"Aforethought" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lightning at the Squire, who commanded the little Scotchman to read the indictment. This suspicious looking document set forth that one skipper Hornblower, of the schooner Virtue, had feloniously, and with malice aforethought, extracted from the nets of one James Belhash, son by lawful wedlock of the presiding justice, sundry herring, mackerel, and other fish—such as usually come into such nets, and are found on these Her Majesty's shores. Here the Squire interrupted by commencing an essay on ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... own tabernacle up there on the point, instead of sulking at his back gate. That's really where we're located, you know. His back gate opens smack in the face of our front one. I think he did it with malice aforethought, too. His back gate is two miles from the house. It wasn't really necessary to go so far for a back gate as all that, was it? To make it worse, he put a big sign over it for us to read: 'NO TRESPASSING. THIS MEANS YOU.' Sara took it down after ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... contents. Not but that my epistles are always commonplace enough (spirits of Montague and Sevigne, forgive me!), but hitherto I have not really tried to make them so. Now, however, I intend to be stupidly prosy, with malice aforethought, and without one mitigating circumstance, except, perchance, it be the temptations of that above-mentioned ambitious little devil to palliate ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... sold even Christ for money, just as we sell our conscience for money. And what happened to him because of it?—And then there are the government offices, the criminal tribunal!—You see, I did it with set purpose, with malice aforethought.—You see, they'll exile me to Siberia. O Lord!—If you won't give me the money for any other reason, give it as charity, for ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... way, and had no cause of discontent, &c., &c., he did of his own wanton depravity and restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he did with malice aforethought set himself to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented and happy until he conceived this base design against their peace; for which wrong he now ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... and his friends to appeal to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. His Excellency the Governor and his advisors have thus shown their utter inability to understand the economic needs of the island. Deliberately—we do not say with malice aforethought—have they decided to perpetuate conditions which in the past have served to disintegrate the population of this colony, and will in the future continue to do this with even more harmful effects than hitherto unless some well-considered attempt is made to produce ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of the court were then drawn up, and the President took them to the Judge's chamber. After the Judge had perused them, he ordered an indictment to be drawn up against Peter Riot: "For that he meanly and clandestinely and with malice aforethought had broken three panes in the window of Widow Careful with a certain instrument called a top, whereby he had committed an atrocious injury upon an innocent person, and had brought a disgrace upon the society ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... all:—Are the versification strong, the sound sharp or soft, monotonous, hurried, in proportion to the requirement of sense; the illustrative thoughts apt and new; the humour quaint and relishing? Finally, is not in many cases that which is spoken of as something extraneous, dragged in aforethought, for the purpose of singularity, the result more truly of a most earnest and single-minded labor after the utmost rendering of idiomatic conversational truth; the rejection of all stop-gap words; about the most literal transcript of fact compatible with the ends of poetry ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Fiddle-sticks! It is down right deception of the very worst kind. I know that I talk too much, tell a great many things that ought to be left unsaid, but I do not tell lies—there is no other name for them—and knowingly, with malice aforethought, make an injury or do a ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... indictment that 'he, William Evans, did feloniously, wilfully, and of malice aforethought, kill and ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... for violence done to his religious scruples and bodily health by the defendant, inasmuch as he, the plaintiff being a Jew, on Wednesday, the 12th day of this month, in the forenoon, in the parish of St. Paul Covent Garden, did, with malice aforethought, knock him down with a pig's head, contrary to the statute, and against the peace of our Sovereign ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to "fire the Southern heart" and light ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... harder for French writers to be prolix. The French writer is inevitably epigrammatic first, and, if diffusive afterward, it is with malice aforethought. If we compare, for example, publicists like Guizot and Gladstone, while each has that perfect command of his material, instead of letting the material command him, which marks the skilful writer, yet the Englishman sometimes seems to require two or three ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... fond of the mare, and it is only charitable to suppose that the clause, which was in the body of the will, was written while Stella was in her prime, and before she had suffered at the paws of the Gausdale Bruin. But even granting that, one could scarcely help suspecting malice aforethought in the curious provision. To Unna the gift was meant to say, as plainly as possible, "There, you see what you have lost by disobeying your father! If you had married according to his wishes, you would have been able to accept the gift, while now you ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "With malice aforethought I practiced my vampirish arts upon these two men! And, Alice, the crudest thing you could do would be to forgive me! I couldn't bear it. I flirted with Mr. Congdon; not only that but I took advantage of his ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... for murder with malice aforethought is now penal servitude for life, other phases of homicide five to twenty years, in both cases mine labour. In cases of infanticide, if the offspring is illegitimate it ranks as manslaughter. The following is a condensed summary, with brief ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... they steal or destroy another's goods or co-operate efficaciously in such deeds of sin. It matters not whether the harm be wrought directly or indirectly, since in either case there may be moral fault; and it must be remembered that gross negligence may make one responsible as well as malice aforethought. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... are rather of the nature of the modern "manslaughter." The "crime passionel" and the downright murder of malice aforethought, are even more frequent. In 1466 Catherine Leseigneur was scolded and even threatened with a beating while in bed by her mother-in-law. In a sudden passion she snatched up a large stone and killed the other ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... mustache, the watch-seals, and all the rest that went to make up the new singing-master. He smiled when he saw her, one of those smiles which are strictly limited to the lower half of the face, and are wholly mechanical, as though certain strings inside were pulled with malice aforethought and the mouth jerked out into a square grin, such as an ingeniously-made automaton ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... severe shock at the opera. Mrs. Medcroft, with malice aforethought, insisted that Ulstervelt should take her husband's seat. As the box held but six persons, the unfortunate Brock was compelled to shift more or less for himself. Inwardly raging, he suavely assured ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... Bates, laughing as a possible solution came to him. "I'm willing to bet money he was just stringing Happy. I'll bet he done it deliberate and with malice aforethought, just to make Happy sneak out uh town and burn the earth getting here so he could tell it scarey to the ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the parish of Henley-upon-Thames, in the county of Oxford, spinster, daughter of Francis Blandy, late of the same place, gentleman, deceased, for that you, not having the fear of God before your eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, and of your malice aforethought, contriving and intending, him the said Francis Blandy, your said late father, in his lifetime, to deprive of his life, and him feloniously to kill and murder on the 10th day of November, in the twenty-third year of the reign of our sovereign lord George the Second, now King ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... made uninhabitable by malaria. The new town, which I suppose is hundreds of years old, with all its novelty shows strikingly the difference between places that grow up and shape out their streets of their own accord, as it were, and one that is built on a settled plan of malice aforethought. This little rural village has gates of classic architecture, a spacious piazza, and a great breadth of straight and rectangular streets, with houses of uniform style, airy and wholesome looking to a degree seldom seen on the Continent. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that I was more surprised than most when I saw you walking with him to-day? Because I knew you did it in cold blood and knowledge aforethought! Other folks thought it was because you hadn't been here long enough to hear his ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... to the effect that any person or persons, who wilfully or with malice aforethought or otherwise, shall aid, abet, succor or cherish, either directly or indirectly or by implication, any person who feloniously or secretly conceals himself on any vessel, barge, brig, schooner, bark, clipper, steamship or other craft touching at or coming within the jurisdiction of ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... "Amusement with malice aforethought! The order affects my spirits like a Dead March. How do the young men amuse young ladies nowadays? Do they begin by saying, 'Have you ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... answered the question the two officers asked him and told his name. Pompey afterwards stated that the two officers asked who owned the adjoining plantations and that one,—and that on being told that Mr. Philbrick had bought them all, said: "Then we need not go any further"—which looks like malice aforethought. The paper was, apparently, written at Hilton Head and there signed with the men's marks—if so, it is a forgery. Pompey's great difficulty seemed to have arisen from a misunderstanding of statements made by Mr. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Donnell's is, as usual, short and to the point. St. Clair never wastes words. I do not think he chose his subject or added the postscript out of malice aforethought. It is just that he has not a great deal ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the first count being "That of malice aforethought, by the temptation of the Devil, Charles Archfield did wilfully kill and slay Peregrine Oakshott," etc. The second indictment was that "By misadventure he had killed and slain the said Peregrine Oakshott." To the first he pleaded 'Not ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sir," interposed the legal gentleman, "that you are rendering gross and offensive, malicious and libellous, scandalous and burglarious language to this gentleman, in his own domicile, with malice prepense and aforethought, and a ——" ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... no one whose mind was not, to put it mildly, abnormal, ever yet aimed very high out of pure malice aforethought. I once saw a fly alight on a cup of hot coffee on which the milk had formed a thin skin; he perceived his extreme danger, and I noted with what ample strides and almost supermuscan effort he struck across the treacherous surface and made for the edge of the cup—for the ground was ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... have in modern times held it to be unnecessary that indictments should charge, as by the common law they were required to do, that an act was done "wickedly," "feloniously," "with malice aforethought," or in any other manner that implied a criminal intent, without which there can be no criminality; but that it is sufficient to charge simply that it was done " contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided." ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... the summer of 1916, the task would be but wasted labor; since even these fascinating chronicles, one comprehends forlornly, must needs be equally obsolete by the time these proof-sheets have been made into a volume. With malice aforethought, therefore, the books and authors named herein stay those which all of three years back our reviewers and advertising pages, with perfect gravity, acclaimed as of enduring importance. For the quaintness of that ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... and called him a savage beast, saying, he ought to be hunted down as an enemy to mankind. "This," said the clerk, "is a strong presumption of a design, formed against the captain's life. For why? It presupposes malice aforethought, and a criminal intention a priori." "Right," said the captain to this miserable grub, who had been an attorney's boy, "you shall have law enough: here's Cook and Littlejohn to it." This evidence was confirmed by the boy, who affirmed, he heard the first mate say, that the captain ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... gold he offered them they bartered these. So much admitted, then surely, in that transaction, those cardinals were the prostitutes! The man who bought so much of them, at least, was on no baser level than were they. Yet invective singles him out for its one object, and so betrays the aforethought malice of its inspiration. ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... joke was, that all this time Lord Masque and Tadpole were two old foxes, neither of whom conveyed to Lady Firebrace a single circumstance but with the wish, intention, and malice aforethought, that it should be communicated ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... did of his own wanton restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world; that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were quite contented until he conceived this base design against their peace; for which wrong he now humbly entreats their pardon. He acknowledges that he ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... may not be altogether useless to remind some of the greener-headed sort what a dreadfully difficult affair the getting of such an aristocracy is! Do you expect, my friends, that your indispensable aristocracy of talent is to be enlisted straightway, by some sort of recruitment aforethought, out of the general population; arranged in supreme regimental order; and set to rule over us? That it will be got sifted, like wheat out of chaff, from the twenty-seven million British subjects; that any ballot-box, reform-bill, or other political machine, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of damages for the loss of an eye, which he said he had sustained in his service. The company endeavoured to appease this citizen, by representing that his misfortune was no other than a common inflammation, nor was it owing to malice aforethought, but entirely to the precipitate passion of an incensed young man, who, by the bye, acted in his own defence. At the same time the merchant promised to make any reasonable satisfaction, upon which ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... people's fathers and mothers before them have been Pagans, and Catholics, and Mohammedans, you don't blame THEM for being so. You regret their error, and strive to lead them back into the right path; only they are not inflammatory. But to have people go out from the faith of their fathers with malice aforethought and their eyes open—well, that is not exactly what I mean either. That is a sorrowful, but not necessarily an exasperating thing. What I mean is this: I see people Orthodox from their cradles, (and probably only from their cradles, certainly not from ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... most part, but occasionally with purpose aforethought, the essays in this book have been written as literary definitions. Its unity lies in the attempt, which at least has been sincere, to grasp, turn, study in a serious, humorous, ironical, anything but a flippant mood, the living forms of literature as they have risen into consciousness ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... winningly presented! The exquisite perfume of refinement hangs about every trivial detail. Your washerwoman is a lady, and your coalman a Chesterfield. If a Frenchman is ever rude, he is rude with malice prepense and aforethought. He knows better, we may be sure. Patrick may err on the score of politeness from ignorance, but Alphonse is a beast only because he chooses to be bestial. All the traditions of his race run counter to his conduct when he forgets the supreme suavity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... on her long cruise from San Francisco there was nothing to drink on board. Or, rather, we were all of us unaware that there was anything to drink, nor did we discover it for many a month. This sailing with a "dry" boat was malice aforethought on my part. I had played John Barleycorn a trick. And it showed that I was listening ever so slightly to the faint warnings that were beginning to arise ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... sweetest and the most sublime, but also the most faultless, that the world has ever seen. But, as soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to the level of Cowley; or rather he does ill what Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elaborately, and of malice aforethought. The only thing wanting to make them perfect was, that he should never have troubled himself with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and laborious flight." His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar, it is only ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... seemed inappropriate. How foolish the average audience in a drawing-room looks while it is listening to passionate love-ditties! And yet I suppose the singer chose these songs, not from any malice aforethought, but simply because songs of this kind are so abundant that it is next to impossible to find ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... Franz. This was ill to bear; and whereas his royal wife called to mind in a happy hour that Welemisl had been provoked out of all measure by Rochow's scorn, and had done the deed out of no malice aforethought but, being heated with wine, in a sudden rage, and that he was in so far more worthy of mercy than young Schopper, who had shed noble blood with a guilty intent, counting on his skill as a swordsman, the Emperor ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... consternation to their ship. Already several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar disasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in the fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale's infernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death that he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an unintelligent agent. Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... her Majesty's slippers and the great seal of State. We were very exact, you see. Yes, sir-we were very exact. Our vulgar people, you see-I mean such as have got up by trade, and that sort of thing-went to a vast expense in sending to England a man of great learning and much aforethought, to ransack heraldry court and trace out their families. Well, he went, lived very expensively, spent several years abroad, and being very clever in his way, returned, bringing them all pedigrees of the very best ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... word of the evidence against him did he deny. It was a plain case of willful, deliberate and premeditated murder. The judge presiding at the trial instructed the jury that a man is presumed to intend that which he does; that whoever kills a human being with malice aforethought is guilty of murder; that murder which is perpetrated by any kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated killing is murder in the first degree. The jury found the assassin guilty and the judge sentenced him to ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... as a man and a writer are so many and so great that I have not hesitated to make much of his defects. Indeed, I have with malice aforethought ransacked his works to find them. But after they are all charged up against him, the balance that remains on the credit side of the account is so great that they do ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... piecing together certain facts, that old Morley Tarrant was an expert photographer and maker of printer's "blocks." Slowly it became plain that Rayne, having been betrayed by the astute American crook, had met him in Edinburgh and with devilish malice aforethought, had contrived to get him to handle the glass cube which served as a paper-weight, and which I had quite innocently conveyed to the old hunchback, who had succeeded in taking the finger-prints and by photography transferring them upon the surgical rubber glove, thin as paper—really a false skin—which ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... of the United States did not take so kindly to the idea of a privateer and pirate colony within its borders. And—with malice aforethought—one Commodore Patterson was sent to disperse these marauders at Barrataria, who, confident of their strength and fighting ability, defiantly flaunted their flag in the faces of the officers of the Government. "We can lick the whole earth," chuckled ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... premeditated—it was not of malice aforethought; it was the outcome of an idle suggestion made one hot summer afternoon, and decided upon in the moment. Within the same half-hour a telegram was sent the Professor inviting him for a ride to Buffalo. Beyond that point there was no thought,—merely a nebulous notion that might ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... capital with malice aforethought. Usually the seat of government is established in some important town from the force of circumstances. Some cities have an attraction too powerful for the court to resist. There is no capital of England possible but London. Paris is the heart of France. Rome is the predestined capital of Italy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay |
