"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannot but feel indignant that so generous a prince, whose first maxim was, that true magnanimity consisted in the forgiveness of injuries, and pusillanimity in the prosecution of revenge, should owe his death to the diabolical machinations of a filthy friar?" Yet, so it was; the circumstances ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... age, as gnarled and sinewy as the stem of an old grape-vine. At the first glance one would not have taken him for a scoundrel. His manner was humble, and even gentle; but the restlessness of his eye and the expression of his thin lips betrayed diabolical cunning and ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... Next the daroga was instructed to go and find Erik. He brought him to Persia, where for some months Erik's will was law. He was guilty of not a few horrors, for he seemed not to know the difference between good and evil. He took part calmly in a number of political assassinations; and he turned his diabolical inventive powers against the Emir of Afghanistan, who was at war with the Persian empire. The Shah took a ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... placed at each end of the path in an upright position, so as to conceal it from the eyes of the passer. For a long time the mulatto reflected upon the conversation he had heard, and considered the means of defeating the diabolical plot. Against a band of ruffians, such as Vernon would enlist for the service, he could not contend single-handed. To remove his mistress from the island, while Henry Carroll lay helpless there, would not be an acceptable proposition to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... about 3, the morning of September 2nd. It was quite dark and bitterly cold. Very sleepily indeed we rode along an exiguous path by the side of the cobbles. The sun had risen, but it was still cold when we rattled into that diabolical city of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... does she ask for them. It is a strange case—one almost of antagonism. They have shown the strangest lack of feeling in regard to their mother and she seems really to hate them. I can hardly blame her because while they are only little children their callousness is positively diabolical." ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... insolent scoundrel! Why do you ask me questions when you know the answers as well as I do, and better? Yes, we have got one of your diabolical ships of the air, and we will build a fleet like it and hunt you ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... cruise the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting toddies. So I brought whisky along—a couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted delicious going down and that ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... sacrilegious modern French Pharisees, who butchered, on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of September, 1792, all the prisoners at Paris, by these massacres only gave the signal for the more diabolical machinations which led to the destruction of the still more sacred victims of the 21st of January, and the 16th of October, 1793, and the myriads ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks out ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... Brewster," said the other man, and this time with brutal, pitiless force. When it came to the prospect of losing money he became as merciless as a machine. Something diabolical in remorselessness seemed to come to the surface, and reveal wheels of grinding for his fellow-men. "Look at here," he said, "I want to know right out, and no dodging. Have you got the money to pay me—yes ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... boy, you have struck on the true secret of this mysterious robbery," the teller exclaimed. "It seems almost unthinkable that any man could descend so low as to plan such a diabolical thing, and then try as best he could to throw it on the shoulders of an innocent lad. If it turns out to be true nothing could be too severe a punishment ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... like that of the weather-gage in a naval action. In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They are taking his ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... pretending you are a poet, and have the soul of a thug, a brute, a coward and bully ... please don't speak to me any more as long as I'm here ... you only pretend interest in spiritual and intellectual things, always for some brutal reason ... even now you are planning something base, some diabolical betrayal of the Master, perhaps, or of all of us.... I myself have advised Mr. Spalton, for the good of his community to send you back to the tramps and jail-birds from whom you come ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... that these advertisements were base lies, gotten up to deceive the sick, or those who think they are sick, and to take their money in exchange for dope that was worse than useless, yet the diabolical wording of those sentences affected me in a queer and inexplicable way. The psychologist would, perhaps, call this a subconscious influence. When a person gets the disease idea rooted deeply in his mind, as I had it, he is kept busy watching for new symptoms. It ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... Kansas enactment, and all the opposition from ministers and laymen, with which these measures have been regarded. He has ordained that one party shall laud them as just and patriotic, and that another party shall condemn and hate them as diabolical. He ordained the arrest of that man on the suspicion of murder, with all the conflicting opinions as to his guilt or innocence, the contradictory testimony of the witnesses, the contrary pleadings of the counsel, the verdict of the jury pronouncing him guilty, the ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... Small wonder that when its details became known in their diabolical cruelty, the people of Richmond cried out for revenge, and the hanging of the prisoners; but this was not heeded by the officials, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... shop. Ten thousand dollars' worth of first-water sparklers! Everybody that was anybody in gangland knew this. The Wolf had seen the psychological and profitable moment to strike—again that was all! And again it was diabolical—but ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... old-fashioned firm regarded me with considerable favour. At any rate, it set its face against anything German, even in the post-war days when the enemy sent its Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and we weakheartedly reopened trade with the diabolical Huns and allowed them to dump in their cheap and nasty goods just as ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... laughter at the clumsiness of men by comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods of teaching the minds of others, of inculcating ideas, and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter when I understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet my laughter seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of evil and tragedy trod close upon the heels of the comic. Oh, doctor, I tell you again, it ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... who should it be?" said Roque, not allowing time to the stranger to give an answer; "why, my honored master, you piously invoked Satan, and his diabolical majesty sends you forthwith one ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... incomplete: with the other personages it is far more so. Franz von Moor, the villain of the Piece, is an amplified copy of Iago and Richard; but the copy is distorted as well as amplified. There is no air of reality in Franz: he is a villain of theory, who studies to accomplish his object by the most diabolical expedients, and soothes his conscience by arguing with the priest in favour of atheism and materialism; not the genuine villain of Shakspeare and Nature, who employs his reasoning powers in creating new schemes and devising new means, and conquers remorse by avoiding it,—by ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... wrong; she talks to her of men and pleasures; this is a good idea, I think, for I feel sure it is women far more than men who lead women astray. Then the first woman whom he has loved for her beauty merely, comes along and continues the diabolical work of the first, by suggesting—I don't know, anything—that the young girl should go in for dress; the young man finds out the scheme, and to save the girl he murders her, he is thrown into prison, he is tried, and in the crowded Court he ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... over. The world's greatest tragedy is arrested. The awful pull at men's heart-strings relaxed. The inhuman monster that leapt out of the darkness and laid blood-hands upon every home of a peace-blest earth has been overthrown. Autocracy and diabolical tyranny lie defeated and crushed behind the long rows of white crosses that stand like sign-posts pointing heavenward, all the way from the English Channel to the Adriatic, linking the two by an ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... through a large section of Africa, and yet was received in every court, and was eventually buried after a panegyric from a Cardinal of the Roman Church—a church which had never once raised her voice against his diabolical career. Consider the similar crimes in the Putumayo, where British capitalists, if not guilty of outrage, can at least not be acquitted of having condoned it by their lethargy and trust in local agents. Think of Turkey and the recurrent massacres of her subject races. Think of the heartless ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was so great that Razumov was glad to put his hands against the wall. A diabolical impulse to say, "I have given you up to the police," frightened him exceedingly. But he did not say that. He said, without turning round, in ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... chests we had brought to land with articles for barter, as he had taken them off to the ships, with the assistance of two natives of Cuba. Near the place of the engagement, there were three buildings of stone and lime, in which were several idols of clay in strange unnatural postures, with diabolical countenances, and several wooden chests containing smaller idols, some vessels, three diadems, and several figures of birds and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... ought to remain a trade secret, so to speak. He would not have trusted even Beaumanoir with its properties had he not known that his own nerve would fail at the critical moment. For that was Felix Poluski's weakness. He could not use his diabolical invention—an anarchist in theory, in practice he would not harm ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... Letters to Denis in occasional paroxysms, as rumor of detestable nature, probably true of one who is so detestable, at least so formidable, to a guilty sinner his Guest. Others, not to be called diabolical, as Herr Dr. Busching, for example, speak of it as a thing credible; as good as known to the well-informed. And, beyond the least question, there did a thrice-abominable rumor of that kind run, whispering audibly, over all the world; and gain belief from ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... in their lower portion, which was sloping and had evidently been filled to a great extent by an accumulation of ashes and erupted refuse. On the side on which I stood, however, the crater had not the diabolical, quite awe-inspiring, appearance of the larger section of the huge volcanic mouth—quite unscaleable by humans in its central section. In the deep cracks in the rock were several small grottoes. I experienced some difficulty and much fatigue ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... efforts. The story was hawked about everywhere. It was spoken of in every tavern and at every dinner-table. The indignation of many respectable citizens was roused. They were parents, and had daughters of their own, who might be made the victims of the diabolical crew from which this poor girl had escaped. Many of them resolved to rally round her—avenge her wrongs, and punish the perpetrators. Elizabeth found herself one of the most important people in London. She received many presents, and considerable funds were ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... preservation of slavery. Well for mediation. But Mr. Decembriseur, what think you and your diplomatic lackeys; what judgment and what determination do you and they form as to the terms and the termination, too, of your diabolical scheme? Descend, sir, from your shilly-shally generalities and verbal fallacies. Is it to be a commercial union, this hobby of your minister here? What is it; let us in all plainness of speech know what it is that you really and positively intend. Propound to us the plain meaning and ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... feeding to the full his lust of gold. The bailiff had more than once, as we have hinted, found means to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained power over female innocence and honest reputation: similarly he now devised a deep-laid plot, nothing short of diabolical. His plot was this: and I choose to hurry over such foul treason. Let a touch or two hint its outlines: those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves. Simon looked at Sir John—young, gay, wealthy; he coveted his purse, and fancied that the surest bait to catch that fish was fair Grace ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge,—it blossoms through the year! And depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... long arranging and planning their diabolical scheme. There was no smile upon the cheek of Angelique now. Her dimples, which drove men mad, had disappeared. Her lips, made to distil words sweeter than honey of Hybla, were now drawn together in hard lines like La Corriveau's,—they ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... but offered him five hundred pounds, if he would sign a bond not to torment me any more. My maternal anxiety made me thus appear to waver from my first determination, and probably suggested to him, or his diabolical agent, the infernal plot, which has succeeded but ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... by the rules of his diabolical art, that Aladdin had arrived to this height of good fortune, than his face became inflamed with anger, and he cried out in a rage: "This sorry tailor's son has discovered the secret and virtue of ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... the officer with questions, but he wouldn't answer many of them; only he said that nothing but a direct hit with a six-inch shell would penetrate its hide; and it could go through any hole or walk right over a house. It was some diabolical device all right, and we went back chuckling over the surprise that the Germans would get next day. That night we went in, marching in single file. It was pitch-dark and the Germans were shelling furiously, though before we left all our ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... peal of laughter sounded through the night. It reverberated against the steep walls of the canyon and was flung mockingly from crag to crag. The boys felt their blood chill as they heard it. There was something diabolical in the merriment of the wild man who, they knew, was ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... wrung a pittance out of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-nature transferred a part of my slender purse to his plump leather bag, or when some ostentatious gentleman should throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than himself, or when—though he would not always be so decidedly diabolical—his pretended wants should make him a sharer in the scanty living of real indigence. And then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment, both as enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve such quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering spirit by his ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the scoundrel for his insolence—to drive him from the neighbourhood—and I know not what other menaces of formidable import. The devil, in the old stories of diablerie, was always sure to start up at the elbow of any one who nursed diabolical purposes, and only wanted a little backing from the foul fiend to carry his imaginations into action. The noble Captain MacTurk had so far this property of his infernal majesty, that the least hint of an approaching quarrel drew him always to the vicinity of the party concerned. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... at all; even if at the same time their own heart is expanding to the highest raptures in a quite different region. The severer Greeks reprobated music without words; Saint Augustine complained of chants that rendered the sacred text unintelligible; the Puritans regarded elaborate music as diabolical, little knowing how soon some of their descendants would find religion in nothing else. A stupid convention still looks on material and mathematical processes as somehow distressing and ugly, and systems ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... vilest, most degenerate men and women on earth, thousands upon thousands of the most hellish brutes of Asia and China—men who reckon girlhood lower than the female dog, has come this very thing—this reeking, diabolical crime against innocent girlhood. Two especially revolting cases have come under the direct notice of the writer, yet without sufficient legal proof to face in court the organized, thoroughly financed hand of men and women exploiting these dreadful conditions: one, a girl Louise, on Custom ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes, But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders, that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them never so much as entred into their thoughts, nor could they be so depraved, though they ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... That the manly and patriotic courage of His Excellency, John W. Ellis, in ordering our forts taken and held by troops of this State, and his independent denial of troops to Abe Lincoln to sustain him in his diabolical policy, meets the entire approbation of this company and ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... she had led before his birth had certainly left its mark upon him. But that instinctive sadness had in her been tinged with an inner joy: the joy of eager motherhood. And in Ivan this joy found its repetition in a vein of practical gayety. There were days when his mischief was as diabolical as one could wish it: when Ludmillo, tormented, was still brought to laugh at his piquant, irresistible nonsense. Nor was the boy without other traits of his sex and age. There were weeks when he was full of the wildest plans for his future career; being all for the joys of the physical, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... handwriting, linking together numerous newspaper clippings and facsimiles of letters. The original correspondence, he has told me, is in the hands of the police. He has begged me, also, as a warning to society against a most frightful and diabolical danger which threatens its very existence, to make public the terrible series of tragedies in which he has been innocently concerned. I herewith ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... somewhere under that lifeless weed human beings spun swiftly along, freighted with the most terrific engine of destruction. What strange warfare! Who could have fancied that when savages began to use clubs to maul each other it would end in this diabolical refinement! Weapons, weapons, weapons—the history of man's undying savagery working under new forms of civilization! The war submarine—what ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... consisted in the persecution of others, induced Captain De Courcy to make occasional excursions to the different watering-places; and whether that, to a certain degree, he was schooled by banishment from society at home, or that he had no opportunity of displaying his diabolical temper, his prepossessing appearance and well-known riches made him a great favourite in these marts for beauty. An amiable girl was unfortunate enough to fix his attention; and a hasty proposal was as hastily accepted by her friends, and quietly acquiesced in by herself. She ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... but friends only. But she really loves him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceased to love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he has never loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a rather diabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. She has known, in exercises of charity (the femme du monde has seldom quite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost their means, have taken ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... then, they were not the best of friends. Chippy now entertained the most respectful regard for police-constables, for it was part of his duty; but it had not always been so. In his days of sin, before he became a boy scout, he had guyed and chaffed Martin many a time and oft, and had exercised a diabolical ingenuity in tricks for his discomfiture. Therefore a sudden appearance, springing out of the darkness as a supporter of law and order, might not be taken as it was meant, and Chippy was quite shrewd ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... familiar spirit) of Mrs. Piper knew a great deal about things which Mrs. Piper, in her normal state, did not, and could not know. Thus, after consulting many physicians, Dr. Nevius was none the better, and came back to his faith in Diabolical Possession. He was therefore informed that he had written 'one of the most extraordinarily perverted books of the present day' on the evidence of 'transparent ghost stories'—which do not occur in ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... know how many stages there were. We turned our pack-horses out for them all, dashing back and forth along the line, coercing the diabolical Dinkey. The road was too smooth. There were no obstructions to surmount; no dangers to avert; no difficulties to avoid. We could not get into trouble, but proceeded as on a county turnpike. Too tame, too civilized, too representative ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... no discoveries that will help us much, I have learned just enough to understand that there is a diabolical ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... moment's pause between their deaths: courage and daring the greatest that all the chances of war can show. Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... little I oppose what she has taken into her head, I raise a terrible storm which lasts at least a week. She makes me tremble when she begins her outcries; I don't know where to hide myself. She is a perfect virago; and yet, in spite of her diabolical temper, I must call her my darling ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... II. Diabolical Agency in Storms. Meteorological phenomena attributed to the devil—"the prince of the power of the air" Propagation of this belief by the medieval theologians Its transmission to both Catholics and Protestants—Eck, Luther The great work ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... accident should leave them parishioners in a place where they knew they must perish miserably; so that great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... amazement at this assurance of mine, and shook his cane over my head, regarding me all the time with a countenance truly diabolical. Although I was terribly startled at his menacing looks and posture, I yet had reflection enough left to convince me I had gone too far to retract, and that this was the critical minute which must decide my future ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... treat Bonaparte as a comrade, and tell him the truth without ceremony. This was enough to determine Napoleon to rid himself of the presence of Lannes. But under what pretest was the absence of the conqueror of Montebello to be procured? It was necessary to conjure up an excuse; and in the truly diabolical machination resorted to for that purpose, Bonaparte brought into play that crafty disposition for which he ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of that diabolical 'tootum-too,' I swear by Allah I'll take your life, and give your body to the crows ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... What think you of a religion wherein the chief interest centers in trials for heresy; whose ultimate effect upon human character is a return to the raw, primitive, immature sense of life that once prevailed among this great people? What think you now of Luther and his diabolical work?" ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... little way to a point where the dogs could only ascend by a very narrow cleft in the rocks, and there he waited for the first dog. Soon a hideous black hound appeared, and with flashing eyes and gaping jaws sprang at our hero. He was received with a sweep of the scimitar, which cleft his diabolical head in twain, and he rolled down the deep declivity, all mangled and bleeding, to the foot, missing the path and falling from rock to rock, so that when he was found by the party who followed they could not tell by what means he ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... went away with one of those diabolical smiles which used formerly to make D'Artagnan shudder, but D'Artagnan could now see it without alarm, and smiling in his turn, with an expression of melancholy which the recollections called up by that smile could, perhaps, alone give ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... manifest than ever that tyranny rules. I see this government to be effectually allied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind. There sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator. This most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence: "What do you assault me for? Am I not an honest man? Cease agitation on this subject, or I will make a slave of you, too, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... acquitted, and Ledred forced to fly for safety to England, of which he was a native. It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish credulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels, or directed ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... be inclined to attach much value to Imperator's prayers. They will take them for one of the diabolical inventions of which secondary personalities are capable. Evidently, if we take them apart from the rest, this is the most plausible explanation; but the character and ideas of Imperator must be considered as a whole. ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... any out of hell!' He adds, that 'this barbarity is not their national character, for no people sympathize so much at the execution of a criminal; but it is the damnable nature of their religion, and the most diabolical spirit of their priests; their celibacy deprives them of the affections of men, and their creed gives them the ferocity of devils.' Geddes saw one man gagged, because, immediately he came out of the Inquisition gates, he looked up at ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... most modest of the four. He has not Shakespeare's absolute universality, and in fact not merely the poet's tongue, but the poet's thought seems to have been denied him. His sphere is not the ideal like Milton's. His irony, splendid as it is, falls a little short of that diabolical magnificence which exalts Swift to the point whence, in his own way, he surveys all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory or vainglory of them. All Fielding's critics have noted the manner, in a certain sense modest, in another ostentatious, in which he seems to confine himself to ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... of Christ in Jerusalem, and of the Passion; visions of hell attacked by Jesus, and defended by Satan and Lucifer with guns, "brasene gonnes," a then recent invention, which appeared particularly diabolical. Milton's Satan, in spite of having had three hundred years in which to improve his tactics, will find nothing better; his batteries are ranged in good order; a seraph stands behind each cannon with lighted match; at the first discharge, angels and ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... also used for poisoning arrows. Boiled to the consistence of tar, it is then smeared upon the blade. The action of the poison is to corrode the flesh, which loses its fiber, and drops away like jelly, after severe inflammation and swelling. The arrows are barbed with diabolical ingenuity; some are arranged with poisoned heads that fit into sockets; these detach from the arrow on an attempt to withdraw them; thus the barbed blade, thickly smeared with poison, remains in the wound, and before it can be cut out the poison is absorbed by the system. Fortunately the natives ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... Diabolical revelations were brought to light. However, as I have said, Lord Palmerston effectually cleared Crockford's, and it almost seemed, from the evidence of those who knew Crockford's best, that they never played anything ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... speciall persons, of all the rest most eger and furious, Gyrald Despes, and Bernardine Mendoza, who ceased not to sound and perswade the mindes of all those whome they coulde growe in acquaintance with, and were men giuen ouer to al mischiefes and diabolical practises: promising them, and bestowing vpon them extraordinarie rewards, of purpose to stirre them vp to moue domestical ...
— A Declaration of the Causes, which mooved the chiefe Commanders of the Nauie of her most excellent Maiestie the Queene of England, in their voyage and expedition for Portingal, to take and arrest in t • Anonymous
... quavered the hag; and the gleam in her eyes, as she laid her hand upon the chiefs shoulder, was most diabolical to see. "My poor simple son is down to the village with the pony for some provisions for my little cabin. Ma belle I shall be able to use handsomely, when she comes." Fetching then a black bottle, around which were many tangles of cob-web, she set it before; ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... effect of the Brethren's religion was to fill the mind with absurd ideas about the Side-Wound of Christ, and rivers and seas of blood; and, therefore, he earnestly besought all Methodists who had joined the Church of the Brethren to quit their diabolical delusions, to flee from the borders of Sodom, and to leave these Brethren, loved the darkness and rejected ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... in the days of Scripture, roamed and roared at will. No one having passed twenty-four hours in the country could possibly doubt that his cup of joy was running over. Where his nephew had concealed his fortune was also a source of mystery to him. He certainly had displayed the diabolical cunning that is characteristic of the mentally deranged. Possibly he had concealed it in Mexico, but to combat the institutions of that land was like attempting to ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... two or three years before "Evelina" appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of fathers and husbands when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and reflecting increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious people, took without scruple liberties which ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... from love for his mother that he had done so; that, in consequence of the same love, they were now going to bury her, and that none but themselves could or ought to do so sacred an office! Mr. Hunt did all in his power to prevent so diabolical an act; but the only reply he received was, that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave, the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an affectionate leave ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Choura occurrences thinking over these things deeply, and sleeping over them night after night and examining my heart I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chouri Choura or the mad outrages of Bombay. He is quite right when he says that as a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had a fair share of experience of this world, ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords; {11} and then debate, with drivelling tears, and diabolical sympathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation having made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices of man's ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... way or other, but, if possible, in such a manner as to make it appear that he died a natural death. These men tried various plans without success. They administered poisons, and resorted to various other diabolical contrivances. At last, one night, dreadful outcries and groans were heard coming from the king's apartment. They were accompanied from time to time with shrieks of terrible agony. These sounds were continued for some time, and they were heard in all parts of the castle, and ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... with him, even with the spirit and soul, and life of Antichrist; both in confounding and blasting of it by this spirit of his mouth, as also by forcing of it to dishonourable retreats, and by making of it give up to him, as the conqueror, not only some of his superstitious and diabolical rites and ceremonies, to be destroyed, but many a goodly truth, which this vile one had taken from his church, to be renewed to them: Nay, further, he hath also already began to take from him both kingdoms and countries, though as to some not so absolutely as he shall do by and by. And ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... also the priesthood of Isis. Shrouding the deceit and vices of a heathen metaphysical philosophy in a brilliant and imposing ceremonial, Arbaces was the better able to gratify his own desires and work out his diabolical scheme. ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... the Devils who only differ from Angels by their Fall, may also draw Women into immodest Pleasures, and Defile them with their Embraces: But it is highly inconsistent to suppose that our Creator who is all Purity, would permit the worst of Spirits to propogate his diabolical Offspring. ...
— Tractus de Hermaphrodites • Giles Jacob
... hidden carefully for nearly a year," the Chemist replied. "Then fearing lest they should in some way get loose, I destroyed them. They possess a diabolical power, gentlemen; I ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... to say of the Empusa? The insect world, at all events in our parts, contains no more fantastic creature. The children here, who are remarkable for finding names which really depict the animal, call the larva "the Devilkin." It is indeed a spectre, a diabolical phantom worthy of the pencil of a Callot. (Jacques Callot (1592-1635), the French engraver and painter, famous for the grotesque nature of his subjects.—Translator's Note.) There is nothing to beat it in the extravagant medley of figures ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... could see that he had suddenly become even more excited than before. It was as though some diabolical force had taken possession of his brain, and he fought it off, but was ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... for you which I bear with Christian Resignation and without any violent Transports of Grief. My Mother (whose diabolical Temper you well know) has taken it into her Sagacious Head to quarrel with me her dutiful Son. She has such a Devil of a Disposition, that she cannot be quiet, though there are fourscore miles between us, which I wish were lengthened to 400. The Cause too frivolous ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... generally to the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to be a heartless demon."—History Vol. IV. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... prevented from doing so. We were hustled into the hoodlum wagon, and driven through the streets amid the yells, execrations and grimaces of the liquor element. I watched their faces and could see that Satan was roused in them beyond their control, making the most diabolical faces sticking out their tongues! at what? Just five women, who were doing with their might what their hands found to do, Just five living hearts that dared to give their lives to save them. Just gray-haired women, mothers, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... in their press and proclamations they go so far as to throw the whole responsibility for the war and for the obstacles placed in the way of a peace with Germany on the Jews. It is these "diabolical Jews," they say, who prevent the conclusion of peace and insist on the continuation of the war, because they desire to ruin Russia. Proclamations in this sense have been found, together with a voluminous anti-Semitic literature, in the offices of the party of Lenine Bolsheviki (Maximalists), ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the body of a member of Parliament), said, 'I suppose you ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in the cases of the diabolical abstaining from food, is that, as in the holy instances, they exhibit various manifestations of hysteria. Goerres, with a charming degree of simplicity, details these symptoms and failing, under the influence of the predominant ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... flat side to these wandering rocks. With the diabolical ingenuity that nature can show when she goes wrong, they lie edge up. Do you remember the little mermaid who wished to lose her tail and gain legs so she could follow the prince? And how her penalty was that every step was like walking on the edges of swords? That is ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at work upon that diabolical task of mine, there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves, since their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... whom he pretended to be enamored. The girl allowed herself to be bribed with persuasive words and a good deal of money, because she was ignorant of the source of the notes and of the real meaning of the intrigue, for had she known that it was all a diabolical plot of Don Jose, although she liked the latter greatly, she would not have acted with treachery toward her mistress for all the ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... class of pupils. No doubt the cause for that fear which did exist as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam," says Sir Anthony in the play, "a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year; and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony was no doubt right. But he takes it for granted that the longing ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... Gerbert by name. A legend, related first by cardinal Benno in 1099, describes him as deep in necromantic knowledge, which he had gathered during a journey through the Hispano-Arabic provinces. He is said to have carried in his travels a sort of a diabolical oracle, a brazen head which uttered prophetic answers. After his election, in 999, he inquired how long he should remain in power; the response was "as long as he avoided saying mass in Jerusalem." The prophecy was ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... such a scene as this were it not certainly true; and we relate it, reader, not for the purpose of harrowing your feelings, but for the sake of showing what diabolical deeds we men are capable of, unless guarded therefrom by the loving and tender spirit of Jesus Christ. We say "spirit" advisedly, for we are well aware that false professors of that blessed name have, many a time, committed deeds even more horrible ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... rest in my breast under the seal of the sacrament. I must in God's name absolve her from sins that my human heart cannot forgive. Day after day must I look upon that face whose accursed smile destroyed our fortunes. I must lend an ear to her diabolical words of enticement, which she whispers to me under the mantle of confession. Is not ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... day; the same with which the report was concerned. The clergy attended in force and panoply led by His Serenity in person—monks, nuns, deacons and deaconesses—in a word, the Church was present. The cistern had been profaned. A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole diabolical evening. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... however, quickly, she advanced to kiss their Graces' hands, but Bishop Francis, after he had drawn his symbolum with chalk before him on the table, namely, H, H, H, that is, "Help, helper, help," cried out, "Back, Satan! stir not from thy place; and know that if thou shouldst attempt any of thy diabolical sorceries upon my dear lord and brother here (as for me, this honourable, consecrated, and priestly robe saves me from thy power) thou shalt be torn limb from limb, and thy members flung to feed the dogs, while thou art yet living to behold it, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... prince, was completely ruled by his mother, Catherine de Medicis, an incarnated fiend of cruelty and treachery, though a woman of pleasing manners and graceful accomplishments,—like Mary of Scotland, but without her levities. Under her influence persecution assumed a form which was truly diabolical. The Huguenots, although supported by the King of Navarre, the Prince of Conde, Coligny (Admiral of France), his brother the Seigneur d' Andelot, the Count of Montgomery, the Duke of Bouillon, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... he was winning ever nearer and nearer to victory. The old man saw it too. He had devoted years of his life to training that mighty sword arm that it might deal out death to others, and now—ah! The grim justice of the retribution he, at last, was to fall before its diabolical cunning. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that from which these words are quoted that Apuleius came to be regarded soon after his death as an incarnation of Antichrist, sent to perplex the worshippers of the true God. Already to Lactantius he is not a curious artist in language, but a magician inspired by diabolical agency; St. Augustine tells us that, like Apollonius of Tyana, he was set up by religious paganism as ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... myself, a midshipman aboard the Terrible,—had committed a crime of a particularly mean and disgraceful character— there is no need for me to specify its precise nature—and with diabolical ingenuity, knowing that discovery was inevitable, had succeeded in diverting suspicion so strongly toward me that I had been accused, court martialled, and—although I had pleaded not guilty—found ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... place. She refused to go, claimed her innocence, but to no purpose. "They chased Francis with guns and dogs on the public streets in daylight; shaddowed the cabin and gave unmistakable evidence of a diabolical purpose." She soon after ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... and his native friends found that they could not induce Mr. Wright to further weaken his ship's company by sending another boat's crew on shore, so that the Union might the more easily be captured, she was ordered under the most awful threats to act as decoy. Resolved to upset their diabolical plan, or die in the attempt, she gave an apparently cheerful assent to the meditated scheme of murder, and hence her appearance in the canoe with the ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... of Baron Hulot; she had persuaded him to grow old by one of those subtle touches of flattery which reveal the diabolical wit of women like her. In all evergreen constitutions a moment arrives when the truth suddenly comes out, as in a besieged town which puts a good face on affairs as long as possible. Valerie, foreseeing the approaching collapse ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... water-buffalo! Every one who knows this brute, must admit that the Indian theory bears on its face the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to be stamping bridle-paths into quagmires; dragging unwieldy lumbering carts, and thereby frightening horses into fits; tugging ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... victim of that diabolical scheme to awaken the wrath of the northland? In the madness which possessed him now Philip shoved out his canoe while there was still danger of discovery. Fortunately none of the pursued glanced back, ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... think, my lord—and you, my good ladies—that the mind must be truly diabolical, that could break through the regard due to the solemn injunctions of a dying parent. They did hold me a good while indeed; and as fast as I found any emotions of a contrary nature rise in my breast, I endeavoured for some time to suppress them, and to think and act ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... "'Tis a diabolical genius, this count Charles," said Ybarra, "and so full of ambition that he insists on governing everybody just as he rules his father. As for me, until the archduke comes I am a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... same breeze and the two separated. At first the one-eyed pirate jumped up with an oath and fired a pistol shot at the Englishman, but missed him. Then he seemed to change his mind and shouted in bad English, with a diabolical laugh—'Swim away; swim hard, p'raps you kitch 'im up!' Of course the two junks were soon out of sight o' the poor swimmer—and that was the end of him, for, of course, he must have ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the utmost, notwithstanding I above all Projectors, have been most discouraged: And I know whoever will attempt any thing for publick Benefit, may expect these Three things. (The first is Necessary, the second Customary, and the third Diabolical) viz., To be the Object of wise mens Censure, other mens Laughter, and if advantagious to himself, Envies implacable displeasure; of which last, I have had share to the highest degree that Revenge could express; and this too from a pretended loving ...
— Proposals For Building, In Every County, A Working-Alms-House or Hospital • Richard Haines
... cruelties; cruelties, which to the eternal disgrace, not only of our holy religion, but even of our nature, these poor people, whose ignorance is their excuse, have been instigated to, both by the French and English colonies, who, with a fury truly diabolical, have offered rewards to those who brought in the scalps of their enemies. Rousseau has taken great pains to prove that the most uncultivated nations are the most virtuous: I have all due respect for this philosopher, ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... proper feeling of humanity, would condemn. If the present mode of carrying on the trade received the countenance of that house, the poor unfortunate African would have occasion doubly to curse his fate. He would not only curse the womb that brought him forth, but the British nation also, whose diabolical avarice had made his cup of misery still more bitter. He hoped that the members for Liverpool would urge no further opposition to the bill, but that they would join with the house in an effort to enlarge the empire ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... as well as the boy. Nicodemus is a long name to write at full length, and Nick is vulgar. Besides, as there will be two Nicks, they will naturally call my boy young Nick, and of course I shall be styled old Nick, which will be diabolical." ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... hotel keepers much trouble, and had to be thrashed, as well as the payment of money by Mr. Jenne, proves the animus of the assault, while the general evidence indicates a wide-spread conspiracy, embracing others than the accused, to cause the diabolical crime. The publicans of Brome, and, indeed, the liquor traffic as a whole, lie under the terrible suspicion of sympathy with this crime. It is not beyond the traffic. Its record is traced in blood as well as tears. The Templar is quite ready to believe that there are men in ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... better thus) Have no misgiving left Of doing yet what here we leave undone? Or if unto the last of these we cleave, Believing or protesting we believe In such an idle and ephemeral Florescence of the diabolical,— If, robbed of two fond old enormities, Our being had no onward auguries, What then were this great love of ours to say For launching other lives to voyage again A little farther into time and pain, ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... known it ever since seeing Valdez, the vaqueano, consorting with the Tovas Indians, and on friendly terms with their chief. Oft had she asked herself the question whither he went afterwards! Did he return to Paraguay, or go direct to the estancia, there to complete his diabolical work—begun by murder, to end in the same with other crimes? In any case he would not likely leave them unharmed, as the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid |
