"Villainous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undergone as many chops and changes as their owners.—Has this been owing to the pride, or to the shame of the respective proprietors?—In honest truth, I think sometimes to the one, and sometimes to the other, just as the temptation has wrought. But a villainous affair it is, and will one day so blend and confound us all together, that no one shall be able to stand up and swear, 'That his own great grandfather was the man who did ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... the red leather chair, his cocoa still untouched. He was in a villainous suit that once, probably, had been dark blue. The jacket was buttoned up to his chin, and a grimy muffler surrounded his neck. His trousers were a great deal too short, and disclosed above a yellow sock, on the leg nearest to him, about four inches of dark-looking skin. His ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... matter of dollars," Vine answered contemptuously. "There are other things worth thinking about. If I strike at you and your friends, it is not for the money or the notoriety I could make out of it. It is because I want to attack a villainous system, because I consider that you and Weiss and the rest of you are really doing your best to throttle the greatest ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you mean. You've always said I go crazy when I'm—angry. Well, that's true. But it's nothing more than a villainous temper. I'm all ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... to him, you would have had the satisfaction of seeing him murdered. He could not deny that this would have been so, but that in no way alters his opinion of his own conduct. I also ventured to point out to him that if he had been killed, you would at this moment be either in the power of that villainous Nana, or be with hundreds of others in that ghastly well at Cawnpore. I also observed to him that I, who do not regard myself as a coward, also jumped overboard from your boat, and that Wilson, who is certainly a plucky young fellow, ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... levee, to which his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which on one occasion, the majority of the Council condescended to repair. His house was an office for the purpose of receiving charges against the Governor-General. It was said that, partly by threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had induced many of the wealthiest men of the province to send in complaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It was not safe to drive to despair a man of such resources and of such determination as Hastings. Nuncomar, with all his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... profession; their sword-blades are half naked, the scabbards being rudely fashioned out of two sections of wood, roughly shaped to the blade, and bound together at top and bottom with twine; in addition to which are bell-mouthed pistols, half the size of a Queen Bess blunderbuss. This villainous-looking quartette does not make "a very reassuring picture in the foreground of one's waking moments, but they are probably the most harmless mortals imaginable; anyhow, after seeing me astir, they pass onl with their flocks and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... rapidly diagnosing the case. 'By Jove, if he comes rotting about with me I'll kill him.' Having to do anything in a desperate hurry always made Charteris's temper slightly villainous. He turned the corner at a sharp trot, and came upon two youths who seemed to be engaged in the harmless occupation of trying to ride a bicycle. They were of the type which he held in especial aversion, the Rural Hooligan ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... affection the ill-proportioned little Place des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved with villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed to me that I remembered finding on the banks ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... you. I don't envy you in the least, Mrs. Ranger. I daresay you think there is no one in the world like your husband. Young brides always do. But you'll find out presently. Men are all selfish where their own pleasures are concerned. And Burke Ranger is no exception to the rule. He has a villainous temper, ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... as possible, except to say that all the rigs were engaged now and always. However, a little violent English language, mixed with Spanish, would arouse emotion and excite commotion eventuating in a pony in harness, and a gig or carriage, and a desperate driver, expert with a villainous whip ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... he explained to Uncle Peter, "that it might do for an ordinary luncheon claret, but on my sacred honour, the stuff is villainous. Now you'll agree with me, Mr. Bines, I dare say, that a Bordeaux of even recent vintage is vastly superior to the ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... was the inquietude of the times, that his lordship had not long enjoyed this tranquility, before there was hatched a most villainous contrivance; not only to take away his life, but, the lives of archbishop Sancroft, lord Marlborough, and several other persons of honour and distinction; by forging an instrument under their hands, setting forth, that they had an intent to restore king ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... that of the Enchanted Castle, or that marked 30 in the National Gallery, or one or two which I remember at Rome; but how little and by how few these fine passages of Claude are appreciated, is sufficiently proved by the sufferance of such villainous and unpalliated copies as we meet with all over Europe, like the Marriage of Isaac, in our own Gallery, to remain under his name. In fact, I do not remember above ten pictures of Claude's, in which the skies, whether repainted ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... realized that the man was in earnest. Her eyes flashed over the swarthy, villainous faces of the scowmen, and the seriousness of the situation dawned upon her. She knew, now, that the separating of the scows was the first move in a deep-laid scheme. Her brain worked rapidly. It was evident that the men on the other scows were not party ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... felt disposed to look at the pavement when approaching the church. However, it is not modern, and not hideous; it is quite the reverse, a study in fine ironwork. That the ancients could, however, do very villainous things, may be seen on a visit paid to the church of S. Jean de Malthe. It has a square east end, is an edifice of the thirteenth century, with a tower of the fourteenth and fifteenth. The original ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... know the hidden and villainous insinuation! he cried, Catholic before all! It is that indeed. Before being daughter! before being wife! before being mother! the Church, the priest first; the rest only comes after. The Mass, the Church! the Church, the Mass! With that they cover every vileness. Well, do ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... they stand alone in English drama. "Volpone, or the Fox," is, in a sense, a transition play from the dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore (the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to whether a story so forbidding can be considered ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... guerrillas were villainous wretches, at the gentlest estimate. Their scanty, ragged and stained cotton manta flapped loosely over their skin, which was scaly and as tough as old leather. Most of them had knives. A few carried muskets, long, rusty, muzzle-loading weapons ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... not the relief after all. It was the good old villainous-looking black cook, with a cup of coffee for ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... Popolo swarmed with life. The merry-makers, who had spent the feast-day outside the walls, were now thronging in; a party of horsemen were entering beneath the arch; a travelling carriage had been drawn up just within the verge, and was passing through the villainous ordeal of the papal custom-house. In the broad piazza, too, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the virtuous task of insulting every person in the room, thereby proving how much superior a cow-boy from New Hampshire is to the wretched resident of the city, whom fate has made a base and villainous gentleman. The PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN goes through with a complicated fit of St. Vitus's Dance, by way of preserving a cool exterior, and thus allaying the suspicions of PETER. Various TEDIOUS PEOPLE enter and converse tediously with the IRRELEVANT ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the names of the two men was surprised, and showed it, but her democratic respect for titles yielded to suspicion when she observed Count Vassilan's villainous guise. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... back! Och! ye villainous pack, Ye slaves of the Saxon, ye blind bastard bunch! Whelps weak and unstable, I only am able The Celt-hating Sassenach wholly to s-c-rr-unch! Yet for me ye won't work, But sneak homeward and shirk, Ye've an eye on ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... that I had been a fool—a poor, coarse fool; there had been treachery somewhere, and that all together we were a villainous lot. I was only hesitating about how to get out of the scrape decently, when Darling spoke in a voice that was ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... a pity! It was a villainous wrong," said Mr. Eldredge. "And so, it may be, some ancient line, in the old country, is defrauded of its rights for want of what might have been obtained from this Yankee, whose democracy has demoralized them to the perception of what is due to the antiquity of descent, and of ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... crushed beneath the massive weight of a "deadfall," the mother moose lay slowly sobbing her life out on the sweet spring air. The villainous log, weighted cunningly with rocks, had caught her just above the withers, bearing her forward so that her forelegs were doubled under her, and her neck outstretched so that she could not lift her muzzle from the wet moss. Though ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... his presence. Without a word of warning, he threw his long arms around her waist, and endeavored to drag or carry her to the Date grove. There could be no mistaking his intentions, and he would no doubt have succeeded in carrying out his villainous design—for the terrified girl was in a half fainting condition, and unable from the suddenness of the attack, to offer much resistance—when Arthur Carlton, who had been attracted to the spot by her shrieks and cries for help, came to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the proverb in this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover again, you shall see how I will take my revenge—first on the rogue, the incendiary, the villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and then on my dear son who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit him, hunt him away from the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... which I was most anxious to have given him if he had stood upon his legs; but which I declined to do while he was prostrate. The fellow now began to beg for mercy, and pretended to be very sorry for his conduct. The parson now proposed to give him a severe hiding for his villainous treatment of the poor beast; but as the coward would not get off his breech, but remained seated upon the earth, and declared that he would not get upon his legs while I remained, he saved himself from a severe and well-merited ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... 1871.—I tried to secure a longitude by fixing a weight on the key of the watch, and so helping it on: I will try this in a quiet place to-morrow. The people all fear us, and they have good reason for it in the villainous conduct of many of the blackguard half-castes which alarms them: I cannot get a canoe, so I wait to see what will turn up. The river is said to overflow all its banks annually, as the Nile does further ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... was before I was again awoke by the child's loud screams and cries of "Hombro—landro;" and sure enough, by the light of the dying fire, I saw a fellow stealing away with my dress, in the pocket of which was my purse. I was about to rush forward, when the fire gleamed on a villainous-looking knife in his hand; so I stood still, and screamed loudly, hoping to arouse my brother over the way. For a moment the thief seemed inclined to silence me, and had taken a few steps forward, when I took up an old rusty horse-pistol which my brother had given me that ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... over again the last edition of my History, in order to correct it still further. I either soften or expunge many villainous seditious Whig strokes which had crept into it. I wish that my indignation at the present madness, encouraged by lies, calumnies, imposture, and every infamous act usual among popular leaders, may not throw me into the ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... not trouble himself to make this journey because he desired to serve the Ydallcao, for another would have done it as well, but he did it with a villainous motive and from the ill-will he bore to Salebatacao whom the King held in prison at Bisnaga; and the reason that he had this wicked motive was because Salebatacao knew that Acadacao was the man that had caused the Ydallcao to flee, and that the cowardice of such an act was enough to destroy an army. ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... to complain of the company here (it was the house midway betwixt Maidenhead and Henley, as you come to Bisham), for I had the place to myself. Nor did I wonder at that when I saw the pig-sty of an inn which it was. The landlord, a villainous-looking rogue, demanded to finger my money before he would admit me; and as for my horse, I had to see to him myself, for there was no one about the place to do it for me. However, a night's lodging was all I wanted, and, having brought away the stable ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... that you—well, I don't wish to—perhaps it is not the proper time to—that is, I don't wish to intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and I most sincerely ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... champion tied to his villainous determination by oath, he prosecuted the intent of his purpose thus. He went to young Rosader, who in all his thoughts reached at honor, and gazed no lower than virtue commanded him, and began to tell him of this tournament and wrastling, how the king should be there, and all ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... a tent on the shore, or rather a hut, which we made with the boughs of trees, and sometimes in the night retired to a wood a little out of their way, to let them think we were gone on board the ship. However, we found them barbarous, treacherous, and villainous enough in their nature, only civil from fear, and therefore concluded we should soon fall into their hands ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... limit. Desert is the name it wears upon the maps, but the Indian's is the better word. Desert is a loose term to indicate land that supports no man; whether the land can be bitted and broken to that purpose is not proven. Void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil. ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... received these forced benevolences from all parts. He sat, covered with rags, on a shabby palm-leaf mat placed. at the outer gate of his ruined palace, holding in his left hand a villainous pipe of the kind used by the lowest people, and in his right an old red cap, which he extended for the donations of the passers-by. Behind stood a Jew from Janina, charged with the office of testing each piece of gold and valuing jewels which were offered ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the knights step back, and says: "My lords, I bid you all, both strong and weak, high and low, that none of you be so bold as to dare to advance a single step. All of you return now quickly! I have done a villainous deed, and I repent me of my foul design. The lady who outwitted me is very honourable, prudent, and courteous. Her beauty fired me with love for her; because I desired her, I wished to kill her lord and keep her back with me by force. I well deserved this ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... Street, to which we had been recommended; my wife and daughter ordered tea and its accompaniments, and I ordered ale, and that which always should accompany it, cheese. "The ale I shall find bad," said I; Chester ale had a villainous character in the time of old Sion Tudor, who made a first-rate englyn upon it, and it has scarcely improved since; "but I shall have a treat in the cheese, Cheshire cheese has always been reckoned excellent, and now that I am in the capital of the cheese country, of course I shall ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Democratic party should say in the first plank of its platform: "We hereby declare, in national convention assembled, that the paramount issue now, always and forever, is the abolition of the iniquitous and villainous civil service laws which are destroyin' all patriotism, ruin in' the country and takin' away good jobs from them that earn them. We pledge ourselves, if our ticket is elected, to repeal those laws at once and put every civil service ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... had knocked at several doors without getting any response, for the people were apt to lie in bed late on Sunday morning, and then his attention was aroused by sounds of crying mingled with oaths, that came from the garret of a villainous-looking tenement. He could hear the voices of a woman and of a child raised in entreaty and terror, and without pausing to consider the consequences, sprang up the broken stairs to the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... of sack of one Artson, and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Paul, "I should know it even if Phil had not told me. Phil is a handsome little chap. He wouldn't have such a villainous-looking brother as you." ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... thirty years of age it is to him a discovery that a man may smile and be a villain! Then think of the shock of such discoveries as are here forced upon him! Villainy is no longer a mere idea, but a fact! and of all villainous deeds those of his own mother and uncle are the worst! But note also his honesty, his justice to humanity, his philosophic temperament, in the qualification he sets to the memorandum, '—at least ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... looked curiously at the maid, who was walking with Father Claude near the canoe. Then the two officers shook hands, and in a few moments were going their ways, Menard with two villainous voyageurs added to his crew. That afternoon he passed the last rapid, and beached the canoe at La Gallette, thankful that nothing intervened between them and Fort Frontenac but a reach of still water and the twining channels of the Thousand Islands, where it would call for ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... will just yet," laughed the captain. "However, as soon as this villainous weather is a bit abated, I'll be off across the Island to do your little errand, and only ask a kiss of the bride for my pains; but if the parson be at Portsmouth there will be no getting him to budge ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unfolded the paper, and opened it out. The writing struck him at once; it was his sister's. The contents of the letter staggered him. That his sister had written it there could be no doubt. That she was in grievous trouble, and that her villainous husband had violated his pledge and was removing the children out of his reach, was equally plain. The appearance of the closing portion of the note puzzled him. He had his misgivings about it. Had his sister's ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... Colonel Greene's charges. In the newspapers of the country that matter was fully ventilated at the time. I simply republish his vituperation to show how the "System" sets about silencing those who dare protest against its villainous methods. In the first six months of the publication of my story the sole defence the "System" entered against my specific and terrible charges of plunder and debauching of the people was to attack me personally. It inaugurated a war ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... head. "Well! Aramis," continued Porthos, "I have dreamed, I have imagined that an event has taken place in France. I dreamt of M. Fouquet all the night, of lifeless fish, of broken eggs, of chambers badly furnished, meanly kept. Villainous dreams, my dear D'Herblay; ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... country would be, by the carnal judgment, counted worthy of so great labor in their behalf. For they themselves are given much to lying, theft, and drunkenness, vain babbling, and profane dancing and singing; and are still, as S. Gildas reports of them, 'more careful to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair, than decently to cover their bodies; while their land (by reason of the tyranny of their chieftains, and the continual wars and plunderings among their tribes, which leave them weak and divided, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... see already I have adopted the Hillerton vernacular.) But I fear Miss Maggie is indeed "poor" now. She has had several letters that I don't like the looks of, and a call from a villainous-looking man from Boston—one of your craft, I believe (begging your pardon). I think she's lost some money, and I don't believe she had any extra to lose. She's as proud as Lucifer, however, and she's determined no one shall find out she's lost ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... pair!" answered Father Loriot, returning abruptly to his shop. And he added to himself, with a chuckle at the anticipation: "I hope Father Dagobert's big prowler will be in a bad humor, and give that villainous pug a shaking by the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see the last of my gun and me. I dare say "villainous saltpetre," as the great playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go into my pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the air, tone or appearance of a capital, while most of them would be paragons in the eyes of such persons as old Mrs. Wetmore and her grand-daughter. Thus it was, that the Greenwich Street Museum gave infinite satisfaction to these two unsophisticated visitors. Kitty was most struck with certain villainous wax-figures, works of art that were much on a level with certain similar objects that were lately, if they are not now, exhibited for the benefit of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, above the tombs of the Plantagenets, and almost in contact with that marvel of gothic art, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... rewards that may be in the future, he might have said, 'Heaven help me!' and taken to his old business." Again it flashed across his mind that if Tickler's courage was not quite up to the mark, he might have decided to try the virtue of his heels now, rather than trust them when facing a villainous enemy on the field of battle. But all these speculations proved mere hauntings of the brain; since when he arrived at the Girard House in Philadelphia, he found to his great surprise that "Mr. and Mrs. Tickler" had stopped to take dinner while passing that way ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... behind a large picture in his closet; but on the loth of August M. de la Chapelle was thrown into the prisons of the Abbaye, and the committee of public safety established themselves in his offices, whence they issued all their decrees of death. There it was that a villainous servant belonging to M. de Laporte went to declare that in the minister's apartments, under a board in the floor, a number of papers would be found. They were brought forth, and M. de Laporte was sent to the scaffold, where he suffered for having ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... significance than appeared to the general eye, and that Ruth Oliver, in her desperate interruption of these treacherous nuptials, had not only made good her prior claim to Randolph Stone as her husband, but had pointed him out to all the world as the villainous author of that crime which for so long a time had occupied my own ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... and proceeds generally to smoke, remarking for form's sake that he "hopes it is not offensive," while you, under the burden of his kindness, smile a fashionable lie, and reply, "Not in the least." So our Gratzer withdrew to the farther end of the seat and began to smoke a most villainous cigar, and continued to smoke, lighting another when one was finished. I soon began to succumb to the poisonous effects of the close atmosphere, for, although we kept our windows open—it was the middle of June—the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... think, (members of the) Boule, that it was possible, if one wished, to keep quiet, and not to be troubled with lawsuits and vexatious business; but I have now fallen in with such unlooked-for charges and such villainous accusers that, were it possible, it seems to me even unborn generations must fear for what is before them. For through this sort of men those who have done no wrong are in as great danger as those who have committed the greatest crimes. 2. The trial is the more perplexing to me, as I was ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... the crews were put on half rations, and eked these out by catching fish. At last, when the supplies were just exhausted, the victualling ships arrived with one month's fresh rations, and a message that no more would be sent. So villainous was the quality of the stores that fever ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... Crawley went, and with half-a-dozen of the most villainous ruffians on earth in his pay, it seemed impossible for Fielding and Robinson to escape. But here the ex-thief's alertness came to George Fielding's aid, and the two men managed to get the better of all the robbers and assassins who attacked their tent. Robinson, in fact, not ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... but beautiful light glowing and then wavering in shadows across the high arched ceiling. A few feet back from the wide high fireplace with its roaring flame were four men playing cards. They sat around a table, and three in appearance were villainous cutthroats, probably Mexicans by their dark visages, swaggeringly armed with knives and revolvers, with gaudy handkerchiefs knotted ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... this, with such a mysterious hang-dog wink; such a sidelong air; such a villainous assumption of your necessities; that, at first, you are almost tempted to knock them ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... A rubicund Mexican priest is the celebrant, while two old Mexicans in modern dress, and a Pueblo Indian in a red blanket, are acolytes. When the host is elevated, an Indian at the door beats a villainous drum and four musket shots are discharged. After the services are concluded, a procession is formed and marches to the race track, which is three hundred yards in length. The runners have prepared themselves in the estufas, or underground council chambers, and soon appear. There ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... with cloak and bag, stepped into his waiting cab and, for the second time on this villainous night, started down the Champs Elysees he was under no illusion as to his personal safety. He knew that he would be followed and presently arrested, he knew this without even glancing behind him, he had understood the whispers and ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... purposes. I got to Le Mans a few hours before our column reached Yvre l'Eveque on the night of December 20, and at once sought a train which would convey me to Rennes, if not as far as Saint Malo. Then came another long, slow, dreary journey in a villainous wooden-seated third-class carriage. It was between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning when we reached Rennes. I still had about five-and-twenty francs in my pocket, and knowing that it would not cost me more than ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Roman people, tore a free-born maiden, as if a prisoner of war, from the embraces of her father, and gave her as a present to a dependant, the pander to his secret pleasures. Where by a cruel decree, and by a most villainous decision, he armed the right hand of the father against the daughter: where he ordered the spouse and uncle, on their raising the lifeless body of the girl, to be taken off to a prison; moved more at the interruption to his sensual gratification than at her untimely death. That the ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... Madam, and the poor's. Meanwhile I have told you that I have no time to waste, since I must away to London to make report concerning this Abbot of yours, a veritable rogue, of whose villainous plots I have discovered many things. I pray you send a messenger to bid ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... Tell his lordship that we are coming; and trust us, Mr. Bowie: we do not look very villainous, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... doubly sure a gigantic log was placed on top of it, strongly clamped down with concealed bands of iron, and, so that this log might not reveal its purpose, the monks cunningly carved it into some semblance of Henry himself, until it seemed a recumbent statue of the late villainous Count. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... took a seat at the table and rang a bell and gave orders, after laying an automatic pistol in front of him. Seated on the couch some distance away, Myra had the sensation of watching and taking part in a play or a game of make-believe when, after a few minutes, Tony Standish, guarded by two villainous-looking but picturesquely-attired brigands, was marched ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... I'll arrest the men. As for this warrant I have, I'll just continue to carry it in my pocket," the sheriff stated. "I must remark that I never heard of a more villainous plot, taking it all around, ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... noble Prefect," replied the shepherd, boldly. "They were led on by three as villainous rascals as go unhung, and these had with them ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... at it as it looked at him; for in looking at it he remembered last night and many nights before. Somehow it made him see the things it could not see, his drunkenness, his folly, his passion, the villainous naked body of his sin. And it was for their work, and their marks upon him, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... per annum spent On making brain and body meeter For all the murderous intent Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!" And after—ask the Yusufzaies What comes of ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... comes before me now—a scene that brings a shudder. Upon a ship sailing along the shores of France were a man and his wife on their way to join a band of villainous people in India. Being on a secret mission, they traveled slowly and carefully. It was a tedious and dangerous journey. One stormy day, on the Bay of Biscay, a child was born ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... and not go to see her, and then she'll take the other man." He was also very hungry. That worm Mrs. Elliot would be through her lunch by now. Trying his braces round him, and tearing up those old wet documents, he stepped forth to make money. A villainous young brute he looked: his clothes were dirty, and he had lost the spring of the morning. Touching the walls, frowning, talking to himself at times, he slouched disconsolately northwards; no wonder that ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... not want to let me go. From the moment I found this out, I have hated and despised you. You have no courage, no spirit; there is nothing even to be afraid of in you. You would be brutal if you dared, but you do not dare. You can be spiteful and treacherous and villainous, that is all. And I hate you for all that you are and all that you ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... very just," nodded Rochester. "Thus by breaking a villainous bargain he is twice a villain, and preserves his reputation to aid him in the more effectual cheating of ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... to Mother, and anyway all our proceedings were supposed to be going on in the most Stealthy and Silent Secrecy. The moidores and the Persian coin were all that was left of an enormous lot of things which the villainous band had buried,—golden chains, and uncut jewels, and pots of louis d'ors, and church chalices (Jerry says chasubles, but I think not). Greg and Jerry had dragged all these things up from the edge of the water in big empty armfuls, and we ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... tobacco, and the men usually went on board for the tobacco alone. But the shining bottles were there, the sharp scent of the alcohol appealed to the jaded nerves of men who felt the tedium of the sea, and thus a villainous agency obtained a terrible degree of power. I have, in a pamphlet, explained how the founder of the Mission contrived to defeat and ruin the foreign liquor trade, and I may do so again in brief fashion. Our Customs authorities at that date would ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... hordes; the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes—which lull you, when once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be funny: a villainous kind of fun—caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City—especially in the Stock Exchange, which is ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... confoundedly hard. I beg mamma's pardon — I wouldn't have said that if I had thought of her — and I would write over my letter now, if I were not short of time, and to tell truth, of paper. This is my last sheet, and a villainous bad one it is; but I can't get any better at the little storekeeper's here, and that at ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... most shameful message that any man sent to a king!' said Arthur, 'and thy king shall rue his villainous words.' Then he laughed a little grimly. 'Thou seest, fellow, that my beard is full young yet to make a hem. So take this message back to thy master. If he will have it, he must wait until I grow older; but yet he shall not wait long before he sees me, and then shall he lose ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... useless to resist any longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant—two men less utterly villainous than he—bringing back her horse. Moved by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the horse, had brought it back to her, and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... far did his perfidy extend? Had he merely known where she was concealed, or had he seen her, spoken with her, wooed her all along? He had won her; so much was plain; and he could scarce have done so during the brief journey to his villa. O villainous Marcian! ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... spasms frequently projecting large masses of water to the height of seven or eight feet. The spring lying to the east of this, more diabolical in appearance, filled with a hot brownish substance of the consistency of mucilage, is in constant noisy ebullition, emitting fumes of villainous odor. Its surface is covered with bubbles, which are constantly rising and bursting, and emitting sulphurous gases from various parts of its surface. Its appearance has suggested the name, which Hedges has given, of "Hell-Broth springs;" ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... pouring from neck, shoulders, and flanks, she still lifted her mud-brown barrel to her mighty stride, with all the vim and lightness of the start. He felt that, jade that she was, she ran because she loved it; ran with a delight that acted as a safety-valve for her villainous temper. She would run herself into amiability and then stop, but not before. And he knew her temper so well that he saw many ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... came on very rough, the wind veering to the south and blowing half a gale, a very favourable wind, as it happened, to take us across this unlovely "Silver Sea," as the poets of the Plata insist on calling it, with its villainous, brick-red, chopping waves, so disagreeable to bad sailors. Paquita and Demetria suffered agonies, so that I was obliged to keep with them a good deal. I very imprudently told them not to be alarmed, that it was ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... thee privately; and, to try him, say that thou desirest to leave thy fathers' religion, and the glory of thy kingship, and to become a Christian, and to put on the monkish habit which formerly thou didst persecute, having, thou shalt tell him, found thine old course evil." The authors of this villainous charge against the Christian knew the tenderness of his heart, how that, if he heard such speech from the king, he would advise him, who had made this better choice, not to put off his good determinations, and so they ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... the attack upon a peaceful citizen, who lies at the point of death, brought there by your villainous hand," repeated the sheriff, solemnly. He so seldom had opportunity to exercise his office that he now embellished it with all the ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... double-dealing traitor to his country, he represents that he set himself from the beginning to betray the province. The record of his actions points to the conclusion that he fell between the stools of covert treachery and half-hearted loyalty, that he was neither as villainous in design nor as heroic in action as he makes himself out to be. He made some show of preparation at the beginning, but from the moment the Roman army arrived under Vespasian, and he realized that Rome was in earnest, he abandoned all hope of success, and set himself to make his ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... glass, when obliged to look there, and besides she would not but be like the Arundels, and was well satisfied with the consciousness of having their features, as indeed she would have been if their noses had been turned up and their "foreheads villainous low." If her vanity was gratified, it was by standing apart from, and being able to look down on the rest of the world; and as Marian became conscious of this, her mind turned from it with the vexation of spirit, the disgust and sensation of dislike, and willingness to forget all about it, that ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the dignitary spat upon the floor and then shuffled his foot over the spot as a concession to public hygiene. Therefore I did not tarry. The precincts of the railway-station are often crowded by batches of German prisoners, villainous-looking rascals, and usually of the earth earthy. I watched some of them entraining one day; with them was a surly German officer who looked at his fellow-prisoners with contempt, the crowd of inhabitants with dislike, and (so it seemed to me) ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... subject pass, then; but, again, regarding this marriage. The principle upon which he and his mother are proceeding is selfish, heartless, and perfidious in the highest degree; and d—— me if I think it would be honorable in me to stand by and see such a villainous game played against so excellent a family—against so lovely and so admirable a girl as Alice Goodwin. It is a union between the kite and the dove, Charley, and it would be base and cowardly in me to ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... from the convent brought me a letter very early in the morning; I devoured its contents; it was very loving, but gave no news. In my answer I gave my dear C—— C—— the particulars of the infamous trick played upon me by her villainous brother, and mentioned the ring, with the secret of which ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of it Johnny Whitelamb had risen and was holding his drawing aslant, in some hope, perhaps, that the angle might correct the perspective of old Mettle's portrait. Certainly it was a villainous portrait, as he acknowledged to himself with a sigh. Parts of it must be rubbed out, and his right hand rummaged in his pocket and found a crust. But Johnny, among other afflictions, suffered from an unconscionable appetite. While he doubted where to begin, his teeth ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the gay youth, 'a black knight with a face of a raw meat colour, and the most villainous scowl ever you saw. I consider him ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... cannot inflict that last horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say—if ever you know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of all whom she may meet, pray for ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... have done in the fairy country of old romance. In the sordid tale of "Irish Artifice," printed in Curll's "Female Dunciad" (1728), no reader could distinguish in the romantic names Aglaura and Merovius the nationality or the meanness of a villainous Irish housekeeper and her son. And though the tale is the very reverse of romantic, it contains no hint of actual circumstance. The characters in Mrs. Haywood's early fiction move in an imaginary world, sometimes, it is true, marked with the names of real places, but no ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... whom it was ascribed in his first edition. All the light we have into the matter from the second edition, is from a marginal note at the beginning of Loks voyage, in which Robert Gainsh is said to have been master of the John Evangelist; neither is there any mention of this villainous transaction in the relation of that voyage. Such crimes deserve severe punishment; since a whole community may suffer for the fault of one ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... as the one who carried out the orders of his villainous chief Paz, tried to take Rosemary off by herself, probably to break her spirit and induce her to send a letter to her friends asking that ransom money be forwarded—when Mike tried to do this he received one of the surprises of his ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... soldiers, but heaping abuse upon the commander of the post, who, with other troops at his disposal, had looked on and lifted no hand to aid them. Later, of course, it was proved that the veteran had foiled old Red Cloud's villainous plan to lure the whole garrison into the open country and there surround and slowly annihilate it, while then, or at their leisure later, his chosen ones should set fire to the unprotected stockade and bear off those of the women or children ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... odd one; it is not easy to say, whether it is good or bad; but his consenting to the villainous Contrivance of the Usurper's to murder Hamlet, (p. 342.) makes him much more a bad Man than a good one. For surely Revenge for such an accidental Murder as was that of his Father's (which from the Queen, it is to be supposed he was acquainted ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... over the rim of his glass as he took a big pull at its contents, and there was something so villainous in the look of him that it did me good in the way of steeling my nerves again. For I now saw that here was an uncommonly bad man to deal with, and that I had ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... Jackson and Miss Pearl soon ripened into friendship and that friendship into trusting confiding love on the Part of Miss Bryan, and the accomplishment of the deep, villainous designs upon the part of Jackson. As Will Wood said in a talk afterward, "Pearl was stuck on Jackson from the first time they met, Jackson would come and get my horse and buggy and drive over to Pearl's house, when they would often go out driving together. Pearl was pretty and ambitious, ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... accompanied: for though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son, I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion; but chiefly, a villainous trick of thine eye, and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point;—Why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher, and eat blackberries? A question not to be ask'd. Shall the son of England ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... from such a number of natives. I did not feel quite at ease; though these were, so to say, civilised people, they were known to be great thieves; and I never went out of sight of my belongings, as in many cases the more civilised they are, the more villainous they may be. In the morning Tommy's father seemed to have thought better of my proposal, thinking probably it was a good thing for one of his boys to have a white master. I may say nearly all the civilised youngsters, and a good many old ones ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... writing many an article a man might be excused for thinking tolerably good, those New York people should single out a villainous backwoods sketch to compliment me on!—"Jim Smiley and his Jumping Frog"—a squib which would never have been written but to ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to see, afar, perched high upon a smiling slope of green, with the highway to Millau at its foot and a beetling cliff behind, the Chateau de Montalais. Seated on that terrasse, late in the afternoon of his second day in Nant, discussing a Picon and a villainous caporal cigarette of the Regie (to whose products a rugged constitution was growing slowly reconciled anew) Duchemin let his vision dwell upon the distant chateau almost as constantly as ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... human characteristics, sometimes alas! human charms, high principle, pathetic sentiment, poetic insight, sensitiveness to nature, things we are bound to love, but particularly do not wish to love in them. This villainous faculty, which puts us in a rage and forces us to be amiable, is almost enough to make us like, or at all events condone, its contrary in our own dear friends. I mean that marvellous transformation to which so many of those we love are subject; ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... attend to my own appearance, and indeed I needed it, for I was caked with mud up to my knees and soaking wet up to my waist. For the first time in my life I was grieved to the bone at the inadequacy of my wardrobe, and even when I had donned my Sunday best my appearance was undoubtedly villainous from the London point of view. I feathered myself as finely as my resources permitted, but it was a homely, uncouth yeoman that raced downstairs and awaited her coming. I drew the curtains, lit the candles, kicked the fire into a blaze, and built it ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that in some instances where a man had an exceptionally villainous cast of countenance, or was exceptionally deformed, as much as twenty francs were ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... some villainous-looking countenances in my time, but none more abhorrent of aspect than was that of Pablo Garcia, as, distorted with rage, he started on seeing Lilla resting half supported by me. The handsome regularity of ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... intrigue with the young and handsome widow, Mrs. Raymond.—How prone are many people to lose sight of their own imperfections while they censure and severely punish the failings of those who are not a whit more guilty than themselves! The swinish glutton condemns the drunkard—the villainous seducer reproves the frequenter of brothels—the arch hypocrite takes to task the open, undisguised sinner—and the rich, miserly old reprobate, whose wealth places him above the possibility of ever coming to want, who ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a pretty consistent picaresque satire, in which the hero ends where Fathom by all rights should have ended,—on the gallows. Fathom is the weakest of all its author's novels; Jonathan Wild is not properly one of Fielding's novels ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... could get some one to vouch for their character in a penal bond of one thousand dollars, the railroad companies would soon go to the "wall." Such mean legislation is too low for comment; therefore I leave the villainous acts ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... musqueteers, one hundred and fifty cross-bow men, a good train of heavy guns, ammunition, &c. What was Cortez's disgust when he found that the treacherous Governor of Cuba had sent them, not to help him, but to take him prisoner as a rebel? It was a villainous business got up out of envy of Cortez's success, and covetousness of his booty. But in the Spanish colonies in those days, so far from home, there was very little law; and the governors and adventurers were always quarrelling and ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... control, it had been strongly recommended. I found, too, that it had been very extensively circulated among the readers of the paper, and that the Secularist leaders were adopting measures to promote its still more extensive circulation. I at once exposed the villainous production in my portion of the paper. As far as a respect for decency would permit, I laid its loathsome and horrible abominations before my readers. This led to an instant, a total, and final separation between me and the friends of ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... off Sandridge, Melbourne, waiting for a crew, which she could not get, although men were very plentiful and the boarding-houses full. There are some vessels running from New York, etc., round the Horn to San Francisco, which have a villainous reputation. The captain of one of these was sentenced to eighteen months in the Penitentiary when I was in the great Pacific Port for incredible atrocities practised on his crew. For one thing, he shot repeatedly at men who were up aloft, and hit ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... the end of the brigands' adventure! The Planetara's last voyage! How small and futile are human struggles! Miko's daring enterprise—so villainous, inhuman—brought all in a few moments to this silent tragedy. The Planetara had fallen thirty thousand miles. But why? What had happened to Hahn? And where was Coniston, down ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... in on the hot protests which had risen to the young man's lips, "no one but a cheat and a traitor could thus have wormed himself into the confidence of an old man and of a young girl! No one but a villainous blackguard could have contemplated the abominable deceptions which you have planned against me and against ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... cried Julian. "I would not have missed it for worlds. That villainous hunchback! So he was a damnable heretic after all! I grieve we ever stood his friend. May he perish like the vile creature he is! I will ask Brother Emmanuel to set me a penance for having touched him that day when we ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... see me, aren't you?" he remarked. A slow anger surged up within him. "Your little scheme didn't work, did it? Wanted me out of the way, did you? Thought you'd keep me out of court! Well, I'm here, just as I said I'd be here. You can pay your villainous tool or kick him out, as you please. He's failed, and he won't get another chance. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... Huish sat there preening his sinister vanity, glorying in his precedency in evil; and the villainous courage and readiness of the creature shone out of him like a candle from a lantern. Dismay and a kind of respect seized hold on Davis in his own despite. Until that moment he had seen the clerk always hanging back, always ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reality, just about that time, the angelic man was endeavouring to get into the good graces of the wife of his best friend, and was writing his Livre d'Amour, and divulging to the world a weakness of which he had taken advantage. This certainly was the most villainous thing a man could do. But then he, too, was in love and was struggling and praying. George Sand declares her veneration for him, and she constituted herself ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... boatswain, was a villainous looking fellow, due in part to the squint of his eyes that set them at different angles. But he turned out a thoroughly capable man with a knack of getting out of the men ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... was personally concerned in sending from forty to fifty heads to the scaffold per diem; and that the Reign of Terror ceased immediately on his overthrow—it is not surprising that his character is associated with all that is villainous and detestable. Nevertheless, as the obscurities of the great revolutionary drama clear up, a strange suspicion begins to be entertained, that the popular legend respecting Robespierre is in a considerable degree fallacious; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... stoutly. "It's that villainous cigarette. But never mind now. There! Don't think of anything but getting better. I'll stroke your head for you. It ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... to find myself the victim of such a low, villainous joke, that had not even the pretence of wit, and I could have cried to see how that greasy string wriggled and ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... seemed to these men that they had plowed forever through the blackness of this evil night, through a hundred villainous shadows by unpointed paths. Mile after mile, they had traversed almost impassable roads, unwavering persistence in command of their strength, heavy stoicism their burden. Few were the words that had passed between them during all those weary miles. An occasional oath, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... never met my experienced gaze. A fat landlady, mark you, was sobbing in the arms of my villainous friend, and a pretty maid was clinging to his arm and screaming. At the same time there were about him a dozen people of both ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... have you well educated. If I had brought you up as I was brought up, you would never have left me! As it is'—she turned to Margaret with suddenly flashing eyes—'do you know, my dear? that atrocious little wretch will never take a penny from me, from me, his own mother! Ah, it is villainous! He is perfectly heartless! He denies me the only pleasure I wish for. Even when he was at school, at Eton, my dear, at the great English school, you know, he worked like a poor boy and won scholarships—money! Is it not disgusting? And at Oxford he lived on that ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... no villainous bounty had yet come from him, that if he had given his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends; and he bade the kind-hearted steward (who was weeping) to take comfort in the assurance ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... thought it must be for some company, not connected with this town, that has got a hint of the scheme you have in hand, and has made haste to buy before the price of these properties went up. Isn't it villainous?—ugh! ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... "bally bounder" is quite a ducal thing to do. His hideous cackle sounds in railway-carriages, or on breezy piers by the pure sea, or in suburban roads. From the time when he gabbles over his game of Nap in the train until his last villainous howl pollutes the night, he lives, moves, and has his being in slang; and he is incapable of understanding truth, beauty, grandeur, or refinement. He is apt to label any one who does not wear a dog-collar and stableman's ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... many years, has undergone a radical change in management; but it is still a cliquey place, full of a lot of habitues who regard a stranger as an intruder. Should you by accident step on Marcelle's dress or jostle her villainous-looking escort, you will be apt to get into a row, beginning with a mode of attack you are possibly ignorant of, for these "maquereaux" fight with their feet, having developed this "manly art" of self-defense ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... lime in this sack, too; there is nothing but roguery to be found in villainous man: yet a coward is worse than a cup of sack with lime in it—a villainous coward.—Go thy ways, old Jack; die when thou wilt, if manhood, good manhood, be not forgot upon the face of the earth, then am I a shotten herring. There live not three ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... destroying." They told me, by the sentence of the law They had commission to seize all thy fortune: Nay, more, Priuli's cruel band had signed it. Here stood a ruffian, with a horrid face, Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate, Tumbled into a heap for public sale: There was another making villainous jests At thy undoing: he had ta'en possession Of all thy ancient, most domestic ornaments; Rich hangings, intermixed and wrought with gold The very bed, which, on thy wedding night, Received thee to the arms of Belvidera, The scene of all thy joys, was violated By the coarse hands of filthy dungeon ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... parental anxiety in regard to the fate of his offspring. And there are few prefaces which do not in some way betray this nervousness. I confess to a respect for even the prefatory doggerel of good Tinker Bunyan—a respect for his paternal tenderness toward his book, not at all for his villainous rhyming. When I saw, the other day, the white handkerchiefs of my children waving an adieu as they sailed away from me, a profound anxiety seized me. So now, as I part company with August and Julia, with my beloved ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... were evidently as much played off at you, as they were meant to concern anybody on the stage,—he must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an injury—a person towards whom duties are to be acknowledged—the genuine crim. con. antagonist of the villainous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have the downright pungency of life—must (or should) make you not mirthful but uncomfortable, just as the same predicament would move you in a ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... went to the Smernovaya (or some such name) Hotel, a truly villainous place, though no doubt the best in the town. The feeding was very good, and everything else very bad. It was some consolation to find that as we sat at dinner we furnished a subject of the liveliest interest ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the "brutally destructive" tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... of the rascally, villainous, and dishonest postmaster is Albert Charlton, and here comes in the wonderful and startling romance of this strange story. The carnival of excitement in Metropolisville and about Metropolisville has all had to do with one family. Our readers will remember how ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... must obey orders; but it goes against my conscience to save such villainous-looking rascals. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... seeing a boy sound asleep in bed, waiting for them to rob him of all his earthly possessions, they found themselves confronted by a wide-awake lad, with his revolver pointed straight at their villainous heads. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet, And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman, Of guns, and drums, and wounds; (God save the mark!) And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth Was parmaceti for an inward bruise; And that it was a great pity, so it was, This villainous saltpetre should be digged Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow had destroyed So cowardly; and, but for these vile guns, He would himself have been a soldier. This bald, unjointed chat of his, my lord, I answered ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... open with the same promptness as before. A villainous-faced man with close-cropped hair stood in ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... above your duty, and above being taught or prescribed to, either by parents, or any body else. But go on, Miss: your mortification will be the greater; that's all, child. It shall, I assure you, if I can make it so, so long as you prefer that villainous Lovelace, (who is justly hated by all your family) to every body. We see by your letter now (what we too justly suspected before), most evidently we see, the hold he has got of your forward heart. But the stronger the hold, the greater ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... and adventurers who, from the year 1748 to 1783, encroached on the hunting grounds of the Indians and explored the wilderness, seeking out the remote tribes and trading the villainous rum for the rare pelts. In 1784 the French authorities, realizing that these vagrants were demoralizing the Indians, warned them to get off the soil. Finding this course ineffectual they arrested those that could be apprehended and sent them ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... ordering him to select the best materials of his command, to start at once, ford the Little Tennessee, and push into Knoxville at whatever cost of life and horse-flesh. Major Audenried was ordered to go along. The distance to be traveled was about forty miles, and the roads villainous. Before day they were off, and at daylight the Fifteenth Corps was turned from Philadelphia for the Little Tennessee at Morgantown, where my maps represented the river as being very shallow; but it was found too deep for fording, and the water was freezing cold—width two hundred and forty ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... asserting itself. After the gentleman's noble efforts for the good of his house (laughter)—and the splendid example he has set of rectitude—(laughter)—and high moral principle—(laughter)—it is truly touching to find him put on one side for an interloper who is villainous enough to tell the juniors they need not walk in his saintly footsteps! (Laughter.) But that is not what I wanted to say, and as the gentleman appears to be overcome by his emotions—(Silk was at that moment angrily leaving the room)—I don't think we need ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... operating so that he appears like a corked volcano! You can see that he takes Austrian money; his skin has got to be the exact colour of Munz. He has the greenish-yellow eyes of those elective, thrice-abhorred vampyres who feed on patriot-blood. He is condemned without trial by his villainous countenance, like an ungrammatical preface to a book. His tongue refuses to confess, but nature is stronger:—observe his knees. Now this is guilt. It is execrable guilt. He is a nasty object. Nature has in her wisdom shortened his stature to indicate that it is left ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... believe, but advised them not to try it again, as it was too good a joke to be repeated. Senor ——- pointed out to us the other day a well-known robber captain, who was riding on the high road with a friend. He had the worst-looking, most vulgar, and most villainous face I ever saw; a low-lived and most unpoetic-looking ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... me how she had changed her coiffure which had displeased me, and told me how she had passed the day arranging her hair to suit my taste; how she had taken down a villainous black picture-frame that had offended my eye; how she had renewed the flowers; she recounted all she had done since she had known me, how she had seen me suffer and how she had suffered herself; how she had thought of leaving the country, of fleeing from her love; how she ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... shuddering. 'The dogs!—they cut off Madame's poor white fingers to get at her rings, and not with knives either, lest her blessed flesh should defile them, they said, and her poor face was an angel's all the time. Nay, nor that was not the worst. The villainous boys, what must they do but pelt the poor swollen bodies with stones! Ay, well you may scream, Victorine. We went down on our knees, Maitre Hebert and I, to pray they might let us give them burial, but they mocked us, and bade ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... control. She crept, until she saw his watch-fob dangling against the counter, and then her heart made a call. He turned. He was not her husband! Another man was in her husband's clothes, a man with a villainous countenance! With a scream she gave the alarm. The stranger turned, dropped his drink, bounded to the door and out, leaped to the back of Beetle, gave rein and spur, and the black horse made good his reputation. In a second all was hue-and-cry and pursuit. While men and horses made, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King |
