"Aforethought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and forty dollars as a legal attorney's fee, and to the clients that Bob McGraw intended to select, a debt of such magnitude would loom up in all the pristine horror of the end of the world at hand and salvation not yet in sight. With, malice aforethought the promoter of Donnaville was trading on the credulity of the very people he planned to benefit! He knew with what ease the poor rush into debt where the creditor requires nothing down; he knew ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... commonplace and severely utilitarian in its style and contents. Not but that my epistles are always commonplace enough (spirits of Montague and Sevigne, forgive me!), but hitherto I have not really tried to make them so. Now, however, I intend to be stupidly prosy, with malice aforethought, and without one mitigating circumstance, except, perchance, it be the temptations of that above-mentioned ambitious little devil to palliate ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... this object, they have in modern times held it to be unnecessary that indictments should charge, as by the common law they were required to do, that an act was done "wickedly," "feloniously," "with malice aforethought," or in any other manner that implied a criminal intent, without which there can be no criminality; but that it is sufficient to charge simply that it was done " contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided." This form of indictment ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... some sort of scene was necessary in order to celebrate my first entrance into America, so I said "Little lamb, who made thee?" to a customs official. A fracas ensued far exceeding my wildest dreams, during which he delved down—with malice aforethought—to the bottom of my trunk and discovered the oddest things in my sponge bag. I think I'm going to ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... fruitful of the commonplaces. Nevertheless, it was not immortal; and Winton was just beginning to cast about for some other safe riding road for the shallop of small talk when Miss Carteret sent it adrift with malice aforethought. ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... beheld nothing more than an abstracted frown over the tip-top edge of his paper, I defiantly swung into The Humming Coon, which apparently had no more effect than Herman Lohr. So with malice aforethought I slowly and deliberately pounded out the Beethoven Funeral March. I lost myself, in fact, in that glorious and melodic wail of sorrow, merged my own puny troubles in its god-like immensities, and was brought down to earth by a sudden movement ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... charm haunts our footsteps. Everything is so well done, so gracefully and so winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance, but Alphonse is a beast only because he chooses to be bestial. All the traditions of his race run counter to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... he never would! He respected the Bourgeois, nay, loved him, for the sake of Pierre Philibert as well as for his own sake. Terrible as is his crime, he never committed it out of malice aforethought. He has been himself the victim of some hellish plot,—for a plot there has been. This has been no chance melee, Count," exclaimed La Corne ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was not premeditated—it was not of malice aforethought; it was the outcome of an idle suggestion made one hot summer afternoon, and decided upon in the moment. Within the same half-hour a telegram was sent the Professor inviting him for a ride to Buffalo. Beyond that point there was no thought,—merely a ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... that no one whose mind was not, to put it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure malice aforethought. I once saw a fly alight on a cup of hot coffee on which the milk had formed a thin skin; he perceived his extreme danger, and I noted with what ample strides and almost supermuscan effort he struck across the treacherous ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... on her long cruise from San Francisco there was nothing to drink on board. Or, rather, we were all of us unaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for many a month. This sailing with a "dry" boat was malice aforethought on my part. I had played John Barleycorn a trick. And it showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were beginning to ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... too personal, is altogether to their taste; but a studied neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, that is, unless he be a nobleman, (as, for example, Lord Stanley, of the Derby family,) who, as an hereditary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best way he can. On the whole, I partly agree ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... one word of the evidence against him did he deny. It was a plain case of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder. The judge presiding at the trial instructed the jury that a man is presumed to intend that which he does; that whoever kills a human being with malice aforethought is guilty of murder; that murder which is perpetrated by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing is murder in the first degree. The jury found the assassin guilty and the judge sentenced him to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... wilfully and feloniously make an assault in and upon one, Theodore Roosevelt, with said loaded revolver, with intent, then and there, him, the said Theodore Roosevelt, unlawfully, willingly and feloniously and of his malice aforethought to kill and murder." ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... aware, sir," interposed the legal gentleman, "that you are rendering gross and offensive, malicious and libellous, scandalous and burglarious language to this gentleman, in his own domicile, with malice prepense and aforethought, and a ——" ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Government of the United States did not take so kindly to the idea of a privateer and pirate colony within its borders. And—with malice aforethought—one Commodore Patterson was sent to disperse these marauders at Barrataria, who, confident of their strength and fighting ability, defiantly flaunted their flag in the faces of the officers of the Government. "We can lick the whole earth," chuckled ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... WIT.—The jurors for our lady the Queen upon their oath present that Eleanor Margaret Owen, upon the first day of June in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and eighty-nine, feloniously, wilfully, and of her malice aforethought did kill and murder one Ann Elizabeth Lewis against the peace of our lady the Queen, her ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... with murder. Murder is defined by Sir James Stephen, in his Digest of Criminal Law, /1/ as unlawful homicide with malice aforethought. In his earlier work, /2/ he explained that malice meant wickedness, and that the law had determined what states of mind were wicked in the necessary degree. Without the same preliminary he continues ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... his mind to the problem. In the end he decided on the following line of defence: "Not Guilty," and in the alternative "Guilty under justifiable circumstances, without malice aforethought but with intent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... just told' me to confirm me in the interest which I had felt in her from the first moment. I told her unsparingly that Steffani had seduced and abandoned her of malice aforethought, and that she ought to think of him only to be revenged of his perfidy. My words made her shudder, and she buried her beautiful face ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to prosecute the merchant on an action of damages for the loss of an eye, which he said he had sustained in his service. The company endeavoured to appease this citizen, by representing that his misfortune was no other than a common inflammation, nor was it owing to malice aforethought, but entirely to the precipitate passion of an incensed young man, who, by the bye, acted in his own defence. At the same time the merchant promised to make any reasonable satisfaction, upon which the other demanded an obligation, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... has ever seen. But, as soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to the level of Cowley; or rather he does ill what Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elaborately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing wanting to make them perfect was, that he should never have troubled himself with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and laborious flight." His natural ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was a pewee, whose own nest was nearly built, in a wild-cherry tree not far off. The fence under the oak was his usual perch, and it was plain that he made his first call with "malice aforethought;" for, disdaining the smallest pretense of interest in it, he flew directly to the nest, hovered beneath it, and pulled out some part of the building material that pleased his fancy,—nothing ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... thy trade so dainty of subjects? Are men become weary o' dying of late, that ye must need make tombs for the living? I'll have thee to the justice, sirrah, for wicked malice aforethought, and misprision." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... had one, eh? Don't be vexed. I'm not tricking you into revealing post office secrets. I knew she was dying, and, when I saw your father take a message to the chemist's shop I simply made an accurate guess.... Now, I'm going to scare you, purposely and of malice aforethought, because I want you to be a good little girl, and obey orders. Mrs. Siddle, senior, now happily deceased, was an epileptic lunatic of a peculiarly dangerous type. She suffered from what is classed by the doctors as furor ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... inexorable, and out-of-doors—Ah, me! It did not seem like a book at all,—not at all the abstraction and impersonality that were intended, but my proper self bevelled and (with another syllable inserted) walking out into the world with malice aforethought. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... it seemed inappropriate. How foolish the average audience in a drawing-room looks while it is listening to passionate love-ditties! And yet I suppose the singer chose these songs, not from any malice aforethought, but simply because songs of this kind are so abundant that it is next to impossible to find ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... versification strong, the sound sharp or soft, monotonous, hurried, in proportion to the requirement of sense; the illustrative thoughts apt and new; the humour quaint and relishing? Finally, is not in many cases that which is spoken of as something extraneous, dragged in aforethought, for the purpose of singularity, the result more truly of a most earnest and single-minded labor after the utmost rendering of idiomatic conversational truth; the rejection of all stop-gap words; about the most literal transcript of fact compatible with the ends of poetry ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... horribly afraid at first of having irredeemably hurt Darco's feelings, but that excellent enthusiast had not even the beginning of an idea that it was possible for anyone to laugh at him unless he chose of purpose aforethought to be laughable. Thus the episode passed lightly enough, but Paul was continually in danger of a reversion to it whenever the distraught heroine appeared ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... are rather of the nature of the modern "manslaughter." The "crime passionel" and the downright murder of malice aforethought, are even more frequent. In 1466 Catherine Leseigneur was scolded and even threatened with a beating while in bed by her mother-in-law. In a sudden passion she snatched up a large stone and killed the other woman with it. How a stone large and heavy ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... compared with that of my own country. Felonies ranked in the following order: Murder, Rape, Incest and crimes against nature, Arson, Robbery, Assault to Murder, Manslaughter, Mayhem, Bribery, Larceny and Perjury. The law held one degree of murder and that was with malice aforethought, but where a person killed a human being wantonly, without cause or malice, the homicide was committed to the Lunatic Asylum, and, after one year's imprisonment, deprived of the sexual organs, and if his or her conduct endangered ...
— Eurasia • Christopher Evans
... The thin-faced women, rat-faced children and ancient men have crept out from their cellars and gathered about the priest; the lamp has been lit, the Host uplifted. The Hun is aware of this; with malice aforethought he lands shells into the cathedral every Sunday in an effort to smash the altar. So far he has failed. One finds in this a symbol—that in the heart of the maelstrom of horror, which this war has created, there is a quiet place where the lamp of gentleness and honour is kept burning. The Hun will ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... the sinful, with which Christianity has literally sprinkled the world; when we remember the uncountable millions whom its ministrations have restrained from bestiality, and have directed to purer lives and holier deaths, he indeed is not to be envied who can find it in his heart, with malice-aforethought, to mock or ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... officers asked him and told his name. Pompey afterwards stated that the two officers asked who owned the adjoining plantations and that one,—and that on being told that Mr. Philbrick had bought them all, said: "Then we need not go any further"—which looks like malice aforethought. The paper was, apparently, written at Hilton Head and there signed with the men's marks—if so, it is a forgery. Pompey's great difficulty seemed to have arisen from a misunderstanding of statements ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... last summer certain blue-blooded Archingtons, with malice aforethought, left their patrician heights on North Avenue, on which they had hitherto dwelt in solitary grandeur, and went to Cape May. There they boarded at the same hotel with the Smith family, and deigned to bestow a few smiles ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... of the court were then drawn up, and the President took them to the Judge's chamber. After the Judge had perused them, he ordered an indictment to be drawn up against Peter Riot: "For that he meanly and clandestinely and with malice aforethought had broken three panes in the window of Widow Careful with a certain instrument called a top, whereby he had committed an atrocious injury upon an innocent person, and had brought a disgrace upon the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... be recorded to the old town's credit, the evil was propagated without malice aforethought. Brownsville's borough limits show its shape to be somewhat like that of a hot-air balloon—a big body with a neck; and the narrow strip of land between the river and Dunlap's Creek stretching toward Bridgeport from time out of mind has been designated ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... reads the indictment that 'he, William Evans, did feloniously, wilfully, and of malice aforethought, kill and murder Sir ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... into three branches; the first is "justifiable," the second "excusable," and the third "felonious." Felonious homicide is subdivided into two branches; the first is murder, which is killing with malice aforethought; the second is manslaughter, which is killing a man on a sudden provocation. Here, gentlemen, are four sorts of homicide; and you are to consider whether all the evidence amounts to the first, second, third or fourth of these ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... It is down right deception of the very worst kind. I know that I talk too much, tell a great many things that ought to be left unsaid, but I do not tell lies—there is no other name for them—and knowingly, with malice aforethought, make an injury or do a ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... Personal Sense to be truthful; that he knew Man, and that Man was made in the image of God, but was a criminal. This is a foul aspersion on man's 437:6 Maker. It blots the fair escutcheon of omnipotence. It in- dicates malice aforethought, a determination to condemn Man in the interest of Personal Sense. At the bar of Truth, 437:9 in the presence of divine Justice, before the Judge of our higher tribunal, the Supreme Court of Spirit, and before its jurors, the Spiritual ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... have been more than the ninth part of a man in some respects; but when, under pretence of a friendly call, he informed Thornton Rush, already very sick, that the priest, Father Ryan, had baptized Althea—we say, when he did this intentionally and with malice aforethought, and with a sinful love of tale-bearing, and with utter recklessness as to consequences, he proved himself infinitely less, even than ordinary tailors of the proverbial size. He deserved the punishment of being hissed by his ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... timber-wolf is twenty dollars, but this is not an off-set to the native's superstitious aversion to killing this animal; the Indian's belief is that such slaughter on his part queers his hunt for a whole season. He never goes out with malice aforethought on a wolf-hunt, but if one of these animals crosses his track he may kill it, although always with inward foreboding. A man brought in a wolf to Fort Smith while we were there and throwing down his hunting gear ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... adjusted, another difficulty occurred — Mrs Tabitha absolutely refused to enter it again, unless another driver could be found to take the place of the postilion; who, she affirmed, had overturned the carriage from malice aforethought — After much dispute, the man resigned his place to a shabby country fellow, who undertook to go as far as Marlborough, where they could be better provided; and at that place we arrived about one O'clock, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... aforethought," I responded, "I am going to litter up your floor. I have decided to be reckless. I don't care ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... here described are, of course, those of the Norwegian capital nearly a quarter of a century ago. Few editors, I fancy, outside of country towns, now go about personally spreading rumors, with malice aforethought, and collecting gossip. But the power of the press for good and for ill, and the terrorism which, in evil hands, it exercises, are surely not exaggerated. But its most striking application has the drama ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... ship. Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent. Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the .. minds of his more desperate hunters were ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... as I have endeavored to explain in the note, the apology is so much the readier as his intrusions into this province of philosophy are slighter, more careless, and more indirect. But Pope's are wilful, premeditated, with malice aforethought; and his falsehoods wear a more malignant air, because they frequently concern truth speculative, and are therefore presumably more deliberate in their origin, and more influential in the result. It is precisely this ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... up his mind to wait there till Jem comes back," said Shirley, trying to laugh as he rejoined the rest. This was exactly what Dog Monday had done. His dear master had gone—he, Monday, had been deliberately and of malice aforethought prevented from going with him by a demon disguised in the garb of a Methodist minister. Wherefore, he, Monday, would wait there until the smoking, snorting monster, which had carried his ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Yez are a man grown. Do yez think yez can crim'nally an' wid conthributory vi'lence aforethought dynymite me employers' property, an' no comeback at ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... and calculated to make potential evil-doers stop and think. Four of the six had been members of an especially desperate gang of train and bank robbers. The remaining two had forfeited their right to keep on living by slaying deputy marshals. Each, with malice aforethought and with his own hands, had actually killed some one or had aided and abetted in killing ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... Donnell's is, as usual, short and to the point. St. Clair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the postscript out of malice aforethought. It is just that he has not a great ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... discontent, &c., &c., he did of his own wanton depravity and restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he did with malice aforethought set himself to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented and happy until he conceived this base design against their peace; for which wrong he now ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... We were very exact, you see. Yes, sir-we were very exact. Our vulgar people, you see-I mean such as have got up by trade, and that sort of thing-went to a vast expense in sending to England a man of great learning and much aforethought, to ransack heraldry court and trace out their families. Well, he went, lived very expensively, spent several years abroad, and being very clever in his way, returned, bringing them all pedigrees of the very best kind. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... together certain facts, that old Morley Tarrant was an expert photographer and maker of printer's "blocks." Slowly it became plain that Rayne, having been betrayed by the astute American crook, had met him in Edinburgh and with devilish malice aforethought, had contrived to get him to handle the glass cube which served as a paper-weight, and which I had quite innocently conveyed to the old hunchback, who had succeeded in taking the finger-prints and by photography transferring them upon the surgical rubber glove, thin as paper—really ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... fountain, yet each in its proper place, and contributing to form a whole, grand in itself, yet complete in the minutest proportions. It is most difficult to hedge him in a corner, for his positions are taken so deliberately, that it is rare to find a point in them undefended aforethought. Professor Reason tells me the following: "On a recent visit of a public nature, to Philadelphia, and in a meeting composed mostly of his colored brethren, Mr. Douglass proposed a comparison of views in the matters of the relations and duties of 'our people;' he holding that prejudice was ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... necessary to offer to the innocent, security from slanderers—those pests of society—when their crime comes within its jurisdiction. Thus, to evade the penalty of law, and yet with malice aforethought to extend their evil intent, is the nice distinction by which [10] they endeavor to get their weighty stuff into the hands of gossip! Some uncharitable one may give it a forward move, and, ere that one himself become aware, find himself ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... in good faith. But once in the ballroom, that little son of Satan called malice-aforethought took possession of her; and there was havoc. If a certain American countess had not patronized her; if certain lorgnettes (implements of torture used by said son of Satan) had not been leveled in ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... almost beside himself with rage as he watched the passing cars and heaped all manner of maledictions upon the head of the station agent, who, he declared, must have known the train was coming, and with malice aforethought had withheld his knowledge and advised the boys to walk. "Everybody was against the college boys," he declared, "and looked upon it as legitimate to take advantage of them in every possible manner." But Will only laughed in response and made no protests ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... of the joke was, that all this time Lord Masque and Tadpole were two old foxes, neither of whom conveyed to Lady Firebrace a single circumstance but with the wish, intention, and malice aforethought, that it should be communicated to ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... that she works on a line quite her own, and quite alone, as a creative artist in fiction. Others have done this incidentally and occasionally, as Charlotte Bronte and Walter Scott, but George Eliot does it elaborately, with laborious painstaking, with purpose aforethought. Scott said of Richardson: "In his survey of the heart he left neither head, bay, nor inlet behind him until he had traced its soundings, and laid it down in his chart with all its minute sinuosities, its depths ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the Southern heart" and light the flame of civil war, was given into the trembling hand of an old white-headed ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the brain that that old chap had, we'd have our own tabernacle up there on the point, instead of sulking at his back gate. That's really where we're located, you know. His back gate opens smack in the face of our front one. I think he did it with malice aforethought, too. His back gate is two miles from the house. It wasn't really necessary to go so far for a back gate as all that, was it? To make it worse, he put a big sign over it for us to read: 'NO TRESPASSING. THIS MEANS YOU.' Sara took it down after the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... slips off! It is contrary to a mule's religion and politics, and all his traditions and precedents, to slip off. He may slide a little and stumble once in a while, and he may, with malice aforethought, try to scrape you off against the outjutting shoulders of the trail; but he positively will not slip off. It is not because he is interested in you. A tourist on the canyon's rim a simple tourist is to him and nothing more; but he has no intention ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... sin either of omission or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions; hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who through ignorance, crass stupidity, or malice aforethought flew prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson than the bum-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson |
