"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... extreme case, if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... elevated a tenderness, his betrothed, to find pleasure in brutal hopes. Ordinarily, he expelled from his mind those images; but now that man had just placed them under his eye, with a diabolical crudity, and he felt shivers in his flesh, he trembled as if the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... mocked at all the Vidocqs, and Lupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for diabolical ingenuity, and for colossal impudence, as well as for a nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his match in all ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... were also consumed, and the ashes scattered in the wind. Fouche proposed, after giving the ass some water to drink in a sacred chalice, to terminate the festivity of the day by murdering all the prisoners, amounting to seven thousand five hundred; but a sudden storm prevented the execution of this diabolical proposition, and dispersed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... treachery combined to put it into the hands of a Committee of Conference to be manipulated afresh, and, if possible, moulded into a shape that might give Democratic recusants an excuse for treason to the North and submission to the Power that demanded it. And the invention was worthy of the diabolical sagacity and ingenuity which have always marked the politics of Slavery. The maxim, that every man has his price, was assumed to apply as well to men when collected into bodies corporate as to individuals; and the hook, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Mrs. Hurdlestone, she bitterly accused her husband of the deception he had practised. Mr. Hurdlestone, instead of denying or palliating the charge, even boasted of his guilt, and entered into a minute detail of each revolting circumstance—the diabolical means that he had employed ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... above the trees; an expectant hush pervaded the forest. Inside the cabin a sleepy negro began the formidable task of sweeping. This duty completed, he shook a bell, which feature of his daily occupation the darky entered into with diabolical energy, and soon the ear-rending discord brought the passengers on deck. But hot cornbread, steaks and steaming coffee speedily restored that equanimity of temper disturbed by the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... letter to Luther, dated May 11, 1530, he wrote: "Our Apology is being sent to you—though it is rather a Confession. Mittitur tibi apologia nostra, quamquam verius confessio est. I included [in the Confession] almost all articles of faith, because Eck published most diabolical lies against us, quia Eckius edidit diabolikontatas diabolas contra nos. Against these it was my purpose to provide an antidote." (C. R. 2, 45; Luther, St. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... and Captain Tarlton to take care of me I sat out in the stern gallery till 10 P.M., when Tarlton told me he had a bed made for me in a spare cabin below. In this I got a good night's rest in spite of the diabolical witlow; the witlow is so unromantic a wound that I shall leave it out of the narrative for the future. The next morning I was with General La Marmora at daylight and from him I went to the municipality. I found them in a ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... is full when I think that our poor Mademoiselle d'Orleans has made the profession of her vows. I said to her all I could, in the hope of diverting her from this diabolical project, but all has been useless. (23rd August, 1718.) I should not have restrained my tears if I had been present at the ceremony of her profession. My son dreaded it also. I cannot tell for what reason Mademoiselle d'Orleans resolved to become a nun. Mademoiselle de Valois wanted to ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... pigs, which, giving vent to a most diabolical yell, appeared to leap from the long-boat deliberately over the port side of the ship into the sea, sinking immediately with a stifled ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... My dear sirs, I have heard people abuse the Mauser as a diabolical weapon. Nothing of the sort; it is one of the most humane. The wounds are small, cleanly cut, and, so long as a bone is not touched, begin to heal with wonderful rapidity. Come and ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... no commerce with the Demon is intended, is per se grave sin; but it can sometimes be excused from mortal sin, on account of simplicity or ignorance or a lack of certain faith.' You see, my child—" he set the book back in its place "—so far as it's not fraud it's diabolical. And that's an end ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... when some of the children of Rabbi Moses ben Menahem embraced the Christian faith, and their father, as was natural, was suspected of skepticism, the Biur and the Meassefim were pronounced, like libraries by Sir Anthony Absolute, to be "an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge." So also with Wessely's Epistles, which were destroyed in public, together with Polonnoy's Toledot Ya'akob Yosef. Haskalah itself was not impugned, and as theretofore translations and original works on science were encouraged, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... men in the State. These cold blooded butcheries would have done credit to the most cruel and blood thirsty of the primeval savages of the forest. These deeds were heralded all over the North as "acts of God, done by the hands of men." The leader of this diabolical plan and his compeers were sainted by their followers and admirers, and praises sung over him all over the North, as if over the death of saints. By a stupendous blunder the people of the South, and the friends of the Union ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... this kind of snuff, is seven inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of plover. The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use. Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils (emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason for some hours, and renders them furious in battle. However varied may be the family of the leguminous ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... cloisters and other institutions, the whole world might well say, Amen. For these the devil's devices curse, condemn and impede everywhere God's Word and his blessing. These things are evils so pernicious, so diabolical, they do not merit our love. The more we serve the ecclesiasts and the more we yield to them, the more obdurate they become. They rant and rage against the Word of God and the Spirit, against faith and love. Such conduct Christ calls blasphemy—sin—against ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... benevolent intention, as it is to imagine that the intention was purely malevolent. And the prevalence of dualistic theories from the earliest times to the present day—whether in the shape of the doctrine of the inherently evil nature of matter; of an Ahriman; of a hard and cruel Demiurge; of a diabolical "prince of this world," show how widely ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the ministry; and by their preaching, publications, correspondence at home and abroad, and the influence of their learning, talents, industry, and zeal in the work, these two men promoted the prevalence of a passion for the marvelous and monstrous, and what was deemed preternatural, infernal, and diabolical, throughout the whole mass of the people, in England as well as America. The public mind became infatuated and, drugged with credulity and superstition, was prepared to receive every impulse of blind fanaticism. The stories, thus collected ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... a diabolical thing?" Jasper mused, as if to himself. "Let us examine the ground very carefully to see if the man who did this deed left any trace. He might ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... regard to the subject-matter and mistaking the impression produced by our eloquence. George Borrow tells us that when preaching in Rommany to a congregation of Gypsies he felt highly flattered by the patient attention of his hearers, till he happened to notice that they all had their eyes fixed in a diabolical squint. Something of the same kind would, we fear, be the effect on a large number of persons of well-meant expositions of the English civil-service reform and its admirable results. Nor will any appeals to the moral sense excite an indignation at the workings of our present system ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... following there were half a dozen letters placed upon his table from the post-office. Their threats and warnings increased his alarm. Some of these purported to come from friends, detailing conversations of diabolical character which had been overheard—others told him only an opportunity was wanting to execute the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Small wonder that when its details became known in their diabolical cruelty, the people of Richmond cried out for revenge, and the hanging of the prisoners; but this was not heeded by the officials, who had a ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... beginning." And many thousand professing Christians are like Amasa of old, their ear is well pleased with the fair sound of "Art thou in health, my brother?" and they, too, take "no heed to the sword" in the inquirer's hand. Judas, too, in his day, illustrates strongly that same diabolical compound of "deceit and violence," only the enemy finds no unwary Amasa in Jesus the Lord. "Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss" tears the vail from him at once; and in the same way the feeblest believer who ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... followed this diabolical scheme rang loud and long around the council-chamber, I stood there paralyzed. My eyes dilated and my heartbeat furiously. I was overwhelmed with the dreadful, the awful prospect, so coolly presented by that impassive, terrible man. My imagination was always vivid, and I saw ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... seven devils without getting into it the all-filling and sanctifying grace of God and love of Jesus Christ will stand empty. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Satan, and the empty house invites the seven ill-tenants, and back they come in their diabolical completeness. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of Brown are all dominated by the motive of horror, and are modeled on the so-called Gothic novel with its sentimental heroine, its diabolical villain, its ghastly mystery, its passages of prolonged agony. If we ask why an American writer should choose this bizarre type, the answer is that agonizing stories were precisely what readers then wanted, and Brown depended upon his ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Last evening a most diabolical, and, it is to be regretted successful, attempt, was made to kiss the Princess Royal. It appears that the Royal Babe was taking an airing in the park, reclining in the arms of her principal nurse, and accompanied by several ladies of the court, who were amusing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... me of his moral qualities? Such miracles might prove his power and his knowledge, but whether malignant or benign, would remain doubtful, until by purely moral evidence, which no miracles could give, the doubt should be solved.[7] This is the old difficulty about diabolical wonders. The moderns cut the knot, by denying that any but God can possibly work real miracles. But to establish their principle, they make their definition and verification of a miracle so strict, as would have amazed the apostles; and after all, the difficulty ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... once, with the added information to soften his coming disappointment that the machine sometimes failed. The fellow merely gathered the notion that I was but a sorry magician at best, who had my diabolical hocuspocus only imperfectly under control, and he did not entirely succeed in keeping his sneers invisible. I offered quinine and such other medicines as were to be found in my traveling case, but he had no faith in ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... his fixed and fascinated eye some grotesque or abominable object may perpetually present itself. To the hermit, in the solitude of his cell, there doubtless often did appear, by the uncertain light of his lamp, obscene shadows of diabolical import; doubtless there was many an agony with fiends, many a struggle with monsters, satyrs, and imps, many an earnest, solemn, and manful controversy with Satan himself, who sometimes came as an aged man, sometimes with a countenance of horrible ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... half converted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, nor courage, nor principle, to aid me on such an occasion—better alone ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... says of the famous son of Robert Guiscard is applicable generally to the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to be a heartless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... so ill-natured are mankind, that I believe I have names already sent me sufficient to fill up my lists for the dark room, and every one is apt enough to send in their accounts of ill deservers. This malevolence does not proceed from a real dislike of virtue, but a diabolical prejudice against it, which makes men willing to destroy what they care not to imitate. Thus you see the greatest characters among your acquaintance, and those you live with, are traduced by all below them in virtue, who never mention them but with an exception. However, I believe I shall ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... to-night at midnight, Xmas night. Such is the way in which mortgages of this kind are always drawn. Yes, sir, it was drawn with such diabolical skill that on this night of all nights the mortgage would be foreclosed. At midnight the men would come with hammer and nails and foreclose it, nail it ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... then shook hands, sealing a compact diabolical to the last degree, and without further hesitation started for Nome ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... deliberate act of war on society as at present constituted. Religion, marriage, ordinary respectability, are subjected to a destructive exposure and criticism which seems to mere moralists—that is, to persons of no more than average depth of mind—to be diabolical. It is no exaggeration to say that Ibsen gained his overwhelming reputation by undertaking a task of no less magnitude than changing the mind of Europe with the view of changing its morals. Now you cannot license work of that sort without making yourself responsible for it. The Lord Chamberlain ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... that all the fuss came about through the Queen of the Desert's objection to the unknown lady on her hack, an objection which was causing her to twist her long neck backwards in the diabolical hope that the loose-lipped mouth in the spite-contorted face might reach something to bite, be it foot or saddle, cloth ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... thought you a strong man," Aynesworth continued, aggrieved and contemptuous. "I nearly went mad with fear when I heard that it was you who were the self-appointed guardian of Juliet Lundy. I looked upon this as one more, the most diabolical ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... jackal utters a howl on the bank, as our boat shoots past, and the diabolical noise is echoed from knoll to knoll, and from ridge to ridge, as these incarnate devils of the night join in and prolong the infernal chorus. An occasional splash, as a piece of the bank topples over into ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... to follow Licquet through all the phases of the inquiry. This diabolical man seems to have possessed the gift of ubiquity. He was in the prison where he worked upon the prisoners; at the prefecture directing the examinations; at Caen, making inquiries under the very nose of Caffarelli, who believed that ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... Brother Boer sleeps in his clothes," he observed grimly. "Cleanliness, may be next to godliness; but it is mighty near the edge of the diabolical to put yourself back into clothes that are only fit for the dust bin. When I am field marshal of a long campaign, my first act will be to establish swimming tanks and laundries as a branch of the Army Service Corps. Meanwhile, see here!" His open hand came down on his dust-colored ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... People will pretend to grieve more than they really do, and that takes off from their true grief. I then went to the Duchess of Hamilton, who never grieved, but raged, and stormed, and railed.(18) She is pretty quiet now, but has a diabolical temper. Lord Keeper and his son, and their two ladies, and I, dined to-day with Mr. Caesar,(19) Treasurer of the Navy, at his house in the City, where he keeps his office. We happened to talk of Brutus, and I said something in his praise, when it struck me immediately ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... admirably represented; the latter, in particular, must always hold a very high place among Balzac's greatest successes. She is, indeed a sort of companion sketch to Cousine Bette herself in a still lower rank of life representing the diabolical in woman; and perhaps we should not wrong the author's intentions if we suspected that Diane de Maufrigneuse has some claims to make up the trio in a sphere even more above Lisbeth's than Lisbeth's is above ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... diabolical and too improbable for anybody to believe. Jack could hardly think it possible when his new friend told him. But the stranger persisted so—it's hard for me even to think of him as quite really my father—that Jack at last ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... his ship's company by sending another boat's crew on shore, so that the Union might the more easily be captured, she was ordered under the most awful threats to act as decoy. Resolved to upset their diabolical plan, or die in the attempt, she gave an apparently cheerful assent to the meditated scheme of murder, and hence her appearance in the canoe with the ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of the sinners—made by Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries. Nor were there lacking the Chinese prints on red paper representing a man seated, of venerable aspect, with a calm, smiling face, behind whom stood a servant, ugly, horrible, diabolical, threatening, armed with a lance having a wide, keen blade. Among the Indians some call this figure Mohammed, others Santiago, [34] we do not know why, nor do the Chinese themselves give a very clear explanation of this popular pair. The pop of champagne ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... concerned. The clergy attended in force and panoply led by His Serenity in person—monks, nuns, deacons and deaconesses—in a word, the Church was present. The cistern had been profaned. A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... abomination before God; which exalted commandment no saint whatever has perfectly fulfilled, so that even Noah and Abraham, David, Peter and Paul acknowledged themselves imperfect and sinners: it is an unheard-of, pharisaic, yea, an actually diabolical pride for a sordid Barefooted monk or any similar godless hypocrite to say, yea, preach and teach, that he has observed and fulfilled the holy high commandment so perfectly, and according to the demands and will of God has ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... a more intolerable situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole diabolical evening. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at that ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... did, accordingly,—shutting himself up in the smoke-house and burning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, giving up the entire night to his diabolical orgies. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... you," she pursued with diabolical plaintiveness. "Our child—our adopted child," she corrected, the pink running up under her skin, "has ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of me, in spite of the interests of France and Russia.... It is an operatic scene, of which the English are the shifters." What madness! As if Russia's craving for colonial wares and solvency were a device of the diabolical islanders.[249] As if his planetary simile were anything more than a claim that he was the centre of the universe and his will its ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... corridor," Henson gasped, "going—going to bed, you see; and one of those diabolical dogs must have got into the house. Before I knew what I was doing the creature flew at my throat and dragged me to the floor. Telephone for Walker at once. I am ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... now ready to depart; and ordered the slave who had been assisting him in his diabolical work to mount the camel formerly ridden by the woman who was thus entombed. The black obeyed, pleased to think that his late task was to be so agreeably rewarded; but a sudden change came over his features when Golah and Fatima passed up the three children, and placed them ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... tale of wrath and revenge, which in sober dreadful truth enacted itself upon this earth, and remains among the eternal records of the doings of mankind upon it. As some relief to its most terrible features, we follow it with a story which has a touch in it of diabolical humour. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Then a diabolical thought flashed into the man's mind. He, too, could make her suffer, even before she went to Lem. A smile twisted his lips, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself. Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had derived an odd sort ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... humble duty to your Majesty, and though your Majesty must be overwhelmed with congratulations at your Majesty's escape from the aim of the assassin,[24] yet Viscount Palmerston trusts that he may be allowed to express the horror with which he heard of the diabolical attempt, and the deep thankfulness which he feels at your Majesty's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... his saddle bags a lump of greyish iron ore, studded here and there with star points of pyrites. The stranger said nothing, but his eye looked a diabolical suggestion. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... said now. It is of no use to go back to a lie," observed Reanda, with an indifference that would have seemed diabolical even to himself, had he believed her outbreak to be quite genuine. "Of what use would it be ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... Satan has had the especial care of tobacco, we cannot be surprised at his finding the means, if he had the desire, of introducing it into America. We have before alluded to what the Abbot Nyssens says, and if in addition we call to mind what others have uttered about its diabolical nature, and that the American Indians were wont to propitiate the powers of darkness by making offerings to them of tobacco, we cannot help thinking that King James was nearer truth and propriety than he imagined, when he declared ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to seek for the causes of actions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... animosity, a traditional hatred, not much diminished since the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes. The whole nation was ready to believe any thing against the Catholics, and especially against their church, which was supposed to be persecuting and diabolical in all its principles and in all its practice. In this state of the popular mind, Oates ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... curses upon his begetter. The advocate stood watching him in silence, as, withdrawing along with the others, the distance dimmed his form, and drowned his maledictions; then, drawing a deep sigh, a dark, vindictive scowl gathered upon his visage, until its expression became diabolical, and these words rolled from his heaving chest in deep, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... and Abate Panciatichi, have come to prepare him for execution; but the one is listening awe-struck to the only kind of confession which they can obtain from him, while the other plies his beads in a desperate endeavour to exorcise the spiritual enemy, "ban" the diabolical influences, it is conjuring up. The speaker is no ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of you—name pistols. This is the man who invented that diabolical thrust with which Georges Clemenceau laid low so many of his political opponents. If you must go on with ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin, but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur (bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit, and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the church tower, on which they wished to put a Maxim. The old man, not having the key, had hobbled off to get it from the garde champetre, who happened to be in possession of it for the time being. He could not, however, find him, and the officer in command, being in a diabolical temper, put the poor old priest up against a wall and shot him dead on the spot. This was recounted by the cure's sister, and there was not a shadow of doubt on the matter, for it ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... out in all this storm! Mrs. Condiment, mum, you deserve to be ducked! Yes, mum, you do! Wool! Wool! you diabolical villain!" ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... opened by Longstreet, who charged the Union left, and ran across Sickles, who had by mistake formed in the way of Meade's intended line of battle. They outflanked him, but, as they swung around him, Warren met them with a diabolical welcome, which stayed them. Sickles found himself on Cemetery Ridge, while the Confederates under Ewell were ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... "How hideous! How diabolical!" a stout, elderly man said in slow, measured tones, as if he were reading his own funeral service. "It must be the devil! The devil! Ha!" and burying his face in his hands, he indulged in a ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... influence of this diabolical system on the slave-owner; and here I shall be cautioned that I am treading on delicate ground, because our own countrymen are slaveholders. But I am yet to learn that wickedness is any the better for being our own. Let the truth be spoken—and ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... unfortunate necessity, always arranged that it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... fled to his father's residence, where he still remains unmolested."—Let it never be forgotten, that no slaveholder or overseer can be convicted of any outrage perpetrated on the person of a slave, however diabolical it may be, on the testimony of colored witnesses, whether bond or free. By the slave code, they are adjudged to be as incompetent to testify against a white man, as though they were indeed a part of the brute creation. ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... forced to fly for safety to England, of which he was a native. It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish credulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels, or directed to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... a shame of master to set his men on a clergyman." And so was proceeding, with well-acted and catching warmth, to dig as dangerous a pit for Mrs. Gaunt as ever was dug for any lady; for whatever Mrs. Gaunt had been betrayed into saying, this Ryder would have used without mercy, and with diabolical skill. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... employed in public affairs, and particularly in embassies. Among those to the smaller princes of Italy, the one of the longest duration was to Caesar Borgia, whom he narrowly observed at the very important period when this illustrious villain was elevating himself by his crimes, and whose diabolical policy he had thus an opportunity of studying. He had a considerable share in directing the counsels of the republic, and the influence to which he owed his elevation was that of the free party, which censured the power of the Medici, and at that time held them in exile. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... from all other suitors. She grew steadily in charm and beauty, and her opportunities to break hearts were, from the susceptible nature of man, of an almost startling frequency. Jessica grasped each one with what seemed even to my loyal eyes diabolical glee. She was an avenging Nemesis, hot on the trail of man. Grave professors, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Juniors and Seniors, loyal boy friends of her youth who came in manhood to lay their hearts at her ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... "What a diabolical scheme!" cried Walter in horror, "they mean to slaughter the Indians for their plumes as they come down the river from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to you the thousand cunning tricks, the diabolical, the ingenious finesses, the Philipistic and Machiavellian diplomacy, which sportsmen employ one towards the other to obtain possession? Two friends, for instance, meet by accident on the same road; with what perfect and impudent lies do ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... conversant with the Soul, beholding the swallowing up of the Moon and the Sun by Rahu, the falling of stars from their fixed positions and the diversions of constellations from their orbits, knowing the sad separation of all united objects and the diabolical behaviour of creatures in devouring one another, seeing the absence of all intelligence in the infancy of human beings and the deterioration and destruction of the body, marking the little attachment ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... his lovely Louisa, were living on a small farm in the vicinity of Rochelle. As he walked one afternoon in the main street of that city, he was very rudely accosted by a couple of officers of the holy inquisition, whose looks and dress were as dark and diabolical as their employment. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... open by his raving master's sword. He was just about to turn his back on his master and disappear till the storm had passed, when Dorothea came to his rescue. She suggested that Sancho's strange behavior could only be ascribed to one thing: enchantment. How else could he have seen such diabolical things as he described, how could he have been made to bear false witness against her, and how could he have spoken words so offensive to her modesty? Knowing the heart of Sancho, Don Quixote at once thought her explanation a most ingenious one, for ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... institutions which the decaying Roman Empire had given to its Northern conquerors,—that criticism which necessarily accompanied the revival of learning began there. Not yet recovered from the disastrous wars of the fifteenth century, suffering from the diabolical tyranny that had overtaken her at that fatal crisis, England could make but a feeble response as yet to these movements. They had been going on for a century before the influence of them began to be visible here. But they were at work here, notwithstanding: they ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... what she has taken into her head, I raise a terrible storm which lasts at least a week. She makes me tremble when she begins her outcries; I don't know where to hide myself. She is a perfect virago; and yet, in spite of her diabolical temper, I must call her my ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... time paying particular attention to the Square in Poperinghe,—the little station and the hospital there,—and it had become such a diabolical nuisance that it was determined to resort to heroic measures to "get it." A monster balloon was enlisted in the work and the mission of the floating bag was to direct the correspondence of one of our 9.2 naval guns, which was operating on a short ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... their eyes. McGinty sat at the head with a flat black velvet cap upon his shock of tangled black hair, and a coloured purple stole round his neck, so that he seemed to be a priest presiding over some diabolical ritual. To right and left of him were the higher lodge officials, the cruel, handsome face of Ted Baldwin among them. Each of these wore some scarf or medallion as ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... what we shall find out," said Paul thoughtfully. "I have a very strong belief that he is the fellow who sold the watch. If he is, poor Alexander can have had but small chance of escape. Did you ever see such a diabolical face? Of course it may be a mere fancy, but I cannot ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... diabolical plot as he pounded on through the rain, tireless, determined, remorseless, on the trail of ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... odious uncle, the fair Constantia—what a meek saint!—and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a house on fire." Tears came to the eyes of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... be the one most remembered in your punishment, I don't think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears would be worse than the famous 'diabolical trumpet' for collecting and distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or discovered them peeping through the assumed lion's skin. Apollo's music probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to drive their opponents into violence and into acts of desperation!!! I know that he will complain, and that he has just cause of complaint, and I dread the consequence, because I know full well their arts, and the power which they have to carry their diabolical plans into execution. If he be troublesome, they will stick at nothing, and I should not be the least surprised if they were ultimately to have some of their spies to swear ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Excellency's life-Guard, who were to have assassinated him: knowing that no person could be admitted into the magazines or among the cannon but those who were of the Artillery they have found several in our Regiment vile enough to be concerned in their diabolical Designs—these were to have blown up the Magazines and spiked the cannon. (Tell Homans, one Rotch, a fellow he bled for me in Morton's company at No 1 is taken up with his brother for being concerned.) Their Design was deep, long concerted, and wicked to a great Degree. But happily for us, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... me, clasping his hands together in a sort of ecstasy, while tears streamed from his eyes. The old woman glared upon me from a far corner, and muttered over her beads, as if they were a spell to secure her against some diabolical art. When I could no longer see to read, Michael took my hand, and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... leaves off the branches, and the fruit hung dried up on the singed black trees. Many a poor mother fled, her naked baby in her arms, behind the still smoking walls of her cottage; but also there the soldiers followed her, and when they found her, she served as new nourishment to their diabolical enjoyments; demons could not possibly have done worse things than these soldiers! The prince was of opinion that all this was right, and that it was only the natural course which things ought to take. His power increased day by day, his name was feared ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... than in convent towns does one learn to hate. The heart of the child, everywhere else free from wicked passions, was born there full of paternal hatreds, inherited from father to son for the last eight hundred years, and after a life of hate, bequeathed in its turn, a diabolical heritage, to his children. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... desponding unbelief! how ingenious and active under diabolical management! The Holy Spirit quoted to this poor, despondent girl "the precious promises," but she "refused to be comforted," and hastened to pass them all over to "the elect." He called to mind her rich experiences. They seemed to her far off ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... first laid the matter before the assembled Korps. Thereupon the whole Seniorum Conventus sat in solemn committee upon this war-worn nose, and decided that its owner need fight no more. But he was not only brave; he possessed the invention of Prometheus, combined with the diabolical sense of humour which so much distinguished the late Mephistopheles. He offered to go on fighting if he might be allowed an iron nose. Goetz of Berliehingen, he said, had won battles with an iron hand, and the case was ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... The other picture was of a group of Spanish guerrillas surrounding their leader, a little man with a heavy mustache. His face was quite as inhuman as the face of any of the dead men he had mutilated. It wore a satisfied smile of fatuous vanity, and of the most diabolical cruelty. No artist could have drawn a face from his imagination which would have been more cruel. The letter press accompanying these photographs explained that this guerrilla leader, Benito Cerreros, had found ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... his hand upon Puddock's collar with an agitated sort of sneer. But he recollected himself, and that diabolical gloom faded from his face, and he looked more like himself, and slid his cold hand silently into little Puddock's; and so they stood for a while, by the door-step, to the admiration of Mrs. Irons—whom Devereux's high tones ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and wildly under the heavy cloak that enveloped him—like a gladiator entangled in his adversary's net—beside himself with rage and despair, as he gasped for breath in his stifling prison, and realized that this diabolical outrage must be the work of the Duke of Vallombreuse. Suddenly, like an inspiration, the thought flashed into his mind of using his dagger to free himself from the thick, clinging folds, that weighed him down like the leaden cloaks of the wretched condemned spirits we read of with a shudder in ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... the table, waiting patiently for his crumbs; and the black boatmen were forward in the bow of the canoe, jabbering, and laughing, and munching, as they clustered round a sparkling fire. When I first saw the apparition of the diabolical looking snout, I was in a manner fascinated, and could neither speak nor move. Mangrove and the patron were also paralysed with fear, and the others did not see it; so Sneezer was the only creature amongst us, aware of the danger, who seemed to have his wits about him, for the instant he noticed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott |
