"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and when he and his native friends found that they could not induce Mr. Wright to further weaken his ship's company by sending another boat's crew on shore, so that the Union might the more easily be captured, she was ordered under the most awful threats to act as decoy. Resolved to upset their diabolical plan, or die in the attempt, she gave an apparently cheerful assent to the meditated scheme of murder, and hence her appearance in the canoe ...
— The Adventure Of Elizabeth Morey, of New York - 1901 • Louis Becke
... episcopal charge Mgr. Meurin had special facilities for ascertaining how men diabolise; the island of Mauritius has enjoyed many privileges of Infernus. There we lose sight of the Rosicrucians on the road to India; there the Comte de Chazal initiated Dr Bacstrom, and all this, of course, is diabolical from the standpoint of Anti-Masonry. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that Mgr. Meurin, in a series of wonderful conferences, has exhibited the superstitions of Mauritius, and, accepting the test of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... over to the same breeze and the two separated. At first the one-eyed pirate jumped up with an oath and fired a pistol shot at the Englishman, but missed him. Then he seemed to change his mind and shouted in bad English, with a diabolical laugh—'Swim away; swim hard, p'raps you kitch 'im up!' Of course the two junks were soon out of sight o' the poor swimmer—and that was the end of him, for, of course, he must have ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Davis was privy to the diabolical plot, but think it the emanation of a set of young men of the South, who are very devils. I want to throw upon the South the care of this class of men, who will soon be as obnoxious to their industrial ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... His descriptive powers were wonderful. Anybody with the least touch of imagination could bring before "his mind's eye" the infernal revel that the artist was depicting. The enchantments of the witches were visible. You could hear their diabolical songs, you could fancy their mad and wild dances; while, when the cock crew (imitated by the way in a most astonishing manner), you would feel that there was a rushing of bodies through the air, which were scattering in all directions. Then the lovely melody succeeding—descriptive ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... suspicions, the mother would not allow me to return even for my effects, which I have not seen from that day to this. It turned out that I was only one of about forty girls who had been engaged by that diabolical woman to fill 'positions as companions.' I am very thankful that 'the way of escape' had been made for me, and though feeling badly about losing my belongings, I agreed with my friends that it were better to avoid notoriety than to create ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... debased. Cunning meant knowing, artful meant well acquainted with one's art, crafty meant proficient in one's craft or calling, wizard meant wise man. The present import of these words shows how men have assumed that mental superiority must be yoked with moral dereliction or diabolical aid. Words indicating the generality—indicating ordinary rank or popular affiliations—have in many instances suffered the same decline. Trivial meant three ways; it was what might be heard at the crossroads or ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... equally with the angel, in the human form. (That an angel is in a complete human form may be seen above, n. 73-77.) When, however, the internal of man is not open above but only beneath, it is still, after it has been loosed from the body, in a human form, but a horrible and diabolical form, for it is able only to look downwards towards hell, and not ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... cunning permitted him to invent a thousand diabolical tricks to add to the burdens ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Administration, as he hated every other policy it had executed; and the knowledge that he had sacrificed his personal feelings to save his country from discord, made him feel a far better man than the Secretary of the Treasury, who had a diabolical talent for getting his own way. He had some reason to be pleased with his conduct, and with his share in contributing to a series of measures which later on won for the Cabinet at that crucial period the encomiums of history; and when time had abated ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... traitor, the Judas, to betray me with a kiss! Dan, I never want to look on your face again. You knew I would spend every dollar I had on those pirates when I couldn't afford to spend anything; and yet you let me do it; you aided and abetted their diabolical plan, and you even got me to get up that damned speech to make the thing still ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe were in motion. Looking more closely he became convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's breast had scintillated actual flames, and threw a flickering gleam upon the ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lived in Ludgvan, was executed at Bodmin for the murder of her husband. There was but little doubt that she had been urged on to the diabolical deed by a horse-dealer, known as Yorkshire Jack, with whom, for a long period, she was generally supposed to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... matter is this," said he. "In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville—that ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... mariner, there is a superstitious horror connected with the name of Pirate; and there are few subjects that interest and excite the curiosity of mankind generally, more than the desperate exploits, foul doings, and diabolical career of these monsters in human form. A piratical crew is generally formed of the desperadoes and runagates of every clime and nation. The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation, when not cruising on the ocean, the great highway of nations, selects ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... plans the more carefully for his warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally divided. Radisson ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... the bird under the eye of the basilisk, involuntarily, though with a perfect consciousness of his awful situation, and the fearful fate which awaited him, every moment drew nearer and nearer to him. The victim reached the chapel door—he felt all the power of that diabolical fascination—another step and he would be in the grasp of the fiend who grinned to clutch him. But the fair boy who spoke from the grave suddenly appeared once more, and, flinging himself between the wretched Count and the ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous
... involuntarily burst out, with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the arch of the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... may never have it. 'Tis an infernal disease," says my lord, "and its twinges are diabolical. Ah!" and he made a dreadful wry face, as if he just felt ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Shepton Mallet was shaken to its foundations by a tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or village ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin, but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur (bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit, and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... aim is to torture me, for relinquishing a beloved object, whom you are, at this moment, attaching to yourself;—to know, that a diabolical disposition, for which I cannot account, prompts you to come here, without the probability of benefiting any party, to injure me, and throw a whole family into confusion, on the eve of a marriage. But, in tearing myself from the poor, wronged, Mary, I almost tear my ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... very little for ancestral crazes. Latin they have heard of, and some of them know it as a good sort of industrious language, that even, in modern times, has turned out many useful books, astronomical, medical, philosophical, and (as Mrs. Malaprop observes) diabolical; but, as to Greek, they think of it as of an ancient mummy: you spend an infinity of time in unswathing it from its old dusty wrappers, and, when you have come to the end, what do you find for your pains? A woman's face, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... sentimental fool. Then they came to terms with her. Truxton King owed his life to this strange girl who knew him not at all, but who believed in him. He suffered intensely in the discovery that she was, in the end, to lend herself to the commission of the most heartless and diabolical of crimes—the destruction of that innocent, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "By the most diabolical arts he obtained an interview with the Dauphine, in which he regained her confidence. He made her believe that he had been commissioned by her mother, as she had shown so little interest for the house of Austria, to settle a marriage ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Letters addressed to bogus firms were indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as "fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters were decapitated. Such petty measures of warfare served merely to annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the contrivance of new devices. Since the law of 1872 went into effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a thorny road. Scores of arrests have been made, and in many cases the criminals have been sentenced to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... can forgive any expression of feeling on your part, young man, when that dreadful and disgraceful deed is brought to your memory. It was a stain that can never be effaced—a deed most diabolical, and what we thought would call down the vengeance of Heaven. If prayers could avert, or did avert it, they were not wanting ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... wait upon us. Uncle Parker, who brought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. His face was ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretched over taut sinews, like a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled with every muscle of his head. His nuts must be counted every day, or he would deceive us in the tale; they must be daily examined, or some would prove to ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, like many other personages of special sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that the enraged hearers proceeded to violence against those whom the preacher had denounced. A sermon which Bernardino once preached in Rome (1424) had another consequence besides a bonfire of vanities on the Capitol: 'After this,' we read, 'the witch Finicella was burnt, because by her diabolical arts she had killed many children and bewitched many other persons; and all Rome went to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... ideas"—that, consequently, against which the GERMAN mind rose up with profound disgust—is of English origin, there is no doubt about it. The French were only the apes and actors of these ideas, their best soldiers, and likewise, alas! their first and profoundest VICTIMS; for owing to the diabolical Anglomania of "modern ideas," the AME FRANCAIS has in the end become so thin and emaciated, that at present one recalls its sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its profound, passionate strength, its inventive excellency, almost with disbelief. ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... plant; they have a period of vigorous youthful growth, of old age, of decay, and of death. In form, in color, in texture, and in cell structure, they imitate so closely the cell structures of organic growth as to suggest something uncanny or diabolical. And yet the author of them does not claim that they are alive. They are not edible, they contain no protoplasm—no starch or sugar or peptone or fats or carbohydrates. These chemical creations by Dr. Leduc are still dead matter—dead ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... Chelicothe, to go on the expedition, in order to destroy us, and entirely depopulate the country. Their savage minds were inflamed to mischief by two abandoned men, Captains McKee and Girty. These led them to execute every diabolical scheme; and, on the fifteenth day of August, commanded a party of Indians and Canadians, of about five hundred in number, against Briant's station, five miles from Lexington. Without demanding a surrender, they furiously assaulted the garrison, which was happily ...
— The Adventures of Colonel Daniel Boone • John Filson
... Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds, "they must be sent home satisfied at any cost." Such were the pains taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the small-pox; and the savages caught the disease, which ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... triumph, a feat of character!' Lee Fu used to say, as we compared notes on the case from time to time. 'I think that he has not been guilty of a single minor error. His correctness is diabolical. It presages disaster, like too much fair weather in the typhoon season. Mark my word, Captain, when the major error comes it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rather less, was arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner of her father's garden, with the view of meeting Tim's intended victim. Midway between husband and wife was the diabolical trap, silent, open, ready. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... portion of the country, and only the chiefs of the tribe, which had just gained a victory over its enemies, took part in the feast. A blazing fire threw its bright glare on a dozen figures seated around huge banana-leaves, on which were spread the smoking viands of the diabolical repast. A disgusting odor was wafted toward the spot where our Frenchman and his companions lay perdu, enchained by a horrible fascination which produced the sensation of nightmare. Directly in front of them was an old chief with long white beard ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... the whole Seniorum Conventus sat in solemn committee upon this war-worn nose, and decided that its owner need fight no more. But he was not only brave; he possessed the invention of Prometheus, combined with the diabolical sense of humour which so much distinguished the late Mephistopheles. He offered to go on fighting if he might be allowed an iron nose. Goetz of Berliehingen, he said, had won battles with an iron hand, and the case was analogous. The proposition was put to the vote ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... these, and you will find abundant cases in which "mystical ideas" are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. In delusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it, we may have a DIABOLICAL mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. The same sense of ineffable importance in the smallest events, the same texts and words coming with new meanings, the same voices and visions and leadings and missions, the same controlling by extraneous powers; only this time the emotion ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... turned away for a moment and stooped down. The trick has been done often enough upon the stage, often in less time, but seldom with more effect. The wonderful wig disappeared, the spectacles, the lines in the face, the make-up of diabolical cleverness. With his back to the wall and his fingers playing with something in his pocket, Peter, Baron de ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pamphlet he declared his conviction that the chief effect of the Brethren's religion was to fill the mind with absurd ideas about the Side-Wound of Christ, and rivers and seas of blood; and, therefore, he earnestly besought all Methodists who had joined the Church of the Brethren to quit their diabolical delusions, to flee from the borders of Sodom, and to leave these Brethren, loved the darkness and rejected the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... more desperate sort of Voltaire utterances,—VIE PRIVEE treating it as known fact; Letters to Denis in occasional paroxysms, as rumor of detestable nature, probably true of one who is so detestable, at least so formidable, to a guilty sinner his Guest. Others, not to be called diabolical, as Herr Dr. Busching, for example, speak of it as a thing credible; as good as known to the well-informed. And, beyond the least question, there did a thrice-abominable rumor of that kind run, whispering audibly, over all the world; and gain belief from those who had appetite. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... greed carried murder and torture through a large section of Africa, and yet was received in every court, and was eventually buried after a panegyric from a Cardinal of the Roman Church—a church which had never once raised her voice against his diabolical career. Consider the similar crimes in the Putumayo, where British capitalists, if not guilty of outrage, can at least not be acquitted of having condoned it by their lethargy and trust in local agents. ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... an ass; whatever may have been the original offense, this would be the one most remembered in your punishment, I don't think it would be possible to believe any thing good of one who had given you this appellation; on the contrary, the reputed long ears would be worse than the famous 'diabolical trumpet' for collecting and distorting the merest whispers of evil against him who planted them, or discovered them peeping through the assumed lion's skin. Apollo's music probably sounded no sweeter to Midas after ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... found the bushes which had been cut down were nicely placed at each end of the path in an upright position, so as to conceal it from the eyes of the passer. For a long time the mulatto reflected upon the conversation he had heard, and considered the means of defeating the diabolical plot. Against a band of ruffians, such as Vernon would enlist for the service, he could not contend single-handed. To remove his mistress from the island, while Henry Carroll lay helpless there, would not be an acceptable proposition to ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... themselves: "Truth (love) will set you free." These words, which identify truth with love, contain in themselves the profoundest social and personal morality. They inspired the first martyrs of Christianity; but in time they were forgotten by the Church. Succumbing to the "diabolical seduction of power," religion itself became a power, an autocracy; people submitted to this power, and thus the Byzantine and Russian orthodoxy came into existence. In this manner, the morals of the government, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, who took part with Edward the Fourth, but afterward "falling off," and endeavoring for the restoration of King Henry the Sixth, was seized on, and tried for his life at Salisbury, before that diabolical tyrant, crook-back Duke of Gloucester, afterward Richard the Third, where he had judgment of the death of a traitor, and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... panting, smiled a diabolical smile, and pulling out his repeater (which he had taken as a perquisite from the body of a member of Parliament), said, 'I suppose you ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... magic-lantern screen—vieux jeu enough at this time of day. A young newspaper man, too, had made mental notes of our adjectives, for use in his weekly (I nearly spelt it "weakly") half-column of Art Criticism; and—and here was Andriaovsky, grinning at the chairs, and mimicking it all with diabolical glee. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... guilty. Fantomas, after blinding him with pepper, had changed back into his uniform and escaped with the diamond. But what was Lady Beltham doing there known to the Hesse-Weimar people as the Grand Duchess Alexandra? What new and diabolical projects were on foot to bring the monster and his mistress together in this honest, bourgeois court ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... wanted to know. Besides," the man smiled his diabolical grin again, "there was a reason for going light on the details. At the time I held you up I hadn't any more idea than you had where John Massey was, nor whether he was even alive. It was the weak spot in my armor. But you were so panic stricken at the thought of having to ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... scalded, and drowned by the bursting of torpedoes from submarines, of men falling out of the sky from shattered aeroplanes, of women and children in Antwerp or Paris mutilated frightfully or torn to ribbons by aerial bombs, of men smashed and buried alive by shells. An indiscriminate, diabolical violence of explosives resulting in cruelties for the most part ineffective from the military point of view is the incessant ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... be the only one I dare offer to a beautiful young widow," said Thugut, with a diabolical smile. "A husband who will bestow upon you a distinguished name, who will strengthen your position at court, and who will one day bequeath to you a ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Uncle Joshua was not prepared for the change in his daughter. He did not even think of her as he saw her last, wasted by sickness, but in imagination he beheld her as she was in her days of health and dazzling beauty, when with diabolical cunning she had brought Dr. Lacey to her feet. Now, however, her face was thin, white and haggard, for such a life as she had lived had never conduced to the beauty and health of any one. Her eyes, sunken in their sockets, and swollen with recent ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... his exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he had ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... justice, which I trust many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of the two words, to gratify his diabolical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... her husband's sober words; now there was young Jeffery Latham at her elbow—he had been almost shot to pieces in France—now there was Simec, the genius of diabolical achievement.... What were things coming to? Even the weather had gone wrong. Outside, an unseasonable cold rain, lashed by a northeast gale, was driving against the panes of the French windows, and the sizzling effulgence of an arc-lamp ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... skill and power came in: they suggested so abominably, leaving most to the imagination. To find such significance in a bourgeois villa garden, and to interpret it with such delicate yet legible certainty, was a kind of symbolism that was sinister, even diabolical. The delicacy was her own, but the point of ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... but that. Why, three years ago that man was as poor and desperate as the most wretched outcast who walks the streets of London to-night. And one thing you may be certain of—wherever you dine from now to your dying day, you will be under the roof of no more diabolical scoundrel than the creature ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... are the gentleman you would be thought, you will not refuse satisfaction for the diabolical calumnies you have so unprovokedly circulated against ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... could an educated priest, or an intelligent woman, condescend to such diabolical impositions? I think it is something after the way that a man gets to be a drunkard; he may not like the taste thereof at first, but afterwards he will smack his lips and say, 'there is nothing like whiskey,' and as their food becomes ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... you for a friend than an enemy," cried Minoret, frightened at the atrocious grin which gave to Goupil's face the diabolical expression of the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... and a pair of horses as leaders. Two Kaffirs acted as charioteers, and kept up an incessant jabber in Dutch. The one who held the reins looked good-natured enough, but the other, whose duty it was to wield the enormously long whip, had a most diabolical cast of countenance, in which cruelty and doggedness were both clearly depicted. We found his face a true indication of his character before the end of the day. Bumping gaily along, we soon left the well-built houses behind, and after passing the Malay quarter of the town, remarkable ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... the terrible velocity of his course. His advance could only be compared to the galloping of several horses—to the rushing noise of some frightful monster—or, I might almost say, of some furious and diabolical being. Down he came like an avalanche; and at this moment, I confess, I experienced such lively emotions that my heart beat with extraordinary rapidity. Was it not death—aye, and frightful death—that was perhaps approaching me? Suddenly the buffalo made his appearance. He stopped for an instant; ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... mothers do it! It seems to me that there's nothing too fiendish or diabolical for these people to do. Why, in some of the islands they have an institution called the Areoi, and the persons connected with that body are ready for any wickedness that mortal man can devise. In fact they stick ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... which gave a look of indescribable ghastliness to the mutilated forms they bent over to examine. To my last day I shall remember, with unfading horror, the aspect of those remnants of mortality, in all the hideousness stamped upon them by the unnamable atrocities practised during that diabolical orgy of murder and mutilation, rape, lust, and rapine. This is war! Away, in the splendid pavilion of the vanquished, the conquering marshal, surrounded by his generals and officers, was installed ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Manners') were what can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a threat, that 'their next meeting should be a different one,' and that then 'he would not ask for Mr. Lascelles' hand, but take it.' The diabolical character of determined and premeditated vindictiveness thus given to an otherwise unaccountable outrage upon his victim, goes far to take away the feeling of pity which we should otherwise have felt for the murderer, regarding him as under the maddening influences of disappointed ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... he ever be found after one of his raids. They were plotted and followed out with diabolical accuracy and thoroughness. He struck, looted, and vanished. And wasn't seen again until ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... together with the tone of the orator and the position in which he found himself, allowed me to guess what was afoot, and I can promise you that I felt very crestfallen at having, although unwittingly, furthered the plans of this diabolical Hungarian. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... among the victims—in short, all of them, his fellow-servant, Chico, excepted. Should the diabolical plan prove a success, not one of them can escape ruin, and most of them ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... as among the best attested and most striking examples of the historical exercise of the mystic powers. The able and bigoted sceptics, who prosecuted this day in the interests of science, insisted, with equal inconsistency and equal skill, on the innumerable recorded and attested instances of some diabolical power possessed by certain supposed members of a detested and malignant sect. A year ago the judges would probably have sided unanimously with the former. But the feeling that animated the conspiracy, if it should be so called, against ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... purpose of exorcising his sister and of ascertaining whether she was truly possessed of an unclean spirit. The novelty of this mystery attracted the whole of my attention. All the inmates of the house appeared to me either mad or stupid, for I could not, for the life of me, imagine that diabolical spirits were dwelling in Bettina's body. When we drew near her bed, her breathing had, to all appearance, stopped, and the exorcisms of her brother did not restore it. Doctor Olivo happened to come in at that moment, and inquired whether he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... him when he made his great discovery. It may have been so. But the story, slenderly rooted in itself, has no support. Spain was the claimant, and, so far as the bold and repeated attempt of the Huguenots to contest her claims in Florida was thwarted by a diabolical, yet not unavenged ruthlessness of resistance, Spain made good her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... tailor's son under his care we have a dervish who in good faith takes charge of the son of a poor widow who had nursed him through a severe illness. The cave scene is very similar in both, only the magician performs diabolical incantations, while the dervish practices "white magic" and prays to Allah for assistance. The twelve-branched candlestick takes the place of the Wonderful Lamp. Like Aladdin, young Abdallah is shut in the cavern, though not because he refused to give up the candlestick until he was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... and generous character, frank and gay, Father Griffen was mischievously hostile and mocking where women were concerned. He was continually making jests upon the daughters of Eve; these temptresses, these diabolical allies of the Serpent. In justice to Father Griffen, we must say that he showed in his railleries, otherwise without malice, a little rancor and contempt; he jested lightly on the subject of a happiness that he regretted not being able to desire; for, in spite of the extreme ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... made no discoveries that will help us much, I have learned just enough to understand that there is a diabolical plot on foot." ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... disappear. We will then live for a little time; and our loves, our disciplines, and our victories alike will be only delusions soon to be mercifully ended by death. Possibly that is true; but, if it is true, then this universe is the embodiment of the most dismal, desolate, and diabolical thought that it is possible for a human being to conceive. On the spiritual hypothesis all experiences are intended for the perfection of the soul. Bodily limitations, physical sufferings, animal solicitations, may all be ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... and the fruit hung dried up on the singed black trees. Many a poor mother fled, her naked baby in her arms, behind the still smoking walls of her cottage; but also there the soldiers followed her, and when they found her, she served as new nourishment to their diabolical enjoyments; demons could not possibly have done worse things than these soldiers! The prince was of opinion that all this was right, and that it was only the natural course which things ought to take. His power increased day by day, his name was feared by all, and fortune ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... about. It would seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer's afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... is eager to give you his name and loving protection. He will take you far away from war's rude alarms, with its attendant and horrible perils. We have no common foe to deal with, but monsters animated by unquenchable hatred and a diabolical spirit. I should betray my trust and be recreant to my duty did I not avail myself of the one avenue of safety still open to you. See, your cousin's brave men are mounted, armed, and ready to act as your escort. Dr. Williams is here to perform ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the bottom, with a diabolical chuckle. "I think you observed just now that I looked a fool last night! perhaps you will not mind trying how ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... down the knoll and along the beach toward the hotel. Googoo followed her, turning occasionally to cast diabolical glances at the Speranza ankles. Albert gazed until the graceful figure in the trim sport costume disappeared behind the corner of the point of the beach. Just at the point she paused to wave to him. He waved ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... had been so dug with such a regard for the slopes of the ground that in some places a triple line of fire was secured. His artillery, consisting of several heavy pieces and a number of machine guns (including one of the diabolical 'pompoms'), was cleverly placed upon the further side of the stream, and was not only provided with shelter pits but had rows of reserve pits, so that the guns could be readily shifted when their range was found. Rows of trenches, a broadish river, fresh rows of ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Burgundy's features were naturally harsh and severe; and when he attempted to smile, in polite acquiescence to the truth of what the King told him, the grimace which he made was truly diabolical. ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... could not silence me, a diabolical attempt was made to bury me alive in an institution for the insane, but when it was found impossible to discover the slightest trace of insanity, or drive me insane during a sojourn of a month among maniacs, ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel
... quarter stretch: Sir Archy is bounding, like some diabolical monster, far before his companions, spite of his owner's cries; the Arabian has come up and locks the mare; they run neck and neck. Sir Archy whirls past the stand, and wins by a hundred yards. The immense crowd utters a shout that shakes the surrounding forest. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... drama, whose function is to observe the course of the action, and to make good-humored sarcasms upon the conduct and motives of the other characters. It was here that Ricker employed his blue pencil the most freely, and struck out passages of almost diabolical persiflage, and touched the colors of the black pessimism with a few rays of hope. The final summing up, again, was adapted from a drama that had been rejected by several purveyors of the leg-burlesque ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... American, is he?" added Thomas, with a diabolical sneer. "A Yankee Doodle! Never mind; we'll take ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... for his injustice and wickedness, for "great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings." ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... timber which faced it; when his pursuers were safely disposed of on board the barge, one cut of a sharp knife had sent them adrift by the stern, while the forward rope, released of any strain, had probably uncoiled itself from a stanchion with the diabolical ingenuity which inanimate objects can ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... systems, laughed at all laws, mocked at all the Vidocqs, and Dupins, and Sherlock Holmeses, whether amateur or professional, French or English, German or American, that ever had been or ever could be pitted against him, and who, for sheer devilry, for diabolical ingenuity and for colossal impudence, as well as for a nature-bestowed power that was simply amazing, had not his ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... him, and after almost assuring herself that he has really ceased to love her (which, in the real language of love, means that he has never loved her at all), devises a further, a very clever, but a rather diabolical system of last proof, involving vengeance if it fails. She has known, in exercises of charity (the femme du monde has seldom quite abandoned these), a mother and daughter who, having lost their means, have taken to a questionable, or rather a very unquestionable manner of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... This I know, that at six years old the foundation of a truly scriptural protest was laid in my character; and to this hour it is my prayer that whenever the Lord calls me hence, he may find his servant not only watching but working against the diabolical iniquity that filled the Lollard's pit with the ashes ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... passed before her sleepy eyes. She thought that she was walking about the field exploring, and came upon a great big kitchen, a wonderful kitchen like in castles, and there were a number of little dwarfs of the most diabolical shapes, sitting around a big table before a blazing fire; some of them were breaking eggs, others were beating them up until they were white and frothy; and some of these eggs were as large as melons and others ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... becomes a pleasure, as when a highwayman, after having killed men because they resist, or because he fears their vengeance, finally grows cruel and takes pleasure in killing them, and even in making them suffer beforehand. Such a degree of wickedness is taken to be diabolical, even though the man affected with it finds in this execrable indulgence a stronger reason for his homicides than he had when he killed simply under the influence of hope or of fear. I have also observed in answering the difficulties ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... soon could he have turned his shady side towards the sun. And she was very ready and eager to credit him with generous qualities. We of his club and circle, a little assisted perhaps by Max Beerbohm's diabolical index finger, may have found and been not unwilling to find his face chiefly expressive of a kind of empty alertness; but when it was turned to her its quite pleasantly modelled features glowed and it ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... contemptuousness of self-conceit and puffy disdain, which John Bull visits on all "un-English" things, especially when they happen under their unfortunate aspects. In not a few of these same comments there was a tone of exultation, malignant and almost diabolical, as at the discomfiture of a hated and dangerous rival. We have read at least three English newspapers for each week that has passed since our troubles began; we have been readers of these papers for a score ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... lived upon the main land. He said that much people grew up around him, men who lived by hunting and fishing, while their women planted the corn, and beans, and pumpkins. They had powwows, he said, who dressed themselves in a strange dress, muttered diabolical words, and frightened the Indians till they gave them half their wampum. Our fathers knew by this, that they were their ancestors, who were always led by the priests—the more fools they! Once upon a time, Moshup said, a great bird whose wings were the flight of an arrow wide, whose ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... mean advantage of a heroine in distress, on which occasions said heroine (of Adelphi Drama) will request him to "unhand her," or to "stand aside and let her pass;" whereupon the dastardly ruffian retaliates with a diabolical sneer of fiendish malice, his eyes ablaze with passion, as, making his melodramatic exit at the O.P. wing, he growls, "Aha! a day will come!" or "She must and shall be mine!" or, if not making his exit, but remaining in centre of stage to assist in forming a picture, he ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... a joyous, a diabolical idea struck her, and she went herself to the telephone, and genteelly wiped the place where Withers had probably ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... are very dull though very various. You may smoke, you may doze, you may go to the Italian comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former. This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is generally a magician, and in consequence of his diabolical art performs a thousand tricks on the rest of the persons of the drama, who are all fools. I have seen the pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his sword he touches the glass from which another was drinking. 'Twas not his face they laughed at, for that ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... religious man. At the end of the story he observed gravely, "The belief in diabolical personalities is not to be ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... "There are diabolical effluvia in the storm, and in weather when the air stirs like the vapours from a furnace, rousing evil instincts and bringing about us the raging swarm ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... made up my mind. There could be no longer any doubt of the diabolical treachery of Kabba Rega. He had only endeavoured to gain time by specious assurances of good-will, combined with presents, in order to organize the whole country against us. The natives who shot arrows must have come from Magungo, as none of the other districts were armed with bows. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... men to death, engaged in intrigues and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of the movements of Union troops, to convey it to the enemy, and in every manifestation of malice, petty spite and diabolical hatred against the flag under which they had been reared, and its defenders, they attained a bad pre-eminence over the evil spirits of their sex since the world began. It is true that these were not the characteristics of all Southern, disloyal women, but they were sufficiently common to make ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... Cranstoun made an assignation with Miss Blandy to meet her in the grounds of Park Place, which had long been their trysting-place; and here it was that in a walk which still goes by the name of 'Blandy's Walk,' he first broached his diabolical plan." Park Place, according to the same authority, had shortly before been purchased by General Conway and Lady Ailesbury from Mr. Blandy, as "trustee" ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... state of rebellion. Nothing but the express orders of Fray Ignatius, to remain where she was, prevented her leaving the Worths; for the freedom so suddenly given to Isabel had filled her with indignation. She was longing to be in some house where she could give adequate expression to the diabolical temper she ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? From her shoulders the dark fur flows. But her lips are already reddening and her cheeks begin to take color. Two diabolical green rays out of her eyes fall upon me, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... the vast body and mass of the Order simply held the relation of probationary membership, until they were rendered competent through the educational capacity of the society, to advance into full fellowship with its diabolical design. A glance at this organization will suffice to show the shrewdness of the transient and local agents of the Confederacy, in their formation of an Order, having for its mission the attainment of so many incidental objects, without in ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... the existence of spirits—is intensely aware,—but refuses to pay any attention if she wise. Some of these spirits are very subtle, very knowing; some are full of flattery, and very persistent; others present themselves as still in human form, and seek to terrify with their terrible faces, some diabolical, some appearing to be in a great agony and undergoing changes more astonishing and horrible than can be even imagined before experienced—and melting only to be re-formed into that which is yet more fearful. Have nothing whatever ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley |
