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Malign   Listen
verb
Malign  v. t.  (past & past part. maligned; pres. part. maligning)  
1.
To treat with malice; to show hatred toward; to abuse; to wrong; to injure. (Obs.) "The people practice what mischiefs and villainies they will against private men, whom they malign by stealing their goods, or murdering them."
2.
To speak great evil of; to traduce; to defame; to slander; to vilify; to asperse. "To be envied and shot at; to be maligned standing, and to be despised falling."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Malign" Quotes from Famous Books



... by the cold-sea, Dragged my body on in anguish, To the cottage-doors of strangers, To the unfamiliar portals, For the care of the neglected, For the needy of the village, For the children poor and orphaned. "There are many wicked people, Many slanderers of women, Many women evil-minded, That malign their sex through envy. Many they with lips of evil, That belie the best of maidens, Prove the innocent are guilty Of the worst of misdemeanors, Speak aloud in tones unceasing, Speak, alas! with wicked motives, Spread the follies of their neighbors Through the tongues of self-pollution. Very few, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... loved and honored, should make of the loyalty which had, at the cost of principle, protected the name of Surtaine against open disgrace, a tool wherewith to tear down his professional standards—it was like some incredible and malign jocosity of a devilish logic. Of what was going on in the quack's mind he had no inkling. He could not know that his father saw in the suppression of the suicide news, only a natural and successful effort on the part of Hal to conceal his own guilt ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... liberalizing influences of the Revolution, which he falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Milton is to cultivate the critical faculty to so high a pitch that it may possibly become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign energy to preventing birth. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... comparison with the world through which he passes, yet no less through time Fate dries up the holy springs, and the mighty cities of old days are undecipherable under the green turf;[18] it is the only wisdom to acquiesce in the forces, however ignorant or malign in their working, that listen to no protest and admit no appeal, that no force can affect, no subtlety elude, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... her mincemeat for Christmas, when in stalked Mrs. Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the dame's scarlet- ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... vindicated; by his death he was proved innocent. And by the manner of his death we realized that he had fallen a victim to the same malign ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... dreadful possession, Which, if no dream indeed, yet mocked with such semblance of dreaming, That, as it happens in dreams, when a dear face, stooping to kiss us, Takes, ere the lips have touched, some malign and horrible aspect, His face faded away, and the face of the Dead—of that other— Flashed on mine, and writhing, through every change of emotion,— Wild amaze and scorn, accusation and pitiless mocking,— Vanished into the swoon whose ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... And shrieks of women, and men's curses. All These visible shapes, and sounds no mortal ear Had ever heard, some spiritual sense Interpreted, though brokenly; for I Was haunted by a consciousness of crime, Some giant guilt, but whose I knew not. All These things malign, by sight and sound revealed, Were sin-begotten; that I knew—no more— And that but dimly, as in dreadful dreams The sleepy senses babble to the brain Imperfect witness. As I stood a voice, But whence it came ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... "you are master of your actions and time in this house. Retire when you please; but you will naturally suppose us anxious to dispel this mystery. Whatever shall tend to obscure or malign your character will of course excite our solicitude. Wortley is not short-sighted or hasty to condemn. So great is my confidence in his integrity that I will not promise my esteem to one who has irrecoverably lost that of Wortley. I am not acquainted with your motives to concealment, ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... commander-in-chief, kept the rightful kings prisoners for thirty years prior to their downfall in 1565. If so, this would include the reign of Achyuta, and the story would differ from that of Nuniz, who represents King Achyuta as free but subject to the malign influence of his "two brothers-in-law." These two may, perhaps, represent Rama and Tirumala, who are said to have married two daughters of Krishna Deva. They would, however, not have been ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... glory, the glory that reigns and rules as King in Israel, is the idea of the words before us. It is the same throne that a later writer in the New Testament speaks of when he says, 'Let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace.' For that light of a manifested divine presence was no malign lustre that blinded or slew those who gazed upon it, but though no eye but that of the High Priest dared of old to look, yet he, the representative and, as it were, the concentration of the collective Israel, could stand, unshrinking and unharmed, before that piercing light, because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... head. "You're no knight-errant," I told my impassive image. "You're too correct, too indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign hypnotist had projected it before me, I saw again a vision of that flashing, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... and wait but the wand of divination to be revealed. In a thousand similar ways are the actions and the motives of the Irish understood by those who are careless of them; or worse, misrepresented by those whose interest, and too often business, it is to malign them. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... to the sun, the dawn, and the twilight; to the light and to the darkness; to the six sacred mountains, and to many other members of a very numerous theogony. Other song-prayers are chanted directly to malign influences, beseeching them to remain far off: to [)i]ntco[ng]gi, evil in general; to dakus, coughs and lung evils, and to the b[)i]cakuji, sorcerers, praying them not to come near the dwelling. The singing of the songs is ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... our town in the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach his funeral sermon." It should ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... Europe. The principality is but large enough to contain the court of the sovereign which is held in the little town of Monaco, and the establishment of the last of legitimate gamblers which is maintained at Monte Carlo. If the report of the world does not malign the prince, he lives, as does the gambler, out of the spoil taken from the gamblers. He is to be seen in his royal carriage going forth with his royal consort,—and very royal he looks! His little teacup of a kingdom,—or rather a roll of French bread, for ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft floating down ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... power of an appetite which cannot only enslave and curse the man over which it gains control, but send its malign influence down to the second and third and fourth ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... conceit, All heedless of the hearts beneath your feet, Fling falsehoods as a sower scatters grain And, for security, invoke disdain. Sir, there are laws that men of sense observe, No matter whence they come nor whom they serve— The laws of courtesy; and these forbid You to malign, as recently you did, As servant of another State, a State Wherein your duties all are concentrate; Branding its Ministers as rogues—in short, Inviting cuffs ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce

... defenseless; for Clorinda was an Amazon, reduced by Tasso's gentle genius to womanhood from the proportions of Marfisa. Finally, with heart surcharged with love for her, he has to cross his sword in deadly duel with this lady. Malign stars rule the hour: he knows not who she is: misadventure makes her, instead of him, the victim of their encounter. With her last breath she demands baptism—the good Tasso, so it seems, could not send so fair a creature of his fancy as Clorinda to the shades without viaticum; and his poetry ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... this happened, before I ever saw you. I am no worse now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. God forbid I should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would soon malign you.' ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... everybody, from Virgil to Milton, from Scott to Moliere, who attains success. When you are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and malign you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you did not write, all in the sacred cause ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... to hold a brief for Lever, because he has been most unjustly censured by Irishmen, even in so august and impartial a court as the Dictionary of National Biography, as if he had traduced his countrymen. Did Thackeray, then, malign the English? The only charge that may fairly be brought against him is the one that cannot be rebutted—the charge of superficiality and of scamped work, of a humour that only plays over the surface of things—a ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn

... the Argive squadron was sailing in order from Tenedos, and in the favouring stillness of the quiet moon sought the shores it knew; when the royal galley ran out a flame, and, protected by the gods' malign decrees, Sinon stealthily lets loose the imprisoned Grecians from their barriers of pine; the horse opens and restores them to the air; and joyfully issuing from the hollow wood, Thessander and Sthenelus the captains, and terrible Ulysses, [262-295]slide down the dangling ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... of the latter than the former; but there were some mollifying circumstances to be taken into the account in the summing up of his character. His natural love of money had been stimulated and intensified by the malign influence of his wife. She was miserly when he married her. To keep what she had, and get what she could, was her ruling passion; besides which she had a passion for ruling. And often, when her husband's gentler heart would be touched by a tale of suffering, and his hand be opened ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... fidelity, and took much pains by their praises and their promises to keep him close at their side; and this, too, amused him. He was amused as a tyrant might be at the obvious efforts of those around him to keep him in good-humor, or as a man conscious of incipient madness might find malign delight in the anxiety of his friends to fall in with all his moods and not to cross him in anything he was pleased ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Disraeli, in one of his popular addresses, was applauded for saying that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"—one of the most exaggerated and ridiculous charges that was ever made against a public man of eminence, yet witty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... Consumption, slow Decline, Put in their claims, on counts malign; And Plague preferred his rapid power To weed ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... But here again the malign influence of Berlin thwarted the plans of Pitt. In vain did Malmesbury ply the Duke with arguments and the Duchess with compliments. On 25th November the Duke informed him that, as a Prussian Field-Marshal, he was bound to consult Frederick ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... as if she were luring him into some secret place to have him slain with poisonous fangs. He passed on from that case to the others unwillingly. The room was still. Most of the snakes would have seemed dead but for the malign stare of the beaded eyes. He seemed anxious to get out; the atmosphere of the ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... the wild whirl malign Of this earthquake storm doth cease, And the sky returns to peace, Quiet, calm, and crystalline, And the bright succeeds the dark With such strange rapidity, That the storm would seem to be Only raised to sink thy bark, Tell me who thou art, repay ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... shipwrecks and disaster; while again, on the opposite quarter, the canvas appears of snowy whiteness, just catching the last rays of the light-giving orb of day, and we would fain believe them benign beings hovering over the ocean, to protect us poor mortals from the malign influences of their antagonists; while our proud ship glides majestically along in solitary grandeur, casting indignantly aside the waves which it seems to rule, like some mighty monarch galloping over the broad domains which own him as their lord. Come, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... became solitaries, animalesque and shy—such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been. Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits, their cave-dwelling ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... month," I exclaimed, "did my distinguished self arrive at this venerable mansion. What a singular conjunction of events! No doubt our horoscopes would reveal some strange entanglement of destinies at this point. Perchance I, even I, was 'the star malign' whose rising disturbed the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... all kinds of sour and biting foods and sharp mineral waters, which are the sworn enemies of any sebaceous condition. And now that she was nineteen, almost at the further boundary of the marrying age, and slimmer than ever before, he rejoiced greatly, for he had accomplished his deep and malign purpose, and laid a heavy burden of sorrow upon Count ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... back with everything to learn. Fear enveloped me as in a cloud during my first ride, and the possibilities of the little cow pony they put me on seemed more awe-inspiring than those of a locomotive. But I have been reading Professor William James and acquired from him the idea (I hope I do not malign him) that the accomplishment of a thing depends largely upon one's mental attitude, and this was mine ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson

... frighten me;—both Barty and your Uncle Tom; ay, and your father too, Brooke; they did not dare to go to law. To law, indeed! If ever there was a good will in the world, the will of your Uncle Brooke was good. They could talk, and malign me, and tell lies as to dates, and strive to make my name odious in the county; but they knew that the will was good. They did not succeed very well in what they ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... no doubt, under some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was "a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, versifying a thought of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... spirit of immortal man, attempts his first outbreak into the domain of unlimited inquiry, unless he take heed of the needfully-cautious prudentialities of mundane observance, there infallibly attends him a fatal Mephistophelean influence, of which the malign tendency, from every conclusion of eventuality, is to plunge him into perilous vast cloud-waves of the dream-inhabited vague. Let, then, the young student ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... expressed the opinion that if no further malign influences were felt, and the train were presently to start, the remainder of the journey would occupy comparatively ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... but will send terror and sorrow on those who look upon her with intelligent eyes. We may neither be angry nor gay in the presence of the moon, nor may we dare to think in her bailiwick, or the Jealous One will surely afflict us. I think that she is not benevolent but malign, and that her mildness is a cloak for many shy infamies. I think that beauty tends to become frightful as it becomes perfect, and that, if we could see it comprehendingly, the extreme of beauty is a desolating hideousness, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... from a haunted sleep, the question, "What disaster is this that has befallen?"—answered, alas! but too easily, too terribly! Amidst all this was perpetually rising before my fancy the obscure, dilated figure of our lodger, as he had confronted me in his malign power that night. I dismissed the image with a shudder as often as it recurred; and even now, at this distance of time, I have felt more than I could well describe in the mere effort to fix my recollection upon its hated traits, ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... will find its God of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment; in faith and zeal toward God it will not believe; charity it will regard as lust; compassion as pride; every virtue it will misinterpret, every faithfulness malign. But the mind of the devout artist will find its own image wherever it exists; it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of dens and caves; it will believe in its being, often where it cannot see it, and always ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... rude hands; Blasting the foodful grain, the loaded branches; And marking all along its way with ruin. 620 Accursed thing!—Oh! where shall fancy find A proper name to call thee by, expressive Of all thy horrors?—Pregnant womb of ills! Of tempers so transcendantly malign, That toads and serpents of most deadly kind Compared to thee are harmless.—Sicknesses Of every size and symptom, racking pains, And bluest plagues, are thine.—See how the fiend Profusely scatters the contagion round! Whilst deep-mouth'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... welcome, or, at least, to avoid any of those signs which would indicate that Johannesburg likes President Kruger no more than he likes Johannesburg; and even those who were most conscious of the President's malign influence did all in their power to make the visit a success, believing themselves to be in duty bound to make any effort, even at the sacrifice of personal sympathies and opinions, to turn the current of feeling and to work for a peaceful settlement of the difficulties ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... the new mother and her husband leave the house in order that the little one may have good luck, and also that they themselves may be removed from the malign influence of the malevolent spirits that are inevitably present on the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh," said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now," said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign. I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were "under," in the Senior's room, but I said, "I have a ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... by James could hardly impose on so astute a diplomatist as Noel de Caron, and the effect produced upon the policy of one of the Republic's chief allies by the Spanish marriages naturally made her statesmen shudder at the prospect of their other powerful friend coming thus under the malign influence ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the memory of him who had done more than all others together to strip life and human nature of their last instinctive decency of illusion. His life, or such accounts as we had of it, had been full of antitheses as startling as if some malign enchanter had embodied one of Macaulay's characters as a conundrum to bewilder the historian himself. A generous miser; a sceptical believer; a devout scoffer; a tender-hearted misanthrope; a churchman faithful to his order yet loathing to wear its uniform; an Irishman hating the Irish, as Heine ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... learn also from another source;(74) although, one at least of the ancient chroniclers strongly hints that the favour of the citizens had been obtained by bribes and promises.(75) The earl's return was marked by decrees of outlawry against the king's foreign favourites, whose malign influence he had endeavoured formerly to counteract, and who had proved themselves strong enough to procure the banishment of himself ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... all that rubbish!" He certainly is a wonderfully interesting study. I wish I could get some glimpse of his mind or of the cause of his sudden passion. Stop. There may be a clue after all, if we can find why today his paroxysms came on at high noon and at sunset. Can it be that there is a malign influence of the sun at periods which affects certain natures, as at times the moon ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... God's lightnings sear the eyeballs of virtue, tall and fair as angelhood,—this is our agonized estimate betimes, and we are troubled lest, unwittingly and unwillingly, we malign God. To an explanation of this fiery tangle of adversity the drama of Job sets ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... without shame, nothing was too much! And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even to her own servants—preparing his food herself, watching for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her discretion, her disinterested benevolence, not only defied danger, (that were little ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... with gifts and privileges, in gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should turn against them as it did, and how all Europe should set itself to disgrace and despoil, to malign and execrate, those who had so long been its favorites and its champions. It is not easy to understand this, and it is painful to read the story in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... strength, delay? I shall go to search for them!' And resolved to do this, the mighty-armed Yudhishthira then rose up, his heart burning in grief. And that bull among men, the royal son of Kunti thought within himself. 'Is this forest under some malign influence? Or, is it infested by some wicked beasts? Or, have they all fallen, in consequence of having disregarded some mighty being? Or, not finding water in the spot whither those heroes had first repaired, they have spent all this time in search ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... it be not vain to object that our fellow-subjects of Great Britain would malign or obstruct our industry when it is exerted in a way which cannot interfere ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... upon him a look of malign triumph. "Ah!" he said. "You suffer, too." He was silent for an instant. "But then you think that you may yet win her," he said. "Who knows?" and he watched his listener closely, "Women are strange," he added. "She'd be flattered by your having been a scamp for her ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... superstition that "Meess Lucie" was learned; with the notable exception of M. Emanuel, who, by means peculiar to himself, and quite inscrutable to me, had obtained a not inaccurate inkling of my real qualifications, and used to take quiet opportunities of chuckling in my ear his malign glee over their scant measure. For my part, I never troubled myself about this penury. I dearly like to think my own thoughts; I had great pleasure in reading a few books, but not many: preferring always those on whose style or sentiment the writer's individual nature ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... the olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced; The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs The vanquished punished with malign revenge: Never had British priest to Saxon preached; And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills Nor man nor woman smiled. They had not lacked The timely warning. From his Kentish shores Augustine stretched to them paternal hands: Later, he ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... bring out very strikingly the double source of the sin. 'Why hath Satan filled thy heart?'—an awful antithesis to being filled with the Spirit. Then there is a real, malign Tempter, who can pour evil affections and purposes into men's hearts. But he cannot do it unless the man opens his heart, as that 'why?' implies. The same thought of our co-operation and concurrence, so that, however Satan suggests, it is we who are guilty, comes out in the second ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... countenance when under the influence of strong emotion. He ceased to take part in the consul's efforts in his behalf; the whole abominable affair seemed as far beyond his forecast or endeavor as some result of malign enchantment, and there was no such thing as carrying off the tragedy with self-respect. Distressing as it was, there could be no question but it was entirely ridiculous; he hung his head with shame before the portiers at being a party to it; he no ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... and the advance of civilization seems in vain; in these times when the Negro is compared to the brute, and his mentality limited to the ordinary; in these times when the holy robes of the Church are used to decry, villify and malign the race; in these times when the subsidized press of the country loudly proclaims the Negro's incapacity for government; in these times I turn with pardonable pride to the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, an organization the affairs of which are administered entirely by ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... this his discomfort augmented. He was assailed by an unreasoning nervousness of something malign, something sinister, about to befall or to become ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye, directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... on me a malign glance. I trotted him out and entertained myself with his paces (which were livelier than those of his nag) for the next three hours. Those who like nature unadorned can find it here. As a specimen of unbridled rancor ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... down upon his breast, broiling in the rays of the hot sun. To make the keener his thirst, there lay before him a delectable oasis, a patch of moist green, with playing fountains and rippling cascades plainly visible to his tortured gaze. He struggled toward it, and always, as he neared it, some malign influence clutched his wrists—which unaccountably stuck out behind ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable^, disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c (corrupt) &c 659; virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c (morbific) 657 [Obs.]; deadly &c (killing) 361; destructive &c (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... easier to enter than to quit your ship," returned the laughing Alida. "By certain symptoms that attended our passage to the island, your Coquette, like others, is fond of conquest. One is not safe beneath so malign ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... feels that the parties who followed him, were directed by some malign agency which is fraught with future danger ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... excrescences, of which innumerable remedies are composed, noble antidotes, syrups, &c. Nay, 'tis reported, that the very shade of this tree is so wholesome, that the sleeping, or lying under it becomes a present remedy to paralyticks, and recovers those whom the mistaken malign influence of the walnut-tree has smitten: But what is still more strange, I read in one Paulus a Physician of Denmark, that an handful or two of small oak buttons, mingled with oats, given to horses which are black of colour, will in few days eating alter it to a fine dapple-grey, which he attributes ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want you to understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it falls to many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darkness and malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a little more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, and suicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, that suicide of self-respect which turns men ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... enemy under the ban and curse of God. A vulgar interpretation is, that it means "five in your eye;" but this custom of cursing is so remote as not now to be explained. The door-posts and rooms of houses are imprinted with the outspread hand to prevent or withstand "the eye-malign" from glancing on them and the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... brought a sickening feeling of helplessness and apprehension. Of course she thought the idea utterly fantastic, but Jim and her mother appeared to believe it, and her own notions of the city's wickedness were so vivid that anything seemed possible. Certainly some malign influence seemed to be deliberately at work against her, and a thousand disagreeable incidents, once she took time to reflect upon them, bore out her suspicions. She was half minded to run away, ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... name, Men of Athens! and liability to reproach from those who desire to malign the city of Athens—that ye put Socrates to death, a wise man. For in very truth they will declare me to have been wise—those who wish to discredit you— even though I be not. Now had you waited a ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater

... liberty, because of its own great self, and not because of its application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive character and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears stuffed with cotton. When these things succeeded the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... not seem to be such an easy matter, however, for difficulties beset them on every side as soon as they started to leave the jungle, as though there were some malign influence in those gloomy shades which was endeavoring to ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... that the least part of knowledge passed to | man by this so large a charter from God | must be subject to that use for which God | hath granted it; which is the benefit and | relief of the state and society or man; | for otherwise all manner of knowledge | becometh malign and serpentine, and | therefore as carrying the quality of the | serpent's sting and malice it maketh the | mind of man to swell; as the Scripture | saith excellently, KNOWLEDGE BLOWETH UP, | BUT CHARITY BUILDETH UP{40}. And again the | 40. ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon

... so malign of itself, and so hard to be removed, the reliques are to be cleansed, by alteratives, cordials, and such means: the temper is to be altered and amended, with such things as fortify and strengthen the heart and brain, [4295]"which ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... countess walked hurriedly through the room, with folded arms, fiery eyes, and on her lips a smile—but what a smile! Alone in that gorgeous apartment, with her sinister beauty and her angry, flashing jewels, she might have been mistaken for a malign spirit who had just left her kingdom of darkness to visit ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... naked sword hangs: the songs of birds and the lyre will not restore his sleep. Sleep disdains not the humble cottages and shady bank of peasants; he disdains not Tempe, fanned by zephyrs. Him, who desires but a competency, neither the tempestuous sea renders anxious, nor the malign violence of Arcturus setting, or of the rising Kid; not his vineyards beaten down with hail, and a deceitful farm; his plantations at one season blaming the rains, at another, the influence of the constellations parching the grounds, at another, the severe winters. The fishes perceive ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... mown down at the devastating stride of 5000 deaths a week, and where men's hearts, the nerve, courage, sanity, and humanity of men, were being sapped and quenched and consumed by terror and panic and despair. I saw the Russian people under the black shadow and in the malign presence of the Great Death, living in the dark clouds of inquietude and dread and awe. And when my visit came to an end I left Russia with the feeling that, relatively short as my life among the Russian people had been, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... stories are tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by his own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and "Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny. Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... monument or temple erected to the glory of Washington in his divine character of Founder and Preserver of republican institutions. If this tutelary deity of the ancient Americans really invented representative government they were not the first by many to whom he imparted the malign secret of its inauguration and denied that of ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... general, that independent institutions are detrimental to a nation. Organized purposely for a public service, and possessing, nearly or remotely under the supervision of the State, the faculty of self-administration, these bodies are valuable organs and not malign tumors. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... reproach, "Why, Barine, how did you get through the howling mob?" she answered gaily: "That a learned member of the Museum may receive me with the query whether I am here, though from childhood a kind or—what do you think, grandfather?—a malign fate has preserved me from being overlooked, and some one else reprovingly asks how I passed through the shouting mob, as if it were a crime to wade into the water to hold out a helping hand to those we love best when ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the light had died; only for an instant had he seen the things that leaped upon Chet—but he knew! Never again could any man tell Spud O'Malley that the Moon was a lifeless globe ... and he knew that the life was of a form monstrous and horrible and malign! ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin

... complaint did Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention—but all to no purpose. The ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here, that men of such origins and such free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Government and people who had welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion. A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. Because it was incredible we made no preparation for it. We would have ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson

... head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank—at two o'clock in the morning—with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a locked door stood between ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite the reverse. Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as these demons of the outer air evinced in their mad battle ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Probus, 'but little of either; yet I thank thee, and all of our name who are here present thank thee, for the free range which thou hast offered. I thank thee too, and so do we all, for the liberty of frank and undisturbed speech, which thou hast assured to me. Yet shall I not use it to malign either the Romans or their faith. It is not with anger and fierce denunciation, O Emperor, that it becomes the advocate, of what he believes to be a religion from Heaven, to assail the adherents of a religion like ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. A sect of MUDders worships Shub-Internet, sacrificing objects and praying for good connections. To no avail — its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdown. Often heard as in "Freela casts a tac nuke at Shub-Internet for slowing her down." (A forged response often follows along the lines of: "Shub-Internet gulps down the tac nuke and burps happily.") Also cursed ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... upon the Boston jailer, and had no friend there like Joseph Putnam, prepared to go to any length on his behalf. But, on the other hand, in Boston they seemed outside of the circle of Mistress Ann Putnam's powerful and malign influence. This of itself was no small gain; and, thinking over the whole matter, Master Raymond came to the conclusion that perhaps the chances of escape would be even greater in Boston than ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... speculate upon what he might have been in this final trial of his public career, had Hamilton died as he took the helm of State. If Hamilton's enemies very nearly ruined his own character, there is no denying that he exerted an almost malign influence upon them. To those he loved or who appealed to the highest in him he gave not only strength, but an abundance of sweetness and light, illuminating mind and spirit, and inspiring an affection that was both unselfish and uplifting. But his enemies hated him so frantically that ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... urged thereto by some influence malign or fate sinister, the loyal portion of two of the southern tribes, the Creeks and the Seminoles, took in April, 1862, a certain action that, all unbeknown to them, expedited the northern schemes for Indian undoing. The action referred to was tribal reoerganization. Each ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... a red portfolio, and affixed the seal in the unpoetic guise of an adhesive stamp; nor did his perturbed and clumsy movements at all lessen the comedy of the performance. Sir John looked on with a malign enjoyment; and Otto chafed, regretting, when too late, the unnecessary royalty of his command and gesture. But at length the Chancellor had finished his piece of prestidigitation, and, without waiting for an order, had countersigned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... verse, though I did not your face. And to him that thinks rightly, there's reason enough, 'Cause one is as smooth as the other is rough. But much I'm amazed you should think my design Was to rhyme down your nose, or your harlequin grin, Which you yourself wonder the de'el should malign. And if 'tis so strange, that your monstership's crany Should be envied by him, much less by Delany; Though I own to you, when I consider it stricter, I envy the painter, although not the picture. And justly she's envied, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... part more than the whole, And love yourself more than all human kind, Who persecute good men with prudence blind Because they combat your malign control, See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school, Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind, Whose best our good to Deity refined, The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul. Deem you that only you have thought and sense, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... express in statistical terms the varying degrees of gravity in the prognosis of cases in which at the moment of conception both parents are the subjects of lead poisoning, also when one alone is affected. The malign influence of lead is reflected upon the fetus and upon the continuation of the pregnancy 94 times out of 100 when both parents have been working in lead, 92 times when the mother alone is affected, and 63 times when it is the father alone who has worked in lead. ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... Accursed, sagacious of his act, Rushed back from all the isle and round him met With anger seven times heated, since their hour, And this they knew, was come. Nor thunder din And challenge through the ear alone, sufficed That hour their rage malign that, craving sore Material bulk to rend his bulk—their foe's - Through fleshly strength of that their murder-lust Flamed forth in fleshly form phantoms night-black Though bodiless yet to bodied mass as nigh As Spirits ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... us. What is popularly called sin these philosophers call error, accident, inexperience, indecision, misdirection, imperfection, disharmony; but they will not allow the presence in the human heart of a malign force which asserts itself against God, and against the order of His universe. That principle which is darkness in the mind, perverseness in the will, idolatry in the affections, "every passion's wild excess, anger, lust, and pride,"—the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... you will be of full age in seven years more. Then, if you are in the same mind—and I am sure you will not change—you, being your own master, can do freely as you will. In the meantime, to secure, so far as I can, my dear Janet against any malign stroke of fortune, I have given orders to my factor to remit semi-annually to Janet one full half of such income as may be derived in any form from my estate of Croom. It is, I am sorry to say, heavily mortgaged; but of such as is—or may be, free from such charge ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... descent upon his coast? Where, then, shall we land? some one asks. The war itself, men of Athens, will discover the rotten parts of his empire, if we make a trial; but if we sit at home, hearing the orators accuse and malign one another, no good can ever be achieved. Methinks, where a portion of our citizens, though not all, are commissioned with the rest, Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes

... of a race and made them his own. When did the colored man have a better and more faithful friend than he? Who was more completely and absolutely identified with his interests than he? Burn down the colored man's school house through the malign influence of caste feeling, and you had kindled in his soul the fires of an indignation which quite eclipsed the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various

... paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is full of dignity and pathos; we have before us a blameless and noble spirit stricken to the earth by malign powers, but not conquered; tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away; enmeshed by subtle coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at any peril of life or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... her part," thought I, as I went back with the fan. "I wonder if it will cause things to go wrong in our business affairs. I wonder if it is possible for her to be sincerely unable to make up her mind, or if there is anything in Alice's malign-influence theory. Anyhow, in the department of Cupid business certainly is ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... characteristic of the Occident is a feature of its individualism, that could not come into being in a feudal civilization in which every respectable man carried two swords with which to take instant vengeance on whoever should malign or doubt him. Universal secretiveness and conventionality, polite forms and veiled expressions, were the necessary shields of a military feudalism. Both the social order and the language were fitted to develop to a high degree the power of attention to minutest ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... in our strife against the Moths, those plagues of our furs and clothes. To keep away these wholesale ravagers, people generally use camphor, naphthalene, tobacco, bunches of lavender, and other strong-scented remedies. Without wishing to malign those preservatives, we are bound to admit that the means employed are none too effective. The smell does very little to prevent the havoc ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... are white, and her claws also. And when she bares them a man has little chance. But I understand your feeling, one has the sense of a besetting menace. I felt it often last winter when I was new to the country, and it is a very nasty feeling—as if malign gods were at work to destroy one, or as if fate were about to ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... to the Duke to make a horse in bronze, of a marvellous greatness, in order to place upon it, as a memorial, the image of the Duke. And on so vast a scale did he begin it and continue it, that it could never be completed. And there are those who have been of the opinion (so various and so often malign out of envy are the judgments of men) that he began it with no intention of finishing it, because, being of so great a size, an incredible difficulty was encountered in seeking to cast it in one piece; and it might also ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... painful reverie, noticed that the mutterings from the bed had ceased for some little time. She turned her chair, and was startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself. There was a curious malign intensity, a curious ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... spirit breathed and moved. Without the influence of such a home, if I had succeeded in the conduct that probity enjoined towards those in whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not think I could have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid bitterness against fate and the world which love, thwarted by fortune, is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in the expression of which Vivian was not without the eloquence that belongs to earnestness, whether in truth or falsehood. But, somehow or other, I never left the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer! For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at best ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... looked into (yet written before the Spanish War) seem to me excellently and most impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases it was amply merited. I have ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... the can of radite. The wires leading to the interrupter fuse gleamed a dull gold with a malign significance. ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... was, Mrs. Sykes was busy washing the veranda. This was a ritual, rigorously observed twice every day; in the morning with a pail and broom, in the evening with the hose. Par be it from us to malign the excellent Mrs. Sykes or to suggest that her opportune presence on the front steps was due to anything save the virtue of cleanliness. Mrs. Sykes, as she often said, couldn't abide curiosity. Still, ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... bitten by the snake of the world. The poison, entering his system long since, had spread, slowly, till his present weariness brought him wholly under its malign spell. Disillusion, disappointment, distrust—they worked in him till he was in a fever of pessimism, denying the good of the world. The newest maggot in his brain was a bitter over-appreciation of the fact that, while, after long years ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... if he be not, he must be very brave, or very good, indeed. I know, Sally, I should be horribly afraid, indeed, to sleep in it myself,' answered Lilias, with a cosy little shudder, as the aerial image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred, and skulking aspect, as if it had drawn back in shame and guilt under the melancholy old elms among the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... seem that some potent and malign influence, resident at the capital, some high functionary, by some species of occultation, controlling the action of the government, a Talleyrand in the pay of both governments, and balancing or equalizing disasters ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... was aware that my Cantankerous Old Lady's malign eye was inexorably fixed upon me every time I went within speaking distance of Mr. Tillington. She watched him like a lynx. She watched me like a dozen lynxes. Wherever we went, Lady Georgina was sure to ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... press has always been ready to misrepresent and malign executive officers who have refused to acknowledge any higher authority than the law, the expressed public will and their own conception of duty. This abuse has even been carried so far that the editorial columns of leading dailies have been prostituted ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee

... ill-judged speech was instantly reported to Sully, who, rising indignantly from his seat, approached the Queen and audibly informed her that he considered it his duty to remark that, as in order to render her favourable to the demand of his son, M. de Villeroy had not scrupled to malign the Protestants, but had designated them as more dangerous enemies to herself and to the state than those who were labouring to further the interests of Spain, he only entreated her to afford to his denial the same weight as that which she attached to the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... a weird history," remarked Dr. Lith. "No less than seven deaths, as well as many accidents, have been attributed to the malign influence of that greenish yellow coffin. You know the ancient Egyptians used to chant as they buried their sacred dead: 'Woe to him who injures the tomb. The dead shall point out the evildoer to the Devourer of the Underworld. Soul and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... creed, of caste, of habit, of training and interest separate men today, as if some malign genius were bent on keeping man from his fellows, begetting suspicion, uncharitableness, and hate. Still there are war, waste, and woe! Yet all the while men have been unfriendly, and, therefore, unjust and cruel, only because they are unacquainted. ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... victory. Both are excessively superstitious, considering that the ruling spirits are sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile; and feel it necessary, in all the commonest acts of their lives, to be constantly on the watch to guard against malign influences,—attributing great power for harm to the spirits of the dead. An Indian, like a Chinaman, will frequently abandon his lodge, thinking some dead relative whom he has offended has discovered him there. He is afraid to ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... heavily. Suddenly I started to my feet. For he had moved. He had raised one hand slowly. He was stroking his chin. And as he did so, and as he watched me, his mouth gradually slackened to a grin. It was worse, it was more malign, this grin, than the scowl that remained with it; and its immediate effect on me was an impulse that was as hard to resist as it was hateful. The window was open. It was nearer to me than the door. I could have reached it ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... suddenly swept together, as though closing behind some one in stealthy retreat. Although they knew that in the deserted garden they were alone, they felt that from the shadows they were being spied upon, that the darkness of the place was peopled by malign presences. ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... applied true principles of finance, supplies striking examples of the benefits a finance minister of the first order renders to his country, and the dangers of false theories. The marvelous restoration of its prosperity by the genius of Colbert, the ruin caused by the malign sciolism of Law, are familiar to all students of political economy. Nor has the United States been less favored. The names of Morris, Hamilton, Gallatin, and Chase shine ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... tales of an ancient crime against their rights," "unfortunate and unreasonable," "restless and turbulent," "reckless creed," "boisterous and passionate campaign," "allied forces of calamity," "encouraged by malign conditions," and so on ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... malign them both. But I do not. I no more than condemn a fault that both must acknowledge could they return ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... is worse this year at Rome than ever, and that it would be madness to go thither during its malign influence. This was very bad news indeed to one heartily tired of Florence, at least of its society. Merciful powers! what a set harbour within its walls! * * * * * You may imagine I do not take vast or vehement delight in this company, though very ingenious, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... not know it, as he was now too busy to go out anywhere. He was spending a great deal of his wealth in fitting out a private hospital for the study and treatment of the diseases that he specialised in. But Karl Meek soon became aware of malign influences working around him, and around the two persons for whom he would willingly, nay, happily, have laid down his life. He met an old friend in the street, who said ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... has made an effort to follow the process by which a weak woman and a weaker man, ignorant of the forces struggling within them and susceptible to malign influences from without, through terrible mistakes and bitter failure, at length reach the heights ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford

... heart all confusion, her mind darkened, we must leave her; various courses before her, and as yet without resolution to choose among them; a lost spirit, borne on the eddies of the storm; fearless and self-reliant, but with no star to guide her on her dark, malign, and forlorn way. ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... human world ends off, as it were, precipitously; and beyond there is an endless, impracticable abyss in which dwells the secret governance of things, an unknowable and implacable fate—"Wyrd"—neither malign nor benevolent, but simply inscrutable. The peculiar cast of noble and desolate courage which this bleak conception gives to the poem is ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... the packet. As he read his face assumed so malign and fierce an aspect that I had little difficulty in persuading myself of the truth of the stories of savage cruelty that I had heard of him. When he had finished he set down the paper, ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... the former refreshment, and the soft-footed half-breed having departed upon his errand, my companion, leaning forward earnestly across the littered table, outlined for Van Roon the story of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the great and malign being whose mission in England at that moment was none other than the stoppage of just such information as our host was preparing to ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... her eyes on Pratt. And Pratt suddenly felt a little afraid—there was anger in those eyes; anger of a curious sort. It might be against fate—against circumstance: it might not—why should it?—be against him personally, but it was there, and it was malign and almost evil, and ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... as he and the sergeant accompanied Hardcastle to the veranda, while Tyler took charge of the three horses. The fame of Cairns had travelled before him to Rosanna, but none had been prepared for a figure so weird or for a countenance so forbidding and malign. His manners were equally uncouth. He shook his bent head to decline refreshment; he pointedly ignored a generalization of Hardcastle's about the crime; and when he spoke, it was in a gratuitously satirical ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung

... got in the King's service, in promoting the interests of the kingdom, but his enemies regarded him as unduly tenacious of wealth and office. All classes alike grew disgusted with the justiciar. The restoration of the malign influence of Peter of Winchester completed his ruin. The king greedily listened to the complaints of his old guardian against the minister who overshadowed the royal power. At last, on July 29, 1232, Henry plucked up ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... by the agency of Antony Ferrara that the wireless message was sent to you from the P. and O. It was by the agency of Antony Ferrara that I dreamt a dream to-night. In fact it was no true dream; I was under the influence of—what shall I term it?—hypnotic suggestion. To what extent that malign will was responsible for you and I being placed in rooms communicating by means of a balcony, we probably shall never know; but if this proximity was merely accidental, the enemy did not fail to take advantage of ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never thenceforward "malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending you in merit." One of the most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... dangerous conjunction of the widow's only son and the Sabbath Day. We had a most enjoyable time, and Lloyd and I were 3 and 4 to arrive; I will not tell here what interval had elapsed between our arrival and the arrival of 1 and 2; the question, sir, is otiose and malign; it deserves, it shall have no answer. And now without further delay to the main purpose of this hasty note. We received and we have already in fact distributed the gorgeous fahbrics of Kirriemuir. Whether from the splendour of the robes themselves, or from the direct nature of the compliments ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... erstwhile lovers sighing out a hopeless passion for the beautiful Lorelei; so they brought against her accusations of sorcery, which in those days generally led to the death of the victim by burning. So grievously did these malign whispers add to the already heavy burden of the maid that she surrendered herself to be tried, hardly caring whether or not she were found guilty. She was summoned before the criminal court held at Rhens by the Archbishop of Cologne, and charged with ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... Democrats? Your test of faithfulness is the negro, ours is the woman; the broadest platform, to which no party has as yet risen, is humanity." Reformers can be as bigoted and sectarian and as ready to malign each other, as the Church in its darkest periods has been to ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... presence of the Raja or of myself, and during our progress through his father's district I heard many tales of his ill doings. To these, however, I attached but little importance, for Malays are very apt to malign a young Chief who, as they say, is born like a tiger cub, with teeth and claws, and may always be expected to do evil. Nevertheless, it would certainly never have occurred to me at that time that this mild-eyed, ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... 2.— Alonso de Palencia, Coronica, MS., part. 1, cap. 4.—Aleson, Anales de Navarra, tom. iv. pp. 519, 520.—The marriage between Blanche and Henry was publicly declared void by the bishop of Segovia, confirmed by the archbishop of Toledo, "por impotencia respectiva, owing to some malign influence"! ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... April, 1822, John Floyd, of Virginia, who, both in that state and in Congress, was active in seeking and scattering malign imputations concerning the political course of Mr. Adams, called, in the House of Representatives, for a letter, written by Jonathan Russell, in 1814, to Mr. Monroe, then Secretary of State, and, as he stated, deposited in ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy



Words linked to "Malign" :   benign, malevolent, malefic, badmouth, smirch, drag through the mud, maligner, malignancy, defame, malignance, harmful, malignity



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