"Prepense" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... summit of Mr. Bertram's ambition; not that he liked either the trouble or the responsibility of the office, but he thought it was a dignity to which he was well entitled, and that it had been withheld from him by malice prepense. But there is an old and true Scotch proverb, "Fools should not have chapping sticks"; that is, weapons of offence. Mr. Bertram was no sooner possessed of the judicial authority which he had so much longed for, than he began to exercise ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... fiercest, pricked up his ears, and a day or two later declared that Mr. Secretary Gladstone had 'deliberately affirmed, not through any oversight or inadvertence or thoughtlessness, but designedly and of his own malice prepense, that which in his heart he knew not to be true.' Things of this sort may either be passed over in disdain, or taken with logician's severity. Mr. Gladstone might well have contented himself with the defence that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the lad's imperturbable good humor at once irritating and disarming. Whatever his faults, they were more negative than positive; there was no malice prepense about him, no absolute personal wickedness. And he had the strange charm of manner and speech which keeps up one's outer surface of habitual affection toward a person long after all its foundations of trust and respect have hopelessly ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... hands; do of one's own accord, do upon one's own authority; originate &c (cause) 153. Adj. voluntary, volitional, willful; free &c 748; optional; discretional, discretionary; volitient^, volitive^. minded &c (willing) 602; prepense &c (predetermined) 611 [Obs.]; intended &c 620; autocratic; unbidden &c (bid) &c 741; spontaneous; original &c (casual) 153; unconstrained. Adv. voluntarily &c adj.; at will, at pleasure; a volonte [Fr.], a discretion; al piacere [It]; ad libitum, ad arbitrium [Lat.]; as one thinks proper, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... malice prepense (especially, for obvious reasons, if a hare is in any way concerned) in scorn, not in ignorance, by persons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word and even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western world puts no ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... not conceive of their souls asking more. It went beyond her to study the cat's dislike to being turned off its favourite chair, or to believe that the dog did not make dirty prints on her fresh scrubbed floor out of malice prepense; it was also incredible that he should have doggy fits of depression, in which up he must to stick a cold, slobbery snout into a warm human hand. And when Richard tried to conciliate Palmerston stalking sulky to the door, or to pet away the melancholy in the rejected ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... impossible to acquit him of the charge of appealing to a limited circle of specially chosen witnesses and advocates in a matter which lay between himself and his wife, but the aggravated offence of rushing into print may well be attributed to "the injudicious zeal of a friend," or the "malice prepense" of an enemy. If he had hoped that the verses would slip into a newspaper, as it were, malgre lui, he would surely have taken care that the seed fell on good ground under the favouring influence of Perry of the Morning Chronicle, or Leigh Hunt of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... unreality: she thought it was because, both in manners and in dress, so far as the custom of his calling would permit, he was that unpleasant phenomenon, a fine gentleman. She had never heard him preach, or she would have liked him still less; for he was an orator wilful and prepense, choice of long words, fond of climaxes, and always aware of the points at which he must wave his arm, throw forward his hands, wipe his eyes with the finest of large cambric handkerchiefs. As it was, she ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... as Hans Matthis, on the morning of the 25th of December, 1853, between the hours of midnight and one o'clock, committed the crime of murder and highway robbery upon the person of Baruch Koweski, with malice prepense, we condemn him to be hanged by the neck till death shall ensue. And may Heaven have mercy on his soul! Usher, let the executioner appear and take charge ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... chair!' broke out Gertrude. 'O, Ethel, you did out of malice prepense make me vow it should be for ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... distressing of quiet people's lives. One is tempted to believe from what one has read of the condition of those districts in the nineteenth century, that those who had them under their power worried, befouled, and degraded men out of malice prepense: but it was not so; like the mis-education of which we were talking just now, it came of their dreadful poverty. They were obliged to put up with everything, and even pretend that they liked it; whereas we can now deal with ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... her, in silence, pushing his bicycle. Had she done it of malice prepense? No—impossible! He had only telegraphed his own movements to her late on the previous evening, much too late to make any sudden arrangement with Philip, who was coming ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... desire to be as wicked as possible—a desire which I have heard you say tormented you in your childhood; for, whenever you were admonished to be remarkably good, you were invariably remarkably bad. So I yield to the temptation, and voluntarily, and with "malice prepense" throw myself into the wickedness of translating (somewhat modernizing I own) the "Tabooed" ode, in defiance of, and purposely to offend, the Parisian, or other editor or editors, who shall ever show themselves such ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various |
