"Malignity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... recitation our amiable host observed that in his opinion Mr. . . . . had over-rated the merits of the poetry; but had they been tenfold greater, they could not have compensated for that malignity of heart which could alone have 35 prompted sentiments so atrocious. I perceived that my illustrious friend became greatly distressed on my account; but fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and presence of mind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... for men, and, above all, for the children of both sexes. The poor, unable to indulge in the luxury of precious metals, found substitutes in shells and glass; and the extravagance of the taste was defended on the ground that their brilliancy served to avert the malignity of "the evil eye" from the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... authority of a near relative of that gentleman for asserting, that the satisfactory testimonials which he possesses of the correctness of his narrative, are sufficient to satisfy the most incredulous, and to silence malignity itself." ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... you. I have been compelled to dismiss Fisher, and have received a very insolent letter from him in reply. The lead-pipe contract will be litigated, and Smith has written a letter full of the bitterest malignity against me to the Secretary of the Treasury. He seems perfectly reckless and acts like a madman, and all for what? Because the condition of my pipe and the imperfect insulation of my wires were such that ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... penny-a-liners, or (worse insult still) apologised for, with half-hearted shrugs, by lukewarm advocates. The purest in life and the most unselfish in purpose of all mankind, he was persecuted alive with the utmost rancour of hate, and pursued when dead with the vilest shafts of malignity. He never even knew in his scattered grave the good he was to do to later groups ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... proceeded to notify the savages, to my great regret, of the malignity of this liar, stating that he had confessed the truth; at which they were delighted, reproaching me with the little confidence I put in them, who were chiefs and my friends, and who always spoke the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... Max. [6508]Tyrius, the Platonist, ser. 26. et 27, maintains and justifies in many words. "When a good man dies, his body is buried, but his soul, ex homine daemon evadit, becomes forthwith a demigod, nothing disparaged with malignity of air, or variety of forms, rejoiceth, exults and sees that perfect beauty with his eyes. Now being deified, in commiseration he helps his poor friends here on earth, his kindred and allies, informs, succours, &c. punisheth ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... relatively good and honourable performance, so that even nominal failure may be a substantial success. And merit in a rival should bring a friendly delight even to the vanquished if they are true lovers of sport and of excellence. Sport is a liberal form of war stripped of its compulsions and malignity; a rational art and the expression of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Roman! that man steals or stabs! Oft you may see three couches, four on each, Where all are wincing under one man's speech, All, save the host: his turn too comes at last, When wine lets loose the humour shame held fast: And you, who hate malignity, can see Nought here but pleasant talk, well-bred and free. I, if I chance in laughing vein to note Rufillus' civet and Gargonius' goat, Must I be toad or scorpion? Look at home: Suppose Petillius' theft, the talk of Rome, Named ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... mean any injury to him or profit to themselves: even where the subject of conversation could not have been expected to put the passions in motion, or to have excited either hope or fear, or zeal or malignity, sufficient to induce any man to put his reputation in hazard, however little he might value it, or to overpower the love of truth, however weak might ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... avoidance of all danger, the old colonel had lost no time in moving, bag and baggage, to Omaha, in having Nevins transported thither, in opening wide his ears to his story of the heinous wrongs inflicted on him by that Arizona court, through the malignity of its judge advocate, of that judge advocate's heartless treachery to two helpless women, one of whom was Nevins' wife, the other the officer's own deserted and broken-hearted betrothed. Then came Petty, ordered to join his company in the field and eager as ever to seek some loophole of escape. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... The wild malignity of this curse, fierce as it is, yet wants the moral venom, the devilish leaven, of a consenting spirit: it ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... the effect depends on something more than the persons engaged in it. The moon with the clouds driving over counts for more than a mere indication of time or weather; it is essential to the story, and lends itself to the malignity of the adversary in casting the spell of fear upon Grettir's mind. The solitude of Drangey, in the concluding chapters of Grettis Saga, the cliffs, the sea and the storms are all much less exceptional; they are necessary parts of the action, more closely and organically related to the destiny of ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... self-annihilation alone could bring relief, and then appeared to him the image of Him whose death brought salvation to mankind. He conceived the idea of picturing a human "Jesus of Nazareth," to represent the universal rejection, in all its malignity and rancor, to which Jesus fell a victim. The reflection, however, that he certainly could not secure a representation of his work under existing circumstances, and the additional fact that after the Revolution, which seemed bound to destroy every ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... said the Doctor. It must be acknowledged that this was astonishing language to be uttered in the apartments of the King's mistress; yet it went on for twenty years without being talked of. "It was probity speaking with earnestness," said M. de Marigny, "and not a mere burst of spite or malignity." ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... after, when we were before St. Jean d'Acre, he expressed himself greatly dissatisfied with Junot, and complained of the injury he had done him by his indiscreet disclosures, which he began to regard as the inventions of malignity. I perceived afterwards that he never pardoned Junot for this indiscretion; and I can state, almost with certainty, that this was one of the reasons why Junot was not created a marshal of France, like many of, his comrades whom Bonaparte had loved less. It may be supposed that Josephine, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... he was on two occasions charged to make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit, although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... woman let her go on with her story?" thought the judge. What did he care how that impish little creature, whom he had always regarded as old Abram's granddaughter, and who glared at him with such savage malignity from her piercing black eye (no figure of speech, for she had but one) when with his foot and cane he gently rolled her off the door-mat, where he found her coiled up asleep on his entrance to the house,—what did he care how that mixture ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... was installed in a villa, semi-detached; the name, "Rosemore," on the gateposts. In a chair on the gravel walk he seemed to sit smoking a cigar, a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, victor over himself and circumstances and the malignity of bankers. He saw the parlour, with red curtains, and shells on the mantelpiece—and, with the fine inconsistency of visions, mixed a grog at the mahogany table ere he turned in. With that the Farallone gave one of the aimless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Crime are taken on divers Scales, and measured, First, by the malignity of the Source, or Cause: Secondly, by the contagion of the Example: Thirdly, by the mischiefe of the Effect; and Fourthly, by the concurrence ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... I saw Luerson, with a countenance of supernatural malignity, and the expression of a fiend, murdering poor Frazer. At another, our boat seemed drawn by some irresistible, but unseen power, to the verge of a yawning abyss, and began to descend between green-glancing walls of water, to ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... notes and collecting and classifying material. I've got collectors at work in England. I went to New York and sat three hours taking evidence while a stenographer set it down. As my labors grew, so also grew my fascination. Malice and malignity faded out of me—or maybe I drove them out of me, knowing that a malignant book would hurt nobody but the fool who wrote it. I got thoroughly in love with this work; for I saw that I was going to write a book which the very devils and angels themselves would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... disgust by vapid panegyric, or gross invective; weary by uniform dulness, or tantalise by superficial knowledge. Sometimes merely written to catch the public attention, a malignity is indulged against authors, to season the caustic leaves. A reviewer has admired those works in private, which he has condemned in his official capacity. But good sense, good temper, and good taste, will ever form an estimable journalist, who will inspire confidence, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... gizzard. He hated Colonel John. For the past wrong, for the past defeat, above all for the present humiliation, ay, and for the very magnanimity which spared him, he, the weak spirit, hated the strong with a furious, if timid malignity. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... passions, urging the prosecution of what men affect; wrath and displeasure against those who stand in the way of compassing their desires; emulation and envy towards those who happen to succeed better, or to attain a greater share in such things; excessive self-love; unaccountable malignity and vanity are in some degrees connatural to all men, and ever prompt them to this dealing, as appearing the most efficacious, compendious, and easy way of satisfying such appetites, of promoting such designs, of discharging such passions. Slander thence hath always been a principal ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... understanding with its thought is the external of man's life while the will with its affection is the internal. The healing of the understanding alone would therefore be like palliative healing in which the interior malignity, closed in and kept from issuing, would destroy first the near and then the remote parts till all would become mortified. The will itself must be healed, not by the influx of the understanding into it, for that is impossible, but by means ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... It is hard to calculate the extent of the malignity of a wicked man. Whether the barony will share the loss with me I cannot yet say; but in either case the wickedness will be the same. There is no word bad enough for it. It is altogether damnable; and this is done by a man who calls me in question because of my religion." ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... Otto read, with waxing indignation; and here his fury overflowed. He tossed the roll upon the table and stood up. 'This man,' he said, 'is a devil. A filthy imagination, an ear greedy of evil, a ponderous malignity of thought and language: I grow like him by the reading! Chancellor, where is ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impossible for human purity not to betray to an eye, thus sharpened by malignity, some stains which lay concealed and unregarded, while none thought it their interest to discover them; nor can the most circumspect attention, or steady rectitude, escape blame from censors, who have no inclination to approve. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... on her soil, and speak peace to the nation through the voice which had so often spoken peace before. But the Northern Democrats failed to comprehend their Southern allies. In their anxiety to impress the slave-holders with the depth and malignity of Northern anti-slavery feeling, they had unwittingly implicated themselves as accessories to the crime they charged on others. If they were, in fact, the friends to the South which they so loudly proclaimed themselves to be, now was the time to show their faith by their ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... have read the above work, was foremost to aid in my arrest when I made good my escape to the Pine woods, lying back of New Orleans. The reader will likewise recollect, that I could not, at that time, account for such manifestations of unprecedented malignity, on the part of one from whom I might rather expect protection than persecution. But the secret is out, and I now have the power to ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... Dwight remarks; 'The numbers of the poet, the delightful melody of song, the fascination of the chisel, and the spell of the pencil, have been all volunteered in the service of Satan for the moral destruction of unhappy man. To finish this work of malignity the stage has lent all its splendid apparatus of mischief; the shop has been converted into a show-box of temptations; and its owner into a pander of iniquity.' And in another place; 'Genius, in every age, and in every ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the malignity displayed toward the children of divorced wives by the women who succeeded them in the affections and homes of their husbands, that in Roman literature attached to the name of a stepmother (noverca) the most hateful associations, which ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... Cross. For some years the ladies had been a little afraid of him, as they were by no means given to free opinions. But he made his way. They were decidedly high; the bishop was notoriously low; and thus, in a mild manner, without malignity on either side, Manor Cross and the Palace fell out. Their own excellent young clergyman was snubbed in reference to his church postures, and Lady Sarah was offended. But the Dean's manners were perfect. He never trod on any one's ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint of the author of a new style in poetry. Pope's youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... defendant pair. Another account would have it that a dispute over a boundary fence marching between the Tatum homestead on Cache Creek and one of the Stackpole farm holdings ripened into a prime quarrel by reasons of Stackpole stubbornness on the one hand and Tatum malignity on the other. By yet a third account the lawsuit and the line-fence matter were confusingly twisted together to form a ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... of seeming good-nature. Her large blue eyes, on fit occasions, became affectionate and caressing. But if any one dared to wound or ruffle her pride, gainsay her orders or harm her interests, her countenance, usually placid and serene, betrayed a cold but implacable malignity. Mrs. Grivois entered the cabinet, holding in her hand Florine's report of the manner in which Adrienne de Cardoville had spent ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... There were cries of "Call him back!" But John explained that this was part of the drama, and no encores would be allowed; whereupon the audience fell to hissing the villain, who now sat alone with the most lifelike expression of malignity. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... addresses an audience composed in various proportions of sceptical inquirers, obstinate opponents, and malignant scoffers. Less than an apostle is unequal to the suppression of all human reactions incident to wounded sensibilities. Scorn is too naturally met by retorted scorn: malignity in the Pagan, which characterized all the known cases of signal opposition to Christianity, could not but hurry many good men into a vindictive pursuit of victory. Generally, where truth is communicated polemically (this is, not as it exists in its own ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... final demonstration of the malignity of the scheme of things. Time itself works against us. The moments that are evil it eternalizes; the moments that might be good it hurries to annihilation. All that is most precious is most precarious. Vainly do we cry to the moment: 'Verweile doch, du bist so schoen!' Only ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... a habit of goodness, directed by right reason; but there is in some men, even in nature, a disposition towards it; as on the other side there is a natural malignity. For there be that in their nature do not affect the good of others. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to a crossness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficilness, or the like; but the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... the more they indicate envy. The same eyes, when dry, show the possessors to be faithless, traitorous, and sacrilegious; and if these eyes are also yellow and cold, they argue insanity. For hollow eyes are the sign of craft and malignity; and if they are wanting in darkness, they also show foolishness. But if the eyes are too hollow, and of medium size, dry and rigid,—if, besides this, they have broad, overhanging eyebrows, and livid and pallid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... their opinion of the negroes, except for the worse. The general belief was that they were just as inferior as before, and had, moreover, been spoiled by a disgusting assumption of equality, driven into their thick skulls by Yankee malignity bent upon humiliating a proud though ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... gives an example of the final powerlessness of such half-convictions. One need not repeat the grim narrative of the murder. We all know it. One knows not which is the more repugnant—the degradation of the poor child Salome to the level of a dancing-girl, the fell malignity of the mother who would shame her daughter for such an end, the maudlin generosity of Herod, flushed with wine and excited passion, the hideous request from lips so young, the ineffectual sorrow of Herod, his fantastic sense of obligation, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Fretful— though he is my friend. Sneer. Why, 'tis certain, that unnecessarily to mortify the vanity of any writer is a cruelty which mere dulness never can deserve; but where a base and personal malignity usurps the place of literary emulation, the aggressor deserves neither quarter nor pity. Dang. That's true, egad!—though ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... that we could find out nothing about Kate from her; but the look of malignity she wore on her face when she spoke of her step-daughter was the best kind of testimony to me. I rose from my chair, and moved towards the door, followed by Bob Hale. We bade the lady good evening, and she ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... in the promised seed, retained the hope of forgiveness of sin, and did not give way to the evil imagination of their hearts, rather resisting it through the Holy Spirit, who is given for the very purpose of contending against, and overcoming, the malignity of man's nature. Because Ham gives way to his nature, he is wholly evil, and totally perishes. Shem and Japheth, who contend against it in their spirit, though being evil, are not altogether so. They have the Holy Spirit, through whom they ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... and toil of emancipating a host of slaves from the most powerful of rulers would uphold Jesus in the infinitely weightier responsibilities which now lay upon Him. Elijah, also, at a crisis of his people's history, had stood alone against all the might and malignity of Jezebel and the priests of Baal; alone, and with death staring him in the face, he confessed God, and, by his single-handed victory, wrought deliverance for the whole people. Their combined voice, therefore, says to Jesus, "Banish all fear; look ...
— How to become like Christ • Marcus Dods
... upon the prodigal Christian: The poet here means to heighten the malignity of Shylock's character, by making him depart from his settled resolve, of "neither to eat, drink nor pray with Christians," for the ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... Oaklands turned to leave the room. As he did so Wilford, for the first time, raised his head, thereby disclosing a countenance which, pale as death, was characterised by an expression of such intense malignity as one might conceive would be discernible in that of a corpse reanimated by some evil spirit. After regarding Oaklands fixedly for a moment, he said, in a low, grating tone of voice, "You have foiled me once and again—when next we meet, it wilt, be my ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... time passed my evil grew worse, my moments of malignity and irony became more somber and intractable. A real physical fever attended my outbursts of passion; I awakened trembling in every limb and covered with cold sweat. Brigitte, too, although she did not complain of it, began to fail in health. When I began to abuse her she would leave ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... of Douglas was not calculated to turn away wrath. He called attention to the fact that these gross insults were not uttered in the heat of indignation, but "conned over, written with cool, deliberate malignity, repeated from night to night in order to catch the appropriate grace." He ridiculed the excessive self-esteem of Sumner in words that moved the Senate to laughter; and then completed his vindictive assault by charging Sumner with perfidy. Had he not sworn to obey the Constitution, and then, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... February 22, notwithstanding it was a National Holiday, such was the haste of the impeachers, to the evening of the 24th, almost without interruption. It was at times illustrated by marked ability, and on the Republican side by intense bitterness and partisan malignity. A large number of the members of the House participated ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... few may be capable of understanding. Its truth, however, may be easily proved by watching the effect of words in irritating one person against another, and increasing, by repeated insinuations, the apparent malignity of some really trifling action. No one, probably, has led so blessed a life as not to have been sometimes pained by observing one person trying to exasperate another, who is, perhaps, rather peacefully inclined, by pointing ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... whatever. There was Peppajee, hunched up against the rock in that uncomfortable attitude which permits a man to come at the most intimate relations with the outside of his own ankle, upon which he was scowling in seeming malignity. There was his hunting-knife lying upon a flat stone near to his hand, with a fresh red blotch upon the blade, and there was his little stone pipe clenched between his teeth and glowing red within the bowl. Also there was the ankle, purple and swollen ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Harold had been thinking. And as he had been thinking for the good, the safety, of Stephen, his thoughts flew swift and true. This man's very tone, the openness of his malignity, the underlying scorn when he spoke of her whom others worshipped, showed him the danger—the terrible immediate danger in which she stood from such a man. With the instinct of a mind working as truly for the woman he loved as the needle does to the Pole he spoke quietly, throwing a sneer ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... subtlety and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness." He was a type of those whom the apostle described as "filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, deceit, malignity—implicable, unmerciful." ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... years, cut off entirely from active life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner's malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get well, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'Had I not then ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... moment followed, when I heard the words "one," "two," "three," in tolerably rapid succession, and, at the utterance of the last, I pulled trigger. My antagonist had done so at the first. His eye was fixed upon mine with deliberate malignity—THAT I clearly saw—but it did not affect my shot. This, I purposely threw away. The skill of my enemy did not correspondend (sic) with his evident desires. I was hurt, but very slightly. His bullet ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... truth, none but a madman, or one whose heart was desperately wicked, would repeatedly, especially after such wholesome reproof, have persisted in such a threat; It discovered, to borrow the expression of a very polite & humane gentleman, upon another late occasion, a malignity beyond what might have been expected ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... declaring that I had "the temper of a hedgehog, the adhesiveness of a barnacle, the vanity of a peacock, the vindictiveness of a Corsican, the hypocrisy of Aminadab Sleek and the duplicity of the devil." I rather enjoyed these paroxysms of malignity, which broke out all over the State among the Governor's conservative satellites, since my only offense was fidelity to my political opinions, the soundness of which I was finding fully justified by events; for the friends of the Governor, in a few short months, gathered together and cremated ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... a cloak, had followed Frank's carriage, and watched him narrowly as he alighted and entered his house. This man's eyes alone were visible, and they glared with a fiend-like malignity upon the young gentleman; turning away, he muttered a deep curse, and a momentary disarrangement of the cloak which hid his face, revealed the horrible lineaments ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... comment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, in this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in absolute command, whether for silence or attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will be tempted to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as well as the vantage-ground ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thy son, then, proud minion," he replied, with fiendish malignity; "for an ye part now, it is forever. Ye ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of thee, malignity flies away and the spirits of peace and goodness surround me, encouraging me to all great and noble deeds, making me forget to look back on my folly, and bidding me gaze forward into the future and the realms ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... afterwards their whole system of doctrine into disrepute, and from the restoration the poets and the players were left at quiet; for to have molested them would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... fact was, that despite the force and variety of the rumors that were abroad against him—and each succeeding week brought in some fresh instance of his duplicity and profligacy, thanks to the ingenious and fertile malignity of Hycy the accomplished—despite of this, and despite of all, the natural reaction of her heart had set in—their past endearments, their confidence their tenderness, their love, now began, after the first vehement expression of pride and high principle had exhausted the ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... an epidemic of extraordinary malignity which swept over Europe, and especially England, in the 15th and 16th centuries, attacking with equal virulence all classes and all ages, and carrying off enormous numbers of people; was characterised ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to do what the body of the animal can do, and do what he, as man, can do as well. He may fly or swim, if be is in the shape of bird or fish; if he has taken the form of a wolf, or if he goes on a gandrei, or wolf's-ride, he is fall of the rage and malignity of the creatures whose powers and passions ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... a greater post, and the clergy had joined his bitterest enemies. Then he touched the corporate spirit, and perceived that for authority to lay a hand on ecclesiastical privilege is to metamorphose goodwill into the most rancorous malignity. Meanwhile, the letters in which Turgot explained his views and wishes to the cures, by them to be imparted to their parishes, are masterpieces of the care, the patience, the interest, of a good ruler. Those impetuous and peremptory spirits who see in Frederick or ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... hunching myself, rigid. Mind you, I was still in a disgusting funk; but what I might call the 'imminent sense of danger' seemed to have eased from around me; at any rate, I felt, in some curious fashion, that there was a respite—a temporary cessation of malignity from about me. It is impossible to word my feelings more clearly to you, for I cannot see them more clearly ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... shouted Pulfennius, "I can tell you. It is because this whole comedy has been rehearsed between you just to make me ridiculous. I know your way, your malignity, your tenacity of a grudge, your pretence of reconciliation, your ingenuity, your well-laid traps. I'll be revenged for ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... of fire, and muttered in no doubtful language, interpreted by my colleague of "Le Temps," who knew Turkish, what they would be glad to do with us. As we sat eating our lunch in the shelter of a hovel by the roadside, while the horses were baiting, a party of the fanatics watched us with growing malignity and a truculent interchange of sentiments of an evidently unfriendly nature. To puzzle them as to our status, I took the pains to repeat in conversation with my colleague the formula of adherence to the faith as it is in Islam, a scrap of Arabic I had ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... Vane turned instantly round upon him, and, looking him haughtily in the face, said: "Sir Charles Pomander, the settled malignity with which you pursue that lady is unmanly and offensive to me, who love her. Let our acquaintance cease here, if you please, or let her be ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... of such a remedy must be admitted as full proof of the malignity of the disease. And in further excuse of Andrew Fletcher, it should be remembered that he belonged to a country where many of the feudal virtues (as well as most of the feudal vices) were at that time in full ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... courted, and at last are not always gained; but criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, she will meet the slow and encourage the timorous. The want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.—Johnson. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it, but by conceiving that man, since he came out of the hands of his Creator, has contracted a taint, and that the venom of this subtle poison has been communicated throughout the race of Adam, every where exhibiting incontestible marks of its fatal malignity? Hence it has arisen, that the appetites deriving new strength, and the powers of reason and conscience being weakened, the latter have feebly and impotently pleaded against those forbidden indulgences which the former have solicited. Sensual gratifications and illicit affections ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Eustace Hignett laughed mirthlessly. "Oh, nothing. Nothing much. Nothing to signify. Only my heart's broken." He eyed with considerable malignity the bottle of water in the rack above his head, a harmless object provided by the White Star Company for clients who might desire to clean their teeth during ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in loving? Was it not enough that you should descend to mark down each incautious look—to chronicle every heedless word—to draw dark deductions from the unsuspecting confidence of my father's friend—to lie in wait—to hang with a foe's malignity upon the unbendings of familiar intercourse—to extort anger from gentleness itself, that you might wrest the anger into crime! Shame, shame upon you, for the meanness! And must you also suppose that I, to whose trust he has given his noble heart, will receive it only to play ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as he uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomed exercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. His colour became a violent pink. "Lunatic!" he said. "Dangerous Lunatic! He didn't do anything—anything bad ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... discovered. Group after group of simple country people would listen intently as he led them round, eager after every word; and as any peg will do to hang hate upon, even this success was noted with evil eye by Glum Gunn. Almost anything served to increase his malignity. Whether or not it grew the faster that he had as yet found no wider outlet ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... is of your making, secretly held, all these years, with unrelenting malignity. The devil himself is not wicked enough to send an innocent, loyal lad to his doom in his own mother's house, with his father as his executioner. Oh, uncle, uncle, repent and make reparation before ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... unspeakable anguish with a calmness and resignation seldom equalled and never surpassed. "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," is a serious rebuke to those who suffer so little and complain so loudly that the times are out of joint, the world as probably as not the work of malignity or indifference, and that he is no God who does not stretch forth an omnipotent hand to slay the accursed thing of evil where it stands. This is in very deed "the crying of an infant in the night". We forget when we utter these foolish things that ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... wrath of Napoleon from the King of Prussia; but the whole malignity of that Corsican nature broke out against the high-spirited patriot as soon as fresh victories had released Napoleon from the ill-endured necessity of self-control. On the 16th of December, when Madrid had again passed into the possession of the French, an imperial ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of Armagh—an office which might be considered as hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... that this charming individual was, in all probability, the coachman," said Mrs. Grahame, with mild malignity. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... fire is no less certain: the fire evaporates and disperses all that is innocent and pure, leaving only acrid and sour matter which resists its influence. The effect produced by poisons on animals is still more plain to see: its malignity extends to every part that it reaches, and all that it touches is vitiated; it burns and scorches all the inner parts with a strange, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... him. All were repulsed. James, says Francis Osborn in his Traditional Memoirs, 'did so far participate of the humour of a pusillanimous prince as to pardon any sooner than those injured by himself.' He was unconscious of any such malignity. It is pathetic to observe his utter freedom from suspicion that posterity could help characterizing him as resolute, wise, and just for his persecution of Ralegh, and not as a ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... New World." As if a disease which every body might have avoided, so soon as its existence, its inveterate nature, and the mode of communicating it, were known, and which, after all that has been said of its malignity and rapid progress, was both mitigated by various means soon after its appearance, and ultimately at no great distance of time effectually arrested in its terrifying career—as if this could be considered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... herself more odious than ever. Her jealousy, already but too well founded, received every hour the poisonous nourishment of fresh conviction, which so much soured and exasperated a temper naturally harsh, that her malignity and ill- humour grew daily more acrimonious. Nor would she have contented herself with displaying this irascibility by general moroseness, had not the same suspicious watchfulness which discovered to her the passion of her husband, served equally to make manifest ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... her, would never venture to cause her arrest, went fearlessly among her neighbours. She was not aware that the enquiry had passed from Caffarelli's hands into those of the prefect of Rouen, and was now managed by a man whose malignity and stubbornness would ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... part of the so-called Southern Confederacy. From the hour of firing upon Fort Sumter to the present moment, the war has not been waged by the rebels as if in defense of the great principles of truth and justice, but with the malignity, the cruelty and barbarity which would, in many instances, put to blush the savages upon our western borders. In our dealing with them, the honor, integrity, fidelity and dignity of the nation have never been forgotten; and the policy of ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... Kolotskoi, a sight still more hideous than that of the field of battle. At Borodino all was death, but not without its quiet; there at least the battle was over; at Kolotskoi it was still raging. Death here seemed to be pursuing his victims, who had escaped from the engagement, with the utmost malignity; he penetrated into them by all their senses at once. They were destitute of every thing for repelling his attacks, excepting orders, which it was impossible to execute in these deserts, and which, moreover, issuing from too high and too distant a quarter, passed ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... soon put a stop to all the little Advances of Hymen; the fatal Star that presided over the Destiny of Don Pedro had not yet vented its Malignity; and one moment's sight of Agnes gave ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... of internal chill at the sight of this dreadful old woman. Though handsomely dressed, she was terrible to look upon, for her flat, colorless, strongly-marked face, furrowed with wrinkles, expressed a sort of cold malignity. Marat, as a woman of that age, might have been like this creature, a living embodiment of the Reign ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... review spoke so bitterly of Prometheus, and why it pretends that the most metaphysical passage of your most metaphysical poem is a specimen of the clearness of your general style. The wretched priest-like cunning and undertoned malignity of that review of Prometheus is indeed a homage paid to qualities which can so provoke it. The Quarterly pretends now, that it never meddles with you personally,—of course it never did! For this, Blackwood cries out upon ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... with mud, and playing fantastic tricks on you without its causing you the slightest degree of alarm or fear, or depressing you as it did before you knew the cause of all these things - because now you apprehend them in their wretched malignity and dare to face them and, if need be, duly to ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... indeed any two-footed singer, is likely to be an immortal poet by seventeen. But Henry's sensitive soul had been so inflated by the honest pride of his friends that he could only see gross and callous malignity and conspiracy in the criticism. His theology, his health, his peace of mind, were all overthrown. As a matter of fact, however (as Southey remarks), it was the very brusqueness of this review that laid the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable malignity. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... twenty-five, yet the countenance was that of one well versed in intrigue. The cast was Italian—the crisp black hair, swarthy complexion, and never-to-be-mistaken eyes. A large amount of Jesuit determination was expressed in his iris, blended with cunning, malignity, and fierceness. The features were prominent particularly the nose; the lips finely cut, but thin; the teeth beautiful and regular. In stature he was low, and habited in the dress of his order, a long black coat or gown, buttoned to the throat, and ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... the world in order; those possessed of extreme maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons gifted with benevolence are its natural fruit. Malignity and perversity constitute the spirit of evil, which permeates heaven and earth, and malicious persons are affected by its influence. The days of perpetual happiness and eminent good fortune, and the era of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... as yet too young,' he said severely, 'to understand the mystic value of men's acts and words. A word may be well meant and innocent, and yet the cause of much disaster, possessing in itself some special virtue of malignity. You all know how the jann[4] attend on careless words; how if I call a goat, a dog, or cat by its generic name without pointing to the very animal intended, a jinni will as like as not attach himself to me, since many of the jann are called by names of animals. ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... caustic and vigorous mode of expression. His name was a target for the wits. "A physician who plays on the guitar and fancies himself a composer," was the scoff of malignant gossips. The journals poured on him a flood of abuse without stint. French malignity is the most venomous and unscrupulous in the world, and Berlioz was selected as a choice victim for its most vigorous exercise, none the less willingly that he had shown so much skill and zest in impaling the victims of his own artistic ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... ceased in his lair. He rose and shook himself. He was still unhappy. Ackronnion still sang on the chaunt called Dolorous. The Gladsome Beast came mournfully up to him. Ackronnion ceased not for the sake of his panic, but still sang on. He sang of the malignity of time. Two tears welled large in the eyes of the Gladsome Beast. Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a suitable spot with his foot. He sang of autumn and of passing away. The the beast wept as the frore hills weep ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." And truly, not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin |
