"Sinister" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in mutual surprise and pleasure. A little while they held each other's hands, and looked into each other's faces with keenly-searching, sinister eyes, one thought coming uppermost in the minds of both—the thought of that long-time-lost capital in ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... of my mind Glib, motley rumours zig-zag without rest, While deep within the darkness of my breast Monstrous desires, lean, sinister and blind, Slink through unsounded night and stir the slime And ooze of oceans ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... interest in him, which was perhaps worse. As for the Empress, there was little concealment in respect to her extreme unpopularity. Rasputin I never heard mentioned by a Russian in Russia; but one knew all about that sinister figure ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... attempt to get him up, he having evidently made up his mind to pass the night at the foot of the tree—probably that he might enjoy at his leisure a further meal off the snake. Greedy Fangs, like many human beings, influenced by sinister motives, he was doomed to suffer severely ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... toward the Rue des Fossoyeurs, in order to superintend the packing of his valise. On approaching the house, he perceived M. Bonacieux in morning costume, standing at his threshold. All that the prudent Planchet had said to him the preceding evening about the sinister character of the old man recurred to the mind of d'Artagnan, who looked at him with more attention than he had done before. In fact, in addition to that yellow, sickly paleness which indicates the insinuation of the bile in the blood, and which might, besides, be accidental, ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ever noticed. Such an old fellow would outline himself against the yellow loneliness, like a lump of pessimistic philosopher impaled on the end of his own hobbling crutch. Tarpons and sharks and sword-fish, monstrous, sinister, moved slothfully in the viscid waters. From scrubby growth on the banks a hundred or a hundred thousand crows had much ado with rebuking the invaders ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... discouraging. Would to God I could auspicate good influences! Would to God that those who think with me, and myself, could hope for stronger support! Would that we could stand where we desire to stand! I see the signs are sinister. But with few, or alone, my position is fixed. If there were time, I would gladly awaken the country. I believe the country might be awakened, although it may be too late. For myself, supported or unsupported, by the blessing of God, I shall do my duty. I see well enough all the adverse ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... sort of human expression in his countenance, undoubtedly caused him to be selected by the ancients as the emblem of wisdom. The moderns have practically renounced this idea, which had no foundation in the real character of the bird, who possesses only the sly and sinister traits that mark the feline race. A very different train of associations and a new series of picturesque images are now suggested by the figure of the Owl, who has been portrayed more correctly by modern poetry than by ancient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... re-painted upon my father's marriage, it had so fallen out that the coach-painter, whether by performing all his works with the left hand, like Turpilius the Roman, or Hans Holbein of Basil—or whether 'twas more from the blunder of his head than hand—or whether, lastly, it was from the sinister turn which every thing relating to our family was apt to take—it so fell out, however, to our reproach, that instead of the bend-dexter, which since Harry the Eighth's reign was honestly our due—a bend-sinister, by some of these fatalities, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... deal, I remember, but everybody in the Convent was kind, and when, of my own choice, I returned to the girls at recreation, the sinister sense of dignity which by some strange irony of fate comes to all children when the Angel of Death is hovering over them, came to me also—poor, helpless innocent—and I felt a certain distinction in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... fortresses. Blockading is the most trying duty the blue-jacket has to discharge. Destitute wholly of glory, the element of danger is still ever present in a form which is particularly trying to the nerves. Every night brought danger of an attack by torpedo boats. These swift and sinister craft might at any time dart out of Havana harbor, discharge their fatal bolt, and send a good ship to the bottom as speedily as went the "Maine." That the Spaniards at no time even seriously attempted a torpedo-boat attack on ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... be haunted; it was a barren wilderness, dark and gloomy, even on a sunny day—it seemed darker and gloomier still from the old, old forest of dead and withered oak-trees which was near it. A few huge trees lifted their grey heads above the low undergrowth of bushes like weary giants. They were a sinister sight; it seemed as though wicked old men had met together bent on some evil design. A narrow path almost indistinguishable wandered beside it. No one went near the Avduhin pond without some urgent reason. Natalya intentionally chose this ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... the trees, crouched low, sinister eyes fixed upon them, were two great timber wolves. The girls, terrified as they were, saw at a glance that it would be of no use to run, the movement would only infuriate the beasts ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... the Shadow. "Friend," he smiled. "'Twas 'lurid London' that you wished 'untiled.' Most secret things are sinister. Innocent mirth needs no Ithuriel spear To make its inner entity appear. Still, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... the forger of the Ems despatch is about to commit another act of treachery. But our calmness and self-possession will prevent us from falling into the same trap as in 1870. The croakings of a sinister raven will not plunge us into folly this time. He has understood his mistake. He has been able to transform a divided and impotent Germany into a great, strong, disciplined Empire. For us and for himself he was less well inspired when he exacted the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, which ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Benoix, a roofless, tumbledown stone cabin which had been from childhood Jacqueline's own particular playground, as sacred to her as the eyrie to her mother. She called it, grandiloquently, the Ruin. The place had a sinister reputation, and was sedulously avoided by both negroes and whites of the neighborhood; which suited Jacqueline's purposes excellently. All dreamers feel the need of a hidden place where they may retire, free from the gaze of a not too sympathetic world; and the Ruin made a strong appeal to the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... after a moment. It was as though some malignant ingenuity had conspired to trap him. He was caught either way. What was he to do? The question kept pounding at his brain, growing more sinister with each repetition. What was he to do? Defy the police—and be branded as a stool-pigeon, a snitch, an informer in every nook and cranny of the underworld! He could not do that. Everything, all that meant anything in life to him now would be swept ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Ellen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortune to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated by circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a much more sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowing that he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him the opportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush of desire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to take advantage of her generosity, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... sculptures which I wonderingly approached. One of the images, on the left of the palace door, was a magnificent colossus, shining through the dusky air like a sentinel who has taken the alarm. In a moment I recognised him as Michael Angelo's David. I turned with a certain relief from his sinister strength to a slender figure in bronze, stationed beneath the high light loggia, which opposes the free and elegant span of its arches to the dead masonry of the palace; a figure supremely shapely and graceful; gentle, almost, in spite of his holding out ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... Servant, thou hast lost; Vpon my right side still I wore thy picture, Palamons on the left: why so, I know not; I had no end in't else, chance would have it so. On the sinister side the heart lyes; Palamon Had the best boding chance. [Another cry, and showt within, and Cornets.] This burst of clamour Is sure ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... and there, a grim cypress lifted its head above the water, and spread wide its moss covered arms inviting refuge to the great black-winged buzzards that circled over and about it in mid-air. Nameless voices—weird sounds that awake in a Southern forest at twilight's approach,—were crying a sinister ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... embarrassing position. Second, Joe was a cousin, was he! One of those annoying second cousins, probably, who are close enough to the family to be a familiar figure, and yet far enough away in blood to marry the daughter! And then there was this sinister person, Fred, who was "really quite one of the family." Another cousin, perhaps? What was the matter with the devil, anyway? If he needed exercise why didn't he go and get it? Certainly I didn't want to ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... fact that the merchant was a familiar figure in this enclosure, he believed that he remarked an unusual degree of interest awakened by his presence, and was assured that he detected more than one sinister and smiling glance directed, with covert insinuation, ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... but otherwise much as Robert D'Oily left it. There is an odd-looking arrangement of planks on the floor. It is THE NEW DROP, which is found to work very well, and gives satisfaction to the persons who have to employ it. Sinister the Norman castle was in its beginning, "it was from the castle that men did wrong to the poor around them; it was from the castle that they bade defiance to the king, who, stranger and tyrant as he might be, was still a protector ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... all the mighty things the future has in store—vague and splendid, like some glittering palace seen suddenly in the passing of a sunbeam far away.... And presently it would be with him as though that distant splendour had never shone upon his brain, and he would perceive nothing ahead but sinister shadows, vast declivities and darknesses, inhospitable immensities, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... some of them wore earrings, and, without exception, they carried dirks and now and then both pistols and dirks in their belts. He sought among them for the face of one who might be a friend, but found none. They were all hardened and sinister, and he believed that at the best they were smugglers, at ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stranger had evidently sat within hearing distance of the girl and her schoolmate, and listening to their merry chatter all the way from Boston to Springfield, had given him the clue to names and localities that enabled him to play his sinister game. Only the faithfulness of the wise conductor saved her from possibilities too painful to ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Foreign Relations) said that his committee originated the idea of creating the Development Loan Fund, which was authorized by Congress in Section 6 of the Foreign Aid Bill of 1957, which Eisenhower established by Executive Order on December 13, 1957, and which may be the most sinister step ever taken ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... appeared that the novelist was stayed in mid-career by an accident of unrelieved and singular brutality. And truly, thus extinguished by the unfounded jealousy of a madman, the force of Charteris's genius seemed, and seems to-day, as emphasized by that sinister caprice of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... from my side; imagined wise, Constant, mature, proof against all assaults; And understood not all was but a show, Rather than solid virtue; all but a rib Crooked by nature, bent, as now appears, More to the part sinister, from me drawn; Well if thrown out, as supernumerary To my just number found. O! why did God, Creator wise, that peopled highest Heaven With Spirits masculine, create at last This novelty on earth, this fair defect Of nature, and not fill the world at once With Men, as ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... power, their importance, their infinite superiority; then about men in their relations with women—their rather grand and noisy ways that made Rosalie blink; their interfering presence that spoilt lessons and spoilt walks; those sinister attributes of theirs, arising somehow out of their freedom to do as they liked in the world, that somehow left the world very hard for women. Grotesque ideas, but masterful ideas, masterfully shaping the child mind wherein they germinated; burrowing in clutchy roots; ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... she took one long look about the engine room. In some such bedlam of noise and heat he spent his life. She was wrong, of course, to pity him; one need not measure labour by its conditions or by its cost, but by the joy of achievement. The woman saw the engines—sinister, menacing, frightful; the man saw power that answered to his hand—conquest, victory. The beat that was uproar to her ears was as the throbbing of ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the cat. Three cats were brought by Belle from Sydney. This one alone remains faithful and domestic. One of the funniest things I have ever seen was Polly and Maud over a piece of bacon. Polly stood on one leg, held the bacon in the other, regarded Maudie with a secret and sinister look and very slowly and quietly—far too quietly for the word I have to use—gnashed her bill at her. Maudie came up quite close; there she stuck—she was afraid to come nearer, to go away she was ashamed; and she assisted at the final ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... apparent air of diffidence I began my recital. I did not spare her in the smallest degree. I ascribed to her all those sinister characteristics I had read about in the handbook; and, when I suddenly remembered a delicious vol-au-vent upon which I had doted, I added a few of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... your city?" asked Orne. He wet his lips with his tongue. The cab light on Tanub's face was giving the Gienahn an eerie sinister look. ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... moreover, reassuring. In these same days between the summoning of the Buckingham Palace Conference and the landing of the Nationalist guns, Continental events arising out of the stale Sarajevo affair reared their heads and looked towards Great Britain in a presumptuous and sinister way to which the British public was not accustomed, and which it resented. The British public had never taken any interest in international affairs and it did not wish to take any interest in international affairs. It certainly ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... bad and mean enough, but the conception of a single poem in my brain, till it found birth on paper, was, I swore, bigger and finer than all this world-mess at its best. Also there was in me somewhat the thwarted, sinister ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... publishers and readers, is by far the newest poet going, whatever other advertisements may say. He has succeeded, where all others have failed, in evolving a blend of the imagery of the unfettered West, the vocabulary of Wardour Street, and the sinister ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... the supposed gambols of the two men with keen, but impersonal, interest. But here at last was something he could understand. Instinct teaches practically every dog the sinister nature of a thrown object. The man on the ground had hurled something at the man whom the collie had begun to love. That meant warfare. To the canine mind it could mean ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... whom the Scythians serve. And you, French Bardi, whose immortal pens Renown the valiant souls slain in your wars, Sit safe at home and chant sweet poesy. And, Druides, you now in peace renew Your barbarous customs and sinister rites: In unfell'd woods and sacred groves you dwell; And only gods and heavenly powers you know, Or only know you nothing; for you hold 450 That souls pass not to silent Erebus Or Pluto's bloodless kingdom, but elsewhere Resume a body; so (if truth you sing) Death brings long life. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... in advance that trouble was brewing, he could have surmised that something sinister was being hatched in the Arvanian Embassy. For, in this big sunny kitchen five men lounged about in addition to the white-coated chef and his beardless stripling of an assistant. And each of the five had a holster strapped openly over his coat with the ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... a gray-white mud that clung moistly to their overcoats, or, fully dry, colored every part of the uniform with its powder. One saw men that appeared to have rolled over and over in a puddle bath of this whitish mud, and sometimes there was seen a sinister mixture of blood and mire. There is nothing romantic about a wounded soldier, for his condition brings a special emphasis on our human relation to ordinary meat. Dirty, exhausted, unshaven, smelling of the trenches, of his wounds, and of the antiseptics on his wounds, the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... taken another aspect and changed its colour, opening the new day by a sinister morn. Completely free from its veil, it gave forth its grand rays, crossing the sky in fitful flashes, foretelling nasty weather. During the past few days it had been too fine to last. The winds blew upon that swarm of boats, as if to clear the sea ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... voice, from out atop, which sounded in the ears of our adventurer like the croaking of some sinister spirit, sweeping ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... interest. Suddenly I perceived the object on which the general attention was fixed—the swooning body of a man, heavily bound in chains and lying at the foot of the throne. Beside him stood a tall black slave, clad in vivid scarlet and masked,—this sinister-looking creature held a gleaming dagger uplifted ready to strike,—and as I saw this, a wild yearning arose in me to save the threatened life of the bound and helpless victim. If I could only rush to defend and drag him away from impending peril, I thought!—but no!—I was forced to stand helplessly ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... into the habit ever since she left the prairies of comparing all men with George Trescott Benedict; and this man, although he dressed well, and was every bit as handsome, did not compare well. There was a sinister, selfish glitter in his eyes that made Elizabeth think of the serpent on the plain just before she shot it. Therefore Elizabeth ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... placing himself in another directly opposite. Here, seated in the full blaze of the gas-light, each face was brought out into strong relief. Both were young, both handsome; Jackson, who was Arthur's senior by five or six years, remarkably so; yet his smile was sardonic, and there was often a sinister expression in his keen black eye as its glance fell upon his victim, for such Arthur Dinsmore was—no match for his cunning and unscrupulous antagonist, who was a gambler ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... yourself proposed before this rencontre. I give you free leave to use all your advantages, in an honourable way, for promoting your suit with the young lady of whom you profess yourself enamoured. Should you have recourse to sinister practices, you will find Sir Launcelot Greaves ready to demand an account of your conduct, not in the character of a lunatic knight-errant, but as a plain English gentleman, jealous of his honour, and resolute in ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... has promised to convey her home in safety. Enter the conspirators, who attack Renato; Amelia rushes between the combatants, and at the psychological moment her veil drops off. Tableau and curtain to a mocking chorus of the conspirators, which forms a sinister background to the anguish and despair of the betrayed husband and guilty wife. In the next act Renato joins forces with the conspirators, and in the last he murders Riccardo at the masked ball from which the opera takes its name. 'Un Ballo in Maschera' is one of the best operas of Verdi's middle ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... to have ever entertained a grateful remembrance of this allusion to him "at a time when praise was of value." But though the criticism is merited, is it too sinister a suggestion that it was prompted partly by the reference in Johnson's pamphlet to "the learned Mr. Warburton"? When Johnson's edition appeared in 1765, Warburton expressed a very different opinion (see ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... project that would fill the whites with alarm. They felt half the time as though walking on the crust of a volcano, and hence were in a state of mind to exaggerate every danger, and give credit to every sinister rumor. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... circumstances on temperament. The opening chapter is so alluring that callous indeed would be the reader who felt no yearning to pluck out the heart of the mystery. La Motte, a needy adventurer fleeing from justice, takes refuge on a stormy night in a lonely, sinister-looking house. With startling suddenness, a door bursts open, and a ruffian, putting a pistol to La Motte's breast with one hand, and, with the other, dragging along a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... old Fort was above them. It stood out staunch against the sky, yet not without some suggestion of the sinister. And for the first time in her years of association with it Jessie became aware of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... etc., with 'harpies,' the comptroller and naval officers, to prey upon the merchants, and deprive them of their property by force of arms, etc. I am informed, also, by these papers, that your General Assembly, though the annual choice of the people, shows no regard to their rights, but from sinister views or ignorance makes laws in direct violation of the Constitution, to divest the inhabitants of their property, and give it to strangers and intruders, and that the Council, either fearing the resentment of their constituents or plotting to enslave them, had projected to disarm them, and given ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... saw a number of Negresses engaged in laying fagots around a stake and in preparing fires beneath a number of large cooking vessels. The sinister suggestion ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her to dance for me, never fear! I'll teach her to love music, and I'll tell her stories. I must get her to explain about the lure of the States. What on earth could the little beggar have meant? It sounded as if she thought America had some sinister clutch on the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... for some time one was found in possession of a number of grey vultures and enormous crows, ranged in a line along the edges, and in the distance these seemed like men stooping in a hurry to drink. It was necessary to fire a gun to disperse these sinister pilgrims. But in the Sahara a spring is always welcome, even when it carries a taste of magnesia; and there was one in the water they had discovered, not sufficient to discourage the camels, who drank freely enough, but enough to cause Owen to make a wry face after drinking. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... they had forgotten all about the artist. But as they talked like two happy children he was watching them very closely, especially the old man. In his eyes there was a peculiar half-gloating expression, while a partly-suppressed sinister smile lurked about the corners of ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... gone out; I felt that I ought not to leave the tent till his return as I might very naturally, by wandering about, have thereby exposed myself to the suspicion of some sinister motive; so I lay still, eagerly listening that I might make a guess at the way things were going by the sounds which reached my ears. Now and then there was a roll of a drum—now a bugle sounded—then the distant report of a field-piece, and next, a whole volley ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... a class born in the country, and of a drifting, nomadic spirit; and from the city, the latter a sinister, dangerous element, whom the farmers fear and suspect. On a large farm, with five men in employ, the farmer may expect to replace one man each month; and to replace his whole force at least once a year. So changeable are the minds of this class ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... logic of rationalistic definition. It will have been made the rallying cry of savage intolerances and the mask for strange perversions. Evil will naturally have attached itself to it and malice will have left its sinister stain upon it. Because chance and accident and even evil have had much to do with its survival, it may easily happen that some primary attribute of the complex vision, such for instance as the aesthetic sense with its innate awareness of the humorous and the grotesque, will have ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the possession, in earlier days, of a most masculine expression of features. Her hair, white as snow, was gathered back from her forehead, under a spreading plain white cap; and her sightless eyes, wide open, stared forward with a startling and somewhat sinister expression. She was wrapped round in a clean white bedgown; and her long thin arms lay straight before her on the outside of the bedclothes. Her lips were moving, as if she were talking ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... topaz, same of thistles, emerald, ensigned with an imperial crown proper, and thereon the crest of Scotland, which is a lion sejant guardian ruby, crowned with the like crown he sits on, having in his dexter paw a sword proper, the pommel and hilt, topaz; and in the sinister a sceptre of the last. The other badge is a sword, as that ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... two sets of engines. There was not another sound. It was as though the vessel were plunging through an endless void. In the darkness astern arose a spear-like puff of crimson flame. Again it appeared and again, quivering, sinister. ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... and miserable, we stopped, some hot wine was brought us, which was very acceptable. The tavern-keeper, for it was no more than a spirit-shop, if not a robber, had all the appearance of one; wild, melancholy, and with a most sinister expression of countenance. Salvator never drew a more bandit-looking figure, as he stood there with his blanket and slouched hat, and a knife in his belt, tall and thin and muscular, with his sallow visage and his sad, fierce eyes. However, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... exultation but an unwonted seriousness. While, as he thus meditated, from out the dazzle as of mirage, a single figure grew into force and distinctness of outline, a figure which from his childhood had appealed to him with an attraction at once sinister and heroic—that, namely, of a certain soldier and ex-Indian official, his kinsman, to pay a politic tribute of respect to whom was the object of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... against the grating of the Carrousel. We saw flames issuing from the chimney of the King's apartments, which had been accidentally set on fire by a quantity of papers which had just been burned therein. This accident gave rise to most sinister conjectures, and soon the rumor spread that the Tuileries had been undermined ready for an explosion before the departure of Louis XVIII. A patrol was immediately formed of fifteen men of the National Guard, commanded by a sergeant; they explored the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the father's side, the Markrute brother and sister were of very noble lineage; even with his bar sinister the financier could not brook the disgrace of Elinka. He had loved her so—the one soft side of his adamantine character. Her disgrace, it seemed, had frozen all the tenderness ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... all his swift change to placability, there was a sinister undertone to his voice that the girl seemed to recognize. She hesitated until her father led ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... praise, enquiring by whom it had been painted; upon which the King introduced Mr. West to him. It would perhaps be doing injustice to say that the surprise with which he appeared to be affected on finding it the production of so young a man, had in it any mixture of sinister feeling; but it nevertheless betrayed him into a fatal indiscretion. As a preceptor to the King, he had been accustomed to take liberties which ought to have terminated with the duties of that office; he, however, inadvertently said, "Your Majesty never mentioned any thing of this ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... and, becoming excited, they chattered at random for some time, but at length slowly dispersed, and the street relapsed into the silence of night. But, a few hours later, the inhabitants were surprised to see the two ends occupied by unknown people, while other sinister-looking persons patrolled it all night, as if keeping guard. The next morning a carriage escorted by police stopped at the widow Masson's door. An officer of police got out and entered a neighbouring house, whence he emerged a quarter of an hour later with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... pretended to the imperial crown of the same; which some time and for the most part ensued by occasion of ambiguity, and [by] doubts then not so perfectly declared but that men might upon froward intents expound them to every man's sinister appetite and affection after their senses; whereof hath ensued great destruction and effusion of man's blood, as well of a great number of the nobles as of other the subjects and specially inheritors in the same. The greatest occasion thereof hath been because no perfect and ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... splendid carriage or miserable shay. Rich and cultured, poor and illiterate, human beings are all alike in their love of butchery and blood. We reached the great ragged stretch of open ground, hideous and bare enough, and the structure of the bull-ring reared itself before us, a sinister curve against the laughing blue of ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... of Christian theology.[354] Yet there is no fragment of folk-lore which remains more obscure. How has it happened that in all parts of the world the snake or his congeners, the lizard and the crocodile, have been credited with some design, sinister or ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and sweatmeats, she shivered to remember her citadel naked of all defences. This made her feel homesick for her lover's arms. Like a sensible girl, therefore, she thought of the Count as little as possible; still less of another sinister apparition, that of the obsequious Captain Mosca, craning his lean neck round the corners of her vision, grinning from ear ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... it, and which was a mere spontaneous effort of nature to relieve the strain upon the shattered nerves. Bench, bar, jury and spectators stared aghast. Such laughter sounded not only incongruous, but sinister, ominous. It was suggestive of the expiring wail of a lost soul. It was more eloquent than any mere words could have been, and spoke with most miraculous organ. Over more than one heart there crept a sort of premonition that a dread reckoning must sometime arrive for that day's work: ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... by determination and constancy. The republican institutions that everywhere prevail on our continent are not propitious to the Caesars who make their glory consist in the sinister brilliancy of battles and in the increase of their territorial domains. These same institutions give voice and vote in the direction of public affairs to the multitudes, whose primordial interest is ever peace, the sparing of their own blood, so unfruitfully shed ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... the Park. As the black trees closed him in the fear of London came, tumbling upon him. He remembered that day when he had sat, shivering, on a seat on the Embankment, and had heard that note, sinister, threatening, through the noise and clattering traffic. He heard it again now. It came from the heart of the black trees that lined the moonlit road, a whisper, a thread of sound that accompanied him, pervaded him, threatened him. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... a most violent temper, Mulcahy was usually disliked by those with whom he came in contact. But he attracted me very strongly. Aged, I should say, about forty five yellow-bearded, exceedingly handsome, strong, and tall there was, nevertheless, a suggestion of something sinister about him. To me he unbent ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... on saying it; they might have hard work to prove it. And—" Bassett's eyes turned toward the window. His brows contracted and he shut his lips tightly so that his stiff mustache gave to his mouth a sinister look that Dan had never seen before. The disagreeable expression vanished and he was his usual calm, unruffled self. "And," he concluded, smiling, "I might have some trouble ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... history, I do so only by way of admonition and not to question the well-attested gallantly of the true Kentuckian, and to the gentleman that it would be well that he should not flaunt his heraldry so proudly while he bears this bar-sinister on the military escutcheon of his State—a State which answered the call of the Republic in 1861, when treason thundered at the very gates of the Capital, by coldly declaring her neutrality in the impending struggle. The Negro, true to that patriotism and love of country that have ever marked and ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... him, but not so sorry as she was for herself. For him she had a touch of indignation. To be so nice, so refined, while all the time he was "Snooks," to hide under a pretentious gentility of demeanour the badge sinister of his surname seemed a sort of treachery. To put it in the language of sentimental science she felt he ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... An arched doorway had opened from the house into this darkened square, but it was soiled and dusty; and the damp weeds that overgrew the quadrangle drooped undisturbed against it. It was plain that human footsteps tracked it little, and I gazed into that blind and sinister area with ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... commission in nature of the writ de idiota inquirendo, to enquire into the party's state of mind; and if he be found non compos, he usually commits the care of his person, with a suitable allowance for his maintenance, to some friend, who is then called his committee. However, to prevent sinister practices, the next heir is never permitted to be this committee of the person; because it is his interest that the party should die. But, it hath been said, there lies not the same objection against his next of kin, provided he ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the Baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the Saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the approaching scene, than any reluctance to be its directors or agents. The Jew then looked ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... we think that all existence is summed up in the word 'ghosts'; another, and somewhat better one, in which we think it is summed up in the words 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Even the vulgarest melodrama or detective story can be good if it expresses something of the delight in sinister possibilities—the healthy lust for darkness and terror which may come on us any night in walking down a dark lane. If, therefore, nonsense is really to be the literature of the future, it must have its own version of the Cosmos to offer; the world must not only be the tragic, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... business hereafter; the ardent desire I feel, and shall continue to manifest, of quietly enjoying in private life, after all the toils of war, the benefits of a wise and liberal government, will, I flatter myself, sooner or later, convince my countrymen, that I could have no sinister views in delivering with so little reserve the opinions contained ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... had discarded their weapons and concealed their armour under the cloak and gown of ordinary life on entering the cathedral precincts, so that on their first appearance in the Archbishop's private room their aspect was sinister without being immediately threatening. Becket had just finished dinner, and was seated on his couch talking to his friends when the four knights were announced, and he pointedly continued, his conversation with the monk who sat by ...
— Beautiful Britain • Gordon Home
... of chill, as if from the neighbourhood of a reptile, and shunning him unless to profit in some way by their superior strength. Never would he join their games without compulsion; his thin, colourless lips seldom parted for a laugh, and even at that tender age his smile had an unpleasantly sinister expression. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... by experience not one of us would have escaped. Fortunately every one of my men had kept the place exactly that I had assigned him. Not one of them flinched under the storm. And yet, Heaven knows what sinister music the bullets played around our ears! We had to ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... again: there was something she did not like about him. Pushed for a reason by her husband, who always assumed a logical and masculine tone to her, she had not one to produce, but she stumbled as if by chance on the word "sinister," which was just what Mr. Gryce was not. So Sebastian made her go into the library for the dictionary and hunt up the word through all its derivations, and thus proved to her incontestably that she was ignorant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... developments. The sounds came from below, but not from the cellar room, as he had located it. A moment later, a man crawled into the room, coming through a hole in the floor, just as he had suspected. A faint light from below revealed the sinister figure plainly, but Bonner felt himself to be quite thoroughly hidden. The man in the room spoke ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... said, on the score of humanity, for an historian who in the nineteenth century calmly and in cold blood defended the use of the rack? Even here Freeman's ingenuity of suggestion did not desert him. After quoting part, and part only, of Froude's sinister apology, he writes, "To all this the answer is very simple. Every time that Elizabeth and her counsellors sent a prisoner to the rack they committed a breach of the law of England." Any one who read this article without ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... was staring with feelings that made him nearly fall off the roof, for indeed the Irishman's face, always sinister, was now ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor close to the table-legs. In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a samovar, cold long ago; and round it ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... brows over the long eyes were equally black, and so were the thick short lashes. Between these inky lines the eyes themselves were as coldly gray and empty as a northern sea, yet they were attractive, if only by an almost sinister contrast. The skin was extraordinarily white, and it did not occur to Mary that Nature alone had not whitened it, or reddened the large scarlet mouth. Women did not paint at the convent, nor did Lady MacMillan's guests. Mary did not know anything about ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... out of the heart of the land, ushering with it a feeling of subtle tension, as though the touch of darkness stirred to wakefulness a populace of shadows, which skulked and crouched and whispered, comprising an underworld of sinister folk which the first glow of dawn would send scampering back to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... escape your censure, but I shall, likewise, gain your compassion. I have erred, not through sinister or malignant intentions, but from the impulse of misguided, indeed, but ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the time that I knew him in St. Petersburg he was as much hated as his enemy Count Tolstoi, but that was because he held the terrible office of head of the Third Section or Director of the Secret Police, with the power of life and death over everyone except the Emperor. It was a somewhat sinister contrast to find, in one who used to the full the awful powers of his office, the greatest gaiety that existed in mortal ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... bathed in moonlight, is new and wild, and sets one's imagination working in harmony with Gogol's "Terrible Vengeance." Particularly fantastic are the alternating precipices and tunnels when you see now depths full of moonlight and now complete sinister darkness. It is rather uncanny and delightful. One feels it is something not Russian, something alien. I reached Sevastopol at night. The town is beautiful in itself and beautiful because it stands by a marvellous sea. The best in the sea is its colour, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... the strong spirit, overworn? Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away? I will not and I dare not yet believe! Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve, And the spring-laden breeze Out of the gladdening west is sinister With sounds of nameless battle overseas; Though when we turn and question in suspense If these things be indeed after these ways, And what things are to follow after these, Our fluent men of place and consequence Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase, ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... worse than all the English," pursued Abdallah Jack in a voice that sounded to Mrs. Greyne decidedly sinister. "He is worse than the tourists of Rook, who laugh in the doorways of the mosques and twine in their hair the dried lizards of the Sahara. Even the guide of Rook rejected him. I only would undertake him because I ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... a few steps, frightened and trembling, as she encountered the glittering eyes and sinister smile of La Corriveau. The woman observed it, and instantly changed her mien to one more natural and sympathetic; for she comprehended fully the need of disarming suspicion and of winning the confidence of her victim to enable her more surely ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... else moved, and there was silence as steel touched steel—breathless silence. For a moment Barbara was hardly conscious of what was happening about her. It seemed only an instant ago that she had cried out, and now naked swords and the shadow of death. Lord Rosmore's face looked evil, sinister, devilish. Fellowes was flushed with wine, unsteady, taken by surprise. There came to Barbara the sudden conviction that in some manner Fellowes had fallen into a trap. He had insulted her, but the wine was the cause, and Rosmore ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... as she had entered it, answering as she went, with a glance of disdain, the passion of admiration that glowed in the eyes and twitched in the fingers of Norman Passepoil. The people that kept that evil Inn, the people that served that evil Inn, always left their sinister customers to themselves to kiss or kill, as best ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... himself of this knowledge to sow dissensions." (Nicholl's Recollections and Reflections during the reign of George III.) This opinion, just or unjust (and there is no great reason to doubt its justice), was founded upon extensive personal experiences, of which this sinister attempt to break up the union of the Cabinet may have ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... batteries were drawn up at the foot of the column. Here and there knots of officers talked together in a low voice,—sinister men. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo |
