"Villainous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the main ones, and, reaching the outskirts of the village of Biaches, I left the car there and prepared to walk into Peronne. I could see in the distance that the place was still burning; columns of smoke were pouring upwards and splashing the sky with patches of villainous-looking black clouds. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to Dorothy. He sat down by Leonore and talked, till a scoundrelly, wretched, villainous, dastardly, low-born, but very good-looking fellow carried off his treasure. Then he ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... most anxious to have given him if he had stood upon his legs; but which I declined to do while he was prostrate. The fellow now began to beg for mercy, and pretended to be very sorry for his conduct. The parson now proposed to give him a severe hiding for his villainous treatment of the poor beast; but as the coward would not get off his breech, but remained seated upon the earth, and declared that he would not get upon his legs while I remained, he saved himself from a severe and well-merited ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... followed the Excellency would know. How Vasili had entered, scattering the minions like a mad bull, and springing upon the villainous King, had torn his life ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... I, 'and at your merry meetings you sing songs upon the compulsatory deeds of your people, alias their villainous actions; and after all, what would the stirring poetry of any nation be, but for its compulsatory deeds? Look at the poetry of Scotland, the heroic part founded almost entirely on the villainous ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... is set down for them; for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... account of his intrigue with the young and handsome widow, Mrs. Raymond.—How prone are many people to lose sight of their own imperfections while they censure and severely punish the failings of those who are not a whit more guilty than themselves! The swinish glutton condemns the drunkard—the villainous seducer reproves the frequenter of brothels—the arch hypocrite takes to task the open, undisguised sinner—and the rich, miserly old reprobate, whose wealth places him above the possibility of ever coming to want, who would sooner "hang the guiltless ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... dress, sounded a loud bell as the hearse rolled over the curb, and when they had taken an aisle to the left, with maple trees on either side, and vistas of mean-looking vaults, a corpulent priest, wearing a cape and a white apron, and attended by a civil assistant of most villainous physiognomy, met the cortege and escorted it to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... out yesterday to try him," continued Meynell, "but Hatton, who was with him, got such a fall (he is a villainous rider, without knowing it), that they had great trouble in getting him back here, and it broke up the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... since the Venetian fete, nearly three weeks ago, owing primarily to the destruction of the Reve, and secondly to Lady Susan's incurable aversion to a hired boat. "They roll, my dear," she asserted, when Ann vainly tried to tempt her into giving the hireling a chance. "And the cushions have villainous lumps in sundry places. No, I'll stay on shore till we have a new ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... likeness of Medusa; but all her prayers and tears were ineffectual; victim of force and rage.—-The cruel leader of these fiends had just effected his diabolical intentions, when a sudden noise of the trampling of horses and the distant voices of men, forced them to fly. Fear, the companion of villainous actions, made them abandon their prey, and make off with incredible swiftness, so that the wretched Princess soon lost sight of them; but her irremediable misfortune, too present to her mind, to vanish with the authors of it, disordered her senses so cruelly, that abhorring herself, ...
— The Princess of Ponthieu - (in) The New-York Weekly Magazine or Miscellaneous Repository • Unknown
... great tank," and her body into "a splendid palace and garden," her arms and legs becoming "the pillars that supported the verandah roof," and her head "the dome on the top of the palace." In almost all countries, when a fairy hero has been slain by a demoniacal or otherwise villainous personage, he is recalled to life by magic means. In European folk-lore the resuscitating remedy is usually a Water of Life, or a Balsam, or some similar fluid. In these Indian tales, it is blood streaming ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... idiot—as a man incapable of giving the court information even upon a question of his own profession? As to his credulity with respect to the somewhat harmless forgeries of Psalmanazer, and with respect to the villainous imposture of Lander, we imagine that other causes co-operated to those errors beyond mere facility of assenting. In the latter case we fear that jealousy of Milton as a scholar, a feeling from which he never cleansed himself, had been the chief cause of his so readily delivering himself a dupe ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... at the sign of the 'Jolly Tar.' You will, therefore, please your majesty, be so good as to take the will for the deed—for by no manner of means either can I or will I swallow another drop—least of all a drop of that villainous bilge-water that answers to the hall of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was a villainous looking fellow, due in part to the squint of his eyes that set them at different angles. But he turned out a thoroughly capable man with a knack of getting out of the men all that ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... or in services, but he has some charm of his own: by complaining I shall not make myself deserve to receive more, but shall become unworthy of what I have received. More has been given to those most villainous men than has been given to me; well, what is that to the purpose? how seldom does Fortune show judgment in her choice? We complain every day of the success of bad men; very often the hail passes over the ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... think that I will stand at their gates, like a beggar, asking that they deign to give me funds to restore the state which is ruined by their stupid and villainous management? Ha, ha! Pentuer, I should not ask the gods for that which is my power and my ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see the last of my gun and me. I dare say "villainous saltpetre," as the great playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go into my pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, which I bound upon ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... odd one; it is not easy to say, whether it is good or bad; but his consenting to the villainous Contrivance of the Usurper's to murder Hamlet, (p. 342.) makes him much more a bad Man than a good one. For surely Revenge for such an accidental Murder as was that of his Father's (which from the Queen, it ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... theatre. Beyond this, I remember with affection the ill-proportioned little Place des Hommes; not at all monumental, and given over to puddles and to shabby cafes. I recall with tenderness the tortuous and featureless streets, which looked liked the streets of a village and were paved with villainous little sharp stones, making all exercise penitential. Consecrated by association is even a tiresome walk that I took the evening I arrived, with the purpose of obtaining a view of the Rhone. I had been to Arles before, years ago, and it seemed ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... seems he has been in England sometime. I met him in the refreshment room at Yeovil station. I was waiting for a down train; he had changed on his way to town. As I opened the door I heard a huge voice in a more or less violent altercation, and there was S. F. U., in a villainous old suit of gray flannels (I'll swear it was the same one that he had on last time I saw him), and a mackintosh, though it was a blazing hot day. His pince-nez were tacked onto his ears with wire as usual. He greeted me with ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... and took the bridle from her. It was useless to resist any longer, so she slipped off and walked away. But it was not ten minutes before she again heard trampling behind, and as she looked around, she saw two companions of this miscreant—two men less utterly villainous than he—bringing back her horse. Moved by her heroism, they had compelled him again to give up the horse, had brought it back to her, and she ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the decaying timbers of the car track the boys discussed in whispers the possibility of aiding Skip to escape from his unenviable position, with never a thought of the deed with which Billings was to crown his villainous career. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... I feared," replied Estein. "One that you might do that; the other, that a troop of as villainous-looking knaves as you now are yourself might hive out of the wood behind you. But how did you escape last night, ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... humiliate myself thus; it is intolerable to me, and my heart is breaking—for the architect, the architect has trampled upon me as if I were his servant; he wished—I heard him with these ears—he shrieked after me a villainous hope that I might be smothered in my own fat—and the physician has told me I may die of apoplexy! Leave me, leave me. I know those Romans are capable of anything. Well—here I am; fetch me my saffron-colored pallium, that I wear in the council, fetch me my gold fillet for my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... so deeply interested in the proceedings of these fellows as in some other of our characters, we will pass from them and their villainous plot, whatever it may be, and look after Duffel and ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... three miles. He did not know me; but was not so much altered as I expected. His wife soon told me of T.'s irregularities which caused him to leave the school at Quebec, and they had come to this wild place to break his connections; their neighbours gone except two or three the most villainous low Irish. If she left home some of the dram sellers would fetch away hay to pay T.'s shots. After dinner T. and I set off to Beauport Lake; sailed across, caught a nice trout but no other fish, and were only allowed to use ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... club they thought it must be for some company, not connected with this town, that has got a hint of the scheme you have in hand, and has made haste to buy before the price of these properties went up. Isn't it villainous?—ugh! ...
— Pillars of Society • Henrik Ibsen
... a boy sound asleep in bed, waiting for them to rob him of all his earthly possessions, they found themselves confronted by a wide-awake lad, with his revolver pointed straight at their villainous heads. ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... one blasting guttural and Serge receded to the horizon with great rapidity. "You understand, mon ami," explained Boris; "he is really a Bulgar, but the villainous Serb propagandists have taught him the Serbian language and that he is Serb. It is his duty really to fight or work for Bulgaria, just as it was ours to liberate him and his other Bulgar brothers in Serbia from the yoke of the Serbs. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... a night." A fifth edition (8vo) was issued on the 5th of December 1812. Just turned twenty-four he "found himself famous," a great poet, a rising statesman. Society, which in spite of his rank had neglected him, was now at his feet. But he could not keep what he had won. It was not only "villainous company," as he put it, which was to prove his "spoil," but the opportunity for intrigue. The excitement and absorption of one reigning passion after another destroyed his peace of mind and put him out of conceit with himself. His first affair of any moment was with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... those days!... tramping northward with nothing in the world to do but swap stories and rest whenever we chose, about campfires of resinous, sweetly smelling wood ... drinking and drinking that villainous tea. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... burglar!" cried the youth indignantly. Somehow it was very different when this nice voiced man called him a burglar from bragging of the fact himself to such as The Sky Pilot's villainous company, or the awestruck, open-mouthed Willie Case whose very ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... suffrage gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or even detection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render evident the consequences, which were that rascality must predominate—in a word, that a republican government could never be any thing but a rascally one. While ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... half a dozen; and Eric, rather against his will, found himself ensconced at the end of the table, with Brigson and Bull on either hand. The villainous-low-foreheaded man, whom they called Billy, soon brought in a tough goose at one end of the table, and some fowls at the other; and they fell to, doing ample justice to the [Greek: daiz heisae] while Billy waited on them. There was immense uproar during the dinner, every one eating as ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... little phrase from the guilty Herbert had come so straight from the heart that even the villainous tiger was ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... lowest depths of pleasure, and began to carve out strange and corrupt ways in the search after enjoyment. Then sensuality, daring all, violated the laws of Nature herself. Who was it who first looked upon the male as female, violating him by force or villainous persuasion? One sex entered one bed, and men had the shamelessness to look at one another without a blush for what they did or for what they submitted to, and, sowing seed, as it were, upon barren rocks, they enjoyed a short-lived pleasure at ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... enemy, Screw, with his villainous face much paler than usual; next, two respectably-dressed strangers whom he appeared to have brought into the room; and next to them Young File, addressing ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the honor to be that particular settlement. "Judge" Briggs, one of the heroes, had many years before discussed with his neighbor, Billy Bent, the merits of two opposing brands of mining shovels. In the course of the chat they drank considerable villainous whisky, and naturally resorted to knives as final arguments. The matter might have ended here, had either gained a decided advantage over the other; but both were skillful—each inflicted and received so near the same number ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... be answered, that they share in them only in so far as they please themselves, and conceive themselves to be good? for certainly, they are not either really, or even apparently, found in any one of those who are very depraved and villainous; we may almost say not even in those who are bad men at all: for they are at variance with themselves and lust after different things from those which in cool reason they wish for, just as men who fail of Self-Control: ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... seemed well off of men belonging to yet higher grades. Rameau distinguished amongst these the medecin des pauvres, the philosophical atheist, sundry young, long-haired artists, middle aged writers for the Republican press, in close neighbourhood with ruffians of villainous aspect, who might have been newly returned from the galleys. None were regularly armed; still revolvers and muskets and long knives were by no means unfrequently interspersed among the rioters. The whole scene was to Rameau a confused panorama, and the dissonant tumult of yells and laughter, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... coffee-house to card-room, I told him plainly he had none, which made him laugh and swear and vow I was treating him most shabbily. And it was no use; he would have his pin-money, and I must sell or pledge or borrow, at an interest most villainous, from the thrifty folk ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... looked at him. Huish sat there, preening his sinister vanity, glorying in his precedency in evil; and the villainous courage and readiness of the creature shone out of him like a candle from a lantern. Dismay and a kind of respect seized hold on Davis in his own despite. Until that moment, he had seen the clerk always hanging back, always listless, uninterested, and openly grumbling ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... truth. One is tempted to feel that the researches of erudite historians end only in proving that white is not so white, and black not so black as one had thought. That generous persons had a seamy side; that dark and villainous characters had much to be urged in excuse for their misdeeds. This is evidently a wrong frame of mind, and one is disposed to say that one must pursue truth before everything. But then comes in the difficulty that truth is so often ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said she, "I beg your pardon, for I am the cause of this misfortune, having brought you to this merchant, because he is my countryman; but I never thought he would be guilty of such a villainous action. But do not grieve. Let us hasten home, and I will apply a remedy that shall in three days so perfectly cure you that not the least ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... Prefect," replied the shepherd, boldly. "They were led on by three as villainous rascals as go unhung, and these had with them a crowd of ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... that the man was in earnest. Her eyes flashed over the swarthy, villainous faces of the scowmen, and the seriousness of the situation dawned upon her. She knew, now, that the separating of the scows was the first move in a deep-laid scheme. Her brain worked rapidly. It was evident that the men on the other scows were not party to the plot, or Vermilion would not have ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... facile to accompany the eloquence of "Appeals" with a kind of stir-the-bile-up statistics—"Abuses of the Aristocracy"—"Jobs of the Priesthood"—"Expenses of Army kept up for Peers' younger sons"—"Wars contracted for the villainous purpose of raising the rents of the land-owners"—all arithmetically dished up, and seasoned with tales of every gentleman who has committed a misdeed, every clergyman who has dishonored his cloth; as if such instances were fair specimens of average gentlemen and ministers of religion! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man it gave a hidden, higher, socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the "brutally destructive" ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... to be white egrets. Now at home I am strongly against the killing of these creatures, and have so expressed myself on many occasions. But, looking from the beautiful white plumage of these villainous mauraders, to the wrinkled countenance of the grateful weary old savage, I could not fan a spark of regret. And from the straight line of their retreating flight I like to think that the rest of the flock never ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the youthful and virtuous of their reputation, scattering the seeds of dissension, and fluttering in the sunshine of their folly like butterflies tasting of the sweets of every flower, but collecting no honey, therefore, my son, discard the venom of such villainous tongues." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... think the mediaeval knights really were? I have always seen them in a romantic light, finer than human. Tennyson gave me that apple, and I confess I did eat, and I have lived on the wrong diet ever since. Malory was almost as misleading. My net impression was that there were a few wicked, villainous knights, who committed crimes such as not trusting other knights or saying mean things, but that even they were subject to shame when found out and rebuked, and that all the rest were a fine, earnest Y. M. C. A. crowd, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... bushman in the horrors, or a villainous-looking sundowner, comes and nearly scares the life out of her. She generally tells the suspicious-looking stranger that her husband and two sons are at work below the dam, or over at the yard, for he always cunningly inquires for ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... butt of his revolver, he leaped forth. Uttering a choking cry he sprang back. Within a foot of his eyes were the barrels of two big Colt's-pistols, and looking over the tops of them was a villainous handkerchief-masked face. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... back on his pillow, and Gorman sat down on a chair beside him. His villainous features worked convulsively, for in his heart he was meditating a terrible deed. That morning he had been visited by Ned Hooper, who in the most drunken of voices told him, "that it wash 'mposh'ble to git a body f'r love or munny, so if 'e wanted one he'd better ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the great scout was in the hands of a white man, and was struggling desperately. His contestant, however, plainly was much the stronger. Peleg saw the face of the man distinctly, and he assured himself that never before had he looked upon so villainous a countenance. The man's face was distorted and discoloured by his efforts, and the perspiration streamed down his cheeks leaving furrows behind it. In spite of his excitement, Peleg asked himself if the man's face had ever been washed. The necessity for quick action, if ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... and with half-a-dozen of the most villainous ruffians on earth in his pay, it seemed impossible for Fielding and Robinson to escape. But here the ex-thief's alertness came to George Fielding's aid, and the two men managed to get the better of all the robbers and assassins who ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... a billet in some pirate breast sooner or later, one of the villainous desperadoes falling over his oar here and another dropping down on the bamboo deck of a junk there; while, occasionally, some wretch would tumble overboard with a wild yell, in answer to the ping of the rifle, shot through the heart as dead as a herring, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... imperfect, incompetent, inferior; untoward, depressing, unwelcome, adverse, grievous, unfavorable, inauspicious; infertile, inarable; barren, unproductive, worthless; hard, heavy, serious, irreparable, egregious; nefarious, felonious, infamous, villainous, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... whispered the Chevalier in the ear of the blushing object of his villainous designs—"to-morrow, thou are mine! Oh, the devotion of a life-time shall atone to you for the sacrifice you make, in wedding an unknown stranger, whose birth and fortunes are shrouded in a ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... of the Peregrine family was the first to view him, and forthwith both Bill and his brother screamed in unison: "What's that sneaking across Smoke Acre yonder? 'Tis a fox—a great, lanky, thieving, villainous fox, darned if ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... place and Kiti, where Larmer dwelt with his villainous associates, was but ten miles. Yet, although Larmer had now been living on the island for a year, Challoner had only once met ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... you among us, child," the Cherub said. "The chivalrous bandoleros of the past exist in these days only in story books and ballads. Vivillo is a villainous brute, and a little farther south we'll find no one on the road who'll care to speak his name. They'll call him Senor Coso. As for the Seven Men of Ecija, one says that they're disbanded long ago, yet there's a rumour that they still exist; and by the way, Don Ramon, for generations ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... His heart was going like a trip-hammer. Could it be possible that his uncle would lend himself to such a villainous scheme? He could scarcely refrain from jumping through the window and denouncing the plotters to their ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... as these, that at times could scarcely be heard because of the sobbing of the people, and of my wives who wept loudly, except Otomie alone, this villainous priest made a sign and once more the music sounded. Then he and his band placed themselves about me, my wives the goddesses going before and after, and led me down the hall and on to the gateways of the palace, which were thrown wide ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... from one of the main thoroughfares, the houses were of the most wretched character, and the people who were congregated about the doorways were villainous looking men and low-browed, brazen-faced women. Lights shone from many windows, and from within came the sound of loud laughter and ribald song. They were evidently in a quarter of the city where vice reigned supreme and where poverty, crime ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... from such a number of natives. I did not feel quite at ease; though these were, so to say, civilised people, they were known to be great thieves; and I never went out of sight of my belongings, as in many cases the more civilised they are, the more villainous they may be. In the morning Tommy's father seemed to have thought better of my proposal, thinking probably it was a good thing for one of his boys to have a white master. I may say nearly all the civilised youngsters, and a good many old ones too, like to get work, regular rations, and tobacco, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... for awhile. Finally I told him—"Well, John, what if we don't find our way out of this today—we'll know all about the country when we do get out." "Oh stuff—I know enough—and too much about the d—-d villainous locality already." Finally, we reached the camp. But as we brought no provisions with us, the first subject that presented itself to us was, how to get back. John swore he wouldn't walk back, so we rolled a drift log apiece into the Lake, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... himself by the loss of a moment's indifference upon any earthly or other subject, saving and excepting always that it involved the death, mutilation, or destruction in some shape, of his great and relentless foe, the Gauger, whom he looked upon as the impersonation of all that is hateful and villainous in life, and only sent into this world to war with human happiness at large. That great professional instinct, as the French say, and a strong unaccountable disrelish of Hycy Burke, were the only two feelings that disturbed the hardened indifference ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the ladder—Mary Travers had gone to look at it—was steep: a little, curious, excited crowd was gathering below. Deane saw their hesitation. He rushed to the door and cautiously opened it. The thing was there! Across the very entrance—that villainous oblong case! And from below came a shriek—it was Madame's voice, and a cry of ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... this same fearful and intolerant spirit,—this over-bearing, boasting spirit, was it, that cowardly attacked a Christian Senator, while seated unsuspectingly at his desk, and felled him to the floor, bleeding and senseless? Was not the villainous blow which fell upon the honored head of CHARLES SUMNER, dealt by the infamous Brooks of South Carolina, aimed at the free speech of the entire North? Was it, think you, a personal enmity that the cowardly scoundrel had toward our ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... orders of the proprietor each evening; a steward of equal taciturnity "ran" the restaurant, and August Meyer himself, with autocratic power, directed the villainous operations of No. ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... eager and open-mouthed, and even the villainous Samory rose from his divan to more closely watch the effect of the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... similar to this; but here he was right in the midst of it, and already it seemed as though he had known his two companions for years. French Pete was smiling genially at him across the board. It really was a villainous countenance, but to Joe it seemed only weather-beaten. 'Frisco Kid was describing to him, between mouthfuls, the last sou'easter the Dazzler had weathered, and Joe experienced an increasing awe for this boy who had lived so long upon the water ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... my fault just as much," he declared, "and the fault of circumstances. I couldn't tell you the whole truth, but there has been a villainous conspiracy going on here. Draconmeyer, Selingman, and the Grand Duke were all in it and I have been working like a slave. Now it's all over, finished this morning on Richard's yacht. We've done what we could. I'm a free lance now and we'll spend ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by the sentence of the law, They had commission to seize all thy fortune.— Here stood a ruffian with a horrid face, Lording it o'er a pile of massy plate, Tumbled into a heap for public sale;—There was another, making villainous jests At thy undoing; but had tacit possession Of all thy ancient most domestic ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... This "junk" is bought at the junk shops along the wharves; outlandish looking dens, generally subterranean, full of old iron, old shrouds, spars, rusty blocks, and superannuated tackles; and kept by villainous looking old men, in tarred trowsers, and with yellow beards like oakum. They look like wreckers; and the scattered goods they expose for sale, involuntarily remind one of the sea-beach, covered with keels and cordage, swept ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... busiest man among them, and upon making inquiries from the party, they were informed that they acted by his orders, and that, moreover, he was himself the very first individual who had set fire to the premises. The clergyman made his way to Sir Robert, on whose villainous countenance he could read a dark and ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... companionship, as for the books themselves. They seem to have run through many editions, and to have received no little encouragement. Morality and sensation alternate in her pages. Monsters abound there. They hire young men to act base parts, to hold villainous conversations which the husbands are intended to overhear. They plot and scheme to ruin the fair fame and domestic happiness of the charming heroines, but they are justly punished, and their plots are defeated. One villain, on his way to an ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... confoundedly hard. I beg mamma's pardon — I wouldn't have said that if I had thought of her — and I would write over my letter now, if I were not short of time, and to tell truth, of paper. This is my last sheet, and a villainous bad one it is; but I can't get any better at the little storekeeper's here, and that at a horridly ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... butts of sack of one Artson, and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined effort to colonise Virginia, could but ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Athos, sipping a glass of sparkling wine. "Villainous host!" cried he, "he has given us Anjou wine instead of champagne, and fancies we know no better! Yes," continued he, "a charming woman, who entertained kind views toward our friend d'Artagnan, who, on his part, has given her some offense for which ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... their thrills or interludes Of tenderness—these hardly seized me; Not by their people, though the pack Were amiable and pleasant creatures, Barring the villains who were black And villainous in all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... Dalmatian Embassy, his rage had not cooled greatly; it was therefore in a tone strangely at variance with his unruffled evening dress that he directed his chauffeur. As for Baxter, he had never seen his master in so villainous a humour. Indeed, had it not been for an uncommonly pretty femme de chambre in the hotel, whose acquaintance he had made the evening before, he would have been tempted to give ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... your letter I beg to assure you of my heartfelt gratitude for your kind offer to try to apprehend the James Boys and break up their villainous gang. These outlaws have too long been a terror to the community, and there is not a decent man, woman or child in the state who would not be glad to hear of the extermination of the gang. The list of crimes for which the James Boys are ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... lover she wants to treat well. Folks wondered and stared that a fellow called Brown— Abstracted and solemn, in manner a clown, Ill dressed, with a lingering smell of the shop— Should appear as her escort at party or hop. Some swore he had cooked up some villainous charm, Or love philter, not in the regular Pharm- Acopoeia, and thus, from pure malice prepense, Had bewitched and bamboozled the young lady's sense; Others thought, with more reason, the secret to lie In a magical wash or indelible dye; While Society, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... uncle who spends his life in making the most villainous puns you ever heard. Not a remark, not a word in any assembly, which this witty specimen of humanity does not at once garnish with a pun of the poorest description. It generally has to be repeated twice, too, for it is never noticed the first ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... had thrust in their villainous faces for the last time, according to their custom, and all had lain down as ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... waiting for his dinner, lolling on a window-seat with his knees drawn up, looked (for all the difference in the setting of the jewel) fearfully and wonderfully like a certain Monsieur Rigaud who had once so waited for his breakfast, lying on the stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell in a villainous dungeon at Marseilles. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... of an excellent sovereign, who had been deceived by evil counsellors, and who would be grateful to those who should bring the truth to his knowledge. He vehemently denied that he had called the grant to Lady Orkney villainous. It was a word that he never used, a word that never came out of the mouth of a gentleman. These assertions will be estimated at the proper value by those who are acquainted with Trenchard's pamphlets, pamphlets ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... against the knaves as long as the sea continued to flow around it. Till the shoals which surround it had become safe anchorage—till its precipices had melted beneath the sunshine—till of all its strong abodes and castles not one stone remained upon another,—would I have defended against these villainous hypocritical rebels, my dear husband's hereditary dominion. The little kingdom of Man should have been yielded only when not an arm was left to wield a sword, not a finger to draw a trigger in its ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... Ay, signor, very sure. 'Tis but a moment since I saw the thing— Bernardo, who last night was sworn thy son, Hath made a villainous barter of thine honor. Thou may'st rely the duke is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... would reflect that the shortest way to gratify it, would be to rob their neighbours of such goods, as the Europeans coveted. The great store of arms, ornaments, and clothes, which they produced at this time, seemed to prove, that such a daring and villainous design had really been put in execution; nor was it to be supposed that this could have been ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... setting his goblet down with a bang upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining a culprit than of a Governor asking ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of the fifth day he was walking down towards the boat-landing to go on board, when his eye came in contact with the interpreter and the whole gang that were concerned in the tobacco enterprise. There was a look of murder on their villainous faces, which the captain said would haunt him to his dying day. He spontaneously and without thought said to his wife, ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... now I see that their opinion is more correct. I do not believe in the theory of madness! The woman has no common sense; but she is not only not insane, she is artful to a degree. Her outburst of this evening about Evgenie's uncle proves that conclusively. It was VILLAINOUS, simply jesuitical, and it was all for some ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to explain to himself and others how Meynell could possibly have behaved in a fashion so villainous, Barron had invented by now a whole psychological sequence. He was prepared to show in detail how the thing had probably evolved; to trace the processes of Meynell's mind. The sin once sinned, what more natural than Meynell's ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my fortune hath answered my desires; and my purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some of those villainous vermin: for I hate them perfectly, because they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much: indeed, so much, that in my judgment, all men that keep Otter dogs ought to have a Pension from the Commonwealth to incourage them to destroy the very breed ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... shows that the object of this book is to give the impression that Chinese ideas, culture and learning had long been domesticated in Japan. The "Nihongi" gives dates of events supposed to have happened fifteen hundred years before, with an accuracy which may be called villainous; while the "Kojiki" states that Wani, a Korean teacher, brought the "Thousand Character Classic" to Japan in A.D. 285, though that famous Chinese book was not composed until the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... You and I, when we have got a decent rig out, could pass anywhere without exciting observation; while if we had half a dozen of the others, whatever their good qualities, they would be noticed at once by their villainous faces, and if questions were to be asked we should be likely to find ourselves in limbo again in a very short time. So I am all for working on our own account, even if the whole of the others were ready to back us; but, of course, we must keep on good terms with them all, and breathe no word that ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... et amoris causa nomino, among scholars, soldiers, poets, and all sorts of people, is held for a man of virtuous disposition, honest conversation, and well governed carriage: which is almost miraculous among good wits in these declining and corrupt times; when there is nothing but roguery in villainous man, and when cheating and craftiness are counted the ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... crossroads?" questioned Sir Neil, "Sir Manstor lives there with his three brothers. Right skillful knights are these but woe the lone stranger who passes by. For these are villainous four." ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... fresh supplies promised did not arrive, and the crews were put on half rations, and eked these out by catching fish. At last, when the supplies were just exhausted, the victualling ships arrived, with one month's fresh rations, and a message that no more would be sent. So villainous was the quality of the stores that fever broke out in ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... band, some stand still, and a very few rent chairs and sit. Nearly all the men smoke, and occasionally a woman does the same. But the flavor of the tobacco is execrable. What substitute the French use I know not, but the villainous smells which come from the cigars smoked by the majority of Frenchmen indicate something very bad. Cabbage leaves—so extensively used to make cigars with in England—do not give forth so vile ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... caravan cleared the palisaded villages of Ellyria, after paying blackmail to the chief, Legge, whose villainous countenance was stamped with ferocity, avarice and sensuality. Glad to escape from this country, we crossed the Kan[i][e]ti river, a tributary of the Sobat, itself a tributary of the White Nile, and entered the country of Latooka, which is bounded by the Lafeet chain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... counter, or seated at numerous small tables, men were drinking villainous liquor, smoking and talking, and paying but scant attention to the strains of the fiddle or the accordion, save when some well-known air was played, when all would join in a boisterous chorus. Some were always passing ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... Its bottom, sound its strength and firmness to thee. Is coward, fool, or villain, in my face? If I seem none of these, I dare believe Thou wouldst not use me in a little cause, For I am fit for honour's toughest task, Nor ever yet found fooling was my province; And for a villainous, inglorious, enterprise, I know thy heart so well, I dare lay mine Before thee, set it to what point ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... in dumb agony. Colette's foul walls and maculate table-linen, and even down to Colette's villainous casters, seemed like objects in a nightmare. And just then there came a knock and a scurrying; the police, so lamentably absent from the Calton Hill, appeared upon the scene; and the party, taken FLAGRANTE DELICTO, with their glasses at their elbow, were seized, marched ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "one of them beggars that you have to feed with spring chickens, and get up with curling tongs. Ah! they're all very well in their way, and do for women and carriage-exercise; but give me this sort of thing!" and Mr. Bouncer patted one of his villainous looking pets, who ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... has not the villainous demagogue got the whole mob on his side? Am I to have the Constantinople riots re-enacted here? I really cannot face it; I have not nerve for it; perhaps I am too lazy. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... annoy the auricular organs of the contemplative perambulator, and together with the incessant discord of the dust-bell, accompanied by the hoarse stentorian voice of its athletic artist, induced Squire Tallyho to accelerate his pace, in order to escape, as he said, "this conspiration of villainous sounds," more dissonant than that of his hounds at fault, and followed by his friend Dashall, slackened not his speed, until he reached the quietude of the new street leading to the King's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... mid-day come forth from their holes, hastily land again from their canoes, in which they had been carried beyond the Cichican* valley, differing one from another in manners, but inspired with the same avidity for blood, and all more eager to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair than to cover with decent clothing those parts of their body which required it. Moreover, having heard of the departure of our friends, and their resolution never to return, they seized with greater boldness than before on ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... in some instances where a man had an exceptionally villainous cast of countenance, or was exceptionally deformed, as much as twenty francs ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... way to their winter quarters, about two hundred miles further from any plantations or English inhabitants. There, after a long and tedious journey, in which I was almost starved, I arrived with this villainous crew. The place where we had to stay, in their tongue, was called Alamingo, and there I found a number of wigwams full of Indian women and children. Dancing, singing, and shooting were their general amusements, and they told what successes ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... waited for Peter. His red beard twitched and his white coat, stained from the laboratory table, looked quite villainous. He ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with Groff there could have been a wider field of conquest. Groff had heard much of Earth. With the power of size here, he could master this realm; then seize the space-globe. Go with it to Earth. Why, in a gigantic size there, he and a few villainous companions could master the Earth-world. A mad dream indeed, but Lee knew it was a lustful possibility matched ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... crafty guidance. Directly to the east, on the brink of the river, the railroad section-foreman, Fitzgerald, had a shack and a wife who quarreled unceasingly with her neighbor, Mrs. McGeeney. At a corresponding place on the other side of the track, a villainous gun-fighter named Maunders lived (as far as possible) by his neighbors' toil. A quarter of a mile west of him, in a grove of cottonwood trees, stood a group of gray, log buildings known as the "cantonment," where a handful ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... we heard that the Devil appeared in the shape of a Minister, in the copper mines of Sweden, and attempted the same villainous apery.'[588] The Scotch witches, like the Swedish, performed the rite after the manner of the Reformed ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... mescal, and shooting people, seemed to be the principal occupation of its inhabitants, who, as a whole, were about as villainous a looking set of cut-throats as could be found west of the ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... the British Labour Party and the daily messages of fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—that when the "Black and Tans" were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... boy had leaped from the car, and was by his friend's side, engaged in a desperate struggle with four as villainous-looking tramps as could well be found; though, of course, he could not judge of their appearance in the darkness. Joe was wielding the heavy oak stick that at other times he used as a lever to aid him in twisting the brake wheels; but Rod was obliged to depend entirely on his fists. The skill ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... thought! among the summer seas, the golden islands, the ideal countries—away from all the trouble and cares, all the burdens of the past, all the fears of the future! Why should she be held by that villainous paper and obey that dreadful summons? Why allow all her precautions, all the fabric of her life to fall in a moment? Why pour upon the boy the horror of that revelation, when everything she had done and planned all his life had been to keep it from him? In the sudden energy of that new ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... say, I'll arrest the men. As for this warrant I have, I'll just continue to carry it in my pocket," the sheriff stated. "I must remark that I never heard of a more villainous plot, taking it all around, than you've brought ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... their contentions that they were making no little disturbance. Hanging on their skirts were a whole crowd of ignorant, dogmatic atheists, who published a paper called "The Freethinker," which, while it was a villainous and contemptible rag, appealed to the passions and prejudices of the partially educated. To answer the specious arguments of their propaganda an association known as the Christian Evidence Society used to send out lecturers. One of them ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... gin at some astonished traveller's expense at that very bar where I met him. The old Palaeolithic man, judging from the few remains we have of him, must have had an unspeakably savage and, to our way of thinking, repulsive and horrible aspect, with his villainous low receding forehead, broad nose, great projecting upper jaw, and retreating chin; to meet such a man face to face in Piccadilly would frighten a nervous person of the present time. But his teeth were ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... alarm. "They're such a villainous-looking lot—so dirty—and they've got so little clothing on. I wouldn't sleep a wink near them. Look at that awful old squaw with only one eye. They'd steal everything we've got left, Kate. Remember the ham—oh, pray remember the fate ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the measure of what is improperly called the viciousness of the slaves.—The more cruel their tyrants, the more treacherous, villainous and cruel are the slaves in return—Can we wonder that Macronius should assassinate his master Tiberius? This viciousness is a punishment ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... anxious about her husband, and, hearing of his illness, followed him from place to place; that, owing to her intense anxiety, she broke down and nearly died; that she finally reached this place to find her villainous servant—the one whom she had dismissed—acting as her husband's valet. That she turned him off on the spot, whereupon he went to the authorities, and lodged some malicious and insane charges against her. But Lady Chetwynde would have more than this to say. She could show certain ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... carry them both before the justice." The poor woman began to tremble, and Adams lifted up his voice, but in vain. Three or four of them laid hands on him; and one holding the lanthorn to his face, they all agreed he had the most villainous countenance they ever beheld; and an attorney's clerk, who was of the company, declared he was sure he had remembered him at the bar. As to the woman, her hair was dishevelled in the struggle, and her nose had bled; so that they could ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... windows or yard, and but one door heavily grated with wooden bars, they present both within and without the grimmest aspect. As public edifices they conspicuously stand upon the hot and dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the gratings, their villainous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of tragic squalor. And here, for a long time, Oberlus was seen; the central figure of a mongrel and assassin band; a creature whom it is religion to detest, since it is philanthropy to hate ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... knight, she shewed him all the adventure. Hardly would Carogne believe the treachery of his companion; but, when convinced, he replied, "Since it is so, lady, I pardon you; but the knight shall die for this villainous deed." Accordingly, Jaques le Grys was accused of the crime, in the court of the earl of Alencon. But, as he was greatly loved of his lord, and as the evidence was very slender, the earl gave judgment against the accusers. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... even grudged himself natural repose; and when he grew drowsy over his books he would, if it was summer, put mosquitoes up his sleeve; and, if it was winter, take off his shoes and run barefoot on the snow. His handwriting was exceptionally villainous; poet though he was, he had no taste for what was elegant; and in a country where to write beautifully was not the mark of a scrivener but an admired accomplishment for gentlemen, he suffered his letters to be jolted out of him by the press of matter ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with his mother and Peggotty, till Mrs. Copperfield contracts her disastrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! Then how the scene changes. There come harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr. Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's death; the worse banishment to London, and descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange shabby-genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the Micawbers; the flight from intolerable ills in the forlorn hope that David's ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... "Why, you see, Harry, there are other gentry visit this coast with a very different object in view," he answered. "For the Spaniards and Portuguese, especially, come here to carry off the unfortunate inhabitants as slaves, and sometimes the villainous crews of their craft, if in want of provisions and water, will help themselves, without ceremony, from any merchantman they may fall in with. And should she have a rich cargo on board, they have been known, I have heard say, to make her people walk the plank, ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston
... I suppose you have been serenading too! Eh, disturbing some peaceable neighbourhood with villainous catgut and lascivious piping! Out on't! you set your sister, here, a vile example; but I come to tell you, madam, that I'll suffer no more of these midnight incantations—these amorous orgies, that steal ...
— The Duenna • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... the land of oblivion up to the ramparts of the City of Destruction, I obtained full view of the hideous monster of a giantess whose feet I had previously observed. "Words fail me to describe her ways and means; but of herself I can tell thee, that she was a three-faced ogress: one villainous face turned towards Heaven, yelping and snarling and belching forth cursed abomination against the heavenly King; another face (and this was fair to look upon) towards earth, to allure men beneath her baneful shadow; and the other direful face towards the infernal abyss, ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... passed away, and I thrilled now with a keener zest than I had ever enjoyed when we were the defenders of the law instead of its defiers. The high object of our mission, the consciousness that it was unselfish and chivalrous, the villainous character of our opponent, all added to the sporting interest of the adventure. Far from feeling guilty, I rejoiced and exulted in our dangers. With a glow of admiration I watched Holmes unrolling ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and deeper. The winters were especially hard for them. If they had bread to eat during the fine weather, the rain and cold came accompanied by famine, by drubbings before the empty cupboard, and by dinner-hours with nothing to eat in the little Siberia of their larder. Villainous December brought numbing freezing spells and the black misery of cold ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... tool, had been associated with him before, in some transactions that would not bear the light of day, and when he unfolded the present scheme to him he found him ready to be his pliant instrument—willing to enter into any scheme, no matter how villainous its nature, if he could be sure of making something ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... beyond the light of day and the movement of the street, I saw the figure of a man, stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slight girlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom of villainous slums, of misery, of wretchedness, of a starved and degraded existence. It was a relief that I could see only their shabby hopeless backs. He was an awful ghost. But indeed to call him a ghost was only a refinement of polite speech, and a manner of concealing ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... Wolverine. However cloudy the atmosphere between the two, the ride had seemed short—so short that Ward felt the jar of surprise when he looked down and saw the cabin below them. He glanced at Billy Louise, guessed from her somber face that the villainous mood still held her, and sighed a little. He was not deeply concerned by her mood. He understood her too well to descend into any slough of despondence because she was cross. Then he remembered the reason she had given—the reason he had not believed at the time. ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... that to call a man a "bally bounder" is quite a ducal thing to do. His hideous cackle sounds in railway-carriages, or on breezy piers by the pure sea, or in suburban roads. From the time when he gabbles over his game of Nap in the train until his last villainous howl pollutes the night, he lives, moves, and has his being in slang; and he is incapable of understanding truth, beauty, grandeur, or refinement. He is apt to label any one who does not wear a dog-collar and stableman's trousers as a ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman |
