"Baleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing the matter with you but the suffering occasioned by the horrible coercion which they are using with you. Your simple and generous soul does not comprehend it. You yield; you forgive those who injure you; you torment yourself, attributing your suffering to baleful, supernatural influences; you suffer in silence; you give your innocent neck to the executioner, you allow yourself to be slain, and the very knife which is plunged into your breast seems to you the thorn of a flower that has pierced ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... to take the proffered hand, for the baleful eye of the terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the words of the other ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the three riding animals. In the confusion he did not see who this was. Haley spoke to his deputy, and then drew their party sharply off toward the jail, which could be used temporarily for the detention of United States prisoners. To the last the young Turrentines muttered together and sent baleful glances toward Bonbright, whom they plainly conceived to be the author of their troubles. Poor Pony Card plodded with bent head mutely behind them, a furtive hand travelling now and again to ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... public in general, have been previously developed. The skill of workmen is propagated especially by observation and the personal emulation of the young; whence it is, that the introduction of new industries is best made by the immigration of skilled workmen.(390) Hence the baleful influence of such interruptions, as for instance, the repeal of the edict of Nantes. Hence too, it is, that despotism and the reign of the populace are so unfavorable to the economy of a country, where there can be no guarantee of a consistent observance and development of the laws. To the best ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... d'ye see? Presently its proper occupant comes in and glares at me from the door, puffing with indignation. Inwardly he is saying, 'How dare you trespass, you bally young cub?' and I pretend to be quite unconscious of his baleful gaze. I know there's really nothing he can do about it. If he were in London, I expect he'd write ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... were formally adopted by the states, by which time it had become clear that they must totally fail of their purpose, for each state decided for itself whether to respond to the demands of congress. The poison of nullification thus infused into the body politic at its birth bore baleful fruit in the years ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... to the duty we owe to the public did we not here, and in this connection, state our emphatic opinion that the editors and proprietors of newspapers, as a rule, have hitherto looked too leniently on this subject of quackery and its baleful announcements. Happily some of our journals will not publish such advertisements, and no editor can excuse himself by saying that he is ignorant of the character of such announcements. It must be known to every man of experience that such ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... followed his example; and they all ran off down the glade searching for Loob, whom they soon found and bearing their strange trophies on their spear-heads they went on. The monsters, clinging sullenly to their perches, rolled baleful eyes of emerald and rose and amethyst upon them as they went, but lifted never a wing to follow them. Ten minutes later the sun came out again. Then the monsters all sprang hurtling into the air, and darted ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... occult in the shape of an old black-letter volume which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have been when you consider that they were both Miss COLE'S characters. A very little of the occult will excuse a good deal of improbability, and the small amount that has crept into The Cypress Tree does not spoil ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... fumbling with the combination to the great vault in the corner, old Hector's breath came in short snorts. He turned and, still in the same attitude, watched Daney while the latter twirled and fumbled and twirled. Poor man! He knew The Laird's baleful glance was boring into his back and for the life of him he could not remember the combination he ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... given rise to the mystery of pain and suffering. When the less fit of chemical combinations or even of the lower forms of life perished in the struggle, we may regard the process with the unemotional eye of pure intelligence. But "pain, the baleful product of evolution, increases in quantity and in intensity with advancing stages of animal organisation, until it attains its highest level in man." And so it comes about that the cosmic process produces evil, sorrow, and suffering. Consideration ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... have a somber and awful background. While this had been going on a boy had been murdered in the vicinity of Lawrence. Some young men rode out to see about it, and one of them was shot and killed. But a still more ghastly crime threw its baleful shadow over the people. It was perpetrated two days before the Governor concluded ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... complained that I am with my dear spouse, and so add to the cost, sure I am worth my meat, of which my poor scarred face is a token. Scarce ever do I see these scars but I remember how I caught that baleful disease, from which God keep you, my son. Should He visit you with it, may you be tended with the care wherewith I tended the Queen's highness, when most of her attendants stood far off. Nay, Philip, I fear you are in danger of forgetting the past service your parents have rendered, in the glamour ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... handles all day and danced or shouted all night. The increase of zymotic diseases is admitted, but there has been a corresponding increase of power in many lines that will more than counteract this baleful growth. ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... however, Dr. Frazer's remarks in G.B. ii. p. 454. He thinks that the air might in this way be purged of vagrant spirits or baleful ghosts, as the Malay medicine man swings in front of the patient's house in order to chase away the disease. Cp. G.B. ii. 343, where a rather different explanation is attempted of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... fixing their baleful eyes and shedding disastrous eclipse on "falling nations and on kingly lines about to sink forever." This belief was cherished among the later Greek philosophers and Roman priests, and was vividly held by such men as Philo, Origen, and even Kepler. It is here ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... royal palaces! The greatest seas have the sorest storms, the highest birth subject to the most bale, and of all trees the cedars soonest shake with the wind: small currents are ever calm, low valleys not scorched in any lightnings, nor base men tied to any baleful prejudice. Fortune flies, and if she touch poverty it is with her heel, rather disdaining their want with a frown, than envying their wealth with disparagement. O Rosalynde, hadst thou been born low, thou hadst not fallen so high, and yet being great of ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Dick to ask himself, or his friend, what was the nature of this monstrous, indistinctly seen shape that upreared itself out of the canoe and poised its head within a foot of his face, its two eyes flashing baleful green fires into his as its long forked tongue flickered angrily in and out of its slightly opened jaws; he knew it at once for one of the enormous boas that dispute the sovereignty of the South American forest ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... are the only business with which we have to do and that of it we must make the best. At one time we think our loves much more immortal than the stars; at another that they are mere shadows cast by the baleful sun of desire upon the shallow and fleeting water we call Life which seems to flow out of nowhere into nowhere. At one time we are full of faith, at another all such hopes are blotted out by a black wall of Nothingness, and so on ad infinitum. Only very stupid people, or humbugs, are or pretend ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... development, are broken; the unnatural superstition ceases to circumscribe and influence its operations; and thus emancipated, it recovers its elasticity and springs forward toward the perfection of the Creator. Rescued from these baleful influences, the new organization is vigorous and rapid in its growth, yielding the beneficent blessings natural to the healthful and unabused energies of the mind. But with maturity and age the webs of superstition begin to fasten on the mind; priests become prominent, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... uttered the words I regretted the rashness of my speech. His face set hard, and a baleful light sprang up in his ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... perfections and my own disastrous imperfections; I made her understand that I was not the inexperienced man she had thought me; rather, I was one with two examples ever before him—one shining with the pure effulgence of Heaven, the other harsh, staring, horrible, like some baleful fire at sea. "Ah, Virginia," I concluded, "you must not misjudge me. It is a sinner who speaks to you, not a saint removed too far to help you. A sinner indeed am I, yet not utterly lost. I have a guide, a hope, a haven; ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... knowledge of the command of men writ plain thereon. The propellers have swirled faithfully and unceasingly; the good ship in consequence has cleft the passive waves. But who knows what hideous lurking peril of mine or torpedo we have not survived, what baleful eye has not glowered at us, itself unseen, and retired again to its foul underworld, baulked of its ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... Beautiful—'When Christian drank it was clear and good, but now it is dirty; and with the feet of some that are not desirous that pilgrims should here quench their thirst.' After the writing of the first part, and before that of the second, the Act of Uniformity had spread its baleful influence over England. To use Bunyan's words—'The Romish beasts have corrupted the doctrine by treading it down with their feet, and have muddied this water with their own ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cry—a wild struggle—a splash of the dark, seething waves—and Helen stood up again in her bright raiment alone on the margin of the pool; whilst ever-widening circles stretched hurriedly away and away, as though terror-stricken, from the baleful spot where Vera Nevill had sunk below the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... animosity of men. But it is, nevertheless, a thing to be dreaded and to be guarded against, with the utmost vigilance. Throughout the melancholy annals of the Church and the world, it has been the fountain of innumerable woes, spreading baleful influences through society, paralysing the energies of reason and conscience, dimming, all but extinguishing, the light of religion, convulsing nations, and desolating the earth. It is the duty of historians ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... Coupeau, Gervaise and Nana, watched each other with eyes of baleful hate. It seemed as if some spring had broken—the great mainspring ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... evening he again met Isabel King. She turned and walked back with him but she made no reference to Four Winds or its inhabitants. If Alan had troubled himself to look, he would have seen a malicious glow in her baleful brown eyes. But the only eyes which had any meaning for him just then were the grey ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there, a tall, large-limbed man, brown and weather-stained, one who had endured much, wrinkled somewhat, care-marked about the brow, but very capable, and evidently as bold and daring, to the line, as he asserted himself,—he stood there, flung back, fixed, petrified, as it were, by the baleful judgment that lighted those unearthly eyes which watched him from across the table there; and though his arm be flung up over his face, half to protect, half in menace,—though his fist be clenched and swollen, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... Scarce had she finished, when she saw the Angel of Death before her. Expecting her end to come immediately, she resolved to make Adam eat of the forbidden fruit, too, lest he espouse another wife after her death.[65] It required tears and lamentations on her part to prevail upon Adam to take the baleful step. Not yet satisfied, she gave of the fruit to all other living beings, that they, too, might be subject to death.[66] All ate, and they all are mortal, with the exception of the bird malham, who refused the fruit, with the words: "Is it not enough that ye have sinned against God, and have brought ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... happy? There were the possibilities of the future to be reckoned with, sickness, childbirth, and the rearing of children, the hidden development of the character which so often grows away from what it once cherished, the baleful currents of outside influences, the attraction and repulsion of so-called friends and enemies all of which complicate the primitive simplicity of married life and forfeit the honeymoon Eden. Adam and Eve in the garden of the Creation can hear the voice of God ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... discharge of judicial duty." Similarly the test of whether a particular act is an attempt to influence or intimidate a court is not the influence exerted upon the mind of a particular judge but "the reasonable tendency of the acts done to influence or bring about the baleful result * * * without reference to the consideration of how far they may have been without influence in a particular case."[35] In Craig v. Hecht[36] these criteria were applied to sustain the imprisonment of the comptroller of New York City for writing and publishing a letter to a public ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Sara, who had nearly jumped off the stump at the sound of those baleful syllables. It would be good to think of, anyhow, she decided; and as she thought of it, the wings of the Zizz began to dry so fast that they fairly sang. And suddenly it zizzed right out of Schlorge's forceps and went buzzing straight ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... should answer just as well, and in that case you might remember the laws of matter and apply a little oil occasionally. What are the motives of your life but dress, admiration, excitement, a rapid succession of men to pass under your baleful fascination, and then to pass on crippled in soul for having known you? Unless you can give Graydon Muir a loving woman's heart, and mean to cling to him for worse as well as better, you will commit a crime before God and man if you accept him. With ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... been an annual commemoration of it in the form of a speech by one of the Whig leaders. This year the post was one of evident responsibility and even of danger, but Warren, true to his character, solicited the appointment. He announced his subject as "The Baleful Influence of Standing Armies in Time of Peace." On the fifth of March the crowd that came to hear him filled the Old South to ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... echoed from lip to lip: "Black Mose," "bad man," "graveyard of his own," "good fellow when sober," etc. Sometimes, irritated and reckless, he lived up to his sinister reputation, and when some Eastern gentleman in brown corduroy timidly approached to say, "Fine weather," Mose turned upon him a baleful glare under which the questioner shriveled, to the delight of the driver, who vastly admired ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them withers ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... before us, chirrups toward the damp steam which symbolizes a horse, and we move off up the long, soppy street, past its houses and jails and grey bathing-penitentiary,—and out at last from Bareges. Out from Bareges, though into the vast unknown; and our spirits rise higher as the baleful spell of the spot ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... what is normal and what abnormal in his physiological development, and is often the victim of groundless fears that use up his strength or send him in despair to seek assistance from the most easily available sources of information, those baleful writings and despicable quack practitioners everywhere soliciting and alarming youth, and whose career forms one of the saddest commentaries on the ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... and as she sheered about, it wavered round the point that seemed to attract it, like a soap suds bubble blown from a tobacco-pipe, before it is shaken into the air; at the core it was comparatively bright, but faded into a halo. It shed a baleful and ominous light on the surrounding objects; the group of sailors on the forecastle looked like spectres, and they shrunk together, and whispered when it began to roll slowly along the spar where the boatswain was sitting at my feet. ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... the notion that Jalapa was the ancient Paradise, the argument is, that Paradise must have been in the tropics, in a region elevated far above the baleful heat and malaria of the low lands, in a climate where plants could grow to the utmost perfection. And there is no such place in the world except Jalapa. Here, too, when the daily shower, which is requisite to bring all vegetable nature to perfection, rendered garments of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... with the peacemakers on the continent of Europe. Its success there has been very great, and I wish its success on the continent of America could be so great that it might replace in the hands of our millions the baleful books which have lately been glorifying bloodshed in the private and public wars of the past, if not present. The wars which "Lay Down Your Arms" deals with are not quite immediate, and yet they are not so far off historically, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... camp building, the bunkhouse, grub-house, office, blacksmith shop, and beyond these the glaring lights of a couple of saloons, while back nearer timber the "red lights," the curse and shame of railroad, lumber, and mining camps in British Columbia then and unto this day, cast their baleful ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... she knew not why, Kate sought her mother. But that good lady was already in attendance on the patient, and Kate hurried past that baleful centre of attraction with a feeling of loneliness and strangeness she had never experienced before. Entering her own room she went to the window—that first and last refuge of the troubled mind—and gazed out. Turning her eyes in the direction of her morning's walk, she started back ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... thought he, "be so cruel to my own Faith! Her life ought to be all sunshine and gladness, and would be but for me, and I must sadden and darken it with the baleful imaginings of a distempered mind. I must struggle harder and pray oftener and more fervently to be preserved from myself. And now my soul feels the need of communing with the Infinite Spirit. What fitter ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... glared the circle round Through baleful, blue-lit eye, Not unforgetful of his debt. "Now, heed ye how ye draw the net." Quoth he: "I'll do some damage yet Or ere ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Helen, baleful in her unconsciousness, had again closed her eyes. Althea looked at her, and she was aware of being angry with Helen. She was further aware that, since all was over for Franklin, she owed him something. She owed it to him at least to make ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... glory beats With withering light upon the mighty seats, They hear the far-resounding trump of fame; On other lips they hear the one-loved name In vaunting or derision, and they weep To know that they shall never lull to sleep Those tired heads, crowned with desolating flame. Beyond the hot arena's baleful glow, Beyond the towering pomp they dimly see, They sit and watch the fateful pageants go Through war's red arch, or up to Calvary, The First Love still within their hearts impearled— Mothers of all the masters ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... window, toward which he stared, wide-eyed and immovable. There, upon the sill of the window, a black bird had suddenly appeared and hopped awkwardly to and fro. It seemed perfectly at home, and not in the least frightened, peering into the room with its head cocked upon one side, a baleful purplish glitter in ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... quickly in his footsteps. If Master Robin, dancing attendance upon his clamourous customers, could have divined the identity of the newcomers whose advent he regarded so indifferently, his purple face would have paled and his stomach failed him at the thought that the Fircone sheltered the baleful presence of the king and of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... admired. Reaching the clearing in front of his house, he dropped the heavy tongue and whipped out a red handkerchief with a sigh of relief. Also, as he wiped away the perspiration on his forehead and neck and arms, he turned baleful eyes upon the innocent ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... and pleasure. It was here that Byron's contempt for woman became fixed, seeing only her weaknesses and follies; and it was this contempt of woman which intensified the abhorrence in which his character was generally held, in the most respectable circles in England. Even in distant Venice his baleful light was not under a bushel, and the scandals of his life extended far and wide,—especially that in reference to Margherita Cogni, an illiterate virago who could neither read nor write, and whom he was finally compelled to discard on account ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... said Apollo, "what dost thou with the warlike bow? Such burden best befits my shoulders, for did I not slay the fierce serpent, the Python, whose baleful breath destroyed all that came nigh him? Warlike arms are for the mighty, not for boys like thee! Do thou carry a torch with which to kindle love in human hearts, but no longer lay claim to ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... communion and his environment. He took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people—qualities accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to say that he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on this point. His boyhood had been spent in those bitter days when social, political, and blood prejudices were fused at white heat in ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... her wing, Beauties bee, may lose her sting; Fairy land can both combine, Roses with the eglantine: Lightly be your measures seen, Deftly footed o'er the green; Nor a spectre's baleful head Peep at ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... religion throughout Europe, without cessation, exerting a baleful influence upon temporal affairs; we see it direct the interests of princes; we see it divide and make Christian nations enemies of each other, because their spiritual guides do not all entertain the same opinions. Germany is divided into two religious parties whose interests ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... learned again whereby Their baleful zeal had come about, King Cole met many a wrathful eye So kindly that its wrath went out— Or partly out. Say what they would, He seemed the more to court their candor; But never told what kind of good Was in ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... congress gaiters. Owing to the fact that he was a large florid sandy person, with a freckled bristly neck and a singularly direct fearless manner of looking at his man with eyes that were small, sunken, baleful and rather piggy, the exigencies of Mr. Hennage's profession had never even warranted recourse to his two most priceless possessions—his hands. Yet, despite this fact, and the further fact that ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... through blood to the gratification of her passions, to that Royal mountebank, Queen Christina of Sweden, whose laughter rang out while her lover Monaldeschi was being foully done to death at her bidding by Count Sentinelli, his successor in her affections; and in this baleful company the notorious Lady Shrewsbury won for herself a dishonourable place by a lust for cruelty as great as that of Christina or Messalina, and by a Judas-like treachery which even they, who at least flaunted their crimes openly, would have blushed ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... of the extent of his guilt, as well as of the certain and terrible end to which it pointed, and, above all, he had not the most remote conception of the almost hopeless slavery to which he was doomed when once fairly secured in the baleful net which Morley Jones had begun ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... abuse, he did not fail to attack the perpetrator or upholder of it also, and that, too, with a strength of invective, or of cutting sarcasm, which brought every foible, and weakness of his, and even those of his father before him, vividly into view. This was the baleful secret of his strength as an assailant; but this, too, caused him to be regarded by his victims with intense dislike, bordering on hatred. This style of attack, on the part of Mr. Mackenzie, did not necessarily arise from anything like vindictiveness, but rather from a keen sense of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... disturbed in his rest plunging away. Again, a slithering bulk of something, undulating its path through the thickets. All unseen. Save once. Looking upward, Elza caught a gleam of green eyes overhead. A triangle of three baleful spots of phosphorescent green. Her murmur of fright caused Tarrano to glance upward. His lavender, beam, grown suddenly larger, swung there with a hiss. Falling from above came a pink body. A bloated body, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... pestered with another species of malignant creatures; men and women whose gifts are followed by misfortunes, whose eyes glimpse evil, and by whose touch the most prosperous affairs are blasted. They work their malicious sorceries in the dark, collect herbs of baleful influence; by the help of which, they strike their enemies with palsy, and cattle with distemper. The males are called maissi, and the females maissa—witches ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... cavern lies, devoid of light, All rough with rocks, and horrible to sight; Its dreadful mouth is fenc'd with sable floods, And the brown horrors of surrounding woods. From its black jaws such baleful vapours rise, Blot the bright day, and blast the golden skies, That not a bird can stretch her pinions there, Thro' the thick poisons, and incumber'd air, But struck by death, her flagging pinions cease; And hence Aornus was ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... staff and water-vessel hung. Near to the lovely dame he drew, While both the chiefs were far from view, As darkness takes the evening air When neither sun nor moon is there. He bent his eye upon the dame, A princess fair, of spotless fame: So might some baleful planet be Near Moon-forsaken Rohini.(495) As the fierce tyrant nearer drew, The trees in Janasthan that grew Waved not a leaf for fear and woe, And the hushed wind forbore to blow. Godavari's waters as ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... in his Diaries, kept during his residence in Europe, which might almost have been written by the grimmest of the old Salem worthies. To him as to them, the consciousness of sin was the most importunate fact of life, and if they had undertaken to write little tales, this baleful substantive, with its attendant adjective, could hardly have been more frequent in their pages than in those of their fanciful descendant. Hawthorne had moreover in his composition contemplator and dreamer as he was, an element ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... stamping up and down the float, waving his arms and orating like Falstaff; Randall and Tombs had their heads together, and were casting what appeared to be baleful glances at Billoo. It was evident that he was not ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of feebleness in their attack; protesting her guiltlessness so loudly that she shouts truth down by brazen strength of lung; retiring at the close with taunts; blazing throughout with the intolerable lustre of some baleful planet. When she enters for the third time, it is to quarrel with her paramour. He has been stung to jealousy by a feigned love-letter. She knows that she has given him no cause; it is her game to lure him by fidelity to marriage. Therefore she resolves to make his mistake the instrument of her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... hounds share their lords' and ladies' secrets, and serve them staunchly in hours of peril; they belong to the times when fairies were still seen holding their moonlight revels, when witches exercised their baleful arts, and fearsome dragons wore still to be met and conquered—"and if you do not believe it," said Dr. Spence Watson, "I ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... ashy white, was distorted into a diabolical grin. The teeth glistened in the lamplight. The brows, twisted into a tense and convulsed frown, were drawn down into black shadows, through which the eyes burned a baleful green like the eyes of a wild animal driven to bay. Again he spoke in the same breathless voice. "I am John Scarfield! Look at me, then, if you want to see a pirate!" Again there was a little time of silence, through which Mainwaring heard his watch ticking loudly from where ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the scene of battle, and, stopping, eyed Henry with a baleful glare. We, who have seen Henry in his calmer moments and know him for the good fellow he was, are aware that he was more sinned against than sinning. If there is any spirit of justice in us, we are pro-Henry. In his encounter with Bill the parrot, Henry undoubtedly ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... master-sculptor of the spirit—Death. Peace was come to the face now; peace to the turbulent spirit; peace to the man whose heart was pure and whose blood was tainted; who had lived ever in the light of a baleful star. He had loved, and he had been faithful to the end; and such a fate might ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... objectionable, we may be sure, would he have found the practice of drilling little children by the hearth or at the school-desk in creeds, catechisms, and the like repositories of mysteries baleful to the growing intelligence. 'Aidons le developpement des facultes humaines pendant la faiblesse de l'enfance,' he said admirably, 'mais n'abusons pas de cette faiblesse pour les mouler au gre de nos opinions de nos interets, ou de ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... like riotous flames; and presently the shell rose upon the peak of many waves swollen to one, and looking below, they saw in the scarlet abyss of waters at their feet a monstrous fish, with open jaws and one baleful eye; and the fish was lengthy as a caravan winding through the desert, and covered with fiery scales. Shibli Bagarag heard the voice of Noorna shriek affrightedly, 'Karaz!' and as they were sliding on the down slope, she stood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the most unlimited success, I purchased a quantity of manure, and had it drawn upon the ground. Then it was that the Evil Genius who (like the wicked Enchanter that always kept his eye upon Don Quixote,) hath ever dogged my steps, made his baleful presence manifest by the most rampant hostility. The day on which the manure arrived, I went out in my pleasure-boat upon Melville Water, accompanied by my man Hannibal, to manage the head-sheets. On our return, at dusk, we found the manure scattered ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... pecuniary concerns of the Government, and by consequence to a great extent those of individuals also, shall be carried back to a condition of things which fostered those contractions and expansions of the currency and those reckless abuses of credit from the baleful effects of which the country has so deeply suffered—a return that can promise in the end no better results than to reproduce the embarrassments the Government has experienced, and to remove from the shoulders of the present to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... to take the proffered hand; for the baleful eye of the terrible Boss was upon him. But his sullen face showed how little the words of the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and listened, his mind growing more irresolute every moment. Now all was certain. Impossible to have any further doubt. That letter! the woman confirmed its meaning. Gwynplaine the lover and the beloved of a duchess! Mighty pride, with its thousand baleful heads, stirred his wretched heart. Vanity, that powerful agent within us, works ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... never be. I never measured him against you. What was his was all of me worth the having, and was given always; there was no change. What was yours was given only when in your presence, and then with hatred of myself and you—given to some baleful fascination in you. For a time, the more I struggled against it the more it grew, for there was nothing that could influence a woman which you did not do. Monsieur, if you had had Robert Moray's character and your own gifts, I could—monsieur, I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... created crises as rabbits create their young, nine at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like rare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... and turned a baleful glare upon the girl, the import of which she was to learn at ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... me?"—eftsoones the answer came From the lips of the lady with blonden hair like a wreath of golden flame, As she lifted the light of her beauteous eyes to the questioning lips of the knight, And muttered those words of import dire, And flashed her eyes with a baleful fire— Alas! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... blows O'er trees, that boast a less-aspiring height. As the wild fury of the whirlwind pours, With direst ruin fall the loftiest towers; And 't is the mountain's summit that, oblique, From the dense, lurid clouds, the baleful lightnings strike. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... for granted that the Marchioness Manson was still in Washington, where she had gone some four weeks previously with her niece, Madame Olenska. It was generally understood that their abrupt departure was due to Madame Olenska's desire to remove her aunt from the baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Carver, who had nearly succeeded in enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the circumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for the wedding. For a moment Archer stood with his ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of the civilised races of the Oriental world. They imagined them as living in a perpetual mist on the confines of the universe: "Never does bright Helios look upon them with his rays, neither when he rises towards the starry heaven, nor when he turns back from heaven towards the earth, but a baleful night spreads ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... in the silence; the clerical person turned in his chair and directed at the prospective customer a stare so baleful that the cigar was forgotten. The flame nipped Johnson's thumb; he dropped the match on the tiled floor and stepped upon it. The clerk hesitated ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... of nature that is not susceptible of scientific challenge and of more logical interpretation. In despite of which the superstitious beliefs are still as firmly fixed in the minds of a large majority of our race as they were in the mind of our prehistoric ancestor. The fact of this baleful heritage must not be forgotten in estimating the debt of gratitude which historic man owes ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... nursing since a collision in the squash court some days previous. Involuntarily he uttered a cry of anguish, followed by a monosyllabic quotation from the original Anglo-Saxon. The girl turned upon him a baleful face, while the long-distance conversationalist on the dock reverted to his original possession and faded from sight in ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... now laid aside too long,— The baleful burthen of this honest song. Though all her former functions are no more, She rules the circle which she served before. If mothers—none know why—before her quake; If daughters dread her for the mothers' sake; If early habits—those false links, which ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... had to pass the Sirens, beautiful but baleful maidens, who sat on a rocky shore and sang a magic song so alluring, that men hearing it let their ships drift on the rocks while listening, or threw themselves into the sea to swim to the maidens, and were drowned. No man had ever heard them and lived. Here the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... made haste to translate, trembling as he spoke, and wilting visibly when the baleful eyes of the fakir rested on him for a second. The fakir answered something ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... He was reluctantly fitting his wooden hand upon the blue steel. He sent a baleful yellow glare into my eyes, and stooped to ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... of pursuers had reached the end of the hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the down. They had decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all directions down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell into the snare set by Nature ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... down. He put away his handkerchief, which had certainly earned a rest. Then he fastened a baleful stare upon his newly-discovered son. It was not the sort of look a proud and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... other—the woman who was his wife. No, she must not keep it—the beautiful, tender thing. With steady hand, but blanched, quivering lips, she reached over and made a little grave among the dying embers, in which a sullen spark glowed like baleful eye. Quietly, with the feeling that she was burying all of youth and hope and joy her life would ever know, she kissed the card with dumb, clinging, passionate kisses, and then with a low, dry ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... Catholic fashion, with extreme unction; audiences were intoxicated with the new drop; sympathy became epidemic; everybody was bewildered and improved; and nobody went and threw themselves off the Monument with a copy of the baleful drama in his pocket! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... the Parliament elected in 1790 the Tories gained ground. Consequently, even the able advocacy of Fox on behalf of religious liberty failed to save Beaufoy's motion from a crushing defeat. Pitt spoke against the proposal and carried the House with him by 294 votes to 105. This vote illustrates the baleful influence exerted by the French Revolution on the cause of Reform ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... let the gleam Of youthful hope that shines upon your hearts, Be chill'd or clouded at this awful task, To learn the lore of undeceitful Good, 390 And Truth eternal. Though the poisonous charms Of baleful Superstition guide the feet Of servile numbers, through a dreary way To their abode, through deserts, thorns, and mire; And leave the wretched pilgrim all forlorn To muse at last, amid the ghostly gloom ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... the woman who had played such a conspicuous and baleful part in Christian's life, she deserted her benefactor at the first sign of his coming ruin and ended her days in her native Holland, bemoaning to the last the loss of her "little dove," whom she had seen raised almost to a throne and had lost ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... baleful crimson sun, The northern light came out, And glared upon the ice-bound ships, And shook ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... persisted in what may be called this war against nature; they then left a few men, who seemed proof against the climate, to retain the castle till the Spaniards should choose to retake it and make them prisoners. The rest abandoned their baleful conquest. Eighteen hundred men were sent to different posts upon this wretched expedition: not more than three hundred and eighty ever returned. The HINCHINBROOK's complement consisted of two hundred men; eighty-seven ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the back-stay. Hardly had he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and the four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down the ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the uproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle. Others of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted turmoil ensued; while standing out of harm's way, the valiant captain danced up and down with ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... their prisoners beyond all chance of rescue. The two lads shivered with fear and weariness. They were bruised and breathless and the thongs which tightly bound their wrists made their arms ache intolerably. Bitter was the regret at invading this baleful Cherokee swamp when they might have remained safe from all ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... hideous antics, should be found many who, like David of Delft, John of Leyden, and others, had been members of rhetorical chambers. The genius for mummery and theatrical exhibitions, transplanted from its sphere, and exerting itself for purposes of fraud and licentiousness, was as baleful in its effects as it was healthy in its original manifestations. Such exhibitions were but the excrescences of a system which had borne good fruit. These literary guilds befitted and denoted a people which was alive, a people which had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... vocation, they have nothing to look forward to. The life beyond is something to which they have given little thought. They have starved their nobler nature that is nourished on higher things, until it is dwarfed and shriveled, and the baleful results of such an unnatural mode of life are pictured in ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... caught sight of it in the lamplight. The White Hope was sitting at the table in the attitude of one who has heard the gong and is anxious to begin; while Mamie, bending over him, raised her head as the two men entered and fixed Steve with a baleful stare. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... filial foot this turf may tread, No kneeling mother clasp her baby's bed; No maiden unespoused, with widow'd sighs, Seek her soul's treasure where her true-love lies; —All stand aloof, and gazing from afar, Look on this mount as on some baleful star, Strange to the heavens, that with bewildering light, Like a lost spirit, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... studied them, like a skilful strategist, catered to them, and felt quite sure that he had that revered individual on his side. But, in the midst of these pleasant imaginings, there rose the dark and baleful image of Chiffield! ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... in heaps together, Smitten by the deadly volley, rolled in blood upon the heather; And the Hanoverian horsemen, fiercely riding to and fro, Deal their murderous strokes at random.— Ah my God! where am I now? Will that baleful vision never vanish from my aching sight? Must those scenes and sounds of terror haunt me still by day and night? Yea, the earth hath no oblivion for the noblest chance it gave, None, save in its latest refuge—seek it only in the grave. Love may die, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life!—These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limitations, modifications they require, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... (involuntarily clasps her hands together and gazes at him in voiceless astonishment). Loved—loved me—thou! (Vehemently, coming close up to him.) I will not believe thee! (Looks hard at him.) Yes, it is true, and—baleful for us both! ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... good-night kiss rested like a blessing on his smooth, boyish forehead, and the prayer learned in the nursery still crept across his pure lips; but now the fair, chiseled lineaments were blotted by dissipation, and blackened and distorted by the baleful fires of a fierce, passionate nature, and a restless, powerful, and unhallowed intellect. Symmetrical and grand as that temple of Juno, in shrouded Pompeii, whose polished shafts gleamed centuries ago in the morning sunshine of a day of woe, whose untimely night has ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... shaggy mantle of his beard Across her neck and bosom to her knee, And called herself a gilded summer fly Caught in a great old tyrant spider's web, Who meant to eat her up in that wild wood Without one word. So Vivien called herself, But rather seemed a lovely baleful star Veiled in gray vapour; till he sadly smiled: 'To what request for what strange boon,' he said, 'Are these your pretty tricks and fooleries, O Vivien, the preamble? yet my thanks, For these have broken ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... seemed to be unavoidable. Coke tried to still the tumult by thundering a command to Norrie, second engineer, to throw open the throttle valve. He took the wheel in person, meaning to shape a course due east, and thus endeavor to avoid the cruiser's baleful glance. But some of the men realized instantly that this expedient would fail. They were in no mood for half measures. Norrie felt a bayonet under his left shoulder-blade. Coke was roared down, and a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... with baleful meaning to the ears of sportive innocence, found a melancholy echo among the deeper woes of my own heart, and, if it chanced to be one of Aunt Lobelia's singing days, the "Dar' to be a Dan-yell! Dar' to be a Dan-yell!" which floated across ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the Evil One used to subject the anchorites of old, by causing to appear before them the attractive but illusive forms of the heathen deities. He wondered whether he were not becoming the sport of the same baleful influence; if, like the Lamias and Dryads of antiquity, this queen of the woods were not some spirit of the elements, incarnated in human form and sent to him for the purpose of dragging his soul ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... year of baleful experience destroyed a great many illusions, and in the election of 1838 the subject of internal improvements was treated with much more reserve by candidates. The debt of the State, issued at a continually increasing discount, had already attained enormous proportions; the delirium of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... intimately affects fundamental, ethical, and hygienic laws, and bears such a vitally important relation to true progress, I frankly admit that I doubt whether I should have the courage to discuss it. But I find it impossible to remain silent, believing as I do most profoundly that the baleful artificial standards so long tolerated must be abolished, that the fetish of the nineteenth century civilization must be overthrown, and that it is all-important that people be thoroughly acquainted with the far-reaching and basic ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... "Fear runs like a baleful thread through the whole web of life from beginning to end," says Dr. Holcomb. "We are born into the atmosphere of fear and dread, and the mother who bore us had lived in the same atmosphere for weeks and months before we were born. We are afraid of our parents, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... gown, perhaps, were attached to the neck and shoulders, tiny lace tuckers were inserted, and gorgeous jewellery was simulated by wretched bits of tinsel trimming. The realism of the Stuart stump picture was never so atrocious as this baleful invention, which was as ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... herself and me before my Dulcinea.[154-1] In my foolish trustfulness I was rash enough to add a caress and to pat her soft neck. She stopped instantly with a hysteric shudder. I knew what was passing through her mind: she had suddenly become aware of my baleful existence. ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards gradually yielding to the baleful influence of Stirn, the Squire grumbled forth that "he did not see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... better preserved, than his wife—a large, stout man, with a fierce face and black, baleful eyes. All cowered before him except La Zandunga, as they called his wife here in Bombardier Lane. He was at her mercy—a Spaniard resident on the Rock by permit granted to his wife—a native of Gibraltar, and liable ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the harassed youth hailed with joy the end of his long suspense. Whatever might be the purport of the words written in that fatal paper, the knowledge thereof could not be worse than the fate which had dogged his footsteps ever since that tragic night when he had first cast eyes on the baleful beauty of the Spanish maid. Yet might it not be that once again the sight of these words would send him wandering homeless o'er the world—that the stream of his uncle's benevolence might be suddenly damned by a force ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Some day, to face this Wellington myself! Marmont too plainly is no match for him.... Thus he goes on: "To have preserved command I would with joy have changed this early wound For foulest mortal stroke at fall of day. One baleful moment damnified the fruit Of six weeks' wise strategics, whose result Had loomed so certain!"—[Satirically] Well, we've but his word As to their wisdom! To define them thus Would not have struck me but for his good prompting!... ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... manorial domain and the farm house a castle. He had not gone far in this work before he began to realize that the returns from his poetry would never suffice to meet such demands as would thus be made upon his purse. Byron's star was in the ascendant, and before its baleful magnificence Scott's milder and more genial light visibly paled. He was himself the first to declare, with characteristic generosity, that the younger poet had "bet"[3] him at his own craft. As Carlyle says, "he had held the sovereignty for some half-score of years, a comparatively ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... mirror and this wig, I shall have the honour of showing you a thousand characters.' As a preparation, the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully grave again, and says to the Proprietor, 'I am ready!' Proprietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and announces 'The Young Conscript!' Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a conscript so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I should think the State would never get any good of him. Thunders ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... a quarter of an hour before he bent close, without starting a convulsion of fear and revolt in the huge fevered body upon the rocky floor. Skag poured a gurgle of water upon the swollen tongue, watching the single baleful tortured eye that held his face. The water was not wasted, though not drunk, for it washed away some of the poison formed of the fever and the thirst. Skag poured again and for a second the great holding eye was lost to him ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... and they found that the slim lad was stronger than any of them. It was an easy matter for him to lift one of the big cans of paste to a wagon without assistance. Teddy, however, stood by with hands thrust in pockets, an amused grin on his face. The baleful eye of the car manager was ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... a tangled jungle, it is almost impossible to pick out the beast from the yellow stems and dark shadows in which it hides, save by the baleful gleam of those wicked eyes, catching the light for one second as they turn wistfully and bloodthirstily towards the approaching stranger. The jaguar, oncelot, leopard, and other tree-cats, on the other hand, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... reports said that Mr. Blaine was vigorous; went up the front steps of his house at a bound; was doing more work than ever, and was rollicking with mirth. The baleful story was ascribed to his enemies, who wanted the great man out of the world. The reassuring story was ascribed to his friends, who wanted to keep him in the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... too many trees, so that some must be cut down; or there may be too few, and it becomes necessary to plant more. Water-courses may not flow in proper curves; hills may be too high, too low, and of baleful shapes, or their relative positions one with another may be radically bad. Any one of these causes may be sufficient in the eyes of a disciple of Feng-shui to account for the sudden outbreak of a plague, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... and belonged to Wes. Her chief characteristic was her devotion to Dinkey. She worshiped Dinkey, and seconded her enthusiastically. Without near the originality of Dinkey, she was yet a very good and sure pack-horse. The deceiving part about Jenny was her eye. It was baleful with the spirit of evil,—snaky and black, and with green sideways gleams in it. Catching the flash of it, you would forever after avoid getting in range of her heels or teeth. But it was all a delusion. Jenny's disposition was ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... the claw-footed, haircloth sofa was a stealthy creature offering to entrap her with wide, inviting arms; three folded umbrellas leaned over the edge of their shadowy stand, looking down at her like scrawny and baleful birds, ready to peck at her with crooked handles. And as for Adoniram, her lank black cat, the child's restless creative fancy was ever transforming him from goblin into warlock, from hydra to hippogriff, until the earnestness ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... he could not rule he was ready to ruin. That disposition accorded with both his mental and physical make-up. Bodily he was a bundle of bones and nerves without a particle of surplus flesh. His hair was red, his complexion was sandy, and his eyes, when he was excited and angry, had a baleful expression that led some one in my presence on a certain occasion to speak of ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... not?" said Blunt. "By'r Lady, thou'lt have cause to fear me ere I am through with thee." He smiled a baleful, lingering smile, and then turned ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. When any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, and produced something strange and baleful—a serpent, a scorpion, a plant of deadly nightshade or of henbane. But, on the other hand, the sun was all goodness, and persons or things which it cast forth into life infallibly partook of its benignity. Wine that maketh man glad, the bee who works for him in the flowers secreting wax ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sternly, "the time has come for the explanation you promised. Before I can aid you in any experiment that may serve to prolong your life, I must know how far that life has been a baleful and ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... over there?" The Scotsman was hostile to the Union cause, and the old Caledonian Mercury was the only paper that stood by us; but it did so manfully. On the day of my arrival a bulletin was posted in the newspaper offices and on Change that McClellan and the Union army had surrendered. The baleful report was received with no little exultation by all who were engaged in the cotton trade. I sat up until midnight with the editor of the Mercury, helping him to squelch the rumor and the next morning expose the falsity of the news ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... attended at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who—when the vail of the Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead flitted about the streets of Jerusalem—shook with fear and said, "Surely this was the Son of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in full view of the crucified Saviour—in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exhaustive explanation I made of the crisis in this country's affairs? Did I not give you twenty-four hours in which to think it over? What were you doing—muddling your brains with French wines?—that you could not reason clearly when relieved of my baleful fascination? Were you not protected on the following day by two men, who were more your friends than mine? I proposed a straightforward bargain, which you understood as well then as you do now. You realized to ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... Cannon Ball people began in 1891, after the ghost dance trouble, and has had to contend with the baleful influence of ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... died away another flash, and another, and another, tore athwart the heavens; until within the space of less than a minute the entire vault of heaven was ablaze with flickering and flashing lightnings, steel blue, baleful green, rosy red, and dazzling white, accompanied by a continuous crash and roar of thunder that was both deafening and terrifying. This tremendous manifestation continued for about ten minutes, when down came the rain again, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... not afraid, ma'am, I promise you," he replied, laughing as he spoke; although he really did not feel one-half so merry as he made out; for he could see the baleful eyes of the watching McGee fastened upon them at that minute, as he stood not far away. "I came here on purpose to meet McGee. I carry a letter from my father, in which he asks the assistance of every man in this place ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... the city; and in this brief moment given to hope, he sent proposals of peace to the Emperor Alexander. A superior officer of the enemy's had just been found in the great hospital; he was charged with the delivery of this letter. It was by the baleful light of the flames of the bazaar that Napoleon finished it, and the Russian departed. He was to be the bearer of the news of this disaster to his sovereign, whose ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... It gave a new interest to breakfast for Snagsby; and the peculiarly lady-like qualities of Mrs. Sawbridge, a gift for silent, pallid stiffness, a disposition, tactful but unsuccessful, to "change the subject," an air of being about to leave the room in disdain, had never shone with such baleful splendour. Our interest here is rather with the effect of these remarkable disputes, which echoed in Sir Isaac's private talk long after Georgina had gone again, upon Lady Harman. He could not leave ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... waves from the top of the head and eyes. It redounds to the other person's good. Have an eunuch near you—it tends to make semen go to the head and gives the mental mouth something to think of. It could be used in a baleful way if one had will power over another person like hypnotism—(Svengali and Trilby)—In hypnotism the will goes on the same lines as psychological influence." The Jews, he said, lay around temples so much that their life had to go into sensuality ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Charon, an infernal deity of fearful aspect. A long gray beard fell all tangled and neglected from his chin; his filthy and ragged garments were knotted over his shoulders; his eyes glittered with baleful light. He sat on a great black barge, which he pushed to and fro across the river with a pole. An immense crowd of shades was incessantly pouring to the banks,—young and old, matrons and virgins, warriors who had endured the toils of a long life and tender boys who had died while yet under ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... care before I finish," said the elder grimly, and he included the girl in his baleful glare. "I think you ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... just a scant block away. They skipped across the street, down the block, and in at the back door. The big sunny kitchen was deserted. The house seemed very quiet and hushed. Over it hung the delicious fragrance of freshly-baked pastry. Bella, a rather baleful look in her eyes, led the way to the butler's pantry that was as large as the average kitchen. And there, ranged on platters, and baking boards, and on snowy-white napkins, was that which made Tantalus's feast seem a dry and barren snack. The Weinberg's had baked. It is the ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... clear when we come to a right understanding of the baleful motive which inspired these men. I have already said that I was not long in discovering it. There was only one possible method of doing so—and that was, by all means, by any means, to find out some condition ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... look around a room not yet dimmed by cigar smoke. I got the most baleful glare, I thought. He didn't need to worry. I'd been certified Normal by ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... or cigars, and gave no cause to fear that they would ever do so. It is not necessary to state that neither knew the taste of beer or alcoholic drinks, nor did they wish to learn. They understood too well the baleful effects of such indulgences to be in danger of ruining their bodies and souls, as too many other youths are doing at ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... slums and have their creative work impulses thwarted is not my idea of value. Factories are necessary to a large production and a large population, but the idea of quantity seems somehow to have exercised a baleful magic on the minds of men. England became "great" through its mills, and its working people were starved and stunted, body and soul. Of what avail are our Lawrences and Haverhills when we learn that in the draft examinations the mill towns ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... just a glimpse of a man with glittering bright blue eyes that had an almost fiendish, baleful glare. An instant later the door which had so unexpectedly opened banged shut, we heard a key turn in the lock—and the man dropped to the floor before even Kennedy's automatic could test its ability to penetrate wood ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... of bashful hesitation, verging on nervous hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the last six months this question by the master had been invariably received each morning as a veiled pleasantry which might lead to baleful information or conceal some query out of the dreadful books before him. Yet this very element of danger had its fascinations. Johnny Filgee, a small boy, blushed violently, and, without getting up, began hurriedly ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... depositary Of magic art and Zoroastic skill; Rival of envious ages, that would hide The glorious deeds of errant cavaliers, Favored by me and my peculiar charge. Though vile enchanters, still on mischief bent, To plague mankind their baleful art employ, Merlin's soft nature, ever prone to good, His power inclines to ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... regulations as conduce to order and general edification. In short it grieves me to think that the Heads of the most Apostolical Church in Christendom should have insisted on three or four trifles, the abolition of which could have given offence to none but such as from the baleful superstition that alone could attach importance to them effectually, it was charity to offend;-when all the rest of Baxter's objections might have ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... muscles and stood up; but Mrs. Strangeways, scarcely moving, still looked at her with baleful directness. ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... showed marked improvement in penmanship. Doubtless Truman Baird did not, he being engrossed with oratory, striving to reproduce, "Hate—the right foot advanced, the face turned to the sky, the gaze directed upward with a fierce expression, the eyes full of a baleful light," or other phases of passion duly set down. Not for Truman was the ornate full-arm flourish; he had observed that all ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... unbridled democracy. In the most praiseworthy instances even, men lacked that repose, that fine tact, which were found universally in the higher orders in the mother country. The defect was ineradicable, according to most; for it had its baleful origin in popular institutions themselves. In justice it must be added that there were some who, in consequence of the American passion for traveling, entertained a mild hope that in time this rudeness would wear away, and this total ignorance of good breeding would be enlightened by the polish ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... the seed of Zeus, Odysseus, of many devices, lo, there again is that baleful man, whom we ourselves suspect, going to the chamber; do thou tell me truly, shall I slay him if I prove the better man, or bring him hither to thee, that he may pay for the many transgressions that he has devised ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... that blest shore we steered our destined way, When sudden dire Orion roused the sea! All charged with tempests rose the baleful star, And on our navy poured ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... diminishing in our country. The judiciary, although weak and amenable to prevailing local prejudices in localities, as a whole is far in advance on the sustenance of righteous rule than in the middle of the last century, when slavery ruled the Nation and its edicts were law, and its baleful influence permeated ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... man was from that superb young hero whom she had worshipped? It requires many, many years—and a man must be very bad indeed—before a woman's pride and vanity will let her own to such a confession. Then Rebecca's twinkling green eyes and baleful smile lighted upon her, and filled her with dismay. And so she sate for awhile indulging in her usual mood of selfish brooding, in that very listless melancholy attitude in which the honest maid-servant had found her, on the day when she brought up the letter in which George renewed ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "honest miner" lingered behind to pick up the baleful pipe which he knew was somewhere there; and when the little party was far enough down the hill, he took it up and buried it in his own capacious pocket with a half-sorrowful laugh. ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various |
