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Malign   Listen
verb
Malign  v. i.  To entertain malice. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Malign" Quotes from Famous Books



... it. If a rat has nibbled one of his sacks he takes it for a fearful portent—a superstition which Cicero also mentions. He dare not sit on a tomb, because it would be assisting at his own funeral. He purifies endlessly his house, saying that Hecate—that is, the moon—has exercised some malign influence on it; and many other purifications he observes, of which I shall only say that they are by their nature plainly, like the last, meant as preservatives against unseen malarias or contagions, possible or impossible. He assists every month with his ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... talked, the fire beyond them gave definite signs of yielding. It had evidently been stopped on the far side and now advanced nowhere, showed no longer a malign yellow crest, but only rolling sullenly heavenward a diminishing cloud of smoke. The fire-fighters began to straggle back across the burned tract towards the road, their eyeballs gleaming ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... Began the loathing of the acorn; thus Abandoned were those beds with grasses strewn And with the leaves beladen. Thus, again, Fell into new contempt the pelts of beasts— Erstwhile a robe of honour, which, I guess, Aroused in those days envy so malign That the first wearer went to woeful death By ambuscades,—and yet that hairy prize, Rent into rags by greedy foemen there And splashed by blood, was ruined utterly Beyond all use or vantage. Thus of old 'Twas pelts, and ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... are threatened with the evil eye when divested of all our charms—when bathing for instance. The pope, Pio Nono, was believed to have the evil eye, and pious pilgrims asking his blessing used, at the same time, to take the precaution of protecting themselves from his malign influence by pointing two fingers ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... she was calm and smiling, but the girls felt instinctively that her dangerous mood had not passed, only deepened, and Molly felt she would give a great deal to win her friend away from the malign ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... occult forces of nature as were constantly postulated by Oriental science. Herophilus and Erasistratus and Galen would hardly have pursued their anatomical studies with equanimity had they believed that ghostly apparitions watched over living and dead alike, and exercised at will a malign influence. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... must be learnt young for any excellence to be attained in it. Of this Metternich was a striking example. If benevolent Nature ever intended a man for a whist-player one would have supposed that she had done so in his case, but had been baffled by some malign Destiny which had degraded him to that class by whom, in conjunction with Kings, it was fondly believed, previously to the recent general election, that 'the world was governed.' Until late in life he never took to whist, when he ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... potentate—some Prester John or old Assaracus—a few years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... surrounding it. Any one examining these cupboards by daylight would have found that they contained innocuous cricket-bats and stumps, croquet-mallets and balls, and sets of bowls. But as soon as the shades of night fell, these harmless sporting accessories were changed by some mysterious and malign agency into grizzly bears, and grizzly bears are notoriously the fiercest of their species. It was advisable to walk very quickly, but quietly, past the lair of the grizzlies, for they would have gobbled up a little boy in one second. Immediately after ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... perpetual curate of the parish,—"that a pestilential disease did break forth in our town in the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial motion and earnest desire I did ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... come back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and villainous; his every act and thought centred on self; drinking pleasure with bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of stone. Henry Jekyll stood at times aghast before the acts of Edward Hyde; but the situation ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was least ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... was happening? Evidently the god had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign constellations—the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... has sent thee hither?" demanded Ludlow. The boy raised a cap of the same rose-colored silk, and pointed to an image of a female, with a swarthy face and a malign smile, painted, with exceeding ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... he took his hand away; it was as though Timmy's malign influence had fallen between them. His very tone changed; it was no ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes

... from year-periods (nengo) was introduced from China. These periods of Japanese history do not correspond to the reigns of the emperors. A new one was chosen whenever it was deemed necessary to commemorate an auspicious or ward off a malign event. By a notification issued in 1872 it was announced that hereafter the year-period should be changed but once during the reign of an emperor. The current period, Meiji (Enlightened Peace), will therefore continue during the reign of ...
— Japan • David Murray

... "I have prepared a statement for the newspapers regarding my friend, Mr. Bristol, and he will add a statement of his own relative to his project in regard to water districts. If you care to malign Mr. Bristol on the heels of that, Colonel, you may go ahead. But if you choose weapons of that sort in the conduct of this campaign we shall be forced to use a few cudgels of our own—for instance, we might be able to give the people considerable information as to how the ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... these natives of the interior are concerned they were never idolaters. I cannot find that they had any distinct notion of worship at all. Their religion had root in a certain frantic terror of the unknown, and found expression in ceaseless efforts to propitiate the malign spirits surrounding them on every side. Thus they were given over to the mastery of those amongst them who had the traditional art of such propitiation, and fell more or less completely under that cruellest and most venal of sways, the tyranny of the witch-doctor. It is impossible ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... Glarus was already on the black list. From the beginning her stars had been malign. As the Breda, she had first lost her reputation, seduced into a filibustering escapade down the South American coast, where in the end a plain-clothes United States detective—that is to say, a revenue cutter—arrested her off Buenos Ayres ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... under your bed haven't done you any harm. Poor aunt Anna, how she dreads them! She always imagines that everything Egyptian has the most malign powers. She's sure some mummy will take its revenge on you ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... that he should have a personality, in contact with which the soul of the hearer or spectator may be heated. A personality of any sort is asked for in this case; its moral significance is excluded: let it be sad or glad, enthusiastic or distrustful, sentimental or sarcastic, benignant or malign, but it must be a soul. Art criticism would seem to consist altogether in determining if there be a personality in the work of art, and of what sort. A work that is a failure is an incoherent work; that is to say, a work in ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... use, and so many have less than they need? Do we think that God wills it? Can we conceive of it as having any part in the economy of the Kingdom which Jesus came to establish on the earth? It is not God, but our selfishness that wills it; a selfishness that has its length of days and its malign power in the widespread folly and culpable ignorance that play into ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... bring forth. When our cavalcades separated, I followed the guide on a blind trail into the little-known regions on the skirts of Mauna Loa. We only travelled two miles an hour, and the mules kept getting up rows, kicking, and entangling their legs in the lariats, and one peculiarly malign animal dealt poor Kahele a gratuitous kick on his nose, making ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... competence. But, my dear Rupert, you will be of full age in seven years more. Then, if you are in the same mind—and I am sure you will not change—you, being your own master, can do freely as you will. In the meantime, to secure, so far as I can, my dear Janet against any malign stroke of fortune, I have given orders to my factor to remit semi-annually to Janet one full half of such income as may be derived in any form from my estate of Croom. It is, I am sorry to say, heavily mortgaged; but of such as is—or may be, free from such charge as the ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... she blamed poor little Ally. She looked on little Ally as the victim of a malign and tragic tendency, the fragile vehicle of an alien and overpowering impulse. Little Ally was doomed. It wasn't her fault if she was ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... surround himself in this "auric Shell" even when awake so that it may beat off all malign and harmful thought-forces. As he grows in Will-Power and Self-Confidence, a Protective Aura will form around him naturally and ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji

... So many noble lords and cavaliers Before this war shall end, which, Italy Afflicting most, has drowned the world in tears, That, if I said the word, I err not, I, Saying he sure the cruellest appears And worst, of nature's impious and malign, Who did this ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... several days. At their next meeting he bitterly reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion; "nor could I," adds Mr. Oldfield, "induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign spirits." Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a subdued voice as "the lost one" or "the poor fellow that is no more." To speak of them by name would, it was supposed, excite ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... about," he exclaimed. "You have attempted to malign me to the king. Remember I possess the most powerful fetish in ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... civil governors appear in malign aspect, or in modern phrase, like a quarrel between the squire and the rector, which is seldom detrimental to the people. This was the case with Henry the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... intense, alert, eager, and when the outer self was languid, dreary, mockingly sedate and indolent. Again there were days, and these were the saddest of all, when the inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be tranquil, high-minded, and strong; when that outer self was malign, turbulent, and headstrong, and when all the resolution and vigour he possessed, appeared to be wasted, not in following the higher aims and imaginings with a patient purpose, but in curbing and reining the rough and coltish nature that seemed so sadly yoked with ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... he assumed when in the presence of the Raja or of myself, and during our progress through his father's district I heard many tales of his ill doings. To these, however, I attached but little importance, for Malays are very apt to malign a young Chief who, as they say, is born like a tiger cub, with teeth and claws, and may always be expected to do evil. Nevertheless, it would certainly never have occurred to me at that time that this mild-eyed, soft-spoken, silken-mannered, rather melancholy young man was capable of committing ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... situation. Prayers and charms, after all, were merely temporary things, which must be constantly renewed, and might be forgotten or overlooked; while the mole, on the contrary, neither faded nor went away. If its malign influence might for a time seem to disappear, it was merely lying dormant, like the germs of some deadly disease, awaiting its opportunity to strike ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... Louder, how you malign such as she," said Charles, growing serious. "Have the proof before ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick

... Paulvitch's naturally malign disposition was aggravated by the weakening and warping of his mental and physical faculties through torture and privation. From cold, calculating, highly intelligent perversity it had deteriorated into the indiscriminating, dangerous menace of the mentally defective. His plan, however, was sufficiently ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the pulpit with failure staring him in the face, and whereas on the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had obviously fought against the malign influence which eventually had prevailed over him, this time he had not had the vigor to make a struggle. Certainly he had not broken down. It might be said of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had "muddled through." He had preached a very poor sermon ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, Messalina, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious Agrippina, whom he next married, had an influence less malign. But she was unfaithful to her husband; and this fact, together with the fear she felt that Nero, her son by her first marriage, would be excluded from the throne, impelled her to the crime of taking the life ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... the celestial bodies at one or other of these moments, it professed to deduce the whole life and fortunes of the individual. According to Diodorus, it was believed that a particular star or constellation presided over the birth of each person, and thenceforward exercised over his life a special malign or benignant influence. But his lot depended, not on this star alone, but on the entire aspect of the heavens at a certain moment. To cast the horoscope was to reproduce this aspect, and then to read by means of it the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson

... nations against the German people who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the new-born Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... likely to displease M. de Morcerf, whose portrait, by Gros, I will also show you. Excuse my talking of family matters, but as I shall have the honor of introducing you to the count, I tell you this to prevent you making any allusions to this picture. The picture seems to have a malign influence, for my mother rarely comes here without looking at it, and still more rarely does she look at it without weeping. This disagreement is the only one that has ever taken place between the count and countess, who are still as much united, although married ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by his own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and "Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny. Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena, thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... than is implied in the practices of many a Westerner. He never builds a straight entrance into his house, for he believes that evil spirits cannot move in a curved line; and across the world, people who call him names because of this refuse to sit down thirteen at table. The malign influences appeased, the average Chinese goes his way untroubled or unconsoled by any thought concerning that which is to come, or at most he strives to acquire merit, not for a week only, but for the ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... he puts the coping-stone to his folly by gambling away all his possessions at a single sitting, even to his horse and the armour on his back. Robert has an ame damnee in the shape of a knight named Bertram, to whose malign influence most of his crimes and follies are due. Bertram is in reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... so high a pitch that it may possibly become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign energy ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... symptoms indicative of perforation having occurred. Small perforating wounds of the bowel are treated by such suturing as the circumstances may suggest, the interior of the abdominal cavity being rendered as free from septic micro-organisms as possible. It is by the malign influence of such germs that a fatal issue is determined in the case of an abdominal wound, whether inflicted by firearms or by a pointed weapon. If aseptic procedure can be promptly resorted to and thoroughly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... wonderfully interesting study. I wish I could get some glimpse of his mind or of the cause of his sudden passion. Stop. There may be a clue after all, if we can find why today his paroxysms came on at high noon and at sunset. Can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at periods which affects certain natures, as at times the moon does others? ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... beneath his sandal-shoon, * And lo! the stibium[FN350] of their dust healed all my hurt of eyne. With one embrace again I bound the banner of our loves[FN351] * And loosed the knot of my delight that bound in bonds malign: Then bade I make high festival, and straight came flocking in * Pure joys that know not grizzled age[FN352] nor aught of pain and pine: The full moon dotted with the stars the lips and pearly teeth * That dance right joyously upon the bubbling face of wine: ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... to one of the Vales' in the pentacles, it seemed to pause, as though preliminary to a tremendous effort. It retired almost beyond the glow of the vacuum light, and then came straight toward me, appearing to gather form and solidity as it came. There seemed a vast, malign determination behind the movement, that must succeed. I was on my knees, and I jerked back, falling on to my left hand, and hip, in a wild endeavor to get back from the advancing thing. With my right hand I was grabbing madly for my revolver, which I had let slip. The brutal thing came with ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... oposicion de Saturno con Marte tan desvaratado en costa brava, adopting de Lollis's text following the suggestion of the contemporary Italian translation. According to the doctrines of astrology the influence of Saturn was malign. "When Saturn is in the first degree of Aries, and any other Planet in the first degree of Libra, they being now an hundred and eighty degrees each from other, are said to be in Opposition: A bad Aspect." William Lilly, Christian Astrology ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... was still more aroused after the crisis to which his strange visitor had hurried him so treacherously, and he resolved to overcome, by the force of genius, the malign influence which weighed upon his work and himself. He first repaired to the various clocks of the town which were confided to his care. He made sure, by a scrupulous examination, that the wheels were in good condition, the pivots firm, the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... greatness lost; The Druid circles of the olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced; The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs The vanquished punished with malign revenge: Never had British priest to Saxon preached; And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills Nor man nor woman smiled. They had not lacked The timely warning. From his Kentish shores ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... Tenderloin, he did not feel confident that in the end this peril would disappear like the others which had from time to time threatened him during his criminal career? But Hummel was fully aware of the tenacity of the man who had resolved to rid New York of his malign influence. His Nemesis was following him. In his dreams, if he ever dreamed, it probably took the shape of the square-shouldered District Attorney in the shadow of whose office building the little shyster practiced his profession. Had he been told that this Nemesis was in ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... their enemy under the ban and curse of God. A vulgar interpretation is, that it means "five in your eye;" but this custom of cursing is so remote as not now to be explained. The door-posts and rooms of houses are imprinted with the outspread hand to prevent or withstand "the eye-malign" from glancing on them and the inhabitants ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... leaves me in the best of Company—Company, which he may at another Time, find it his own Interest, if that governs him, to court & respect. We are even reduced to the Hutchinsonian Times, if a Citizen shall think himself constraind to malign his old Friend, merely because the Great Man has been prevaild upon to mark him as his Enemy.—But the History of all Ages & all Countrys shows, that there is no Absurdity into which Idolatry will not lead Men. Remember me to My Friend Mr Gerry, & let him know that ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... act, Rushed back from all the isle and round him met With anger seven times heated, since their hour, And this they knew, was come. Nor thunder din And challenge through the ear alone, sufficed That hour their rage malign that, craving sore Material bulk to rend his bulk—their foe's - Through fleshly strength of that their murder-lust Flamed forth in fleshly form phantoms night-black Though bodiless yet to bodied mass as nigh As Spirits can reach. ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... himself still to represent. For the duration of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Occident is a feature of its individualism, that could not come into being in a feudal civilization in which every respectable man carried two swords with which to take instant vengeance on whoever should malign or doubt him. Universal secretiveness and conventionality, polite forms and veiled expressions, were the necessary shields of a military feudalism. Both the social order and the language were fitted to develop to a high degree the power of attention to minutest details of manner and speech ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... like a toad"; and when he springs up in his own form there, as the "grisly king," he mourns most his beauty lost; neither is his resolute courage long admirable. To me, at least, so far from having any heroic quality, he seems always the malign fiend sacrificing innocence to an impotent revenge. In all great creations of art it is necessary that this consistency of beauty, virtue, reason, and joy ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... her genius (the thing which had been tacked on to her) more as a crime than a misfortune. It was a power in the highest degree destructive and malign, a power utterly disintegrating to its possessor, and yet a power entirely within her own control. They refused to recognize in it any divine element of destiny, while they remained imperturbably unastonished ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... privileges, in gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should turn against them as it did, and how all Europe should set itself to disgrace and despoil, to malign and execrate, those who had so long been its favorites and its champions. It is not easy to understand this, and it is painful to read the story in its sad and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... really definite, he seemed near it so often. And yet he was his own master; no stern father loomed in the background—that Bluebell would have considered a possible obstacle,—for had she not seen such malign influence destroy more than one promising love affair among her companions. Of course there was no solution to such an inscrutable mystery, though Bluebell tossed awake half the night in the effort to ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... and her husband leave the house in order that the little one may have good luck, and also that they themselves may be removed from the malign influence of the malevolent spirits that are inevitably present on ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... seductions of that luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in the freer revelation of himself by conversation, at the extent of his early corruption. How often, afterwards, did evil things present themselves in malign association with the memory of that beautiful head, and with a kind of borrowed sanction and charm in its natural grace! To Marius, at a later time, he counted for as it were an epitome of the whole pagan world, the depth of its corruption, and its perfection of form. And still, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... fault of your curls or of your lips, or of your smile, or of your whole sweet self, I know not, but because no man ever draws near you but what you make a fool of him, you seem to think all men resemble your victims, all women you, their bane. No, you don't, though; I malign you. Do you remember saying to me one day: "Try and make yourself appear a little silly sometimes, Emilia, do, now! Men never fall in love with clever women!" And right you were. The only passions I ever inspired flared through their day in the bosoms of women and boys. Never mind! I ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema

... fascination of the Great Game. When he came into his kingdom he could choose; not before. His destiny was drawing him nearer and nearer to it, he thought, with slow and irresistible force. In a few years there would be Parliament, office, power, the awaking from stupor of an England hypnotized by malign influences. He saw himself at the table in the now familiar House of green benches, thundering out an Empire's salvation. If he thought more of the awakener than the awakening, it was because he was the same ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... abundant feast of Brahminical good things, to which the "fat and greasy citizens" of the caste are bidden by some zealous or manoeuvring Soodra,—on occasion of the dedication of a temple, perhaps, or in a season of drought, or when a malign constellation is to be averted, or to celebrate the birth or marriage of some exalted personage. From all the country round about, the Brahmins flock to the feasting, singing Sanscrit hymns and obscene ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... the ships, such guns would be freely made. No sooner does one nation adopt some rascal's costly device for taking life or protecting it from the taker (and these soulless inventors will as readily sell the product of their malign ingenuity to one nation as to another) than all the rest either possess themselves of it or adopt something superior and more expensive; and so all pay the penalty for the sins of each. A hundred million dollars is a moderate estimate of what it has cost the world to abstain from strangling ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... hesitated to take them; but his manner was so threatening and imperious that she again concealed them on her person. As they came out together, Roger, with hat drawn over his eyes, gave them a glance which fixed the malign features of the man and the frightened, guilty visage of the girl on his memory. They regarded him suspiciously, but, as he went on without looking back, they evidently thought ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... to possess the characteristic of the malign water-nymphs of the Old World. They have a legend that a bonto was in the custom of assuming the shape of a beautiful woman, with hair hanging loose down to her heels; who, going on shore, endeavoured to entice young men to the river. When any unhappy youth, smitten ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... fearful the power of an appetite which cannot only enslave and curse the man over which it gains control, but send its malign influence down to the second and third and fourth ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... have been the effect of the phenomenal weather, but the next day a malign influence seemed to pervade the Demorest household. Dona Rosita was confined to her room by an attack of languid nerves, superinduced, as she was still voluble enough to declare, by the narcotic effect of some unknown ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... Miss Boncassen slowly. "I have seen them together and I think not. There might be somebody, though I think not her. But why do I say that? Why do I malign him, and make so little of myself? There is no one else, Lady ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... part," thought I, as I went back with the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... Constantia; though now I need not tell you that the love of boyhood has never been banished from my bosom. The remembrance of the hours we spent together, before a knowledge of the world, before a change in the constitution of our country, shed its malign influence, not over our hearts, but over our destinies—the remembrance of those hours has been the blessing, the solitary blessing, of my exile; it has been the green oasis in the desert of my existence: amid the turmoil of battle, it has ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... a counterproductive role. Iraqis are upset about what they perceive as Syrian support for efforts to undermine the Iraqi government. The Syrian role is not so much to take active measures as to countenance malign neglect: the Syrians look the other way as arms and foreign fighters flow across their border into Iraq, and former Baathist leaders find a safe haven within Syria. Like Iran, Syria is content to ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... fell a blight: The corn grew cankered in its sheath; And from the verdurous uplands rolled A sultry vapor fraught with death,— A poisonous mist, that, like a pall, Hung black and stagnant over all. Then came the sickness,—the malign Green-spotted terror, called the Pest, That took the light from loving eyes, And made the young bride's gentle breast A fatal pillow. Ah! the woe, The crime, the madness that befell! In one short night that vale became More foul than ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... lofty, compassionating smile. Cudjo's anger cooled at once. Penn had already recognized in them the twin Tobys of his dreams. And what a contrast between the two! There was Toby the Good, otherwise called Pomp, dignified, erect, of noble features; while before him cringed and grimaced Toby the Malign, alias Cudjo, ugly, deformed, with immensely long arms, short bow legs resembling a parenthesis, a body like a frog's, and ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... rest long on the judge, although he gave him a keen, searching glance. Even then he felt that the circumstances were far out of the ordinary. Only the previous evening this man's daughter had confessed her love to him. She had defied all conventions, defied the possibility of malign gossip, but of course Judge Bolitho did not know that. They met there as judge and accused, and such were the relations that they must maintain. A few weeks before, this man had written a letter to him—an insulting letter—forbidding him to approach his daughter; and now he, the judge, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking

... Bill Lightfoot retired in a huff to his blankets. So the rodeo ended as it had begun, in disaster, bickering, and bad blood, and no man rightly knew from whence their misfortune came. Perhaps the planets in their spheres had cast a malign influence upon them, or maybe the bell mare had cast a shoe. Anyhow they had started off the wrong foot and, whatever the cause, the times were certainly not auspicious for matters of importance, love-making, or the bringing together of ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... had a Dream, which was not all a Dream. (By Somnus and old Nox I fear 'twas not!) Common-sense was extinguished, and Good Taste Did wonder darkling on the verge of doom. I saw a Monster, a malign, marine, Mysterious, many-whorled, mug-lumbering Bogey, Stretched (like Miltonian angels on the marl) In league-long loops upon the billowy brine. Beshrew thee, old familiar ocean Bogey, Thou spectral spook of many Silly Seasons, Beshrew thee, and avaunt! Which being put In post-Shakspearian vernacular, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various

... matter of theory and system that it begins to be used amiss. Let the rule be to spare it, if it can be spared, and to use it only under the strictest compelling of moral indignation. And were not Mr. Phillips among the most genial and sunny of human beings, really incapable of any malign passion, he would fool the reactive sting of this invective in his own bosom, and so become fearful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... the Indians, who promptly reclaimed it, and restored it to the exact position which it occupied before. There is, in fact, such a subtle and universal belief in the doctrine and agency of minor spirits of malign or benignant influence among the Indians who surround the cantonment, or visit the agency, and who are encamped at this season in great numbers in the open spaces of the village or its vicinity, that we are in constant danger of trespassing ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... year I lived in the old North barracks, four of us in one room. There, under the malign influence of two men who were afterward found deficient, I contracted the bad habit of fastening a blanket against the window after "taps," so that no one could see us "burning the midnight oil" over pipes and cards. The corps of cadets was ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield

... prevailed. The young woman, for some reason untold, was deaf to his entreaties, and the rejection of this his best affection fell on him with a malign influence, just as he was setting his face to learn a trade which he hoped would enable him to ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... abilities, while he could not but feel satisfied and pleased with his competency, his assiduity, and his untiring devotion, the quick, sensitive nature of this truthful, genuine man felt magnetically the malign force working in the brain of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... laugh He praises Brutus, praises Brutus' staff, Brutus, the healthful sun of Asia's sphere, His staff, the minor stars that bless the year, All, save poor King; a dog-star he, the sign To farmers inauspicious and malign: So roaring on he went, like wintry flood, Where axes seldom ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... dost thou dare Malign my husband thus? I have known his life From his own lips, and ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... and opened the packet. As he read his face assumed so malign and fierce an aspect that I had little difficulty in persuading myself of the truth of the stories of savage cruelty that I had heard of him. When he had finished he set down the paper, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... also from another source;(74) although, one at least of the ancient chroniclers strongly hints that the favour of the citizens had been obtained by bribes and promises.(75) The earl's return was marked by decrees of outlawry against the king's foreign favourites, whose malign influence he had endeavoured formerly to counteract, and who had proved themselves strong enough to procure the ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... drop,—with sharp semivowel consonantal sounds,—frsh,—for that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding earth,)—about this time of over-ripe midsummer, the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and restless instincts. This was the period of the year when the Rockland people were most cautious of wandering in the leafier coverts which skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear thick, long boots, whenever they went into the bushes. But Elsie was never so much given ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... very good of him," said Westover, whom her words confirmed in a suspicion he had had all along. But what did it matter that Jeff had suggested their asking him, and then attributed the notion to them? It was not so malign for him to use that means of ingratiating himself with Westover, and of making him forget his behavior with Lynde, and it was not unnatural. It was very characteristic; at the worst it merely proved that Jeff was more ashamed of what he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... doing business in direct violation of law, are in every street and block, their work of plunder and demoralization going on with open doors and under the very eyes of the police. Every one of them is known to these officers. But arrest is useless. A hidden and malign influence, more potent than justice, has power to protect the traffic and hold the guilty offenders harmless. Conviction is rarely, if ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... had been disappointing below Kelso. The Tweed anglers above that town had been more favoured, being beyond the malign influences of the Teviot, which has a wonderful facility for gathering up anything that comes from the clouds, and sending down dirt and volume to the beats eastward ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... Moliere, who attains success. When you are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and malign you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you did not write, all in the sacred ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... accompanied the vizier towards the Alhambra. As they passed the copse in which Muza, two nights before, had met with Almamen, the Moor, lifting his head suddenly, beheld fixed upon him the dark eyes of the magician, as he emerged from the trees. Muza thought there was in those eyes a malign and hostile exultation; but Almamen, gravely saluting him, passed on through the grove: the prince did not deign to look back, or he might once more ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... taken Krool by the neck and throttled him? All the bitterness, anger and rage that he had felt an hour ago concentrated themselves upon Krool—without reason, without cause. Or was it that his deeper Other Self had whispered something to his mind about Krool—something terrible and malign? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... where patrons sit around small tables, drinking coffee, "with or without" turned or unturned, steaming or iced, sweetened or unsweetened, depending on the sugar supply; nibble, at the same time, a piece of cake or pastry, selected from a glass pyramid; talk, flirt, malign, yawn, read, and smoke. Cafes are, in fact, public reading rooms. Some places keep hundreds of daily and weekly newspapers and magazines on file for the use of patrons. If the customer buys only one cup of coffee, he may keep his seat for hours, and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... say the air is worse this year at Rome than ever, and that it would be madness to go thither during its malign influence. This was very bad news indeed to one heartily tired of Florence, at least of its society. Merciful powers! what a set harbour within its walls! * * * * * You may imagine I do not take vast or vehement delight in ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... and the lyre will not restore his sleep. Sleep disdains not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not Tempe, fanned by zephyrs. Him, who desires but a competency, neither the tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of Arcturus setting, or of the rising Kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail, and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains, at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at another, the severe winters. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... under some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was "a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the victims move on to the final scene in which ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... average of 90,000 bacteria, while other cows of the same herd, milked by the same man, but carefully cleaned before milking, gave only 2000 per c.c. The care involved brings its own reward, and it is in most cases a lack of knowledge or an indifference to results which causes the malign effects ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... own, a purely original creation. I heard, only the other day, in North Carolina, of the consternation struck to the heart of a certain dark individual, upon finding upon his doorstep a rabbit's foot—a good omen in itself perhaps—to which a malign influence had been imparted by tying to one end of it, in the form of a cross, two small pods ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... the arch, naughty, pleasantly-malign smile of a terribly experienced dowager. And she seemed positively anxious that James should have Andrew Dean ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett

... a heap like a tea-kettle when she's renderin' this yere madrigal, an' that, an' the words, an' all the rest, makes me gloomy an' dejected. I'm shore pinin' away onder these yere malign inflooences, when my old gent notes I ain't recooperatin', an' so he guesses the cause; an' with that he gives Aunt Tilly a lay-off, an' tells her to send along her niece Polly to take ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... horse-keepers, but the custom was finally abandoned in deference to an alleged revelation from Izanagi, the deity of Awaji, on the occasion of a visit by Richu to that island. In the context of this revelation it is noticeable that belief in the malign influence of offended deities was gaining ground. Thus, on the occasion of the sudden death of Princess Kuro, the voice of the wind was heard to utter mysterious words in the "great void" immediately before the coming of a messenger to announce the event, and the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer! For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... full days I heard no sound Where Dunkery frowns on Exon Moor, I heard no sound at all around Whether his fay prevailed, Or one malign the master were, Till some afoot did tidings bear How that, for all his practised care, He ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... are brought into very close contact with you will be beneficially influenced, or the reverse, exactly as you choose to exert your power. I do not think, after what you have seen, you will ever desire to exert a malign influence, knowing that the Creator of your being is all love and forgiveness. At any rate, the greatest force in the universe, electricity, is yours—that is, it has begun to form itself in you—and you have nothing to do but to encourage its growth, just as you would encourage a taste for music ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... entitled Mephistopheles, there are a few independent themes which portray the malign influence of the spirit of Evil—the movement is marked Allegro vivace ironico!—but most of the material is a transformation of the Faust themes which are here burlesqued, parodied; as if all the noble aspirations of Faust were being mocked and set at naught. This treatment ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... trifling twinges of remorse. Excellent and virtuous fathers, and masters of like quality, ought not to let their arm in wrath descend upon their sons and servants with such inconsiderate haste, seeing that subsequent repentance will avail them nothing. But now that God has overruled the malign influences of the stars and saved me for your Holiness, I humbly beg you another time not to let yourself so easily be stirred ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini



Words linked to "Malign" :   smear, evil, denigrate, malefic, traduce, asperse, harmful, malignity, sully, badmouth, benign, malignancy, smirch, besmirch, malignance, drag through the mud, maligner, malignment, unkind, slander, malevolent, calumniate, maleficent, defame



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