"Fiendish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The policy of Henry was "to reduce that realm to the knowledge of God and obedience of Us." The policy of Elizabeth was to pray that God might "call them to the knowledge of his truth and to a civil polity," and to assist the Almighty by the most fiendish means to accomplish these ends. The government of the island was a crime, and yet for this crime some considerations must be urged in extenuation. England then regarded the Irish much as the Americans have seemed to regard the Indians, as savages to be killed and driven off ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... queen has given birth to a son, and joy is in the land. Here is the letter I bear to the king.' The wicked Donegild said, 'You must be already tired; here are refreshments.' And while the simple man drank ale and wine, she forged a letter, saying that the queen had been delivered of a creature so fiendish and horrible that no one in the castle could bear to look upon it. This letter the messenger gave to the king; and who can tell his grief! But he wrote in reply, 'Welcome be the child that Christ sends! Welcome, O Lord, be thy pleasure! Be careful ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... "Here!" she replies, cowering upon the earth. "Here at your feet!" Simple Elsa's heart melts at the sight, really out of all reason soft, out of all reason unsuspecting. Yet she is infinitely sweet, in her exaggeration of goodness, when she not only pardons, but begs pardon of this fiendish enemy for what the latter may have had to suffer through her. She eagerly puts out her hands to lift Ortrud from her knees. "God help me! That I should see you thus, whom I have never seen save proud and magnificent! Oh, my heart will choke me to behold you in so humble ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... terrible set-to between two tribes of gipsies in the Overboro' road. They fought like tigers, making the lovely summer day hideous with their cries and shrieks—the women, the fiercer by far, tearing each other's hair. One fiendish creature drew her scissors, and, using them like a stiletto, drove the sharp point ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... while, with fiendish eagerness, they both turned to perform the foul deed. With a firm grasp they first laid hold on Azariah, and he was thrown into the midst of the flames. The same was done to Mishael; and, finally, as Hananiah dropped to the burning depth below, the ascending flames became doubly ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... the maiden, within herself, "are but half converted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... them after a fashion. But new scenes took place, when the little ones, inflamed against the woman who made their mother weep, assailed their aunt with the refined tortures of misbehaved children, mingled with the fiendish cruelty of little savages. After several patched-up truces it became necessary to part. Mademoiselle de Varandeuil decided to leave her brother, for she saw how unhappy he was amid this daily wrenching of his dearest affections. She left him to his wife and his children. This separation was ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... by the fading foliage, now emerging into view. Those letters were the early love-epistles of William Mainwaring. She had not recurred to them for years. Perhaps she now felt that food necessary to the sustainment of her fiendish designs. It was a strange spectacle to see this being, so full of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, condemned to that helpless decrepitude, chained to the uneasy seat, not as in the resigned and passive imbecility of extreme age, but rather as one whom in the prime ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ready to run the risk of getting through to the south, but what you have said decides me. I would die rather than say a word that could betray you and your cousin. But no one can say what one would do under fiendish tortures; therefore I ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... varis other notid persons, and also for a sertin pirut named Hix. I've bin so long amung wax statoots that I can fix 'em up to soot the tastes of folks, & with sum paints I hav I kin giv their facis a beneverlent or fiendish look as the kase requires. I giv Sir Edmun Hed a beneverlent look, & when sum folks who thawt they was smart sed it didn't look like Sir Edmun Hed anymore than it did anybody else, I sed, "That's the pint. That's the beauty ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the 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 Aroi, and the persons connected with that body are ready for any wickedness that mortal ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... stood near the furnace, motionless as statues. The sable monster on his black throne watched them without moving a muscle in his great, coarse face, only his small eyes seemed like two scintillating sparks of infernal fire, as with a fiendish kind of pleasure he marked the agony of Ninon. Although the young girl instinctively gave up all hope of life, yet never had life seemed so sweet. Its homeliest details now appeared precious, and their poor little cottage, heaven, compared with this den of infamy. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... experience, moments when even the Christian is so haunted by the demon of unbelief, when the dire enemy of God and man takes advantage of some unpropitious circumstance, some painful affliction, to taunt the soul, already almost crushed, and to inquire, with fiendish malignity, "Where is now thy God?" that if not wholly overcome, he, at least, escapes alone with fearful wounds from the trying conflict; how then can that one sustain the assault who is totally unprepared, ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... on any bed of roses. They were rough, and their lives were rougher. They were no gentler with Spaniards than Spaniards were with them when both were fighting. But, except by way of revenge, and then very seldom, they never practised such fiendish cruelty as the Spaniards practised the whole time. "Captain John Smith, sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England" (whom the Indian girl Pocahontas saved from death) did not write The ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... building, in the courtyard of his magnificent palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas, he remarked to the architect, when instructing him to design a family vault, "That is where I hope to bury them all." The architect often subsequently admitted that he was so terrified by the fiendish laugh which accompanied these words, that had not Francesco Cenci's work been extremely profitable, he would have refused ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of expression in a pig's eye can only be appreciated by those who have studied pigs as Morland must have studied them. The pertness, the liveliness, the humor, the love of mischief, the fiendish ingenuity and perversity of which pigs are capable, can be fully known to the careworn pig-minder alone. When they are running away,—and when are they not running away?—they have an action with the hind legs ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... home—dreading the consequences of the butchery, and gladly abandoning, in his terror, all solicitude about the fate of the Ourang-Outang. The words heard by the party upon the staircase were the Frenchman's exclamations of horror and affright, commingled with the fiendish jabberings ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the two lovers, following her who flies, To other place than Paris might be brought: But this calamity was a surprise On Malagigi, through his little thought; And fiendish malice, banished from the skies, Which ever blood and fire and ravage sought, Guided them by that way to Charles' disaster; Left to his choice by him, the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... as though they were modeling something, while in actuality they were carefully holding his own entrails—even that hideous recollection faded before the sight of this Janus head, all peace, all gentle humanity on one side; all war, all distorted, puffed-up image of fiendish hatred on ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... his hands hung, irritated her beyond bearing. She turned on him blindly and destructively, he became a mad creature, black and electric with fury. The dark storms rose in him, his eyes glowed black and evil, he was fiendish ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... his daughter as if she had been responsible for its incurable character. He had been heard to bellow at the top of his voice, as if to defy Heaven, that he did not care: he had made enough money to have ham and eggs for his breakfast every morning. He thanked God for it, in a fiendish tone ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... to gag her so that she would hear him out for once and not break into every phrase. He wanted to tell her for her own good in one clear, cold, logical, unbroken harangue how atrocious she was, how futile, fiendish, heartless. But he knew that she would not listen to him. Even if he gagged her mouth her mind would still dodge and buffet him. How ancient was the experience that warned a man against argument with a woman! And that wise old saw, "Let sleeping dogs lie," referred even better to wives. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... seemed to be in his glory. Half a dozen times he swung around, gained a little altitude, and again went plowing down along the road, his guns jumping and smoking in fiendish delight. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... from Braddock's army ten years before and joined the Indians. He had been kindly received, adopted into the tribe, had married the daughter of a chief, and become the father of two children. With the prospect of gaining a reward for Indian scalps, all the cupidity of this man's fiendish nature was aroused, and on the approach of Bouquet's army he conceived a plan for enriching himself and at the same time escaping the punishment due him as a deserter. While meditating it he found himself encamped one night with two warriors, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... shield is set upright at his head, and by the bench-posts stands his spear, supporting helmet and mail. Such was their custom; they slept as ever ready to rise and do service to their king. Horror is renewed in the night; Grendel's fiendish dam visits the hall and kills one of the sleepers, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... that surrounds the whole case two points stand out clear and indisputable, that no indiscretion of conduct or aberration of mind on the part of Tasso can possibly have merited the sufferings to which he was subjected, and that whatever may have been Alfonso's suspicions, his fiendish vengeance is one of history's darkest crimes, and covers ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... for nothing but the filling of their insatiable appetite;—this man's nature was too hard, too iron in its moulding, to give way to temporary imbecility; liquor made him savage, fierce, brutal, excited his fiendish temper to its height, nerved his muscular system, inflamed his brain, and gave him the aspect of a devil; and in such guise he entered his wife's peaceful Eden, where she brooded and cooed over her child's slumbers, with one gripe of his hard hand lifted her from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... people, does not possess one elevated attribute. If, in the circumstances, society does not become a moral pesthouse it is only because the people continue better than their religion. The human heart, though fallen, is not fiendish. It has still its purer instincts; and, when the legends about abominable gods and goddesses are falling like mildew, these are still to some extent kept alive by the sweet influences of earth and sky and by the charities of family life. When the heart of woman is about to be swept into the abyss ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... dressing, as the only means left of checking his lying, obstinate, destructive, wasteful, and injurious habit of intermeddling. This raised the creature's choler, and he vowed vengeance to the death, seconding his words with such a fiendish, murderous look, his eyes glistening like an infuriated tiger's, that I felt obliged to damp his temerity and freedom of tongue by further chastisement, which luckily brought him to a proper sense ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... large mural decorations, in which he unfolded the scale of his sparkling colours, and affirmed his spirit, his fancy and his dreamy art. Cheret's harmonies remain secrets; he uses them for the representation of characters from the Italian comedy, thrown with fiendish verve upon a background of a sky, fiery with the Bengal lights of a fairy-like carnival, and he strangely intermingles the reality of the movements with the most arbitrary fancy. Cheret has also succeeded in proving his artistic descent by a beautiful series of drawings in sanguine: he descends ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... Objects seemed evasive and bewilderingly unreal. The low ceiling swayed up and down, back and forth. The candle glowed and flickered, moving around, followed by table and chairs. Such a dreadful sensation of helpless bewilderment! There were harsh janglings of unnatural voices and glitter of fiendish eyes. ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... will on those weaker than himself; a power healthful enough for the victim (for, doubtless, flogging is the best of all punishments, being not only the shortest, but also a mere bodily and animal, and not, like most of our new-fangled "humane" punishments, a spiritual and fiendish torture), but for the executioner pretty certain to eradicate, from all but the noblest spirits, every trace of chivalry and tenderness for the weak, as well, often, as all self-control and command of temper. Be that as it may, old Sir Vindex had heart enough to feel that it was now his duty ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... this belief that fairy-folk are necessarily malign? Example treads upon example to prove that the Breton fairy is seldom beneficent, that he or she is prone to ill-nature and spitefulness, not to say fiendish malice on occasion. There appears to be a deep-rooted conviction that the elfish race devotes itself to the annoyance of mankind, practising a species of peculiarly irritating trickery, wanton and destructive. ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... to be made to feel that the human nature, i.e., the divine nature of love and mercy, spread through the hearts of all creatures, and seldom utterly withdrawn from man,—was gone, vanished, extinct; and that the fiendish nature had taken its place. And, as this effect is marvellously accomplished in the dialogues and soliloquies themselves, so it is finally consummated by the expedient under consideration; and it is to this that I ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our days, has come from an individual not authorized or at all commissioned by his party—from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, and finally offering ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... who—hunted and rummaged from their burrows in the hillocks of coarse grass by a pitiless pack of school-girls—must surely have wondered after our departure, when they came together stealthily, with twitching noses, ears, and tails, what manner of fiendish visitation had suddenly come and gone, scaring their peaceful settlement on the silent, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... difference," Hoskins went on. "Temperature, about normal for an early summer back home ... looks as if there's a fiendish plot afoot here to make things easy ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... of animals, cold and starved, and uttering doleful sounds; the driving away of the animals in the night from one farm to another to avoid seizures; the auctions without bidders, in the midst of groaning and jeering multitudes; the slaughter of policemen, and in some instances of clergymen, with fiendish expressions of hatred and yells of triumph; the mingling of fierce passions with the strongest natural affections; the exultation in murder as if it were a glorious deed of war; the Roman Catholic press and platform almost justifying ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... many of our best and bravest have fallen in battle; that many others are still held in foreign prisons; that large districts of our country have been devastated with savage ferocity, the peaceful homes destroyed, and helpless women and children driven away in destitution; and that with fiendish malignity the passions of a servile race have been excited by our foes into the commission of atrocities from which ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... set out upon the descent, was prepared to climb down handsomely. "It isn't all right; it's all wrong. I was simply fiendish to you, and I shall never ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... away, and we worked away. Just as the last wagon-load but one was being transferred to the omnivorous depths of the Delaware,—which I should think would have been filled ten times over with what we had put into it,—down rode the General with a fiendish joy in his bright eyes and held out a paper,—one of the familiar ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... war-path and was totally defeated by Uncas in a battle on the Great Plain in the present township of Norwich. Encumbered with a coat of mail which his friend Gorton had given him, Miantonomo was overtaken and captured. By ordinary Indian usage he would have been put to death with fiendish torments, as soon as due preparations could be made and a fit company assembled to gloat over his agony; but Gorton sent a messenger to Uncas, threatening dire vengeance if harm were done to his ally. This message puzzled the Mohegan chief. The appearance of a schism ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... mad. A foolish member of the Interrogation family whose most fiendish offspring is "How old is Ann?" ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... made light of the distinction between Jew and Gentile. In their case the natural aversion of the heart to a pure and spiritual religion was inflamed by national pride combined with mortified bigotry; and the fiendish spirit which they so frequently exhibited in their attempts to exterminate the infant Church may thus admit of ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... paradise is now almost extinct! Their sale here is possible because the Dutcher law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country and sold; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign birds, so far as we ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... it?" he asked in a vast calmness. "Apparently every nation on the continent has some devil like Ribiera in charge of the administration of this fiendish poison. Every republic has some fiend at work in it. And they're organized. My God! They're organized! The Master seems to supply them with the mixture of poison and its antidote, and ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... unfortunate victim had no idea. Perhaps to some lonely spot where Ignacio could torture him to his fiendish heart's content! But there was no use in ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... permitted to carry larger walking-sticks than the Romans, whom the French commandant has forbidden to come abroad with any but the merest twig. Some of these spies wear spurs, the better to deceive and to succeed in their fiendish work. No disguise, however, can conceal the sbirro. His look, so unmistakeably villanous, proclaims the spy. These fellows will not be defeated in their purposes. They carry, it is said, articles of conviction, that is, political ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... us crawled into a long hole to explore a cave in the woods. While laboriously making our way on all fours, carrying torches, we were suddenly horrified by fiendish hisses. Visions of snakes danced before our minds, the girls shrieked, the torches fell in our frantic scramble and we were left in Stygian darkness. A mocking, demoniacal laugh was heard, winged creatures dashed against ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... on reaching Port Said before we got the train alongside the docks, amidst the awful shrieking of our most unmusical engine whistle. The Egyptian is notorious for his love of this fiendish noise, one blast is never sufficient at any time, but he gives shriek after shriek till you feel inclined to ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... crimes and follies are due. Bertram is in reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his society for all eternity. In strong contrast to the fiendish malevolence of Bertram stands the gentle figure of Alice, Robert's foster-sister, who has followed him from Normandy with a message from his dead mother. Isabella supplies Robert with a fresh horse and ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... You may well believe him a choice flower in the bouquet of the corporation; we mean the corporation that banquets and becomes jubilant while assassins stab their victims in the broad street-that becomes befogged while bands of ruffians disgrace the city with their fiendish outrages-that makes presidents and drinks whiskey when the city would seem given over to the swell-mobsman-when no security is offered to life, and wholesale harlotry, flaunting with naked arms and bared bosoms, passes along in possession of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... walking or riding with Margaret, was enough to send her writhing upon her bed in the darkness of a wakeful night. She would clench her pretty hands until the nails dug into the flesh and brought the blood. She would bite the pillow or the blankets with an almost fiendish clenching of her teeth upon them and mutter, as she did so: "I hate her! I hate her! I could ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... and continued to suffer, no pen can adequately describe, or do justice to the touching fortitude with which those sufferings were borne. It wrung the hearts of all who had opportunities of personally observing it. They resisted, poor famishing souls! all the fiendish attempts that were systematically made to undermine their loyalty, to seduce them into insubordination and rebellion. Let us, by and by, see how far the result has justified this implied confidence of theirs in the power, the wisdom, and the integrity of the new Government. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... through the mob at these grim words, which seemed to intoxicate the hearts of all who heard them with a fiendish cruelty. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and indignation, he looked up into the face that was bending over him, and recognized Pierre Costello, whose features wore a fiendish expression, the effect of which was heightened by a murderous-looking knife which he carried between his teeth. Scowling fiercely, as if he were trying to strike terror to the boy's heart by his very appearance, he loosened his grasp on Frank's throat, and the latter, ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... and trimmed the sails, But no cheery cries the night wind hails. They worked the ship like men who slept But steadily, oh so steadily! They took in sail, the watch they kept, And groped about blindly, silently. Fore and aft on the waves swarmed fiendish things, Vile creatures that seemed to be heads with wings. Like a shoal of porpoises millions strong, Alive with motion that could not rest, Twisting out ropes from the breaker's crest, From the fleecy foam ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... a moment felt an unprincipled and fiendish wish to annihilate his rival at all cost. By the exercise of that treachery which love for the same woman renders possible to men the most honourable in every other relation of life, he could send off Phillotson in agony and defeat by saying that the scandal was true, and that Sue had ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... is, however, this much to be said in Maybelle's favour: she was persistent. She did not let go till it thundered! We could have stood it well enough if she had limited her campaign for a job on the paper to an occasional call at the office. But she had a fiendish instinct which told her who were the friends we liked most to oblige: the banker, for instance, who carried our overdrafts, the leading advertiser, the chairman of the printing committee of the town council—and she found ways to make them ask if we ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... of bets and "booze," Had sworn could he not win he should not lose. DARES, you see, was "Champion" of his land, And these were "Trojans all" you'll understand. ("Champion be blowed!" SAYERIUS said. "Wus luck, They wasn't Trojans. This is British pluck!") Then from the Corner fiendish howls arise, And oaths and execrations rend the skies. ENTELLUS stoutly to the fight returned. Kicked, punched and mauled, his eyes with fury burned, Disdain and conscious courage fired his breast, And with redoubled force his foe he pressed, Laid on with either hand like anything, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... and shiver; for there is no other sound like it in the wilderness. Sometimes, when you climb to his nest, he has a terrifying hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo, running up and down a deep guttural scale, like a fiendish laugh, accompanied by a vicious snapping of the beak. And if you are a small boy, and it is towards twilight, you climb down the tree quick and let his nest alone. But the regular whooo-hoo-hoo, whooo-hoo, always five notes, with the second two very short, is a hunting call, and he ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... letter was written in the most plausible manner; the hand-writing and name of the Chairman of my Committee was forged, and every thing was admirably calculated to give the impression, that it was genuine truth. But, fortunately, this fiendish scheme failed of its purpose; for, as my family had left Rowfant before the letter arrived, the letter was never opened till we returned together ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... brother's battle in holding down those tearing hands, in binding whenever she could those uplifted restless arms prompt and prone to do mischief. All the time she subdued him with her cunning or her strength, she spoke to him in pitying murmurs, or abused the third person, the fiendish enemy, in no unmeasured tones. Towards morning the paroxysm was exhausted, and he would fall asleep, perhaps only to waken with evil and renewed vigour. But when he was laid down, she would sally out to taste the ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gloat the more. She loath'd the man, for Hamuel's eye was bold, And the strong workings of brute selfishness Had moulded his broad features; and she fear'd The bitterness of wounded vanity That with a fiendish hue would overcast His faint and lying smile. Nor vain her fear, For Hamuel vowed revenge and laid a plot Against her virgin fame. He spread abroad Whispers that travel fast, and ill reports That soon obtain belief; that Zillah's eye When ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... the cliff — a fit! a fit! a fit! chimed in voice after voice — each flinging the words to and fro with shouts of awful laughter to the invisible lips of the other till the whole place echoed with the words and with shrieks of fiendish merriment, which at last ceased as suddenly as they ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... thirst for spirit, they are boisterous and rude, and by their obstreperous laughter, their demoniacal shrieks and turbulent vociferations, produce an appalling discord, such as might well be expected to proceed from a company of infernal spirits at their fiendish revels; and exhibit a striking contrast to the low, monotonous tones used ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... whose terror had given away to almost fiendish exultation. "The outbreak has come, like I said it was goin' to do, but it aint the babolitionists an' niggers that's doin' of it. It's our own friends. Come on, Sile. Me an' you mustn't hang back when there's work to be done for the 'Federacy ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... case here, / O high and royal dame. Dared I but give the lie to / one of thy lofty name, Thou hast in fiendish manner / Ruediger belied. He and all his warriors / have laid all thoughts of ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... so as best to secure their own supremacy. No word of dissent to the institutions under which they live, no syllable of dissatisfaction, even, with any of the excesses they stimulate, can be breathed in safety. A Christian minister in Tennessee relates an act of fiendish cruelty inflicted upon a slave by one of the members of his church, and he is forced to leave his charge, if not to fly the country. Another in South Carolina presumes to express in conversation his disapprobation of the murderous assault of Brooks on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... like decade civil war raged between England and Scotland, originating in a question of authority between the King and Commons, and ending in Cromwell's protectorate. Why, I ask, if we admit this fiendish visitant to our borders, should we anticipate that our fate would be more favorable? No! war is to be averted, and a nation still covered with glory is to be preserved by holding the ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... had revealed to him. He saw her, young and beautiful, with face and eyes that from the beginning had made him feel all that was good and sweet in life, and behind her he saw the shadow-hulk of John Graham, the pitiless iron-man, without conscience and without soul, coarsened by power, fiendish in his iniquities, and old enough ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... ordinary life, so that it seemed as if they had all been transfigured since yesterday. Oh, high, heroic, tremulous juncture, when man felt himself almost an angel; on the verge of doing deeds that outwardly look so fiendish! Oh, strange rapture of the coming battle! We know something of that time now; we that have seen the muster of the village soldiery on the meeting-house green, and at railway stations; and heard the drum and fife, and seen the farewells; seen the familiar ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... previously exhibited. It completely deranged their designs, and caused an utter abandonment of the plot, for the leaders in Chicago having been arrested, no one knew how soon his turn would come, and it is a general and well-established fact, that however sanguinary and fiendish a rabble may prove when attacking their victims by surprise, the mass of such beings lose their brute courage when discovering, to a certainty, that the details of their strategy are known, and the party upon whom an assault is contemplated ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... said, the greater part of the diners at the restaurants are single, and seem to have no knowledge of each other. Perhaps the gill of the fiendish wine of the country, which they drink at their meals, is rather calculated to chill than warm the heart. But, in any case, a drearier set of my fellow-beings I have never seen,—no, not at evening parties,—and I conceive that their life in lodgings, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... edge of the well, whence came the groans of the dying, the hot, fresh odors of the dead, and waited, fiendish in the patient ferocity of his more ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... name o' Simon Girty," replied Younker, in a deliberate and startlingly solemn tone, "I al'ays call down God's curse upon the fiendish ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... wolf on a near by eminence sounded like a voice to him, mocking, taunting, fiendish. Never, it seemed to him, had any man been thus unhappy. Even the wilderness had failed him! In a land of desolation he ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... that is not what I mean," returned I; "but this man will challenge you, will—you are aware of his accursed skill—will murder you. Oh! that fiendish look of his as you left the room—it will haunt me to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... sad and pitiful are the scenes recalled by the words of the fiendish Iago,—type for all time of those who ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... as bewilderment and sleep clung to his mind. His senses knew that it was night, although details about him were brought into sharp relief by a thousand flashes spasmodically flooding the dug-out with fiendish brilliancy; and he knew that his body was cold, although the walls and timbers seemed to be consumed by raging fires. He felt the ground trembling in the throes of a titanic upheaval, while his entire being seemed to be hammered and torn by the frightful cataclysm of sounds. He stood ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... to mouth, and received permission for two missionaries to come and settle down. From there, still accompanied by Cammerhof, Zeisberger went on to the Senecas. He was welcomed to a Pandemonium of revelry. The whole village was drunk. As he lay in his tent he could hear fiendish yells rend the air; he went out with a kettle, to get some water for Cammerhof, and the savages knocked the kettle out of his hand; and later, when the shades of evening fell, he had to defend himself with his fists against a bevy of lascivious women, whose long hair streamed in ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... I heard Fraser's fiendish chuckle. "The instinct of fear still holds, eh? My serum can destroy your conscious mind—but not your native fear? Cowards! Fools! But I am not going to push you off. Look!" With his foot he pressed another lever which, while ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... guide; and down he went, down, down, down, till Neverbend looking over, could barely see the glimmer of his disappearing head light. Was it absolutely intended that he should disappear in the same way? Had he bound himself to go down that fiendish upright ladder? And were he to go down it, what then? Would it be possible that a man of his weight should ever ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... get alongside and hook on without very much difficulty; and then all hands of us swarmed up her towering side and tumbled in on deck, with our drawn pistols in our hands, for there was never any knowing what ghastly trick a pirate might play, or what fiendish trap he might set—they were capable of anything and everything—therefore it behoved us to be wary; but nothing happened. There was not a soul on deck to interfere with us, or to demand our business; and the first thing we did was to put the helm ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... assassin drew his inspiration, and then look at the result, we stand yet more astounded at this most barbarous, most diabolical act. . . . We can trace its cause through successive steps back to that source which is the spring of all our woes. No one can say that if the perpetrator of this fiendish deed be arrested, he should not undergo the extremest penalty of the law known for crime; none will say that mercy should interpose. But is he alone guilty? Here, gentlemen, you perhaps expect me to present some indication of my future policy. One thing I will say: every era teaches its ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... through the country, were some very curious figures erected by the roadside. These were posts, one side of which was roughly planed. On the upper part of each of these posts was a rude carving of a hideous human face with prominent teeth. The cheeks and teeth were slightly coloured. A most fiendish appearance was presented by these figures, called by the Koreans syou-sal-mak-i, and if looks counted for anything, they ought well to serve their purpose,—the scaring away of evil spirits from the ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... and tore out his roll of bills. Then he reached low at Duane's hip, felt his gun, and took it. Then he slapped the other hip, evidently in search of another weapon. That done, he backed away, wearing an expression of fiendish satisfaction that made Duane think he was only a common thief, a novice at this kind ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... children half devoured and a mother so overwhelmed with sorrow that not a tear would come from those great sad eyes. Then there was the wolf with severed spine, but still alive and looking more fiendish than ever. Very soon was the savage brute dispatched and his body thrown ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... black silence of the place there came a startling sound. It was a peal of laughter, loud, evil, triumphant; and, as if it had been a signal, other mocking voices took it up, until the great vault rang to a fiendish din. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... uncertainly in the moonlight, and then, with light, swinging strides, moved directly toward the banskian. Lapierre's pulse quickened, and his lips twisted into an evil smile. That the figure was none other than Chloe Elliston was easily discernible in the bright moonlight, and with fiendish satisfaction the quarter-breed realized that the girl was playing directly into his hands. For, as he sat upon the sled beside the little camp-fire, his active brain had evolved a new scheme. If Chloe Elliston ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the tedious voyage that included two oceans, and as if to intensify and blacken the horrors of the future all the fiendish tragedies of Delhi, Meerut, and Cawnpore were vividly revived among the missionaries to whom Mr. Lindsay was hastening. Deeply interested in the condition of a people whose welfare was so dear to his heart, she had eagerly read all the mission reports, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to his neck, blindfolded the priests and compelled them to enter the enclosure with sticks in their hands, and in this ridiculous attitude, obliged them to strike about when the sound of the bell appraised them of the animal's proximity; it is obvious that the principal purpose of the fiendish Villa was to have the priests lay about them in such a way as to deal each other the blows instead of the pig. The tyrant also had the idea of making us and the other priests in Ilagan parade the streets of that town dancing and playing the band. The wish to consummate his plan ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... shot, Bertrand of Gourdon! Maddened by the pain of the wound, the brute nature of Richard was aroused: his fiendish appetite for blood rose to madness, and grinding his teeth, and with a curse too horrible to mention, the flashing axe of the royal butcher fell down on the blond ringlets of the child, and the children of Chalus were ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had for background the Christian Church; they made their first appearance issuing from it; they used it for their advancement; and the sharp contrast of their conduct with the holy state makes them appear altogether fiendish. The Borgias are a satire on a great form or phase of religion, debasing and destroying it. They stand on high pedestals, and from their presence radiates the light of the Christian ideal. In this ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... everybody hated her and thirsted for her blood; nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to die; that was not the misery! the misery was that this consummation could not be reached without so much intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... to be met with in superstitious countries, these mydratic alkaloids are among the worst. They offer a chance for crimes of the most fiendish nature—worse than with the gun or the stiletto. They are worse because there is so little fear of detection. That crime is the ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... whistling and whizzing all round them, spears were pointed at them. Their skins were scratched with stone knives and mussel shells. Hideously painted, fiendish-looking creatures suddenly rushed upon them. Should they show fear and quail at the Little Boorah they would be returned to their mothers as cowards unfit for initiation, and sooner or later sympathetic magic would ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... acquainted with her delightful points that you forget your early impression of her. How do you feel when you are enthusiastically enumerating her many lovable attributes, if the member of the household with the fiendish memory ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... coming up the second flight of stairs. Servant? He listened, then, suddenly, as though an incredible, frightful revelation had been shouted to him from a distance, he bellowed out in the empty room: "What! What!" in such a fiendish tone as to astonish himself. The footsteps stopped outside the door. He stood openmouthed, maddened and still, as if in the midst of a catastrophe. The door-handle rattled lightly. It seemed to him that the walls were coming apart, that the furniture swayed at ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Michael Arranstoun," Henry said in a voice strangled and altered with suffering. "I see every link in the chain—but, O God! why have they deceived me? What can it mean? What hideous, fiendish cruelty! And ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... the animals will eat you up. You are bad, same as me. You two won't be able to go to any more Zoos;" and Pen rolled round and round in fiendish delight. ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... several poems of remarkable merit, referring to the war. In the present we have a work of higher ambition, and one which is truly well done. In it the horrors of slavery, the iniquitous abuses to which it so often gives rise—the tortures, vengeances, murders, and fiendish punishments, which in their turn follow the crime—are portrayed with striking truthfulness and real power. The author is evidently no Abolitionist on hear-say—the whole poem gives evidence of practical familiarity with ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... well decline to answer you," said Aubrey undauntedly. "Were I to make him acquainted with the fiendish plot you have contrived against his daughter's fame and honour, he would scarcely allow you ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... So now these two fiendish things were placed, and their devilish tails hanging out behind them. The fuses had been cut with the utmost nicety to burn the same length of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... a powerful stroke I almost sever the victim's head from the body. And as the warm blood pours forth in every direction and the last sign of life departs from its shivering body, I view the work of destruction with the fiendish glee of a ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... be seen in the Virginia law of 1691 which declared that any white woman marrying a negro or mulatto, bond or free, should suffer perpetual banishment. But at no time in the South was adultery of any sort punished with such almost fiendish cruelty as in New England, except in one known instance when a Virginia woman was punished by being dragged through the water ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... clears up, with the sun shining brighter than ever, ain't that so, Tony? Of course it is. Well," went on Phil, sagely, "I guess I can size the McGee up, all right. He's just got a fiendish temper. He does things on the spur of the moment, that he's sorry for afterwards. All right. I can understand such a man; and Tony, take it for me, I'd rather deal with such a fiery disposition than the cold, calculating one of the man who never gets mad. I'm going ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... cried Euphemia, not regarding the real agitation of her auditor (so much was she occupied in appearing overwhelmed herself), and wringing her hands, she continued, "That frightful wretch Mr. Lascelles is just come in to dinner. You cannot think with what fiendish glee he told me that several days ago, as he was driving out of town, he saw Mr. Constantine, with two bailiffs behind him, walking down Fleet Street! And, besides, I verily believe he said he ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... Pascals who are mathematicians at five and discoverers at sixteen; there we have Mozarts, composers at three; there we have our inspired boy preachers already consecrated to their great ideal of work; and we have also our Jesse Pomeroys, fiendish murderers before adolescence. I believe with Carlyle that it is the heroes, the geniuses of the race, to whom we owe its achievements; and the hero and the genius are the men and women of "greatest variability" in powers. The first weapon, the starting of fire, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... to leave the rampart. Safety lay in being all together. The pounding of hoofs grew louder and louder, the picketed horses whinnied, then there was a wild gallop past the little camp, accompanied by fiendish yells. Not a man dared to investigate, for fear of ambush. All that they could do was to patiently await the coming ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... And when the storm calmed down, they found themselves deprived of the accumulations of centuries, forced, like Noah after the deluge, but without his means, to start again from the very beginning. Indeed, as Levinsohn remarks, the wonder is that, despite the fiendish persecution they endured, these unfortunates should have preserved a spark of love of knowledge. Yet a little later it was to burst into flame again and bring light and warmth to hearts crushed by "man's inhumanity ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... At this moment, in fiendish contrast with the behavior of the people, a loud, mocking laugh was heard. Shudderingly they looked around, wondering who it was that could add the weight of a sneer to the supreme misery which was rending their hearts. It came from above; and every face, even that of the wretched Podstadsky, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... to take a renewed interest in his platoon, and, having discovered the recalcitrant one of No. 11 actually coming on parade with only the front of the tip of his bayonet-scabbard polished, he took a fiendish delight in seeing the criminal writhing under the brutal and savage sentence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... heart she resented the conviction forced upon her. Reckless he undoubtedly was, at odds with the law surely, but it was hard to admit that attractive personality to be the mask of fiendish cruelty and sinister malice. And yet—the facts spoke for themselves. He had not even attempted a denial. Still there was a mystery about him, else how was it possible for two so distinct personalities to dwell together in the ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... we are shocked at the utter absence of the sentiment relating to the sanctity of human life. But our horror at this fiendish indifference to murder is doubled when we find that the victims are not strangers but members of the same family. I must defer to the chapter on Sympathy a brief reference to the savage custom of slaughtering ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Bernard Du Guesclin, as she named her mouse, was so very small, that she could take him up, and turn him round bodily, when other means failed, or pull him half into the chair if danger threatened in front. He was a sprightly little fellow, and had not yet lost all the ardour of youth, or developed the fiendish obstinacy of his kind; so he frequently ran little races—now and then pranced, and was not quite dead to the emotion of gratitude in return for bits ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... good-bye. That tiresome engine is snorting with a fiendish impatience to bear me away. Good-bye, Miss Lovel, and a thousand thanks for the companionship that has made this journey so ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... devils, panting heavily, drop their burdens upon the fiery floor. "What have ye?" asked Lucifer. "We have what a day or two ago were called kings," answered one of the fiendish steeds. (I sought carefully to see whether Lewis of France were among them.) "Throw them here," bade the King; and at that they were thrown amongst the other crowned heads that lay beneath Lucifer's feet; and following the monarchs came their courtiers and their flatterers ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... brandishing his ax, he deftly all but cuts off a hand here, an arm or leg there, an ear yonder. He suddenly rushes forward and grinningly feigns cutting off a man's head. He contorts himself in a ludicrous yet often fiendish manner. This dance represents the height of the dramatic as I have seen it in Igorot life. His is truly a mimetic dance. His colleague with the spear and shield, who sometimes dances on the outskirts of the circle, now charging a dancer and again retreating, also produces a true mimetic and dramatic ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... pictures and decorations, and then came down to meet the faces of his companions. As they did so, the black cat, having finished its meal, sprang on to his shoulder to crouch there, watching the three men through the curling smoke drift with its green blinking, fiendish eyes. Dr. Nikola smiled as he noticed the effect the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... hidden from aerial observation in the thick forest kept up its slow firing at intervals. It was "bothering" one of the German trenches. Fiendish the consistent regularity with which it kept on, and so easy for the gunners. They had only to slip in a shell, swing a breech-lock home, and pull a lanyard. The German guns did not respond because they could not locate the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... rapidly, traversed the brief space, and disappeared within his house. Don Luis looked after him with a low, fiendish laugh, and plunged once more into ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... the place where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned and murdered. Of them it could be fairly alleged that they were responsible for the crimes of the old regime; but what crimes have the poor workmen and peasants committed that the most fiendish cruelty should be reserved for them? I give it up! Perhaps there is some reason or justification; all I can say is I have not heard it, neither can I imagine what ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... They call it Soear Bethlehem. You'll see where in old Roman days, Before Revivals changed our ways, The Virgin 'scaped the Devil's grab, Printing her foot on a stone slab With five clear toe-marks; and you'll find The fiendish thumbprint close behind. You'll see where Math, Mathonwy's son, Spoke with the wizard Gwydion And bad him from South Wales set out To steal that creature with the snout, That new-discovered grunting beast Divinely ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... the second floor Ted saw a score or more of forms leap into prominence; the forms of men who cast aside their skins of wolf, and who had turned their wolfish howls into the scarcely less fiendish yells ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... side of the bed, knitting his brows and staring straight before him, with an expression in his clear grey eyes whose significance he would have denied hotly, had any man charged him with it. He was thinking of Antony Ferrara's record; the victims of this fiendish youth (for Antony Ferrara was barely of age) seemed to stand before him with ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... he said, "not my problem. I had the coin made when I was an undergraduate. I enjoyed reading one side, turning it over, reading the other side, and so on. A fiendish enjoyment like boys planning where to put the ...
— As Long As You Wish • John O'Keefe
... a cruel man. I have seen him whip a woman, causing the blood to run half an hour at the time; and this, too, in the midst of her crying children, pleading for their mother's release. He seemed to take pleasure in manifesting his fiendish barbarity. Added to his cruelty, he was a profane swearer. It was enough to chill the blood and stiffen the hair of an ordinary man to hear him talk. Scarce a sentence escaped him but that was commenced or concluded by some horrid oath. The field was the place to witness his ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... that or else he's took a notion to hunt that Gold Dust maverick again"—referring to a strange, wonderfully beautiful, outlaw filly that had appeared on the Kiowa range a year before and tormented the riders by her almost fiendish cunning in dodging corral or rope—"if he's riding Captain Jack ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... not this to tell them they are close to an encampment—that of the savages they have been pursuing. They can hear their barbarous jargon, mingled with shouts and laughter like that of demons in the midst of some fiendish frolic. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... ball had a sort of impish intelligence that could only be met by a superior cunning. I suspected that it deliberately hid itself, and that so long as it was aware that you were hunting for it, it took a fiendish delight in dodging you. If, said I, one could only let the thing suppose it was not being looked for it would be taken off its guard. I put the idea into operation, and I rejoice to say it works like ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... gave a shove. The bridge swayed a moment, and then fell with a splash into the water, leaving a space of one hundred feet between the two banks. This done, Burke the Slogger, —for it was he,—with a fiendish chuckle seated himself on the divided railway track and awaited ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... must have been familiar with—the country, the cool winds that sometimes came when one thought it was almost Summer, the perfect blend of Madame's tea, the quaint Chinese pot, and the bad manners of the canary, who seemed to take a fiendish delight in scattering the seed that was ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of hunting the White Whale. Had any one of his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking in him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have wrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on profitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the mint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural revenge. Here, then, was this grey-headed, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... all arahnd Luk'd like some fiendish heead, Fer t'more I star'd an' t'more I thowt It did ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... habitation, flocks of crows came down heavily from every tree. The noise they make whilst jumping about everywhere is indescribable. There seemed to be something positively human in the positions of the slyly bent heads of the drunken birds, and a fiendish light shone in their eyes while they were examining us ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... get dashed to death at the bottom as they went flying down past the different floors, and heard a fiendish chuckle from the Frenchman above ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... troublesome, and was chastised by the captain, after which the voyage was quietly pursued, and the crew were obedient and apparently contented. But beneath this apparent calm a terrible storm was brewing. A fiendish plan was devised by Williams and Stromer, and agreed to by the rest, to murder the officers and get possession of the money, which they knew was on board. They first determined to poison the captain, supercargo, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... upon his captors, but his mouth was too dry for speech. He could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet. He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They danced giddily before ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... in the Management of the Sorrel Hill Cemetery. The Sacred City of the Dead in the Leprous Clutches of a Demon in Human Form. Fiendish Atrocities Committed in 'God's Acre.' The Holy Dead Thrown around Loose. Fragments of Mothers. Segregation of a Beautiful Young Lady Who in Life Was the Light of a Happy Household. A Superintendent Who Is an Ex-Convict. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... "The Revelations" she found evident proof of Gethin's depravity; and she quailed a little as she saw a vivid and realistic pen and ink drawing of a fire of leaping flames, standing over which was a monster in human shape, though boasting of a tail and cloven hoofs. With fiendish glee the creature was toasting on a long fork something which looked fearfully like a man, whose starting eyes and writhing limbs showed plainly that he was not as happy as his tormentor. It was very horrible, and Morva closed the book with a snap, but could not resist the temptation of another ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... am a member, may I ask what is this object, the secret of which you guard with such fiendish zeal?" I ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... streamed her black, disordered hair. Contrasting strangely in the silver moonlight with her glistening, copper-coloured body, the mask of Little Bonsa on her head glared round with its fixed crystal eyes and fiendish smile as she turned her long neck from side to side. Seen thus she scarcely looked human, and Alan's heart was filled with pity for the poor bedizened wretch she named her husband, who had just been forced to announce the date of ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... the Mormon, again setting into motion the fiendish echoes. He was naked to the waist; he had lost flesh; he was haggard, worn, dirty, wet. While he pulled on a shirt Nas Ta Bega made the rope fast to a snag of a log of driftwood embedded in the sand, and the boat swung to shore. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... Governor of Fort William.[249] But the emissaries of William the Third could not have chosen a worse period than that in which to treat with the brave and wary Cameron. The massacre of Glencoe was fresh in the remembrance of the people, and the stratagem, the fiendish snares which had been prepared to betray the unsuspecting Macdonalds to their destruction, were also recalled with the deep curses of a wronged and slaughtered people. The game of cards, the night ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... carrying bows and arrows and every man his little axe at his girdle. Each glided after each like shadows upon the water, so still and smooth, and they seemed making for the town. Then as I bent my ear to the quarter whence they came I caught the far-off echo of that same fiendish cry that saluted us at the First Encounter, and would seem to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... beautiful plans of theologians and priests for scaring half-witted people into their individual folds has been telling them that they were in danger of committing the most dreadful of all sins, the "sin against the Holy Ghost." The utterly "unpardonable sin" of all sins. This blasphemous, fiendish proposition has frightened numbers of half-baked folks, and they have pestered their small modicum of brains over this mysterious say-so of priests and parsons even to the point of committing suicide, or of landing themselves in ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... indispensable appendages to any elegant dinner table than silver spoons; and, along with silver forks, came in the explosion of that anti-Queensberry brutalism which forks first superseded—viz., the fiendish practice of introducing the knife between the lips. But, in defiance of all these facts, certain select hacks of the daily press, who never had an opportunity of seeing a civilized dinner, and fancying ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... this wretched tittle-tattle about you!" chafed Lady Susan. "My poor little Ann, it really is a stroke of the most fiendish ill-luck." ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... white teeth grinning through his short, black beard. His two clenched hands were raised above his head, and a heavy, blackthorn stick lay across them. His dark, handsome, aquiline features were convulsed into a spasm of vindictive hatred, which had set his dead face in a terribly fiendish expression. He had evidently been in his bed when the alarm had broken out, for he wore a foppish, embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... there was nothing the matter with him beyond a mistaken choice of the theatrical profession. Surely there are here the elements of a play, not to mention a cinema play. Surely a New England village maiden might find herself among the wigwams in the power of the formidable and fiendish 'Little Blue Bison,' merely through her mistaken sympathy with his financial failure as a Film Star. The notion gives me glimpses of all sorts of dissolving views of primeval forests and flamboyant theatres; but this impulse of irrelevant theatrical production must ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Averted-head and Drooping-face; The Seen, and that which Secret flies; The weapon of the thousand eyes; Ten-headed, and the Hundred-faced, Star-gazer and the Layer-waste: The Omen-bird, the Pure-from-spot, The pair that wake and slumber not: The Fiendish, that which shakes amain, The Strong-of-Hand, the Rich-in-Gain: The Guardian, and the Close-allied, The Gaper, Love, and Golden-side: O Raghu's son receive all these, Bright ones that wear what forms they please; Krisasva's mystic sons are they, And worthy thou their might to sway." ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... there are any, being conducted in that insipid dialect in which a fine woman was called an "elegant female." The following is a sample description of one of Brown's heroines, and is taken from his novel of Ormond, the leading character in which—a combination of unearthly intellect with fiendish wickedness—is thought to have been suggested by Aaron Burr: "Helena Cleves was endowed with every feminine and fascinating quality. Her features were modified by the most transient sentiments and were the seat of a softness at ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... chambermaid leave her room. Yes, such is the despotism of slavery, that wives and sisters dare not run to meet their husbands and brothers after such separations, and hours sometimes elapse before they are allowed to meet; and, at times, a fiendish pleasure is taken in keeping them asunder—this furnishes an opportunity to vent feelings of spite for ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... lid. There was no denying the ownership, it was marked in large bold letters, 'John Othard.' Now, I must know what it contained; I could wait no longer; a sort of determined malice took possession of me to connect it with the newspaper, and with my husband—fiendish thought. I did not desire to prove him other than the pure and noble man I had loved; but I was not myself—I would do it just to still my excited suspicions. Putting the lamp down over the name, as if that could blot it out, I went up the creaking steps, and hastened ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... which were first thoroughly soaked in alcohol and then boiled in oil; they were then tightly bound with cotton or wool, also soaked in inflammable liquids mixed with saltpetre and gunpowder. Once these fiendish contrivances were set alight nothing availed to put them out, and they were feared as was naught else by the Turks during the remainder of the time they were in Malta. They were particularly deadly against ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... liked to believe it, he could not be quite sure that the accident at Bolsover was the result of a deliberate murderous design, or indeed of anything more than the accidental catastrophe of a blundering fit of temper—criminal, if you like, and cowardly, but not fiendish. And his conscience made coward enough of him just now to cause him to hesitate before plunging into ruin one who, hateful as he was to him, was after all a poor wretch, miserable enough ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed |
