"Nefarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as a man of moderate means he left it possessed of a fabulous fortune—the bribe money of the Magnates. And not content to retire from office, and cease his nefarious trade, he is to-day the counsel for the Money Trust. It is his mind that conceives the interminable means for forcing the Government to issue bonds for the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... the wet marble steps and passed into the region of gilded gleams and pearly glints, our hearts began to beat with suppressed excitement, as if we were secret plotters, scheming to carry through some nefarious design. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they not live and die just as we do?" The blows, the broken limbs, the clanking chains, the stinted food of the ergastula or slave-prisons, excited all Seneca's compassion, and in all probability presented a picture of misery which the world has rarely seen surpassed, unless it were in that nefarious trade which England to her shame once practised, and, to her eternal glory, resolutely ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... suspicious-looking characters, of whom he was undoubtedly the leader. Soon the imaginative market women indulged in the highest flights of fancy, revelled in the most melodramatic ideas. There was talk of a band of smugglers plying their nefarious calling in the very heart of Paris, and of a vast central association formed for systematically robbing the stalls in the markets. Much pity was expressed for the Quenu-Gradelles, mingled with malicious allusions to their uncle's fortune. That fortune ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... years he has been dogging the steps of Hugh Mainwaring and acting the part of a spy, not only in his private offices, but even in his own home, stooping to any means, no matter how contemptible, to further his nefarious designs? Would such a man, when his schemes were finally matured, have any scruples about taking the life of the one who stood in the way of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... saw quite clearly. For the rest he was content to wait. He had spent most of his life in thus waiting and watching the nefarious schemes ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... been known to me earlier, but I remember him first as he swam vividly into my ken, with a volume of Macaulay's essays in his hand, one day. Less figuratively speaking, he came up into the printing-office to expose from the book the nefarious plagiarism of an editor in a neighboring city, who had adapted with the change of names and a word or two here and there, whole passages from the essay on Barere, to the denunciation of a brother editor. It was a very simple-hearted fraud, and it was all done with an innocent trust in the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of every land abandoned women are so numerous, despite all these centuries of law-making and moralizing, that they find it impossible to earn a livelihood by their nefarious trade—are driven by sheer necessity to seek more respectable employment. The supply of public prostitutes is apparently limited only by the demand, while the number of "kept women" is constantly increasing, and society becoming day by day more lenient to those favorites ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... great wealth and pseudo social prominence, who once made a serious attempt to enter Chicago society. It is not necessary to name the man, for all who are acquainted with recent events in Chicago will know who is meant. The latest rumor to affect his already nefarious reputation relates to two women—one the daughter, and the other the wife, of men of repute and standing in the community. In these latest instances it is more than likely that he has arrayed influences of the greatest importance socially and financially against himself, for the husband in ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... bulky paper, or rather set of papers, which detailed the inventions and their history, exposing some of the nefarious ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... head sadly. "No, this low fellow is a white man and a scoundrel. He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name and dragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes. He has made Tui Tulifau drunk. He has made him very drunk. He has kept him very drunk all the time. In return, he has been made Chancellor of the Exchequer and other things. He has issued this false paper and compelled the people to receive it. He has levied a store tax, a copra tax, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... sought to take advantage of it by appointing him a secretary of the Foreign Office, and subsequently ordered him to Shanghai to direct the management of the official newspaper there. Instead of this, however, he dared to remain in Peking pursuing his nefarious designs against the dynasty, and had it not been for the protection given by the spirits of our ancestors he certainly would have succeeded. Kang Yu-wei is therefore the arch conspirator, and his chief assistant is Liang Chi-tsao, M. A., and they are both ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... order to lessen the Weight of their Example & Influence. Such Patriots as Lord Russell & Algernon Sydney of the last Age, have of late been falsly & audaciously chargd by a Scotch Tool of the most nefarious Court, with having receivd Bribes from the National Enemy; and it is not strange that a Gentleman whom the leading Whigs of America have always placd so high in their List of Patriots, who has renderd the most laborious & important Services to our Country in England ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... Ham's nefarious work appeared to be finished; and, without being able to decide what I should do, I hurried back to my chamber, even forgetting all about poor Bully in my agitation. I heard the step of Ham a moment later. The whining of the dog attracted his attention, and he let him in before he went ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... I have every reason to believe he was deeply involved in the British Conspiracy of '88, the object of which was to separate the States. The design which Vigo abetted was nefarious, yes, sir, nefarious! yes, damnable! The same disloyal and turbulent spirit caused the Whiskey Rebellion here in Pennsylvania, which General Dave Morgan, General Neville, and I crushed out. The diabolic sentiment of disunion survives yet; Pittsburg tolerates a set of seditious young men, a ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... were George Doble and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad, heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business of his own. He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather chaps ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... work on a clear, white page, but it is scarcely necessary to add that the black, besmirched lines on the opposite side of the sheet could be traced through every entry that went down on the fresh white surface. Bansemer was just as nefarious in his transactions, but he was a thousandfold more cautious. Droom sarcastically reminded him that he had a reputation to protect, in his new field and, besides, as his son was "going in society" through the influence ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... of a countless army of sharpers is constantly at work in this country, devising plans to obtain funds dishonestly, without work, but, in fact, they often expend more time, skill, and labor in carrying out their nefarious schemes than would serve to earn the sum they finally secure, by honest labor. Every banker must, therefore, be on his guard, and should acquaint himself with the most approved means of detecting and avoiding the most common swindlers. This is just as necessary as it is ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the Feudal Lord from one to three days after their marriage, and from this custom, the oldest son of the serf was held as the son of the lord, "as perchance it was he who begat him." From this nefarious degradation of woman, the custom of Borough-English arose, in which the youngest son became the heir. The original signification of the word borough being to make secure, the peasant through Borough-English made secure the right of his own son ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 1822. The art was carried to the point that it defied detection, and the credulity of the public was insatiable. In Germany a man imitated Schiller's writing so perfectly that Schiller's daughter bought his letters as fast as they could be produced. At Paris the nefarious trade became active ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... chum at that time of Bill Glutts. Having failed of election, Werner did all he could to make things uncomfortable for the Rovers, and in his actions he was seconded by Glutts. But in the end Werner and Glutts were discovered in some of their nefarious doings, and, becoming alarmed, Gabe Werner left the school camp early in the morning and did not return. Glutts was brought before Captain Dale, the teacher in charge of the camp, and received a stern lecture and was deprived of many liberties he might otherwise ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... was lending his companion a helping hand. It may not have been through generosity that Nick acted thus; perhaps he dimly suspected that the cowardly Leon might wish to draw back, and allow him to carry out the nefarious business alone and unaided; and Nick was bent on making his crony share in the act, so that he could not turn on him and betray ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... that general laxity of moral conduct which even now distinguishes that country, was Fraudulent Bankruptcy. The merchant, no longer possessing the means of making his fortune by fair speculation, has recourse to this nefarious mode of bettering his condition. He settles with his creditors for a small per centage; disposes of his property by fictitious sales, ventes simulees, and thus enriches himself upon the ruin of his creditors. At a small town in the south of France, where I for sometime resided, there were ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... The whole nefarious scheme was one of the "put-up jobs" which are part of the dirty work of a certain order of statecraft—to be accepted if successful; to be denied ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... was to do the thing! You'll bear in mind that on the right hand side of that cove the plantation comes right down to the edge of the bit of cliff—well, a man lurking amongst the shrubs and undergrowth 'ud have nothing to do but reach his arm to the bank, draw my coatie to his nefarious self, and abstract my property. And by the time I was on dry land again, and wanting my garments, he'd be a quarter of ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... certain alluring plants that so far from repelling thieves, or discouraging pillagers, open their arms to all comers—with purpose of the deadliest. Of these betrayers the chief is the round-leaved sun-dew, which plies its nefarious vocation all the way from Labrador to Florida. Its favourite site is a peat-bog or a bit of swampy lowland, where in July and August we can see its pretty little white blossoms beckoning to wayfaring flies and moths their token of good ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... with the English commanders, whose instructions enabled them to take and send to their prize-courts all vessels, except those under the American flag, under the slightest showing of nefarious character; and their hauls of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... mountains in the gold mines of El Dorado county and elsewhere the spirit of the men of San Francisco was at work in the camps. Robbers were there, bold characters, dark-browed men, who would not hesitate to steal, and kill, if need be, in their nefarious work. The miners had their perils to encounter in these bandits. The robbers had their dens in the mountains in lonely places, beside a trail sometimes, and in the depths of the forests. The dens had generally two rooms on the ground floor and a loft which was reached ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... protege of "that dreadful man Liszt," as the potentate of Weimar was characterised by Lady Macfarren, an all-powerful factor in the control of the institution; and that proving finally his abandonment to a nefarious modernity, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... been guilty of shameful acts, but I call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the scandalous statements made against him by a man now dead, and who died in his house—the statement that he was for many years engaged in nefarious practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest procedures—or else to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as a ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... my thoughts unhappy. I had much to reflect upon. The extreme difficulty of our present situation, encompassed and separated as we were: De Noyan was bewitched by a siren who had already bound him by silken cords to any nefarious scheme her unscrupulous desires might compass; Cairnes was as helplessly entangled in her power, although held to his fate by ropes of a different nature; while Madame was scarcely less a prisoner, powerless to escape the ruthless grasp of ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... one time enjoyed the privilege of a debtors' sanctuary, and had, till abolished in 1697, become a haunt of all kinds of nefarious characters. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... taken by a state warrant for stealing, and the stolen property found in the house of William W. Phelps; in which nefarious transaction John Whitmer had also participated. Oliver Cowdery stole the property, conveyed it to John Whitmer, and John Whitmer to William W. Phelps; and then the officers of law found it. While in the hands of an officer, and under an ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... especially planned and maintained as a blind for its underground activities; or that Perkins was holding a position which suited him exactly and which he would not have given up for wealth or glory—that of being the guiding genius who planned nefarious things for the men higher up, and saw to it that they were carried out by the men lower down. He was in constant personal touch with his superiors, but in order to avoid any chance of betrayal he never saw his subordinates personally. Not only were they entirely ignorant of his identity, but ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... illusions. He knew that a department is at the mercy of its subordinate officers, who have their own conceptions of loyalty. His career had begun in a tropical colony. He had liked his work there. It was police work. He had been very successful in tracking and breaking up certain nefarious secret societies amongst the natives. Then he took his long leave, and got married rather impulsively. It was a good match from a worldly point of view, but his wife formed an unfavourable opinion of the colonial climate on ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... aluminium and gleamed silvery white. But although the lines were very similar, I soon came to the conclusion that the car we saw before us was not the one which the Pirate had used when engaged upon his nefarious work. One glance at the tyres convinced me that they had never been upon the road, and I fancied that the wheels were smaller and the lines of the body finer altogether. I pointed these things out to Forrest, who, while agreeing that this particular car could not have been the one which ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... buyers, I.D.B.'s as they are called, who had cunningly situated themselves at a great distance from the scene of operations practically beyond the reach of civilized law. Probably they were engaged also in other nefarious dealings with Kaffirs, such as supplying them with guns wherewith to make war upon the Whites. Sekukuni had been fighting us recently, so that there would be a very brisk market for rifles. This, too, would account for Marnham's apparent knowledge ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... military power of those States to the Government to subdue the South. Did the people of the North authorize those Legislatures to make any such tenders? Would the people of the North sanction any such nefarious policy? I know well the enormous bribe with which the Republican leaders would seduce the North into fratricidal war. The expenditure of uncounted millions, the distribution of epaulets and military commissions for an army of half a million of men, the immense patronage involved ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... the coast, a bright look-out being kept both for native dhows and square-rigged vessels, of which not a few Brazilians, Spaniards, and Americans were known to be engaged in the nefarious traffic. The carpenters had been busy fitting the boats, raising the gunwales of the smaller ones, and adding false keels to the larger, to enable them the better to carry sail; and all hands guessed that something was to be done, but what it was the commander kept ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... wider and more propitious field for Anarchist outrage lay before him. Others opined that he had contemplated committing an outrage in the immediate vicinity of the spot which witnessed his own death; and others, again, that, having manufactured his infernal machine for some nefarious purpose either at home or abroad, he was suddenly seized either with fear or remorse, and had journeyed to this unobserved spot in order to bury it. The papers hinted at accomplices and talked about the usual "widespread conspiracy"; the ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... evil-disposed spy, whose person Clara knew, and whose intentions she had reason to dread were unfriendly. Had she dared—for she was daring—to attempt this nefarious plot against the fair fame and happiness of an honorable gentleman, her family would not have become her accomplices. They could not have blinded themselves to the perils of the enterprise, the extreme ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... and stands some five feet ten. He wears an old brown coat, cut after the fashion of a surtout, that might have fitted him, he says, when he was a man. But it has lost the right cuff, the left flap, and a part of the collar; the nefarious moths, too, have made a sieve of its back. His trowsers are of various colors, greasy down the sides, ragged at the bottoms, and revealing two encrusted ancles, with feet stuck into old shoes, turned ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the agents of the malcontent leaders gathered together in the inns, where, so long as they did not rouse the suspicions of the authorities and maintained the bearing of studious men, they could hire assassins, plan risings, hold interviews with fellow-conspirators, and nurse their nefarious projects into achievement. At periods of danger therefore spies were set to watch the gates of the hostels, and mark who entered them. Governments took great pains to ascertain the secret life of the collegians. ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... in the Egyptian Gallery of the British Museum. It is a curious coincidence that in the Ethiopic version of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander is said to have been the son of Nectanebus II., who threw a spell over Olympias, the wife of Philip of Macedon, and won her love by the exercise of nefarious magic. (See the Life and Exploits of Alexander the Great, by E. A. Wallis Budge, Litt.D., F.S.A., Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, 1896, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... already scarcely able to pay their town, county, and state taxes; was it to be supposed they could bear the additional burden with which federal taxation would load them? Then the compromise on the slave-trade was fiercely attacked. They did not wish to have a hand in licensing this nefarious traffic for twenty years. But it was urged, on the other hand, that by prohibiting the foreign slave-trade after 1808 the Constitution was really dealing a death-blow to slavery; and this ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... anyone. It is he who induces many a diseased person to attempt the journey, and it is also he and his associates who do their best to have the undesirables admitted. The steamship companies, as a rule, do not deal with these runners directly and disclaim all responsibility for their nefarious practices. But the official agents of the steamship companies do pay their runners commissions for every immigrant referred to them. I have especially studied this problem along the borders of Germany, Russia, and Austrian Galicia. Here most of the emigrants are smuggled ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner, she'd show them. They had always thought she was unnecessarily ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... a young detective saves the boys from the clutches of Chinese smugglers, of whose nefarious trade they know too much. How the Professor's invention relieves a critical situation is also an exciting ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... him a group of lovely children, it was altered and enlarged; but no tree was rooted up, nothing with which there was any association of bygone times was ever removed or changed. Mr. Squeers, having come within the meshes of the law over some nefarious scheme of Ralph Nickleby's, suffered transportation beyond the seas, and with his disappearance Dotheboys Hall ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... together with that Adamantius who set forth these opinions together with his nefarious and execrable doctrine, and whoever there is who thinks thus or defends these opinions, or in any way hereafter at any time shall presume ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... free under the necessity of seeking new victims to offset the fine, offers her no incentive to lead any other life, incidentally increases opportunities for police graft, and virtually gives the sanction of the law to the whole nefarious business. The ostrich with his head buried in the sand sees our gravest social problem about as clearly and wholly as do many who are administering laws ...
— The Social Emergency - Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals • Various
... Natalie Brande from her brother and the fanatics with whom he associated, it was now plain that I was powerless. And what guarantee had I that she herself was unaware of his nefarious purpose; that she did not sympathise with it? This last thought flashed upon me one day, and the sting of pain that followed it was so intolerable, I determined instantly to prove ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... equally astonished and embarrassed by the circumstances in which he found himself, possesses, as he now appeared to be, of property to a much greater amount than his own, but which had been obtained in all probability by the same nefarious means through which he had himself been plundered. His first thought was to inquire after the nearest justice of peace, and to place in his hands the treasure of which he had thus unexpectedly become the depositary, telling, at the same time, his own remarkable story. But a moment's consideration ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stated these subdued despatches, "that these systematic filchings from the Government's receipts cover a period of more than fifty years, and that in this, the minor officials of the New York Custom House have been the greatest offenders, although their nefarious profits have been small in comparison with the illegitimate gains of their employers, the great importers. These are the views of responsible officials of the Treasury Department." These despatches stated the truth very mildly. The frauds have been ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... Clutching Hand himself where he hid his identity from even his most trusted followers. It was a small room, lined with books on every conceivable branch of science that might aid him and containing innumerable little odds and ends of paraphernalia that might help in his nefarious criminal career. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... ranks and habits collected together in one town, without any occupation to divert the tedium of their lives." Nor were there wanting additions to their society of an undesirable character, men who had voluntarily fled across the Channel to escape the consequence of nefarious dealings in horse-racing and gambling. One of these, indeed, was described by the French Minister of War as "the worst monster which England in her wrath has yet vomited across the Channel"; and the enforced idleness to which the prisoners were subjected, ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Chicago, and who would be only too willing to spoil his plans to quit their company and reform, so as to keep others of the brotherhood from quitting the game and thereby making it all the more hazardous for hardened and irreformable criminals to ply their nefarious vocations. He weighed the chances he stood to reform in Chicago and abandoned the scheme ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... they had resolved on no definite nefarious plan. Hickory looking down at Patsey's bare feet instantly took off his own shoes. The bold act sent a thrill through his companions. Wan Lee took off his cloth leggings, Polly removed her shoes and stockings, but with royal foresight, tied them up in her handkerchief. The last link ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... I'm going to feel like anything but limp tulle this evening. No, I'm perfectly all right, I just want to rest for a little while and I promise I'll be positively incandescent at dinner. No, Juliet dear, I wouldn't keep you or anybody else away from Peter's nefarious projects for ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... it was said that his Highness was displeased with such murderous and hostile proceedings, still it was necessary for the States to beware of the nefarious projects of the King of Spain ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... matter that was at that moment forcing itself upon the attention of the Commodore; and that was the doings of two craft which were pursuing the nefarious business of slavers, with a measure of audacity that was only equalled by the impunity with which they worked. They were said to be sister ships, undoubtedly built from the same model, most probably launched from the same stocks, and made ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... for the Second Duma were held under a reign of terror. The bureaucracy was determined to have a "safe and sane" body this time, and resorted to every possible nefarious device to attain that end. Whole masses of electors whose right to vote had been established at the previous election were arbitrarily disfranchised. While every facility was given to candidates openly favoring the government, including the Octobrists, ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... you make! Let us then pray for the day when the "drop too much" with the bottle will be as nefarious as a cut too much with the razor or a blaze too much with ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... along the sea-shore: the tenants whom he found living near the coast were an idle, profligate, desperate set of people; who, during the time of the late middle landlord, had been in the habit of making their rents by nefarious practices. The best of the set were merely idle fishermen, whose habits of trusting to their luck incapacitated them from industry: the others were illicit distillers— smugglers—and miscreants who lived by waifs and strays; in fact, by ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... a poet by nature, and, wonderful to say, withal a herald by taste. Upon his nefarious possessions, he founded a scheme of literary forgeries; purporting to be ancient pieces of poetry found in Canynge's chest; and described as being the production of Thomas Canynge and of his friend, one Thomas Rowley, a priest. Money and books were sent to Chatterton in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... It is that nefarious Siebald the Refectorarius. That fellow is always playing the scout, Creeping and peeping and prowling about; And then he regales The Abbot with ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the land in consequence of the extraordinary, unprecedented epidemic now raging there. I had an opportunity of discovering, involuntarily, the designs of sundry malevolent persons who looked upon this terrible time as an excellent occasion for carrying out their nefarious designs. The dregs of the population have been roused to action, and only await the signal to pour their ignorant, brutal herds all over the kingdom. This is no idle tale I am telling you, General. I have heard their seditious mutterings, I have read their letters, I have seen the lists of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and sacred for gold. After his time there was no improvement; the Church degenerated into an instrument for the exploitation of money. Vast sums were collected in Italy; vast sums were drawn under all manner of pretenses from surrounding and reluctant countries. Of these the most nefarious was the sale of indulgences for the perpetration of sin. Italian religion had become the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... had concluded our rather nefarious negotiations, which were to the effect that I was to receive so many cattle in return for so many guns, if I could deliver them at a certain spot, namely, Umbezi's kraal, I returned to the circle where Umbezi, his followers and guests were sitting, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... the transfer of his monopoly by the Governor of Bressa to Genoese merchants, instead of increasing the exportation of negroes to America, resulted in almost stopping the nefarious trade, hence no considerable amount of mischief is traceable to the adoption of Las Casas's suggestion, which was only one of many enumerated in his scheme. Had the project as he framed it been accepted in its entirety and loyally carried out, ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... in which things are to be managed in Britannula! Because a young boy had fallen in love with a pretty girl, the whole wealth of England was to be used for a most nefarious purpose, and a great nation was to exercise its tyranny over a small one, in which her own language was spoken and her own customs followed! In every way England had had reason to be proud of her youngest child. We Britannulans had become noted for intellect, morals, ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... the hermit, in a sad tone. "The truth is, I had discovered some of his nefarious plans, and more than once have been the means of preventing his intended deeds of violence—as in the case of the Dyaks whom we have so lately visited. Besides, the man had done me irreparable injury, and it is one of the curious facts of human experience that sometimes those ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... into a fair and industrious province. He possessed the unscrupulous and relentless spirit of such conquerors as Julius Caesar, and he was at the same time a financier of the widest resource. But some nefarious or alleged nefarious transactions which stained his name as a business man and a politician deprived him of royal recognition. He was not only denied a title, but even failed to obtain a decoration, and it was not until his death that a magnificent monument ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... Ivry coolie on the section takes a ticket—or he gives 'em the go—wanst a month on pay-day. Ivry coolie that wins ut gives ut back to him, for 'tis too big to carry away, an' he'd sack the man that thried to sell ut. That Dearsley has been makin' the rowlin' wealth av Roshus by nefarious rafflin'. Think av the burnin' shame to the sufferin' coolie-man that the army in Injia are bound to protect an' nourish in their bosoms! Two thousand ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... dwell," added Mirandola in a hushed voice. "England had a mission; it had belief, and it had power. It announced itself the representative of religious, commercial, and political freedom, and yet, when it came to action, it allowed Denmark to be crushed by Austria and Prussia, and, in the most nefarious transaction of modern times, uttered the approving shriek ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... conspirators at a table in a corridor of the first-class quarantine station. In the words of Lieutenant Long "they fully looked the part," being of distinctly merciless cut of jib. They were roughly dressed and without collars, convincing proof of some nefarious design, for when the Latin-American entitled to wear them leaves off his white collar and his cane he must be ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... poacher. This does not mean that every night in every month he went forth with nefarious tricks and tools, to steal the flesh and fur that legally were not his. Far from it. Josh never poached but once. But that's enough; he had crossed the line, and this ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... undertaken for the threefold purpose of capturing the traitor Arnold, saving the life of the unfortunate Andre, and establishing the innocence of General Gates, who had been charged with complicity in Arnold's nefarious intrigue. His investigations secured the complete vindication of Gates; but, failing in his other attempts, he drifted with the Red Coats to North Carolina, where he deserted their ranks and rejoined the American forces ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... trick or device, by plot or conspiracy against competitors, or by oppression of wage-workers, and then extorting high prices for the commodity it had made artificially scarce, it would be prevented from organizing if its nefarious purpose could be discovered in time, or pursued and suppressed by all the power of Government whenever found in actual operation. Such a commission, with the power I advocate, would put a stop to abuses of big corporations and small corporations ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the variety of living creatures that have been burnt at festivals both in ancient Gaul and modern Europe; all these victims, we may surmise, were doomed to the flames, not because they were animals, but because they were believed to be witches who had taken the shape of animals for their nefarious purposes. One advantage of explaining the ancient Celtic sacrifices in this way is that it introduces, as it were, a harmony and consistency into the treatment which Europe has meted out to witches from the earliest times down to about two centuries ago, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... "repelling and repelled." One of the most observable points in these volumes, is the contamination of jails. When men are thrown together in a place where reputation is valueless, they have no inducement to conceal their vices. What is the consequence? They delight in recounting to each other their nefarious exploits: thus conscience is more and more corrupted, and the young and inexperienced are initiated into the skilful manoeuvres of adepts. Whoever has read the first edition of Ellwood's Life, (for the subsequent editions do not contain the passage,) may remember the amusing ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... don't be slanderous," said Paul; "these officers you speak of are but one or two out of twenty, mere burglars and light-fingered gentry, using the king's livery but as a disguise to their nefarious trade. The rest ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... Newport, illicit trade flourished; and the waters of Narragansett Bay were dotted with the sail of small craft carrying cargoes on which no duties had ever been paid. In order to stop this nefarious traffic, armed vessels were stationed in the Bay, with orders to chase and search all craft suspected of smuggling. The presence of these vessels gave great offence to the colonists, and the inflexible manner in which the naval officers discharged ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... generally as a point of hospitality. For I am of the same opinion as M——, a very able friend of mine in Liverpool, who looks upon it as criminal to concede anything a man says in the process of a disputation: the nefarious habit of assenting (as he justly says) being the pest of conversation, by causing it to stagnate. On this account he often calls aside the talking men of the party before dinner, and conjures them with a pathetic earnestness not to agree with him in anything he may ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... knowledge of "steam-boating" in general, Ben Wilford was a very unskillful pilot. If he had understood the management of a boat half as well as Lawry, the nefarious scheme might have been successful. He saw his brother; he did not wish to have him come on board, for Lawry might be so obstinate as to induce one of his dissolute companions to fire at him. He rang the bell to stop her, and ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... occupied her new situation at Pisa quite a week before she fell ill. All sorts of reports were circulated as to the cause of this illness; and the Demoiselle Grifoni even went so far as to suggest that the health of the new forewoman had fallen a sacrifice to some nefarious practices of the chemical sort, on the part of her rival in the trade. But, however the misfortune had been produced, it was a fact that Mademoiselle Virginie was certainly very ill, and another fact that the doctor insisted on her being ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... opportunity of the time, because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."[184] All this is no evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... alone in his chamber, with his head resting upon his hand, anxiously pondered upon the possible issues of this nefarious day's doings, the sailor advanced, in broad daylight towards the land to ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of our ordinary commercial advertisements, the shameful adulteration of goods, and a multitude of other such nefarious practices, it is at once interesting and instructive to compare the employers' denunciations of "the outrageous infringement of personal liberty," when the "oppressor" is a labor union, with some of their everyday practices. The same employers who loudly, and, let it ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... and fitful cough shattered me continually until I fled to thine asylum, and brought me back to health with rest and nettle-broth. Wherefore, re-manned, I give thee utmost thanks, that thou hast not avenged my fault. Nor do I pray now for aught but that, should I re-take Sestius' nefarious script, its frigid vapidness may bring a cold and cough to Sestius' self; for he but invites me ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... for my sustenance. I regretted too late that I had not exercised more restraint; but the hungry man does not and cannot consider consequences, else a certain hairy gentleman who figures in ancient history had never lent himself to that nefarious compact, which gave so great an advantage to a younger but sleek and well-nourished brother. In spite of all this, I felt a secret satisfaction in the thought of the clothes, and it was also good to know that the nature of the work I had undertaken would not lower ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Green's house. It is unlikely that anyone else in the village outside of myself and Green and his accomplices know about it. It wasn't built by Green, but by a former owner of the farm, who was in the same nefarious business. It may even be that Green does not know about it, although that is unlikely. This passage leads from the barn to the house, and was used to store contraband goods in. You see the stuff could be brought to the barn in a load of hay, ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... fide occupant of the room where these parties met had no share whatever in the nefarious transactions carried on there. Through the treachery of the janitor, Ragem was permitted at certain hours to make use of the apartment for the purpose of keeping appointments with his victims. A confederate stationed on the outside delivered the knocks as soon as customers were plucked ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the greatest heiresses in America,—clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least attractive about her,—and, above all, with the Woods millions at her disposal. ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... potentate, what is there but a man? I never felt my weakness more acutely than now, Geraldine, but it is stronger than I. Can I cease to interest myself in the fortunes of the unhappy young man who supped with us some hours ago? Can I leave the President to follow his nefarious career unwatched? Can I begin an adventure so entrancing, and not follow it to an end? No, Geraldine: you ask of the Prince more than the man is able to perform. To-night, once more, we take our places at the table of the ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... insisted that he was judged without being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government. He left that position to go into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious stock-company that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police. Cerizet proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it to be a revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said, would ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... regard, and this was the case with Charles. One, however, of those maidens, unto whom it was the folly and vanity of his youth to pay general court, conceived for him a passion deep and pure, which in semblance, at least, he returned; but how far to answer his own nefarious purposes, for Charles Elliott was a godless young ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... directed to pass forth of the kingdom, under pain of death as common, notorious, and condemned thieves." This was persecution with vengeance, and no mistake; and it was under this kind of treatment, severe as it was, the Gipsies continued to grow and prosper in carrying out their nefarious practices. The case of these poor miserable wretches, midnight prowlers, with eyes and hearts and bending steps determined upon mischief and evil-doing, presents to us the spectacle of justice untempered with mercy. ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... ex-ambassador, from whom I had the misfortune to differ in matters of foreign policy, the Moscow Gazette had denounced me publicly by name as a person who was in the habit of visiting daily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—doubtless with the nefarious purpose of obtaining by illegal means secret political information—and the police had concluded that I was a fit and proper person to be closely watched. In reality, my relations with the Russian Foreign Office, though inconvenient to the ex-ambassador, were perfectly regular ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... whom it was presented; they could not stir a finger any more than if they were dead. Sometimes the dead man's hand is itself the candle, or rather bunch of candles, all its withered fingers being set on fire; but should any member of the household be awake, one of the fingers will not kindle. Such nefarious lights can only be extinguished with milk. Often it is prescribed that the thief's candle should be made of the finger of a new-born or, still better, unborn child; sometimes it is thought needful that the thief should have one such candle for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the final exposition, years of utter ruin to my prospects and my hopes. Wentworth might be married by that time, or indifferent, or dead; Ernie too old to make the matter of a year or two of consequence in the carrying out of the nefarious scheme to sustain which it would be so easy to summon ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Tea and Coffee—The adulteration of articles of human food is a practice of the most nefarious description, and cannot be too strongly deprecated, although it has been carried to an alarming extent. There is scarcely an article of ordinary consumption but has been unlawfully adulterated, and in many cases rendered injurious by the infamous and fraudulent practice of interested persons. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... station wid the gurl's kit at the end av the first piece. 'Twas the kit that flusthered me, for I knew for a Capt'n to go trapesing about the impire wid the Lord knew what av a truso on his arrum was nefarious, an' wud be worse than easin' the flag, so far as the talk ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... nefarious business was conducted mainly through one channel; for, spite of man's inclination to vice and crime, there are but few men, thank God, so low in the scale of humanity as to be willing to degrade themselves by doing the dirty work of four-legged bloodhounds. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... keep these poor fellows without their annual dinner. The village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of the most dreadful commotion. By degrees, ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... a German spy! What can he be up to! The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the damning evidence—a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled "Poison!" That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning. The tin ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... those in hiding, and the precious pair proceeded on their way, now out of earshot. But enough had been overheard. It was plain now, if it had not been before, where lay the guilt for the attempt to destroy the airplane. Plain, too, was the fact that Higginbotham was engaged in some nefarious enterprise. ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge |
