pulled the rings from her fingers, and tossed them at him. One touched his face, the others hit his coat, and they scattered ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... Fellowes' handwriting on an envelope among those waiting for Jasmine's return home. In a far dark corner he had waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his chair as he spoke, his blotched gums showing in a grin between his thin lips, his dull eyes half veiled by the drooping of the leaden-hued lids. More than ever he was a mask of death, but of a death that possessed a grim humour, malevolent in its satirical cynicism. The justice of the King. Who should know that justice so well as Commines, its minister for almost a dozen years, or who so testify to its stern implacability? None escaped the rigid iron of its wrath. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of baptism by unchaste ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... she was such a tender-hearted person that she loved every dumb creature that wandered to her door. Had Boost been dumb I might have loved him too. He had a voice like the noise a small boy can make with a tin can and a resined string. He had a malevolent eye and knew that I detested him, so that he took especial pains to crow under my windows, generally about an hour after the mocking-birds stopped. I think living with a lot of big hens and roosters told on his nervous system, and he took it out on me. Great self-restraint ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... obviate, impervious, trivial Video, visum see provide, revise Vinco, victum conquer province, convict Vir man triumvir, virtue Vivo, victum live vivacious, vivisect Voco, vocatum call revoke, avocation *Volo wish malevolent, voluntary Volvo, volutum turn revolver, evolution Vox ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... stranger's stare, withholding anything from his eyes that the other could read, as some men born with a certain cold courage are able to do. He went back to the bar, the man going with him shoulder to shoulder, turning his malevolent eyes to continue his ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... this chatter of the woman from Cleves,' he croaked, like a malevolent raven. 'An Anne she is, and a Lutheran. I mind we had an Anne and a Lutheran for Queen before. She played the ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... after dissolved the parliament, and told them, with some sharpness in the conclusion, that their proceedings had contained much dissimulation and artifice; that, under the plausible pretences of marriage and succession, many of them covered very malevolent intentions towards her; but that, however, she reaped this advantage from the attempts of these men, that she could now distinguish her friends from her enemies. "But do you think," added she, "that I am unmindful of your future security, or will be negligent in settling ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... been accused of forming the most dangerous of these intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orchestra. A bad singer can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist the pernicious influence ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... belief of the Australian aborigines, "no demon, however malevolent, can resist the power of the right word."[39:4] Ignorant people are usually impressed by obscure phrases, the more so, if these are well sprinkled with polysyllables. Cicero, in his treatise on Divination (LXIV) criticizes ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... succeeded, died in the Tower after many years of imprisonment. Dudley, Earl of Leicester, followed, and during his period of residence the house can claim association with the name of Spenser, who was a frequent visitor. Leicester escaped the malevolent influence of the house, which he left to his son-in-law, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. During the Earl's occupancy the mansion went through some stormy scenes. It was here that he assembled his fellow-conspirators which he left to his step-son, Robert Devereux, to arouse the people to aid ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... knew to his cost what Athalie really was—the only hinderance to Timea's happiness, the finder of the philosopher's stone which exercises everywhere a malevolent spell—that one man finds his death by a single ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... their belief in the existence of an evil spirit, haunting dark caverns, wells, and places of mystery and gloom, and called Jinga. I heard from a settler that upon one occasion, a native travelling with him, refused to go to the well at night from fear of this malevolent being; supposed to keep an especial guardianship over fresh water, and to be most terrible and most potent in the hours of darkness. Miago had never seen this object of his fears, but upon the authority of the elders of his tribe, he described ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... the smell of powder and hot oil, spitting death, resistless, huge, furious, an abrupt vision of chaos, faces, rage-distorted, peering through smoke, hands gripping outward from sudden darkness, prehensile, malevolent; terrible as thunder, swift as lightning, the two engines met ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... And horned as now ye see me, poison-stung By the envenomed bitings of the brize, I leapt and flung in frenzy, rushed away To the bright waters of Cerchneia's stream And Lerna's beach: but ever at my side, A herdsman by his heifer, Argus moved, Earth-born, malevolent of mood, and peered, With myriad eyes, where'er my feet would roam. But on him in a moment, unforeseen, Came Fate, and sundered him from life; but I, Still maddened by the gadfly's sting, the scourge Of God's infliction, roam the weary world. How I have ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... it the fundamental decree of our order, that we must impart our secrets only to the pure. The most terrible part of the ordeal is in the temptations that our power affords to the criminal. If it were possible that a malevolent being could attain to our faculties, what disorder it might introduce into the globe! Happy that it is NOT possible; the malevolence would disarm the power. It is in the purity of Viola that I rely, as thou more vainly hast relied on the ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and prolonged self-reproach, il gran riffiuto was made, youthful passion, worldly advantages—and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in his black uniform, conversed with me courteously, but in his manner there was a kind of malevolent curiosity from which I concluded that my anti-occidental influence upon the King was not unknown to him. In accordance with the mode of thought peculiar to him, he sought for the motives of my conduct not where ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... Alexander when Hadrian was emperor of the Roman world, and when the spirit of declamation and dogmatism was at its full height, but who was himself, unlike the dreaming pedants of the schools, a statesman and a soldier of practical and proved ability, well rebuked the malevolent aspersions which he heard continually thrown upon the memory of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are bh[u]ts, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... at an indication of malevolent feeling in her," I said. "She is a woman who has always inspired me with distrust and dislike, but she managed to insinuate herself into her mistress's favour." He was silent after this, looking at the fire with an air of absorption, till he went upstairs again. He stayed away longer ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... although his frame was attenuated almost to a skeleton, the color of his face a pale yellow, his eyes sunken, and hair closely shorn; he still exhibited strong traces of what he had been, still retained his erect and fearless carriage, his quick, fiery, and malevolent eye, his hurried and concise speech, and his close and pertinent style of remark. He appeared to me such a man as would have made a hero in the ranks of his country, had circumstances placed him in the proper road to fame; but ignorance and poverty turned into the most ferocious robber, one who ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... suddenly on a 'stock term.' There were tones of his master's that Cop never dared to disobey; he went down at full length and lay panting, regarding Maori fixedly with a sidelong and malevolent eye. Harry returned to his cradle, and Chris approached the stepping-stones ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... to sound actively malevolent. But Tommy, with his arms gripped round his knees, raised eyes of bloodshot fury to ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... husband, and to make both a county and a family peace, on condition that Harriot should give up all connexion with Lady Delacour. Mrs. Luttridge knew this would provoke me beyond measure, and there is nothing she would not do to gratify her mean, malevolent passions. She has succeeded for once in her life. The blame of the duel, of course, is all thrown upon me. And (would you believe it?) Harriot Freke, I am credibly informed, throws all the blame of Lawless's business on me; nay, hints that Lawless's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... fellow's utter worthlessness long before. He had never been for me a person of prestige and power, like that awful governess to Flora de Barral. See the might of suggestion? We live at the mercy of a malevolent word. A sound, a mere disturbance of the air, sinks into our very soul sometimes. Flora de Barral had been more astounded than convinced by the first impetuosity of Roderick Anthony. She let herself be carried along by a mysterious force ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... district and heard Osman Effendi's appeal against the first verdict, consisted of three Egyptian judges. It is true that the English judge who should have gone on Assize had fallen ill, and there was no other to take his place. But Osman Effendi saw in this too the malevolent hand of the English, who nourished a grudge against him. "How," he said, "can I obtain justice if there is no Englishman on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... for the preservation of her liberty, and would either be surrendered to them by the people in order to expel the tyrant, or by the tyrant for fear of the people. He recalled the remembrance of the injuries done to the republic by the governor of Lucca; his malevolent disposition toward them; and their embarrassing situation with regard to him, if the pope or the duke were to make war upon them; and concluded that no enterprise was ever undertaken by the people of Florence with such perfect facility, more positive ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... was as tall as himself, it sprang out into the room, toward Larry and the shuddering girl. Just off the crystal disk, beyond the scarlet pillar of fire, it paused for long seconds, seeming to regard them with malevolent eyes. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... you that you should again see the criminal in whom you and your officers took such a deep and benevolent interest. I now fulfil that promise—and leave you." And, with a malevolent smile, he ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... conscience of the senate, the man who knew better than any that an individual or a government lives by its reputation, who saw with horror that no specious pretexts were being employed to clothe a policy which the malevolent might interpret as a political crime, and that the sinister rumours which had been current in Rome were finding their open verification in the senate. A vigorous championship of the cause of right ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to discuss judgments, sometimes superficial, sometimes malevolent, which too often pass current among us; to examine what has been, what should be the attitude of our Europe, what is our responsibility, what are our interests and our duties. We alone, I am ashamed ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... a little malevolent cackle as he spoke, and the three boys named laughed too, though with no great heartiness, and shifting the while uneasily on ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... was awakened by a tap upon his arm; opening his eyes, he beheld, close by him, seated upon the back of a flying-fish, an ugly kelpie, or water-fairy, with a malevolent, evil aspect, who regarded him with a ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... becoming incompatible. The laws of science demanded that he seek the common factor, as source of the whole trouble. Therefore, he himself must be the sole cause of the wretched bungle Fate was making of his well-intentioned life. Was he so malevolent, or just futile? And which was the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... silence, and the proper amount of expectant attention. And in that minute before the thing began to happen he had the sense of a breathless second hanging suspended in time: he saw through the glass partition that bounded off the little office the malevolent conical head of his employer, Mr. Moonlight Quill, bent over his correspondence. He saw Miss McCracken and Miss Masters as two patches of hair drooping over piles of paper; he saw the crimson lamp overhead, and noticed with a touch of pleasure how really ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... moment of hesitation, during which a malevolent pleasure slightly disfigured the countenances of the two gentlemen with Julia; but when Florence pointed to a house across the street and remarked, "There's Great-Uncle Milford and Aunt C'nelia; they been lookin' out of their second ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... galaxy was exposed. He referred to the blueskins, of course. He did not need to tell the people of Weald what vigilance, what constant watchfulness was necessary against that race of depraved and malevolent deviants from the norm of humanity. But Weald, he said with emotion, held aloft the torch of all that humanity held most dear, and defended not alone the lives of its people against blueskin contagion, but their noble heritage of ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... been subjected to dynamic influences. The ordeal through which she had passed, unscathed bodily but seared in spirit, had left her strung to a tense pitch. Relaxation had not come—as yet. She only knew that she resented to the uttermost the Brazilians' malevolent fury. Hers was a nature that could not endure unfairness. It was unfair of David Verity to seek to mend his shattered fortunes by forcing her into a hateful marriage; unfair of both Verity and Coke to found their new venture on a great fraud; and monstrously ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Parliament-men; for I said {27} not that they were at any time given to any violent or pertinacious dispute, the elections being made of grave and discreet persons, not factious and ambitious of fame; such as came not to the House with a malevolent spirit of contention, but with a preparation to consult on the public good, and rather to comply than to contest with Majesty: neither dare I find {28} that the House was weakened and pestered through the admission ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... disorders of the world originated with the devil and his sinister companions, because they were stirred with the unholy desire to obtain associates in their miseries. It was impossible to fix a limit to the number of these malevolent spirits constantly provoking diseases and infirmities upon men. They were alleged to surround mankind so densely that each person had a thousand to his right and ten thousand to the left of him. Endowed with the ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... the worst abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses, the able and bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him would not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. The keen, severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole public life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in the history of mankind, is in one respect advantageous to his reputation. It brought many lamentable ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." St. Augustine said: "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants." Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance upon every person. Gregory of Nazianzus declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Nilus and St. Gregory of Tours, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... in representations designed for the people such malevolent charges are found. These exaggerations are to be corrected not by concealment, but by a candid statement of ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking big eases the smart, don't it?" and he ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... must remain neutral—that is our one and only duty. The more malevolent our neutrality the better, but it must be neutrality. Remember that there are Germans whose bitterness prompts them to wish that British troops were marching through the streets of Berlin. I think their wish is juster than yours, but both wishes cannot be fulfilled, and it is therefore desirable ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... A curiously malevolent expression crossed the face of the man with the child as he bent his eyes on Andy; but he did not speak to him then, but rather to the crowd that had ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... fortunate. I have already touched on the immediate plight of those of you who are thrown out of employment, with your just labor claims unpaid. There are others—and some of them are perhaps in this room—who entrusted their savings to the Sycamore Traction Company, and who are now at the mercy of the malevolent powers that invariably control and manipulate such corporations. I shall not be personal; I have no feelings against any of those men. But I say to you, men and women of Montgomery, that when I heard this morning from the lips of an industrious and frugal German mechanic ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was driven to converse solely upon persons, and, having imbibed no other philosophy than that which worldly deceits and disappointments bestow, his remarks, though shrewd, were bitterly sarcastic, and partook of all the ill-nature for which a very scanty knowledge of the world gives a sour and malevolent mind so ready ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... generosity, their magnanimity, faith, truth, purity, simplicity and mercy, are published to the world in the records of former times by sacred bards of great learning. Though endued with every noble virtue, these have yielded up their lives. Thy sons were malevolent, inflamed with passion, avaricious, and of very evil- disposition. Thou art versed in the Sastras, O Bharata, and art intelligent and wise; they never sink under misfortunes whose understandings are guided by the Sastras. Thou art acquainted, O prince, with the lenity and severity of fate; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... guarded by a gigantic serpent, were stationed at intervals, and led to an immense hall full of flame and fire, peopled by hideous monsters and executioners whose office it was to torture the damned. Then came more dark and narrow passages, more blind gropings in the gloom, more strife with malevolent genii, and again the joyful welcoming of the propitious gods. At midnight began the upward journey towards the eastern regions of the world; and in the morning, having reached the confines of the Land of Darkness, the sun emerged ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... light wooden fish-spear, carefully examined the shallow pools as he walked along over the reef, and after he had progressed about a mile he at last saw one of the hideous creatures he sought lying on the white sandy bottom of a circular hole in the reef, its green malevolent eyes looking upward at the intruder. In an instant he thrust the spear through its horrible marbled head, and drew it out upon the rocks, where he proceeded to kill it, a task which took him longer than he anticipated; then carrying it ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... that he had no ground to consider the motives of his visitor as positively malevolent, although he had afforded him little encouragement to hope for assistance on the points he had most at heart. Towards himself, there had been expressed a decided feeling, both of sympathy and interest; if through means of these ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... those they had already practised in India; and that if they were once suffered to get footing in the country, China might experience the same fate as Hindostan. Fortunately for the concerns of the British East India Company this officious interference and the malevolent insinuations of Bernardo Almeyda took a very different turn to what he had expected. The intelligence of a hostile force so near the coast of China coming first from an European missionary, implied a neglect in the Viceroy of Canton, and an angry letter was addressed to him from court, ordering ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the room, in a tin cage, a great green parrot, with its head cocked on one side, had been regarding Roddy with mocking, malevolent eyes. Now, to further add to his discomfiture, it suddenly emitted a chuckle, human and contemptuous. As though choking with hidden laughter, the bird gurgled feebly, "Polly, Polly." And then, ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum's triumphant surrebutter, showing he had most unwillingly been goaded by the attacks of malevolent wretches into an unavoidable course of defence. Of course, spotless innocence came out triumphant. Mr. Barnum's system of innocence was truly admirable. When he had concocted some monstrous cock-and-bull curiosity, he was wont to ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... live together in harmony.... And yet it was not that there was any definite bad feeling between them, that he could find any holes in the scheme of his brother's behaviour. It was only that Archelaus, old as he was, still retained the quality of a satyr, of something oddly malevolent, that boded ill. Ishmael tried to break himself of the feeling, life-old with him, though for so many years forgotten, but he found that, though he could force himself not to dwell on it, beyond that he was powerless. There was no actual harm Archelaus could do him, and ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... the deck in front of me. I looked up hastily to see Bothwell's malevolent face in ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... ships were laid up in port; while some, like the "Constellation," were blockaded by the enemy. The "President" and the "Congress" managed to get to sea from Boston in April, and entered upon a protracted cruise, in which the bad luck of the former ship seemed to pursue her with malevolent persistence. The two ships parted after cruising in company for a month, and scoured the ocean until the following December, when they returned home, experiencing little but continual disappointments. The "Congress" could report ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... original owners, had been beggared and dispossessed by vexatious and fraudulent lawsuits; and the Ashtons had achieved their purpose by dishonesty and chicane. However this might be, busy rumour gave currency and credit to the tale, though probably it had none other foundation than the idle and malevolent gossip of the envious ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... when the day at its start Provokes a malevolent feeling; Her answer may puncture a hole in my heart, But Time is an expert at healing; And that will be better than learning too late, At the end of the honeymoon season, That the lady had only consented to mate In an hour that was bad for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... that the early self-helpfulness of such children is very remarkable, and all the more so because they grow up into men and women so stupid that, according to the theories of all polite economists, they have to have their discontent with their conditions put into their heads by malevolent agitators. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... she flung it off, and stepped back, confronting me with a face as hard and an eye as malevolent as a demon. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable[obs3], disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c. (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c. (corrupt &c. 659); virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c. (morbific) 657[obs3]; deadly &c. (killing) 361; destructive &c. (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c. 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, peccant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of your father, and the lawfulness of your mission; for that we are surrounded, impelled, and worked upon by beings different in their nature from ourselves, I have had full evidence, as you will acknowledge, when I state what has occurred in my own family. Why such malevolent beings as I am about to speak of should be permitted to interfere with us, and punish, I may say, comparatively unoffending mortals, is beyond my comprehension; but that they are ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... man. He has every chance of being so. And as for his irresponsibility, that is an idiotic idea. Do have the courage to face the fact that Nature does not care a rap about good and evil, and is so far malevolent that a man may easily be a criminal and yet perfectly sound in mind and body. Virtue is not a natural thing. It is the work of man. It is his duty to defend it. Human society has been built up by a few men who were ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... afternoon, just as I returned from a long walk, Mrs. Purblind ran over to see me, and soon afterward, Mrs. Cynic dropped in. I never could bear this latter woman; something malevolent seems to emanate from her; something that is more or less unhealthful to the moral nature of all who come in contact with it, just as the miasma from a swamp is poisonous ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... first time I detected a sign of emotion in the yellow eyes: they darted a look toward Maillot, and away again; but it flickered with a spark of malice—gleamed for an instant with a light of malevolent contempt—which made me feel that the fellow had all along been keeping something in reserve, something which must inevitably come to light presently, to Maillot's utter discomfiture and undoing. It suggested that Burke was patiently biding his time until some ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... from this strange being, sensible of his serpent-like fascination, even while he repelled her. It flashed across her consciousness that he was something more than human, something worse—the embodiment of malevolent purpose—a man devoid ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... They were, however, far from equally matched, and that was the cause of Grizzie's cry; for the one was the somewhat ancient colley named Covenant, whose teeth were not what they had been, and the other a mastiff belonging to Lord Lick-my-loof, young and malevolent, loosed from the chain the first time that night for a month. It looked ill for Covenant, but he was a brave dog, incapable of turning his back on death itself when duty called him, and what more is required of dog or man! Both the dogs were ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... as though a malevolent genius had been trying, for four days past, to direct events in such a way that he, Philippe, was under the ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... most gratifying. The butterfly assured me with indignation that it was only a cold in her head, which had been annoying her for days: that was what made her eyes act so, and I was a suspicious and malevolent old gentleman—and—and—and perhaps some day she and Mr. Martin ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... lay I have not the faintest idea; but I was roused at last by the malevolent chuckle of Gunga Dass at my ear. "I would advise you, Protector of the Poor" (the ruffian was speaking English) "to return to your house. It is unhealthy to lie down here. Moreover, when the boat returns, you will most certainly be rifled at." He stood over me ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... would soon know. He stood up and looked far along the valley. Suddenly it seemed a malevolent place, oppressive, threatening, grim in spite of its beauty. It seemed as if something had been lurking there ready to strike. The fire had swept away his timber. In that brilliant sunshine, amid all that beauty, Myra's life had been snuffed out ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Gardner guns had been overturned into the limber containing its ammunition, and set fire to. This kept burning, hissing, and firing shots like a gigantic and malevolent cracker for a long time. But the Blue Jackets recovered the gun. When the victorious troops crowned the last ridge, the valley of Tamai lay below them, and there was spread the camp of Osman Digna, the object of their march, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... atmosphere of sullen resentment. Her father gave her a brief, abstracted nod, in response to her greeting, and went on with his bacon and his Daily Mail; her stepmother's forbidding expression checked any attempt at conversation. The children stared at her with a kind of malevolent curiosity; they knew that a storm had been brewing for her the night before, and longed to know just how thoroughly she had "caught it." Eliza, bringing in singed and belated toast, looked at her with pity, ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... believed in by all the tribes I refer to here [in South-Eastern Australia], either as a benevolent, or more frequently as a malevolent being, it seems to me represents the ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... finger to the sleeping woman's mouth, inserting it between the lips. Then she moved backward and stood by the head of the bed, facing the window. She raised herself to her full height and extended her arms horizontally. The position gave her the form of a cross—a black cross, topped and pointed with malevolent white; one hand was spread above Valencia's face. She was the most awful sight I ever beheld. She uttered no sound; she scarcely breathed. Suddenly, with the curve of a panther, her figure glided above the unconscious ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... War necessarily stimulates the malevolent passions and practises deception 92 Rights of war in early stages of civilisation 93 Distinction between Greeks and Barbarians 94 Roman moralists insisted on just causes of war and on formal declaration 95 Treatment of prisoners.—Combatants and non-combatants ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... one in such a city! What malevolent spirit brought me here? Throat-cutting on the streets at night; highwaymen in every foul alley; unsafe to stir at evening without an armed band! No police worth mentioning; freshets every now and then; fires every day or else a building tumbles down. And then they must wake me up at an unearthly ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... of the unseen has been acting upon the mind of man; filling him with dread of malevolent and reverence for beneficent powers, inspiring him to acts of worship, peopling his imagined heavens with imagined deities, and giving rise to an extraordinary variety of deific tales and mythological ideas. The literature of this subject would fill a library ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... in the gladness of the morning, like a sullen cloud in the blue sky, and began to do something to his favourite bed of cabbages. Not that Arthur was fond of old Jakes; on the contrary, ever since the coffin-stand conversation, which betrayed, he considered, a malevolent mind, he detested him personally; but still he set a fancy value on him because he was connected with the daily ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... a severe headache, and did not appear at the dinner-table that night, nor did she see her husband during the evening. She retired to her bed-chamber at an early hour, but not to sleep. Instead, she abandoned herself to torturing reflections on the malevolent predicament into which she had been brought. She did not attempt to disguise from herself the hideous fact that her own precipitancy of action in the matter of the candidates for the club had been the primary cause of the peril that now ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... can, you may be sure, but with little hope of doing any good: humanity is no match for cruelty. There are now and then such angelic beings as Mr. Hanway and Mr. Howard; but our race in general is pestilently bad and malevolent. I have been these two years wishing to promote my excellent friend Mr. Porter's plan for alleviating the woes of chimney-sweepers, but never could make impression on three people; on the contrary, have ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... who is so malevolent as to cause another sickness, insanity, or death. So charitable is the Igorot's view of his fellows that when, a few years ago, two Bontoc men died of poison administered by another town, the verdict was that the administering hands were ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... criticising of the Parisians: "This victory was necessary, for these sad Parisians had begun to complain. The emptiness of Paris, its quiet, the lack of money which continues to make itself felt, gave to the malevolent a good opportunity to excite dissatisfaction, and they did their best to spread it. I was wondering this very morning why in a nation so devoid of national feeling there should be in the army such unity of action and thought. It seems to me ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... turning in her bed in that delightful apartment in "Midsummer Night's Dream," and reviewing the fell array of these unlucky affairs. As she eyed them, black shapes against the glow of her firelight, it struck her that the same malevolent influence inspired them all. For what had caused the failure and flatness of her tableaux (omitting the unfortunate incident about the lamp) but the absence of Olga? Who was it who had occasioned her unfortunate remark about the Spanish Quartet but Olga, whose clear duty it had been, when ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... different a conduct from Jackson's!... Every day is clearing away all the difficulties that prevent its adoption; the only difficulty that remains, it is universally said, is the protection of the wires from malevolent attack, and this can be prevented by proper police and secret and deep interment. I have no doubt of its universal adoption; it may take time but it ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... embarrassed by the indignation, which this malevolent allusion to her father excited, and by the difficulty of rendering her answer as temperate as it should be reprehensive, hesitated for some moments, in a confusion, which highly gratified her aunt. At length ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... slip to spoil it by making the child define a parable as "a heavenly story with an earthly meaning"—the result being to evoke a paean of exultation from the few papers whose favourite sport it is to keep a malevolent weather-eye on Punch in perpetual hope of catching him tripping. Just such a little chorus of mischievous delight greeted the publication of Mr. du Maurier's joke in which an old maid complains that a serious drawback to the charming view from her windows is the tourists ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... subsequent development can convert this unmistakable blunder into a demonstrable truth. To take a case in point. When it was shown that so far as witchcraft rested on observed facts these could be explained on grounds other than those of the malevolent activities of certain old women, the belief in witchcraft was not "purified," neither did it advance to any so-called higher stage; it was simply abandoned as a useless and mischievous explanation of facts that could be otherwise accounted for. Are we logically justified ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... part our knowledge, even of persons, is built up of motor elements. By unconscious and imperceptible copying in our own body the external behavior of a man, we may learn to understand him with benevolent or malevolent sympathy. And it will, no doubt, be admitted by most readers that the reason why they know their friends and foes better than they know anyone else is that they carry the remembrance of them not only in their ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the light—toads and creepy, crawly things, to say nothing of Bogles and Little Bad People—came out in the darkness to do all the harm they could, for they hated the people and were always trying to lead them astray. Many a poor man going home in the dark had been enticed by these malevolent things into quicksands and mud pools. When the Moon was away and the night was black, these vile ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... emphasis and bared his teeth. If ever malevolent hate was written on a face it found expression ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... affairs is of such recent date, for presuming to stand forth as the champion of the fights and privileges of the City of London. No man of common spirit, however, could tamely submit to the insulting charges and coarse insinuations with which the Corporation has long been assailed by malevolent or ignorant individuals. That the civic system is free from spot or blemish, no one in his senses would pretend to assert. But it may honestly and truly be asserted that the Court of Aldermen have both the power and the inclination to amend whatever is defective, and to introduce whatever reforms ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... just as Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid, in these days, have written the most delightful stories about the Red Indians. In religion they were polytheists; they believed that, in the work of Creation, many Powers participated; that some of these Powers were benevolent, some malevolent, whilst others—neither benevolent nor malevolent—were merely neutral. To the benevolent creative Powers they attributed all that is beautiful in the world (i.e. certain of the trees, plants, flowers, animals, insects, and pleasing colours and scents); all that is fair and agreeable in the human ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... There were other people seated in chairs on the Calvert's Favor lawn. Camillion, his electronics expert, and two others. At full length, covered by a blanket, was the guard. He looked up at Rick, his eyes dull and malevolent, ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... malevolent silence became terrible. The strain of it increased, for each man now had something definite to cherish in the words and the looks that had passed. They divided the camp work with scrupulous nicety, each man waited upon himself ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... throughout the country; though every clue, however fantastic or tenuous or obviously fraudulent, was as cautiously examined as if it really held the nucleus of discovery; though fakers and cheats of preposterous sorts harassed the proceedings and wrought many malevolent bits of mischief in disappointed revenge, being treated with a leniency which would suffer aught, all, rather than clog any vague chance of a revelation of the seclusion of the lost child—there seemed no ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Daoine shi,' or Men of Peace, of the Scottish Highlanders, rather resemble the Scandinavian Duergar, than the English Fairies. Notwithstanding their name, they are, if not absolutely malevolent, at least peevish, discontented, and apt to do mischief on slight provocation. The belief of their existence is deeply impressed on the Highlanders, who think they are particularly offended at mortals, who talk of them, who ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence. To gain sooner than others that which all pursue with the same ardour, and to which all imagine themselves entitled, will for ever be a crime. When those who started with us in the race of life, leave us so far behind, that we have little hope to overtake ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... perspective. In some way Joe had become more human. She still refused to believe that Eddy was not all that was chivalrous and noble, but her anger against Joe for his insinuations had given way to a feeling of regret that he should have made them. She ceased to look on him as something wantonly malevolent, a Thersites recklessly slandering his betters. She felt that there must have been a misunderstanding somewhere ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... himself suddenly on a 'stock term.' There were tones of his master's that Cop never dared to disobey; he went down at full length and lay panting, regarding Maori fixedly with a sidelong and malevolent eye. Harry returned to his cradle, and Chris approached the ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... came within range of Tarzan's vision, just behind the prostrate form of his companion, the crouching, devil-faced figure of the striped saber-tooth hybrid, eyeing him with snarling, malevolent face. ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling the truth. Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has whirled out of sight like Cinderella's: our house in Belgravia has been whisked away into the air by a malevolent Genius, and I am no more a member of Parliament than I am a Bishop on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a garter at his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and your own little ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... necessary for him to reach me, and well he knew it, the scoundrel! With a malevolent expression on his face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence, he began teetering. Teetering!—and with me out on the very edge of the bough, clutching at the twigs that broke continually with my weight. Twenty feet ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... offers him oblations with sincerity of heart, he is able to so successfully perpetuate the peace and quiet of their sons and grandsons that these will no more meet with any calamities arising from being possessed by malevolent demons.'" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... to him, but at last an impulse to definite action turned his footsteps toward the cluster of greenhouses in the deepening shadow of the mansion. He would find Gafferson, and probe this business to the uttermost. If there was discoverable in the man's manner or glance the least evidence of a malevolent intention—he would know what to do. Ah, what was it that he would do? He could not say, beyond that it would be bad for Gafferson. He instinctively clenched the fists in the pockets of his jacket ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... her breath, and to his amazement he perceived that her face was full of pain, as though she had revisited some scene connected with sorrowful memories. There was even a slight drawing back in her attitude, as if she feared to go on, and meet some ghost. What could it be? Then the malevolent sprite who was near him just now whispered: "It is an Italian garden, she has seen such before in other lands; perhaps the man is an Italian—he looks dark enough." So instead of feeling solicitous and gentle with whatever caused ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky bottle. Men unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon, Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor), plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats, rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent, pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named Misanthropos, in such sort that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained in the air and bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... little malevolent cackle as he spoke, and the three boys named laughed too, though with no great heartiness, and shifting the while uneasily ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... grew cold, they lay down quite close to each other upon the ground and continued their conversations. Manuel was repelled by the malevolent spirit of the gang; one of them told a story about an aged fellow of eighty, "old Rainbow," who used to sleep furtively in the Manzanares laundry in a hole formed by four mats; one night when an icy cold wind was blowing they opened two of his mats and the next day he was ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... come, and he should pay her for the bitterness of that hour! Yonder malevolent fellows, who now looked bewildered and uneasy, should be forced to retreat before her and perceive what power she had obtained by ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the hands of the party on the one side as well as in those of the other, and to remain an undisturbed and sarcastic spectator of the fierce struggle that ensues, seems, from the dogmatical point of view, to be a part fitting only a malevolent disposition. But, when the sophist evidences an invincible obstinacy and blindness, and a pride which no criticism can moderate, there is no other practicable course than to oppose to this pride and obstinacy similar feelings and pretensions on ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... anguish of my breast. Nay! even as this instant fled, Was it not thou, O vision bright, That glimmered through the radiant night And gently hovered o'er my head? Was it not thou who thus didst stoop To whisper comfort, love and hope? Who art thou? Guardian angel sent Or torturer malevolent? Doubt and uncertainty decide: All this may be an empty dream, Delusions of a mind untried, Providence otherwise may deem— Then be it so! My destiny From henceforth I confide to thee! Lo! at thy feet my tears I pour And ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... tiny movement and Tommy saw a Ragged Man. He was lying prone upon the earth. He seemed either to hear or see something, because his lips moved as he spoke to another invisible man beside him, and his expression of malevolent joy ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... nose. The sun was red and dim even at midday, and at his rising and setting he was as harmless to the eye as a crimson shield or a painted moon. The meteorological conditions seemed the farthest possible remove from those that produce rain, or even dew. Every sign was negatived. Some malevolent spirit seemed abroad in the air, that rendered abortive every effort of the gentler divinities to send succor. The clouds would gather back in the mountains, the thunder would growl, the tall masses would rise up and advance threateningly, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... This unending malevolent silence became terrible. The strain of it increased, for each man now had something definite to cherish in the words and the looks that had passed. They divided the camp work with scrupulous nicety, each man waited upon himself ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... wild, terrible and fantastic dreams that filled his brain, satisfied him that he was haunted and pursued by countless spirits of evil. For some reason he supposed that these spirits differed in power—that they were not all alike malevolent—that the higher controlled the lower, and that his very existence depended upon gaining the assistance of the more powerful. For this purpose he resorted to prayer, to flattery, to worship and to sacrifice. These ideas appear to have been ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... length, and despatched in hot haste to Lady Rashborough's. Beatrice had scarcely entered before Stephen Richford drove up. He looked anxious and white and sullen withal, and he favoured Mark with a particularly malevolent scowl. Richford knew the relationship that had existed at one time between Mark ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... which he had called his conscience, he had for motion and companionship only the swaying of the curtains in the breeze from the open window and the dark, prostrate thing whose face as he went closer was like a white mask—a mask with a fixed and malevolent sneer. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... leaving the Italiens, Mme. d'Espard humiliated Mme. de Rochefide by snubbing her; all the women followed her example, shunning the mistress of Calyste du Guenic. [Beatrix.] In short the Marquise d'Espard was one of the most snobbish people of her day. Her disposition was sour and malevolent, despite its elegant veneer. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Markland, Envy made room for her twin-sister, Detraction; Ill-will, Jealousy, Unkindness, and a teeming brood of their malevolent kindred crowded into his heart, possessing its chambers, ere a warning reached him of their approach. Is there rest or peace for a man with such guests in ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... seemed animated by a hostile, malevolent, unjust spirit. In the next room he could hear his father moving. He pictured him at his work-bench, with his serge apron, calm and content. What a humiliation! and for the second time in a dozen hours he ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... that they more than half guessed the nature of my errand at Cocheforet, and that they were not minded to be bound by Mademoiselle's orders. In particular, I augured the worst from Clon's appearance. His lean malevolent face and sunken eyes, his very dumbness chilled me. ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... to consider this supposed missionary in the last act of his mission; and here it is that the malevolent spirit of a Bible-prophet, or of a predicting priest, appears in all that blackness of character that men ascribe to the being ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... flung it off, and stepped back, confronting me with a face as hard and an eye as malevolent as a demon. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... fifty years people now called "anarchists" will have in America as respectable a place as they now occupy in France. When we are more accustomed to social thought, we shall not regard those who radically differ from us, as mad dogs or malevolent idiots. We may, indeed, still look on them as mistaken, but what now seems to us their insanity or peculiar atrociousness will vanish with our growing understanding and experience. When we become less ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... "pussy,"—whereas Mrs. Arbroath's countenance was cold and hard and shiny, like porcelain, and her smile was precisely that of the immovable and ruthless-looking animal designed long ago by old-time potters and named "Cheshire." Her eyes were similar to the eyes of that malevolent china creature—and when she spoke, her voice had the shrill tone which was but a few notes off the actual "me-iau" of an angry "Tom." Within a few days after their arrival, every cottage in the "coombe" had been "visited," and both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... their very best—or worst—to make the earth a miserable place. I can laugh as heartily as anybody at Dickens's "scolds" and female bullies; none the less however am I ready in all seriousness to reckon the shrew as an evil influence, as bad as some of the most subtle and malevolent scourges inflicted by physical nature. All of us have but a little span on earth, and we should be able to economise every minute, so as to extract the maximum of joy from existence; yet how many frail lives are embittered by the shrew! How many men, women, and children has she not forced ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... wrong man!" Craddock returned, making mockery of the words, uttering them jeeringly out of the corner of his mouth. He blasted Morgan with the glare of his malevolent red eyes, redder now than before his weapon had moistened the street of Ascalon with blood. "You're the feller that's been shootin' off your mouth about murder in the name of the law, and you bein' able to take his gun away from that feller. Well, kid, I'm afraid it's goin' to be a little too ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... and a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before they came home ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... Obviously we are removed outside the moral order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result, as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... through their long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... miracle, for it might quite as likely be a revelation made by Satan to injure, as by God to benefit, mankind. Allowing that God and Satan exist, it would seem likely—judging Christianity by its fruits—that the Christian religion is such a malevolent revelation of ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... hand as he was sworn indicated that his nerves were not so calm as he strove to appear. He looked neither to the right nor left, but kept his glance downcast. Only once, as he stood there waiting to be questioned, did he cast a furtive look towards the man whose life hung on his evidence, but the malevolent vindictive gaze Birchill shot back at him caused him to ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... case: an attack by a secret, sober, malevolent band, who in cold blood approached to demolish the company works. Not liquor moved them on their mission, but money—money paid by his arch enemies. The men were simply hired tools, brazenly indifferent no doubt to crimes, desperate in character certainly, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... he most generally left 'em the poorer when he got ready to quit. "Little Kid," that's what they used ter call him, 'cause he was little an' good-lookin'; but there wasn't a decent hair in his head.' And the tramp turned away with a malevolent look ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... is called Porgu, or Hell. His mother usually appears in the form of a bitch, and his grandmother under that of a white mare. The minor Esthonian devils are usually stupid rather than malevolent. They are sometimes ogres or soul-merchants, but are at times quite ready to do a kindness, or to return one to those who aid them. Their great enemies are the Thunder-God and the wolf. The principal outwitter of the devil is generally ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... intentions hostile. Kau Moala, a Tongan who visited them in 1807, and related his experiences to Mariner, describes them as always friendly to strangers. Probably they took the Pandora for a god-ship, and since the Immortals of their Pantheon are generally malevolent, they left their women behind, and flourished weapons to scare the gods into good behaviour. In 1807 they had forgotten the visit, perhaps because it had brought them no calamity to inspire the native poets. Hamilton relates an incident quite in keeping with the character of this determined ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... perfection. No insanity here either, but something of the same undue sensitiveness and melancholy as in the father, the same absence of the coarser and more robust virtues. Moreover, she belonged to a family by no means so angelic as herself, not insane, but abnormal—malevolent, cruel, avaricious, almost criminal. The most scrupulous modern alienist would hesitate to deprive either Bernardo or Porzia of the right to parenthood. Yet, as we know, the son born of this union was not only a world-famous ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... in the universe, and with these imps, every occurrence of an unusual character was in some way connected. There was no order, no serenity, no certainty, in anything. Everything depended upon ghosts and phantoms. Man was, for the most part, at the mercy of malevolent spirits. He protected himself as best he could with holy water and tapers and wafers and cathedrals. He made noises and rung bells to frighten the ghosts, and he made music to charm them. He used smoke to ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... Indians of California a girl at her first menstruation "was thought to be possessed of a particular degree of supernatural power, and this was not always regarded as entirely defiling or malevolent. Often, however, there was a strong feeling of the power of evil inherent in her condition. Not only was she secluded from her family and the community, but an attempt was made to seclude the world from her. One of the injunctions most strongly laid upon her was not to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... moments he was awakened by a tap upon his arm; opening his eyes, he beheld, close by him, seated upon the back of a flying-fish, an ugly kelpie, or water-fairy, with a malevolent, evil aspect, who regarded him with a ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... acknowledged, and it was perceived to move along definite lines of law. Further, in the great outburst of Spiritualism it began gradually to be evident to the world that this force occasionally manifested itself in a personal, though always a malevolent manner. Now it must be remembered that even this marked an immense advance in the circles called scientific; since in the middle of the nineteenth century, even the phenomena so carefully recorded by the Church were denied. These were now no longer denied, since phenomena, at least closely resembling ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... that anybody has designedly set this wonderful universe going, it is perfectly clear to me that he is no more entirely benevolent and just in any intelligible sense of the words, than that he is malevolent and unjust. Infinite benevolence need not have invented pain and sorrow at all—infinite malevolence would very easily have deprived us of the large measure of content and happiness that falls to our lot. After all, ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the showerer, the slayer of the malevolent, profound, mighty, of impenetrable sagacity, the dispenser of prosperity, the enfeebler, firm, vast, the performer of pious acts, Indra has given birth to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... had parted from all comfort in this life, and every hope of affluence in the Beyond, it would presently be disclosed that all these were in reality as one person who had unceasingly plotted to my destruction, and William Beveledge Greyson would stand revealed in the guise of a malevolent vampire. Truly that development has at this moment an appearance of unreality, and worthy even of pooh-pooh, but thus is the warning spread by your own printed papers and the records of your Halls of Justice, and it would be an unseemly presumption for one of my immature experience to ignore ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... in creating order. But Carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is still Machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whom, to my astonishment, I recognised Cetywayo, King of the Zulus. At the foot of the bed stood another man—myself grown older by many years, and leaning over the bed, apparently whispering into the dying man's ear, was a grotesque and malevolent figure which I knew to be that of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, whose glowing eyes were fixed upon the terrified and tortured face of Cetywayo. All was as it happened afterwards, as I have written down in the book ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... its initial steps. Its method of betrayal was, Judas-like, to sit in friendly intercourse beside its victim, and afterwards, when the fulness of malevolent inspiration had come, to give the fatal kiss in the presence of enemies. The people did not know the ills they were about to suffer until deliverance was well-nigh hopeless. Had Rationalism begun by laying down its platform and planning the ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... apparent submission; but the old man did not stop, and the boy saw all his strategical points turned, one after another, until he found himself seated inside the school, and obviously the centre of curious if not malevolent criticism. Not till then did the President release his ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... corruption, mitigated by his calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity, though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to all the action, was Kishwegin. And her dark braves seemed to become darker, more secret, malevolent, burning with a cruel fire, and at the same time wistful, knowing their end. Ciccio laughed in a strange way, as he wrestled with the bear, as he had never laughed on the previous evenings. The sound went out into the audience, a soft, malevolent, derisive sound. And when ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... among the Bell Letters and poetry will do you some service in the interval of severer studies. I hope we shall fully discuss with George Dyer what I have never yet heard done to my satisfaction, the reason of Dr. Johnson's malevolent strictures on the higher species ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... deprecation, using the old household title by which he had familiarly known her. "I've nothin agin you—and I kin prove it by wot I'm yer to say. And I ain't trucklin' to yer for myself, for ez far ez me and your'n ez concerned," he continued, with a malevolent glance, "thar ain't gold enough in Caleforny to mak the weddin' ring that could hitch me and Cress together. I want to tell you that you're bein' played; that you're bein' befooled and bamboozled and ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... to you as I ought to speak, I am at the disadvantage of being wholly unable to comprehend the strange and malevolent change which has come over you. Through nearly twenty years of close and even daily observation, rendered at once keen and kindly by an affection to which I will not now refer, you had produced upon me the impression of a dutiful, respectful, honorable, and polite young man. If, as was the case, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... everybody was well pleased and glad at the captive's good fortune; and as now almost two-thirds of the night were past, they resolved to retire to rest for the remainder of it. Don Quixote offered to mount guard over the castle lest they should be attacked by some giant or other malevolent scoundrel, covetous of the great treasure of beauty the castle contained. Those who understood him returned him thanks for this service, and they gave the Judge an account of his extraordinary humour, with which he was not a little amused. Sancho Panza alone was fuming at the lateness ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... towards them again, and, much to Catherine's dissatisfaction, pulled his brother away. They retired whispering together; and, though her delicate sensibility did not take immediate alarm, and lay it down as fact, that Captain Tilney must have heard some malevolent misrepresentation of her, which he now hastened to communicate to his brother, in the hope of separating them forever, she could not have her partner conveyed from her sight without very uneasy sensations. Her suspense was of full five minutes' ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... then both breaking away too soon. Did never two dart at each other, seize, and cling, and ever after be one? Love! It had spoiled her father's life, and Daphne Wing's; never came when it was wanted; always came when it was not. Malevolent wanderer, alighting here, there; tiring of the spirit before it tired of the body; or of the body before it tired of the spirit. Better to have nothing to do with it—far better! If one never loved, one would never feel lonely—like that poor girl. And yet! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Speech which is falsly & shamefully called MOST GRACIOUS. It breathes the most malevolent Spirit, wantonly proposes Measures calculated to distress Mankind, and determines my Opinion of the Author of it as a Man of a wicked Heart. What a pity it is, that Men are become so degenerate and servile, as to bestow Epithets which can be appropriated ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... The Mystery Keepers is put in to make it harder. The Abbey at Clynch St. Mary has a "coise" put on it by the last Abbess, and every direct male heir expires punctually on his twenty-first birthday. The actual agency is a poisoned ring concealed in the frame of a portrait of the malevolent Abbess and is in the custody of the Otway family, who enjoy a prescriptive if nebulous right to be stewards of the property. Just how or why the Otways—noble fellows, we are given to understand—carry out the deceased ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... stubborn man, czar in his own domains, a small principality bounded by four inhospitable walls. His guests—having no other place to go—were his subjects, or prisoners, and distress could not find a more unfitting tribunal before which to lay its case. There was something so malevolent in his vigilance, so unfriendly in his scrutiny, that to the players he seemed an emissary of disaster, inseparable ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... imprisonment. Dudley, Earl of Leicester, followed, and during his period of residence the house can claim association with the name of Spenser, who was a frequent visitor. Leicester escaped the malevolent influence of the house, which he left to his son-in-law, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. During the Earl's occupancy the mansion went through some stormy scenes. It was here that he assembled his fellow-conspirators which he left to his step-son, Robert Devereux, to arouse the ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... supplied him with flint and steel, that he might strike fire when he wanted it. Moreover, they placed a hammer near him, which they supposed he would use with force against evil spirits, for they thought he had sovereign authority over all the mischievous and malevolent spirits that inhabited the air, mountains, and lakes. High festivals were held in honour of this deity, as noticed elsewhere, to supplicate for a propitious year, and at these festivals every excess of extravagant and dissolute ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of forming the most dangerous of these intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orchestra. A bad singer can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist the pernicious influence of this person. The most ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... The world was so low in its political relations that no other form of government was possible. Now that Rome had conquered numberless provinces, the ancient constitution, which was based upon the existence of a privileged patrician class, a kind of obstinate and malevolent ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... relation existing between McGuire and his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was something like that of a peevish, perverse child toward an indulgent parent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a fit of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be met by a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman seemed actually to assume and feel the character assigned ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... to an improved state of civilisation and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction. The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the age, was proved by their ascribing this frightful affliction to the inefficacy of ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... black fellow at my elbow that he really had never met with any, but that his grandfather had found the little implements and tools belonging to this diminutive race of subterraneous spirits. The Germans believed in two species; one fierce and malevolent, the other a gentle race, appearing like little old men, dressed like the miners, and not much above two feet high; these wander about the drifts and chambers of the works, seem perpetually employed, yet do nothing. Some seem to ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... kept in the background, yet it is certain that what has here been said of the domestic interior of a man-of-war will, in a greater or less degree, apply to most vessels in the Navy. It is not that the officers are so malevolent, nor, altogether, that the man-of-war's-man is so vicious. Some of these evils are unavoidably generated through the operation of the Naval code; others are absolutely organic to a Navy establishment, and, like other organic evils, are incurable, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... unavailing; so that there were continual frauds, concealments, and thefts, which animated every one against his neighbour, and produced infinite contentions and perpetual quarrels. Hence a perverse and malevolent disposition was constantly kept up among them, which rendered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... chair, with clasped bands upon Ida's knees, and sweet, half-tearful face looking up, 'My darling, I have never been angry with you,' answered Ida, clasping the girl to her heart, with a stifled sob. 'But I don't think Miss Rylance meant so kindly. Her idea sprang from a malevolent heart. She wanted to humiliate me—to drag my most sordid characteristics into the light of day—to make me more abject than poverty had made me already. That was the motive ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the verge of rashness, loyally adherent to Lord Raglan while governed by his own judgment, distrustful under stress of popular clamour; Panmure, ungenerous, rough-tongued, violent, churlish, yet not malevolent—"a rhinoceros rather than a tiger"—hurried by subservience to the newspaper Press into injustice which he afterwards recognized, yet did but sullenly repair. We see finally that dominant Press itself, personified in the all-powerful Delane, a potentate with convictions at once flexible ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... terror, as a huge scorpion, malevolent, and with its tail raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gaping void where once the corridor-door had swung. "Oh, oh! Where ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... been but a private individual, living in Spain, he would, out of the love he bore the provinces, have rushed to their defence had their safety been endangered. He felt therefore deeply wounded that malevolent persons should thus insinuate that he had even wished to injure the country, or to exercise tyranny over its citizens. The tenth penny, he continued, was necessary to the defence of the land, and was much preferable to quotas. It was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... stopped now, but he thought he could hear heavy breathing from beyond the house. As he moved toward that side, a small but malevolent-looking snake slithered out from beneath a bush near by. Involuntarily he leaped aside. As he landed, a round pebble slipped under his foot. He flung up his arm. It met the low branch of a tree, and ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... The most malevolent person upon earth could not have tired poor Clarence's patience more than good-natured Lord Delacour contrived to do, with the best intentions ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... her purpose. But the friendship of the Island women she had never desired, and when her husband was drowned there was not a fisher-wife to go and sit with her in the desolate house. As the years went by her good looks went with them. She yellowed, and her malevolent eyes took on red rims round their greenness; while her dry lips, parted over her snarling teeth, were more ill than they had been when they were ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... The so-called saint who does not wash his body is not a saint. He who has strengthened and purified his thoughts does not need to consider the malevolent microbe. ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... granted for the foundation of the new colleges. Cromwell remained with the great cardinal till his fall. It was then that the truly noble nature which was in him showed itself. The lords had passed a bill of impeachment against Wolsey—violent, vindictive, and malevolent. It was to be submitted to the commons. Cromwell prepared an opposition, and conducted the defence from his place in parliament so skilfully that he threw out the bill, saved Wolsey, and gained ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you—do ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... hoped that Ellas Droom—who knew too much—might refuse to go into the new territory with him, but the gaunt, old clerk took an unnatural and malevolent delight in clinging to his employer. He declined to give up his place in the office, and, although he hated James Bansemer, he came like an accusing shadow into the new offices near the Chicago River, and there he toiled, grinned and scowled with ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the head of the Government, and for this reason it was thought by many, when William came to the throne, that he would be sure to dismiss from his service the Prime Minister who once had offended him so deeply. A man with a more malevolent turn of mind would very likely have acted as public expectation seemed to foreshadow, but William, as we have seen, soon made it clear that he had no fault to find with the Duke of Wellington, that he cherished no ill-will and was quite ready to let bygones be bygones. There can be no doubt that ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... defence, wherein he justified himself and his conduct. A number of gentlemen of high character and distinction spoke to the kindliness of manner of Mr. Sparling at all times, and also of Captain Colquitt, and completely exonerated them from the imputation of entertaining vindictive or malevolent feelings. Amongst others who appeared for Mr. Sparling were Sir Hungerford Hoskins, Captain Palmer, Rev. Jonathan Brooks, His Worship the Mayor (William Harper, Esq.), Soloman D'Aguilar, Lord Viscount Carleton, Major-General Cartwright, Lord Robert Manners, Lord Charles Manners, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... whistle gave him seventeen seconds before the arrival of the shell, and, if he waited for the sound of the discharge, he had about four seconds left. Still they didn't worry much until, after a few opening rounds, Abdul's practice got too good and there was no mistaking his malevolent attentions. Mac, if he were not near his own bivouac, would dive into the nearest one, irrespective of owner, and seek its leeward corners. A few seconds of quiet waiting while he exchanged the time of day with his host; then ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... on the levels; when the rain ceased for a moment the wind charged over the already defeated field, ruffled the gullies, scattered the spray from the roadside pines, and added insult to injury. But both wind and rain concentrated their energies in a malevolent attempt to utterly disperse and scatter the "Half-way House," which seemed to have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed and bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the taunting fury of the blast. A loose, shambling, disjointed, ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... him for a malevolent, gloating second. Then six strong arms flashed down, again and again, mercilessly. Pain and blood, screaming agony, punctuated by the awful thudding of solid clubs hitting fragile flesh and bone, over and over ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... the court returned to London; and from that time, some malevolent star having gained the ascendant, every thing went cross in the empire of Love: vexation, suspicions, or jealousies, first entered the field, to set all hearts at variance; next, false reports, slander, and disputes, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... They could never impart the secret to mortals; and because of the knowledge which burned within their hearts, and the anguish of being parted forever from those they loved, the tortured spirits in prison grew malevolent. While the sun (still worshipped by them as Ra) was above the horizon they had no power over men, but the moment that Ra? "died his red death" the djinns could destroy those who ventured within such distance ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... heathen everywhere, despite their ignorance of God and his grace, condemned to the utmost the evil of ingratitude. They regarded it the mother of evils, than which was none more malevolent and shameful. Among many examples in this respect is one left us by a people in Arabia called Nabathians, who had an excellent form of government. So strict were they in regard to this evil that anyone found guilty of ingratitude to his fellows ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... contains no person who is so malevolent as to cause another sickness, insanity, or death. So charitable is the Igorot's view of his fellows that when, a few years ago, two Bontoc men died of poison administered by another town, the verdict was that the administering hands were directed by some vengeful ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... Confidence in them. But a People, who, through a Winter of seventy Years Continuance, have never failed, or forsaken, or given us Cause of Offence, surely merit some Consideration, some grateful and chearing Ray to warm them to a Sense that Protestants are not, by Choice, of a cruel, unforgiving, and malevolent Nature. ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... been in vain. For the last eight days Herr von Schoen (German Ambassador in Paris) has lulled us to sleep with endearing protestations of peace. Meanwhile Germany has mobilized troops in a secret and malevolent manner. ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... excelled by no journal in Europe except the London "Times." It gives out two editions daily, the evening one about the size of the New York "Nation;" and it has all the telegraphic news. It is absurdly old-grannyish, and is malevolent in its pretended conservatism and impartiality. Yet it circulates over forty thousand copies, and goes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... degree. As her property is widely scattered over Northern Mayo, there is generally something going on in her behalf. One day there is an ejectment at Ballycastle; the next an abortive attempt to evict at Cloontakilla. In the opinion of the poorer peasantry this eccentric lady is a malevolent fiend, an "extherminathor," a tyrant striving to make the lives of the poor so wretched as to drive them off her estate. "A sthrange lady is she, Sorr," cried one of her tenants to me. "Och, she's a divil of a woman, entoirely. All she wants ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... return home. In a far dark corner he had waited till he saw Lablanche enter her mistress' room hurriedly, without observing the letter. Then he caught it up and stole away to the library, where he read it with malevolent eyes. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Eastern seas was reopened. The bill was brought in, but was, with great difficulty and by a very small majority, thrown out on the second reading. [17] On other financial questions Montague, so lately the oracle of the Committee of Supply, was now heard with malevolent distrust. If his enemies were unable to detect any flaw in his reasonings and calculations, they could at least whisper that Mr. Montague was very cunning, that it was not easy to track him, but that it might be taken for granted that for whatever he did he had some sinister motive, and that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... own. They were, however, far from equally matched, and that was the cause of Grizzie's cry; for the one was the somewhat ancient colley named Covenant, whose teeth were not what they had been, and the other a mastiff belonging to Lord Lick-my-loof, young and malevolent, loosed from the chain the first time that night for a month. It looked ill for Covenant, but he was a brave dog, incapable of turning his back on death itself when duty called him, and what more is required of dog or man! Both the dogs were ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... never refused us when we have had occasion to ask for the loan of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse him." McGinty paused and looked round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. "Who ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... red-hot iron bar was merely the terrible insignia of the Professor's indubitable might and mastery; a very compelling invitation to docility and respectful obedience. To Finn it was not that at all; but merely terrible and unmistakable evidence of basest treachery and malevolent madness. And it was largely with the red-hot iron that the Professor sought to tame Finn, believing, as he did, that this was necessary to his own, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... (and miserably enough) staring down at my jewelled buttons that seemed to leer up at me like so many small, malevolent eyes, upon the air rose a distant stir that grew and grew to sound of voices with the creak and ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... verdict, consisted of three Egyptian judges. It is true that the English judge who should have gone on Assize had fallen ill, and there was no other to take his place. But Osman Effendi saw in this too the malevolent hand of the English, who nourished a grudge against him. "How," he said, "can I obtain justice if there is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... day to break the charm, and see the interior of the palace. I am sorry we did. There was no Sleeping Beauty in any chamber that we saw; nor any fairies, good or malevolent. There was a shabby set of clean old rooms, which looked as if they had belonged to a prince hard put to it for money, and whose tin crown jewels would not fetch more than King Stephen's pantaloons. A fugitive prince, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... expectations, if he had prudently declined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same talents in studious solitude would have placed beyond the reach of kings his present happiness and his immortal fame. When we inspect, with minute, or perhaps malevolent attention, the portrait of Julian, something seems wanting to the grace and perfection of the whole figure. His genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Caesar; nor did he possess the consummate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life—firearms, too, with malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for. Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... burdened by the sorrowful conviction that he was powerless against his niece's malevolent purpose, he was detained by the representation that every fresh piece of intelligence would first reach the Sebasteum and her. Some question might easily arise which his calm, prudent mind could decide far better than hers, whose troubled condition ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... but the sea was so rough that we could scarcely walk at all among the packages and emigrants. Some of them who were crouching on the floor watched us silently as we tottered and stumbled along like drunkards. I was annoyed at being watched by those malevolent, mocking eyes. "I say, doctor," one of the men called out, "the sea water gets in the head like wine. You and your lady look as though you were coming back from a spree!" An old woman clung to me ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... that all the disorders of the world originated with the devil and his sinister companions, because they were stirred with the unholy desire to obtain associates in their miseries. It was impossible to fix a limit to the number of these malevolent spirits constantly provoking diseases and infirmities upon men. They were alleged to surround mankind so densely that each person had a thousand to his right and ten thousand to the left of him. Endowed with the subtlest activity, they were able to reach ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... to take Fakrash quite seriously, in spite of all his supernatural powers; he had treated him with a half-kindly, half-contemptuous tolerance, as a well-meaning, but hopelessly incompetent, old foozle. That the Jinnee should ever become malevolent towards him had never entered his head till now—and yet he undoubtedly had. How was he to cajole and disarm this formidable being? He must keep cool and act promptly, or he would never ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... stammer of it in such words as Eternity, Fate, God. All the outcries of all creatures, living and dying, sink in its depth as in an unsounded ocean. Whether this listening silence, incurious, yet hearing all, is benignant or malevolent, who can say? The wistful dreams of men haunt this theme for ever; the creeds of men are so many keys that do not fit the lock. We ponder it in our hearts, and some find peace, and some find terror. The silence presses ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... human life, we follow up the homicidal Glam with a Scottish traditional story of malevolent and ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... partly ridiculous, partly malevolent old lady heard of her younger brother's sad case, she immediately called in what little money she had out at interest—the fruits of many years of pinching and sparing—converted it into florins, and, tying them up in a bright pocket-handkerchief, ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... feel who has just been scared from the side of a lamb by the timely arrival of a huge sheep-dog. He growled with anger, showed his teeth for an instant, then slunk away with his tail between his legs. He was a spiteful, malevolent creature, cunning, unprincipled, and tainted with cowardice. He had pluck of the wolfish sort, and could fight desperately if cornered; but he shunned the open unless hard pressed, and preferred snapping at an opponent's heels to flying ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... for a moment to tap the cement. "Pooh!" he ejaculated, uneasily. There was a pause, followed by a malevolent chuckle. "At any rate," he said, with joy in the afterthought, "you'll never go ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... understanding of nature, have in the period of their youth and anthropomorphistic and animistic thought worshipped light, and its source, the sun, as the supreme deity, the giver of joy and abundance. All the benevolent deities of the Arians were celestial beings, all the malevolent divinities spirits of darkness: Olympian gods and the demons of the netherworld—Aesir and Giants. To the naive mind of the Indo-Germanic races it appeared a matter of course that the sun, the conqueror of night and ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... threshold, the baron dipt his finger in the font-stone and offered holy-water to his lady, who accepted it, as usual, by touching his finger with her own. But then, as if to confute the calumnies of the malevolent lady of Steinfeldt, with an air of sportive familiarity which was rather unwarranted by the time and place, he flirted on her beautiful forehead a drop or two of the moisture which remained on his own hand. The opal, on which one of these drops had lighted, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... very well for you to find excuses for him. You would find excuses for Satan himself, John. You are far too lenient. Just think what father would say, if you were to be made bankrupt. Can't you hear his delighted, malevolent chuckles? Oh, it is too terrible, too outrageous! You know what everyone would say—that you had been speculating, or gambling, just because you dabbled a little in mines a ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... student of his peculiar nature must be an odd analyst who does not in the end conclude that Grey was on the whole more akin to the Christian hero painted by Froude and Olive Schreiner than to the malevolent political ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... George and M. Clemenceau were in theirs. Gradually the conviction entered Mr. Wilson's soul that what was being destroyed at Paris was Mr. Wilson. The figure of Senator Lodge began to rise across the Atlantic, malevolent and evil, the Lodge against whom he had wanted to appeal to the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... incompatible. The laws of science demanded that he seek the common factor, as source of the whole trouble. Therefore, he himself must be the sole cause of the wretched bungle Fate was making of his well-intentioned life. Was he so malevolent, or just futile? And which was the ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
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