"Sinister" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strip. At its upper end, below my windows, all the cats of the neighbourhood congregate as soon as darkness gathers. They lie undisturbed on the long ledge of a blind window of the opposite building, for after the postman has come and gone at 9:30, no footsteps ever dare to interrupt their sinister conclave, no step but my own, or sometimes the unsteady footfall of the son who "is somethink ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... another, though not better man, has made up his mind to go gold-seeking on the Sacramento. Still, if he be not gone, I think we might persuade him to take a trip on the craft you speak of. It was once Harry's sinister luck to slip overboard in the harbour of Guaymas—dropping almost into the jaws of a tintorero shark—and my good fortune to be able to rescue him out of his perilous plight. He is not the man to be ungrateful; and, if ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... my motives have been pure, men have seen a fault in the conduct, and calumniated the motives; when my conduct has been blameless, men have remembered its former errors, and asserted that its present goodness only arose from some sinister intention: thus I have been termed crafty, when I was in reality rash, and that was called the inconsistency of interest which in reality was the inconsistency of passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn you how you suffer your subjects to become your tyrants; ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... day that one comes across such individuals! I went to speak to him, and I must confess that whether he had as a fact troubled the dead or not, he was none the less most courteous and polite with the living. He had, it is true, at times somewhat of a sinister look in his face; but for his unsteady eyes, you might almost have put him down as a missionary. He informed me that codfish was to be had in great abundance at Fusan, and that the grain export was almost entirely done by the Japanese, ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... happily enjoying her food. She was certainly the most harmless being in creation, and was probably guilty of a thousand generosities and kindnesses in her private life. Nevertheless, Mlle. Finisterre had for her a dark and sinister hatred, and the remarks that she made about her, in her bitter and piercing voice, must have reached their victim. She also abused her host very roundly, beginning to tell me in the fullest detail the history of an especially ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... stern and criticising eye. He also looks upon life as a picture, but to catch its beauties, its lights,—not its defects and shadows. On the former he loves to dwell. He has a wonderful knack at shutting his eyes to the sinister side of anything. Never beat a more kindly heart than his; alive to the sorrows, but not to the faults, of his friends, but doubly alive to their virtues and goodness. Indeed, people seemed to grow more good with one so unselfish ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... were always lawyers in these subterranean affairs—"shyster" was a word she had heard applied to them—and this man looked the part. His thin face, clear-cut profile, and skin which showed dark where he shaved, were all, in her judgment, signs of the sinister. Even his clothes, from his patent leather shoes with spats to his dark blue necktie with a pearl in it, were those which an actor would wear in pictures ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Meynell galloped home over the lonely road, the bland and winning smile which had played over his face all the evening contracted into a moody and sinister expression. The thin lips became compressed, and his arched brows extended into a hard dark line over his eyes. He was planning evil, and had no witness; at such times his features seemed to take this peculiar appearance as their natural cast; yet it was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... who have endeavored to do something to alleviate the condition of the thousands of contrabands, who are many without clothes, employment, or the slightest idea of what they are to do. It would be hard to imagine any thing more harmless or more perfectly free from any thing like sinister or selfish motives than have been the conduct and motives of the noble women who have assumed this mission. Florence Nightingale undertook nothing nobler; and the world will some day recognize the deserts of those who strove against every obstacle to relieve the sufferings ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... wanted to give her pleasure. But somehow Elizabeth had fallen into the habit ever since she left the prairies of comparing all men with George Trescott Benedict; and this man, although he dressed well, and was every bit as handsome, did not compare well. There was a sinister, selfish glitter in his eyes that made Elizabeth think of the serpent on the plain just before she shot it. ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... the Little Playmate was old Hanne. She was brought in by a cowled monk of dark and sinister appearance—in fact, as my heart leaped to observe, I saw that she was accompanied by Friar Laurence—he who had taught me my learning in the old days, and who even then had watched the Little Playmate with no ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... rushing wind, whose damp breath smelt of rain; and presently the mountain-rim was veiled in brown and ruddy and purple earth-haze. A bow in the eastern sky strongly suggested, in the apparent absence of a shower, refraction by dust—if such thing be possible. We were disappointed, by the sinister wind, in our hopes of collecting a bottle of rain-water for the photographer; nor did the storm, though it had all the diffused violence of a wintry gale, materially alter the weather. The next two nights were brisk and cool, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... had never known nor heard of such a man. The stranger had evidently sat within hearing distance of the girl and her schoolmate, and listening to their merry chatter all the way from Boston to Springfield, had given him the clue to names and localities that enabled him to play his sinister game. Only the faithfulness of the wise conductor saved her from possibilities too painful to be recorded ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... go fishing with Doctor Prance," said Miss Birdseye, with a serenity which showed that she was far from measuring the sinister quality of the ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... case, fortunately, the Capugi's visit had no sinister motive. The fact was now divulged that Lady Hester had been given a manuscript, said to have been copied by a monk from the records of a Frank monastery in Syria, which disclosed the hiding-places of immense hoards of money buried in certain ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the first she had ever met. She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No one certainly had on ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... "turned" by a well-known authoress. Its sinister appearance is accounted for by the fact that at the time of "turning" the cup, she was arranging mentally a murder plot for the ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... railing, elevating his eyes above his chest, and enabling him to peer through the open-work of the cage. Thus the two deadly enemies faced each other. The rajah's stern face paled at sight of the hideous, shapeless thing which met his gaze; but he soon recovered, and the old hard, cruel, sinister look returned. Neranya's black hair and beard had grown long, and they added to the natural ferocity of his aspect. His eyes blazed upon the rajah with a terrible light, his lips parted, and he gasped for breath; his face was ashen with rage and despair, and his thin, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... three companions, and it was he who had spoken. Two of the men—one of them had a most villainous countenance—Calvert had never seen before, but the third one he discovered, to his intense surprise, was Bertrand—Bertrand, whose honest lackey's face now wore a curious and sinister look of power and importance. So, it was in the society of such that Monsieur de St. Aulaire now talked and ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... went on chatting of this and other things, and Joe examined the luminary of night from an entirely novel point of view, the heavens became covered with heavy clouds to the northward, and the lowering masses assumed a most sinister and threatening look. Quite a smart breeze, found about three hundred feet from the earth, drove the balloon toward the north-northeast; and above it the blue vault was clear; but the ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... agreeable reveries I passed the first hour of the journey; when, to my unfeigned relief, on reaching Antrim my fellow-traveller quitted the carriage. No doubt his object was a sinister one, and when I saw him speak to the constable at the station, I had no doubt in my own mind that my liberty was not worth five minutes' purchase. But even so, anything seemed better than his basilisk eye in the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... and dashed against it, as if to try its force; as far as one could see, its waves lifted themselves and crowded together, like the muscles upon a chest; over the flank of the waves passed flashes with sinister smiles; the mast groaned, and the trees bent shivering, like a nerveless crowd before the wrath of a fearful beast. Then all was hushed; the sun had burst forth, the waves were smoothed, you now see only a laughing expanse; spun out over this polished back a thousand ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... a condition that irritated him almost beyond control. He had absolutely no grounds for interference. He could only glower angrily and in silence at a meeting he could not prevent. Conjecture might run riot as to the causes which had given this sinister bend to an idyl, but perforce he ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... observe that M. de Chateaubriand was ignorant of the fatal event. However, on his return home he said to his friends that he had remarked a singular change in the appearance of the First Consul, and that there was a sort of sinister expression in his countenance. Bonaparte saw his new minister amidst the crowd who attended the audience, and several times seemed inclined to step forward to speak to him, but as often turned away, and did not approach him the whole morning. A few hours after, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... gayly with my pious guide and his hopeful companion, no sinister accident impeding our journey. I was in the happiest circumstances both of mind and body that I ever recollect having experienced; young, full of health and security, placing unbounded confidence in myself and others; in that short but charming moment of human life, whose expansive energy carries, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... pessimism by the wet splash of a new ball. At your side is the ninth green, with its sinuous undulations which have so often wrecked the returning traveller in sight of home. And at various points within your line of vision are the third tee, the sixth tee, and the sinister bunkers about the eighth green—none of them lacking in food for ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... another man in the country who was so able to persuade others of the scientific, financial, commercial soundness of his projects. If, more than any one else, he could make a scheme appeal, it was not that it was in any sinister sense a scheme, but because his tact and his address were pleasing, his reputation firmly grounded for honesty and common-sense as well as for thorough scientific knowledge, so that his enthusiasm was contagious. His enemies might call him a lobbyist, ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... Greek tragedy which has come down to our time, the Orestes of Aeschylus, represents the victory of the new gods of light over the old maternal powers. Orestes has sinned against the old law, for in order to avenge his father's death, he has slain his mother. The sun-god Apollo and the sinister Erinnys, the upholders of the old maternal right, are waging war over the justifiableness of the deed. To the Erinnys, matricide is the foulest of all crimes, for man is more nearly related to the mother than to the father. But Apollo had commanded the deed, so that ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... pretence or another; and among them Aelius Sejanus, whose fall was attended with the ruin of many others. He had advanced this minister to the highest pitch of grandeur, not so much from any real regard for him, as that by his base and sinister contrivances he might ruin the children of Germanicus, and thereby secure the succession to ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... loves,—the acquisition of Cuba. In that case, we should deplore his language, and be inclined to doubt also the sincerity of his just denunciations of Walker's infamous schemes of piracy and brigandage. Until events, however, have developed the signs of a sinister policy of this sort, we must bestow an earnest plaudit upon his decided rebuke of the filibusters, coupling that praise with a wish that the "vigilance" of his subordinates may hereafter prove of a more wide-awake and energetic kind than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... high (36), though it has since fallen to the level of ten years ago. But the death-rate has risen concomitantly (to over 24 per 1000), and has continued to rise notwithstanding the slight decline in the birth-rate. We see here a tendency to the sinister combination of a falling birth-rate with a rising death-rate.[107] It is obvious that such a tendency, if continued, will furnish a serious problem to Japanese social reformers, and at the same time make it impossible for Western alarmists to regard the rise of Japan as a ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... by the reddish gold wavelets of the "branch." In the eastern sky the florid face of a hunter's moon looked down, from the level line of a leaden cloud, which striped the star emblazoned shield of night, like a bar sinister; and the white lustre of her rays was dimmed to a lurid dulness ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... recognise that man and all that is best in man—his aspirations, ideas, virtues, and practical and abstract justice and goodness—are just as much the product of the cosmic process and part of the Cosmos as the most sinister results of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... man's manner, and the queer mystery of it all sent a cold sensation through the King's blood; he felt now that he was up against something dangerous and sinister. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... honourable augmentations to his armorial ensign: viz. "A chief, undulated, argent—thereon, waves of the sea; from which, a palm-tree issuant, between a disabled ship on the dexter, and a ruinous battery on the sinister; all proper." And, for his crest, "On a naval crown, or; the chelengk, or plume of triumph, presented to him by the Grand Signior, as a mark of his high esteem, and of his sense of the gallant conduct of the ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... satisfied that there will be no fireworks. It will do no harm to send the boy. It will placate the Left and please the Clerics—it will also consolidate our reputation for liberality and largeness of mind. Also the young man will either be killed or fall a victim to the sinister influences of that corruption which, alas, has so entered into the vitals ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... arrogant, but he is still 'a lad with the bloom of a lass.' A shade of aspiring melancholy marks a portrait done in France, just before the expedition to Scotland. Le Toque's fine portrait of the Prince in armour (1748) shows a manly and martial but rather sinister countenance. A plaster bust, done from a life mask, if not from Le Moine's bust in marble (1750), was thought the best likeness by Dr. King. This bust was openly sold in Red Lion Square, and, when Charles visited Dr. King in September 1750, the Doctor's ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... A restless cow, changing her pasture, sent them flying to cover. A startled rabbit dashed across the road, and the boys flung themselves face downward in a gully in a twinkling. The night made odd, sounds, each one of sinister import to the fugitives. The wind sprang up and made noises that caused their hearts to jump into their throats half ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... that huge settle kept guard. As these thoughts crossed my mind, I instinctively glanced again toward the fireplace for what I almost refused to believe lay outstretched at my feet. When nothing more appeared there than that old seat of sinister memory, I experienced a thrill which poorly prepared me for the cry which I now heard raised ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... time in getting to the mill district, and a longer time still in finding Cardew Way. At an all-night pharmacy he learned which was the house, and his determined movements took on a sort of uncertainty. It was very late. Ellen had waited for him for some time. If Lily were in that sinister darkened house across the street, the family had probably retired. And for the first time, too, he began to doubt if Doyle would let him see her. Lily herself might even refuse ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... express-packets plowing the seven seas, the smoking trains piercing the bowels of the mountains and connecting cities vibrant with hordes of business men, the telegraph wires setting the world aquiver with their incessant reports, the whole sinister glittering faery of gain and industry and dominion, seemed to tread and soar and sound and blare and swell with just such rhythm, such grandeur, such intoxication. Mountains that had been sealed thousands ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness, eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind, and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... sensible one, and we started, I going on foot nearly the whole way; and at five o'clock we halted at a wretched inn, but we saw no signs of the sinister trio. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the day before, his mission, the ambuscade, his imprisonment, all flashed back to him, and he sprang to his feet. His comrade, who had been dozing in the corner, jumped up also at the first movement, with his hand on his knife, and a sinister glance directed towards ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Moses was ready to afford them. Methusaleh's spirits and confidence rose tremendously at such appearances. One after the other was silently pronounced "the real Lord Downy." Then came two or three sinister visages—faces half muffled up, with educated features, small cunning eyes, and perhaps green spectacles—conspirators every one—villains who had evidently conspired to reduce Mr Moses's balance at ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... multitude at last emerged into the light of day. Savage and fierce were the outcries which blended in sinister discord with the rattling of the chains they dragged after them. Even the most fearless among the Hebrews shrank in horror as they beheld the throng of hapless sufferers in the full radiance of the sunlight; for the dazzled, reddened eyes of the unfortunate sufferers,—many ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... should not conceive him as sagacious, ascetical, playing off his appetites against each other, turning the wing of public respectable immorality instead of riding it directly down, or advancing toward his end through a thousand sinister compromises and considerations. The one man might be wily, might be adroit, might be wise, might be respectable, might be gloriously useful; it is the other man ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... no sinister motive in this romantic enterprise of Mrs. Arnold," the testimony proceeds. "I have understood that her sympathies were British but, if so, she had been discreet enough in camp to keep them to herself. Whatever they may have been, I felt ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... one challenged. He drew a drink from the well with its loud-rattling chain and clumsy, water-sodden bucket, but no one called. At the door of the house he whistled, stamped, pounded, and at last flung it open with all the noise he could make. Still his hungry ears fed on nothing but sinister echoes, the barren husks of his own clamour. There was no curt voice of a man, no quick, questioning tread of a woman. There were dead white ashes on the hearth, and the silence was grimly kept by the dumb ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... explained. Six casts of the clay model had been made before the original was broken up. One of these Morse had kept for himself, four had been given to various institutions, and one to his friend Charles Bulfinch, who succeeded Latrobe as the architect of the Capitol. A sinister fate seemed to pursue these little effigies, for his own, and the four he had presented to different institutions, were all destroyed in one way and another. After tracing each one of these five to its untimely end, he came to the conclusion that this ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... judicial devastation, that was to extirpate all signs and memories of Mediaeval and Semitic Rome, and restore and renovate the inheritance of the true offspring of the she-wolf. The very aspect of the place itself was sinister. Whether it were the dulness of the dark sky, or the frown of Madre Natura herself, but the old Seven Hills seemed to look askance. The haughty capitol, impatient of its chapels, sighed once more for triumphs; and the proud ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... inscribed with sacred rhyme, Whose antique characters did well denote The Sibyl's hand of the Cumaean grot: The mad divineress had plainly writ, 490 A time should come (but many ages yet), In which, sinister destinies ordain, A dame should drown with all her feather'd train, And seas from thence be call'd the Chelidonian main. At this, some shook for fear, the more devout Arose, and bless'd themselves ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... have a large following among artists and art lovers; for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign of a subtle artistic temperament. There is something not quite good, something almost sinister, about it—at least, in its more complex forms, though in its simple form, as we find it in outdoor nature, it is innocent enough; and, indeed, is it not used in colloquial metaphor as an adjective for innocence ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... alone on the rostrum, a heroic figure pitted, as it were, against all the sinister forces that bore from within, one valiant United ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... of fact Pancrazio had never been rakish or debauched, but mountain-moral, timid. So that the queer, half-sinister drop of his eyelids was curious, and the strange, wicked yellow flare that came into his eyes was almost frightening. There was in the man a sort of sulphur-yellow flame of passion which would light up in his battered body and give him an almost ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... only by a feeble snore that issued now and then from the adjoining bedroom, Basilio heard light footfalls on the stairs, footfalls that soon crossed the hallway and approached the room where he was. Raising his head, he saw the door open and to his great surprise appeared the sinister figure of the jeweler Simoun, who since the scene in San Diego had not come to visit either himself ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... when he had said that, a silence that seemed to Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... later Lady Margaret stood with Ralph on the terrace outside the hut. Her eyes plunged into the awful abyss at their feet, swept along the moonlit valley thousands and thousands of feet below them, and fastened themselves upon the sinister crags of the Lyskamm and the stupendous dome of Mont Blanc. A lump came into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... why it was, but even then it struck me that there was something dashed odd—almost sinister, if you know what I mean—about young Bingo's manner. The old egg had the air of one who ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... be alone at sea, or to be deep somewhere in the bosom of the earth. He could not understand this side of his auntie's individuality. But there was no delivery from Mrs Hamps. The only person who could possibly have delivered them seemed to enjoy the sinister thraldom. Mr Clayhanger listened with appreciative and admiring nods; he appeared to be quite sincere. And Edwin could not understand his father either. "How simple father must be!" he thought vaguely. Whereas ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the dominant note was one of generous and enthusiastic sympathy with the young rancher and his wife, who had come so lately among them and who had been made the unfortunate victim of a sinister and threatening foe, hitherto, it is true, regarded with indifference or with friendly pity but lately assuming an ominous importance. There was underneath the gay hilarity of the gathering an undertone of apprehension until ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... countenance, undoubtedly caused him to be selected by the ancients as the emblem of wisdom. The moderns have practically renounced this idea, which had no foundation in the real character of the bird, who possesses only the sly and sinister traits that mark the feline race. A very different train of associations and a new series of picturesque images are now suggested by the figure of the Owl, who has been portrayed more correctly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to be reasons for Yussuf's suspicions, the men having a peculiarly evil aspect. A perfectly honest man sometimes belies his looks, but when a dozen or so of individuals mounted upon shabby Turkish ponies, all well-armed, and wearing an eager sinister look upon their countenances, are seen together, if they are suspected of being a dishonest lot, there is every excuse for those who ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... companion much as a groom might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the first to see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that he regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised admiration and wonder. Lydia's first impulse was to turn and fly; her next, to apologize ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... The road was so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... shown "the burdens and abominations" of prostitution, in "simple, fine, and deathlessly-caustic images"; has shown that "all the horror is in just this—that there is no horror..." For it is as a pitiless reflection of a "singular," sinister ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... the city to which we journeyed, night had fallen. There was something sinister about our entry; we were veiled in fog, and crept through the gate and beneath the ramparts with extinguished head lights. Scarcely any one was abroad. Those whom we passed, loomed out of the mist in silence, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... freezing cold and its terrible shadows, when the high mountains covered with black forests rose menacingly before me, the endless steppes, all lying between me and my country and all that was dear to me.... Then came the terrible sadness ... which, in the depths of your heart, suddenly lifts up its sinister head, and in the terrible silence among the shadows murmurs these words: 'This is the end of you ... the very end ... you will remain in ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... accepted the invitation, and the sinister-looking man, picking her up, carefully descended the ladder to his small boat, and rowed away to ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... softening down her refusal. But when he came at length to the words Priscilla had spoken, Words so tender and cruel: "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, till his armor Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound of sinister omen. All his pent-up wrath burst forth in a sudden explosion, Even as a hand-grenade, that scatters destruction around it. Wildly he shouted, and loud: "John Alden! you have betrayed me! Me, Miles Standish, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... political sagacity liable to impeachment by the extent to which he had been thus deceived by the French court. "So far from being reprehensible that I did not suspect such a crime," he said, "I should rather be chargeable with malignity had I been capable of so sinister a suspicion. 'Tis not an ordinary thing to conceal such enormous deliberations under the plausible ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was a sinister tone in this ejaculation that gave a shock to my momentary complacency. But we are so made that an anticipated evil affects us less than an immediate one; and remembering that weeks must yet elapse, during which he or John Poindexter or even myself might die, I said nothing, and ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... the ideal democracy which underlies our institutions may achieve, it will not be the survival of conditions such as these, but the fruition of their betterment. Recognition of the sinister elements involved determines the modern type of library work with children. That work rests upon a knowledge of the background which has been pictured, upon the use of methods that shall reach sanely and effectively the contributing causes, upon correlation of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... lynx." 62 "He caught sight of a beaver swimming down the pond." 72 "'Or even maybe a bear.'" 90 "He drowns jest at the place where he come in." 96 "Hunted through the silent and pallid aisles of the forest." 102 "A sinister, dark, slow-moving beast." 106 "He sprang with a huge bound that landed him, claws open, squarely on the wolverene's hind quarters." 110 "It was not until the moon appeared ... that Jabe began to call." 142 "Something gleamed silver ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... thousand warriors of Pavia, a new people, under the same appellation of Goths, was insensibly formed in the camp of Totila. He sincerely accomplished the articles of capitulation, without seeking or accepting any sinister advantage from ambiguous expressions or unforeseen events: the garrison of Naples had stipulated that they should be transported by sea; the obstinacy of the winds prevented their voyage, but they were generously supplied with horses, provisions, and a safe-conduct to ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... Voltaire; calling on everybody (or everybody but Friedrich himself, who is easily sated with that kind of thing) to admire. In the world are many opinions about Friedrich. In Austria, for instance, what an opinion; sinister, gloomy in the extreme: or in England, which derives from Austria,—only with additional dimness, and with gloomy new provocations of its own before long! Many opinions about Friedrich, all dim enough: but this, that he is a very demon for fighting, and the stoutest King walking ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... reach it by the lane where mandrakes are to be found. How is it that I did not meet you before? By what sinister destiny, living so near you, have I lived without seeing you? But what do I say, lived? Is it to live without knowing you? Are you shut up in ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... humanity. The old-fashioned black walnut bedstead in which the sick man lay seemed to have a thousand voices of experiences. A great piece was broken off one corner of the footboard. The wound in the wood looked sinister. Directly opposite the bed stood the black walnut bureau, with its swung glass. The glass was cracked diagonally, and reflected the bed and its occupant with an air of experience. Gordon went directly to his patient. ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... in hers. She read in them something cruel and sinister. It was as if he were walking over the ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... was sure to hand them over to the tender mercies of his brother, who had all his faults, and some, in addition, of his own, without any of his merits. There was but one hope, and that turned out a mere aurora borealis, connected with the Duke of Monmouth, who, through his extraction by a bend sinister from Charles, as well as through his popular manners, Protestant principles, and gracious exterior, had become such a favourite with the people, that strong efforts were made to exclude the Duke of York, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... picturesque figure and rode a very good horse. He wore a big slouch hat, from under which a number of fair curls hung nearly to his waist. His beard was fair, his eyes blue, and his complexion ruddy. There was nothing sinister in his expression, and his manner was respectful and frank. He was dressed in a hunter's buckskin suit ornamented with beads, and wore a pair of exceptionally big brass spurs. His saddle was very highly ornamented. What was unusual was the number of weapons he carried. Besides ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... even now of its original pomp are discernible in the faint glittering of the gilding, and the exquisite symmetry of its execution. The bearings appeared to me as—party per pall,—dexter division.—Sapphire a cross gules ensigned with fleur de lis between six martlets topaz.—Sinister—quarterly sapphire and ruby, first and third, three fleur de lis; topaz, second and fourth, three lions passant gardant of the same, supported by two angels, and surmounted by a coronet; the whole resting on an angel ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... quite at home, and in humor to enjoy their self-appointed stay of two weeks. Despite her restless eye and sinister smile, she could be affable; and although, at first, I felt an indescribable misgiving in her presence, it wore away, and I often amused Johnnie while she ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of clashes developing finally into a series of riots of a grave nature. Innocent Negroes, attacked at first for purposes of sport and later for sinister designs, were often badly beaten in the streets or even cut with knives. The offenders were not punished and if the Negroes defended themselves they were usually severely penalized. In 1819 three white women stoned a woman of ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... experienced river men as pilots, with picked crews, and protected by the big guns at Fort Gray, 600 men, with two pieces of light artillery, in thirteen boats, in the grim darkness of the morning of the 13th—a sinister coincidence—drew up in silence on the wharf. They comprised the first detachment of 850 regulars and 300 militia, the advance attacking party—"the flower of Wadsworth's army"—embarked to "carry the Heights of Queenston and appal ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... In the place where the breach was opened by his cannon he ordered the placing of a marble panel bearing his arms; and there it is to be seen to this day: Dexter, the sable bars of the House of Lenzol; Sinister, the Borgia bull in chief, and the lilies of France; and, superimposed, an ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... of the Anathematisms; one against Andrew of Samosata, and other Oriental prelates, who through mistake were offended at them; and the other, against Theodoret of Cyr. And lastly, An Apologetic for them to the emperor Theodosius, to remove some sinister suspicions which his enemies had endeavored to give that prince against his ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... companion-way to tell him, with the pride of a discoverer, that France was broad in sight, and the sun was shining on it. "Oh!" exclaimed my mother, looking up from her, pale discomfortableness on a sofa, with that radiant smile of hers, and addressing poor Miss Shepard, who was still further under the sinister influence of those historic alpine fluctuations which have upset so many. "Oh, Ada, Julian says the sun is shining on France!" Ada never stirred. She was the most amiable and philosophic of young ladies; but ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Those sinister little squares of red paper with the Chinese characters, one of which had been found in Thornton Lyne's pocket? The explanation of their presence in Thornton Lyne's desk was simple. He had been a globetrotter and had collected ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... nightmare; but a sane corrective to the ostrich policy of those who had sown the evil seed and were trying to say of the fruit—'It is not.' Letters from Dyan, and spasmodic devouring of newspapers, kept him alive to the sinister activities of the larger world outside. News from Bombay grew steadily more disquieting:—strikes and riots, fomented by agitators, who lied shamelessly about the nature of the new Bills—; hostile crowds and insults to Englishwomen. Dyan more than hinted ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... showery, with occasional drenching plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in the sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting the forest of Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, drooping its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full of hardy and innocuous living things, where there ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at Clem's arm and drew him back into the hall. For the moment terror overcame her—terror of something sinister within—of their grandfather sitting there like Giant Pope in the story, waiting to catch them. She hurried Clem along to the kitchen-passage, which opened out of the hall at right angles to the ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... veranda, one was immediately swallowed in the chaos of hurtling drift, the darkness sinister and menacing. The ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... securely bind the hands of Phil and Dick firmly behind their backs, and this operation was at once so effectually performed that anything in the nature of escape by simply breaking away and running for one's life was rendered impossible, quite apart from the sinister and significant order to shoot which had been given to the soldiers. A quarter of an hour later the entire party were on the move, and the two Englishmen had the mortification of finding themselves marched back along the road by which they ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... acknowledge him in your presence, and therefore virtually in the presence of His Holiness. I thus help to remove the stigma I myself set on his name. Plainly speaking, Monsignor, we men have no right whatever to launch human beings into the world with the 'bar sinister' branded upon them. We have no right, if we follow Christ, to do anything that may injure or cause trouble to any other creature. We have no right to be hasty in our judgment, ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... Manchester. But Constance conjectured that Gerald Scales was dead—or Sophia would never have returned so soon. Then the doctor suggested that on the contrary Gerald Scales might be out of danger. And all then pictured to themselves this troubling Gerald Scales, this dark and sinister husband that had caused such a ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... humility, this holding of ourselves lightly and yet ready for an infinity of unmerited triumphs, this secret is so simple that every one has supposed that it must be something quite sinister and mysterious. Humility is so practical a virtue that men think it must be a vice. Humility is so successful that it is mistaken for pride. It is mistaken for it all the more easily because it generally goes with a certain simple love of splendour which amounts to vanity. Humility ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... extraordinary vessel. But the science of our new life must be to forget or to remember. We must live in the past or forego the past. For Pan and his likes I conceive that it will largely resolve itself into a question of temperature—of temperature and of appetite. That orb is of a sinister appearance, but to do it justice it looks heated. My sister had a passion for coldness; she would never permit me to lend her any of my warmth. I cannot say that it is chilly here ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... formed, he voted publicly or secretly? Most of the followers of Bentham advocated secrecy. Since men acted in accordance with their ideas of pleasure and pain, and since landlords and employers were able, in spite of any laws against intimidation, to bring 'sinister' motives to bear upon voters whose votes were known, the advisability of secret voting seemed to follow as a corollary from utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill, however, whose whole philosophical life consisted of a slowly developing revolt of feeling against the utilitarian ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... and the common interests and the deep sympathy—it is screaming! Almost worth the price I pay, for the sake of the rattling good joke! And by this grave! Great heavens, how humourous is destiny!" He leant his arms on the tomb-stone and laughed on softly, his big form shaking, his strange sinister face appearing over the stone, irradiated with merriment. In the dusk, among the graves, the grinning face looked like that of some mocking demon, some gargoyle come to life, to cast a spell ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... started down the trail. A heavy wind was blowing, and the night air was cold and penetrating. In a few minutes we met a half-breed Mexican, who, accosting us at once, urged us to go no further. His manner was somewhat sinister and disagreeable. He warned us that, if we attempted to make the descent in the darkness, we would at least lame our animals. He asserted that our comrades were fully three leagues ahead when he had met them, and that we would never overtake them. He also hinted darkly as to other ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... tragedian stood enframed upon her desk. Any one may possess the portrait of a tragedian without exciting suspicion or comment. (This was a sinister reflection which she cherished.) In the presence of others she expressed admiration for his exalted gifts, as she handed the photograph around and dwelt upon the fidelity of the likeness. When alone she sometimes picked it up and ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... wot I'd work my 'ead orf to please any gentleman that is a gentleman; and when you've eaten one of my dinners, sir, you won't want nobody else to cook and do for you no more." And though Ted had pointed out to her the sinister ambiguity of this formula, she had ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Serpent is a sinister birth of time, The likeness of the light 'twould fain take on, But 'tis engendered from the poisonous slime Of hate, and greed, and darkness. Though it don Apollo's guise, 'tis but Apollyon. To shackle, poison, palsy is its aim. Venom and violence never ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... the table at him. She could hardly believe that this old friend with whom she had gone through the perils of the night and with whom she was now about to feast was the sinister figure that had cast a shadow on her childhood. He looked positively incapable of pulling a little girl's hair—as ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... they could be forged. Besides, were there not many American radicals, soldiers of fortune, here assisting in the attempt to overthrow their rule. He should go to prison at once, and "To-morrow!" There was something so sinister about the way they said that "to-morrow" that it sent the cold chills racing down ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... is inhabited by Polish Jews, and a filthy, greasy, nauseating set they are, both men and women. The men wear two or three long, oily, tight curls in front of their ears. Their noses are hooked like a parrot's. Their countenances are sinister, and I believe they have not washed since the Flood. The women, when they marry, shave their heads. Then they either wear huge wigs, which they use to wipe their hands on without the ceremony of ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... coast. They still, however, kept their course to the northward; though greatly delayed by cross winds, and by the frequent interruptions occasioned by the necessity of searching for food on shore, and constantly struggling with a series of the most sinister events. At length, about the end of January, 1742, having made three unsuccessful attempts to double a head-land, which they supposed to be that called Cape Tres Montes by the Spaniards, and finding the difficulty insurmountable, they unanimously resolved to return ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... writers boldly asserted that all the disorders of the world originated with the devil and his sinister companions, because they were stirred with the unholy desire to obtain associates in their miseries. It was impossible to fix a limit to the number of these malevolent spirits constantly provoking diseases and infirmities upon men. They were alleged to surround mankind so densely that ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... blew now hot and dry, now cool and damp. By about ten o'clock a large part of the sky was lined with heavy clouds, shading from ashen-grey into iron-colour and perfect black; at times this sooty mass, seeking an outlet upon the earth, burst asunder, revealing a sinister light through the crevices. Then again the clouds lowered themselves and drowned the tops of the forest trees in mists. But a hot wind soon drove them upwards again and tore strips off them, so that they ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... in number, and warlike in their nature. They fight not, because they have been managed with wisdom and humanity. There is no corruption among the accredited officials; there is no sinister dealing towards them by the government." We do not charge our officials with corruption, neither do we believe that their administration has been feeble;—on the whole our attitude towards the Indian people has been fair; our policy has revealed ordinary ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... butts—from the soft-hearted and, at the time, unpardonably hirsute Colonel Sibthorpe, to Sir R. Temple and Mr. McNeill, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Roebuck, Edwin James, ex-Q.C. (who was disbarred for corruption and set up in New York, joining, as Punch put it, the "bar sinister"), Madame Rachel (the "beautiful for ever" enameller, who had not yet been convicted), Colonel North, Sir Francis Baring, Cox of Finsbury, Wiscount Williams of Lambeth, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the sword, and what wrinkles the reader may imagine. In default of portraits, that is all I have been able to piece together, and perhaps even the baldness should be taken as a figure of his destitution. A sinister dog, in all likelihood, but with a look in his eye, and the loose flexile mouth that goes with wit and an overweening sensual temperament. Certainly the sorriest figure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which they were dancing; not, however, with the air of an equal, but that of a superior, come to grace with her presence the festival of her dependants. The old man and woman attended, with looks as sinister as hers were lovely, like two of the worst winter months waiting upon ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott |
