"Baleful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his summons to speak with him. For she was anxious, now at last, to speak out her mind, and Privy Seal's agents had worked upon the religious of a poor little convent near her father's house a wrong so baleful that she could no longer contain herself. Either Privy Seal must redress or she must go to the King for justice to these poor women that had taught her the very elements of virtue and lay now ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... a measure, of us all; and, alas! it is the experience, in a very tragical degree, of many who have walked for a little while behind the Master, and then have turned away and walked no more with Him. We may well wonder; but the root of the mischief is in no baleful glitter of a sorcerer's eye without us, but it is in the weakness of our own wills and the waywardness of our own hearts, and the wandering of our own affections. We often court the coming of the evil influence, and are ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... only over sin? And thou would'st know if other worlds have felt The curse that fell upon, and blighted thine. Poor simple child of clay! no doubt thou know'st The story of the Eden of thy sire, And think'st that there, in its fresh, stainless breast, The baleful seeds of evil first were sown, Which since have spread so fearfully abroad,— When the sad doom, that came on him and his, Was but the spray, cast from the wave of fate, Which just then reached thy newly finished orb. Where it first started—whither tends its course— Where it ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... Jove, and Fate, And gloomy Erinnys, who combined to throw A strong delusion o'er my mind, that day I robb'd Achilles of his lawful prize. What could I do? a Goddess all o'erruled, Daughter of Jove, dread Ate, baleful power Misleading all; with light step she moves, Not on the earth, but o'er the heads of men. With blighting touch, and many ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... that we might escape the desolation of the storm. This treaty, like a rainbow on the edge of the cloud, marked to our eyes the space where it was raging, and afforded, at the same time, the sure prognostic of fair weather. If we reject it, the vivid colors will grow pale,—it will be a baleful meteor portending tempest ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... youth hailed with joy the end of his long suspense. Whatever might be the purport of the words written in that fatal paper, the knowledge thereof could not be worse than the fate which had dogged his footsteps ever since that tragic night when he had first cast eyes on the baleful beauty of the Spanish maid. Yet might it not be that once again the sight of these words would send him wandering homeless o'er the world—that the stream of his uncle's benevolence might be suddenly damned by a force ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... learned again whereby Their baleful zeal had come about, King Cole met many a wrathful eye So kindly that its wrath went out — Or partly out. Say what they would, He seemed the more to court their candor; But never told what kind of good Was in ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... their destination. Underneath this arch, they build a fire and, in single file, all pass under, stepping over the fire and spitting into it as they pass; by this act they thoroughly exorcise the evil spirits and emerge on the other side free from all baleful influence. Another instance, is where they are throwing aside the signs of mourning for the dead; during the period of mourning they may not cut their hair nor shave their temples, but as soon as the mourning is ended by the ceremony of bringing home a newly-taken head, the ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... energy which we can never altogether repress though by wise guidance we may render it an aid not only to personal development and well-being but to the moral betterment of the world. The attraction of sex, according to a superstition which reaches far back into antiquity, is a baleful comet pointing to destruction, rather than a mighty star to which we may harness our chariot. It may certainly be either, and which it is likely to become depends largely on our knowledge ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... his eye brightened into baleful flame, but she met it calmly. An indomitable spirit confronted one equally indomitable, and his was the first to succumb. Turning from her, Hazen took out pencil and paper from his pocket, and, crossing to the window with that same peculiar and oscillating motion of which he seemed ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... is as rotten as the grave? Ill-will is abroad in our learned and religious city at all hours of the day and night. He glares at us under the sun by day, and under the street lamps at night. We suddenly feel his baleful eye on us as we thoughtlessly pass under his overlooking windows: it will be a side street and an unfrequented, where you will not be ashamed and shocked and pained at heart to meet him. Public men; much ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... "fly out" at her as he had never done before. Her temper was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged into ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... of the nation comprehended that even where the estimated value of property had been highest, the true welfare of society had diminished. They learned too late the baleful effects of this circulation of paper money; the greater part of the States and cities had nothing to show ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... (involuntarily clasps her hands together and gazes at him in voiceless astonishment). Loved—loved me—thou! (Vehemently, coming close up to him.) I will not believe thee! (Looks hard at him.) Yes, it is true, and—baleful for us both! ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... allogajxo. Bake baki. Baker panisto, bakisto. Balance (scales) pesilo. Balance (poise) balanci. Balance of a/c restajxo. Balance-sheet bilanco. Balcony balkono. Bald senhara. Baldness senhareco. Bale pakego. Baleful pereiga. Balk malhelpi. Ball (globe) globo. Ball (playing) pilko. Ball (party) balo. Ball (bullet) kuglo. Ballad balado. Ballast balasto. Ballet baleto. Balloon aerostato. Balloon (plaything) aerpilkego. Ballot vocxdoni. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... had a fortnight of calm, dry, and warm weather. There is a hazy atmosphere, and the sun rises and sets wearing a blood-red aspect. At night the moon, dimly and indistinctly seen (now a crescent), has a somber and baleful appearance. This is strange at this season of the year; it is like Indian summer in May. The ground is dry and crusted, and apprehensions are felt for the crops, unless we have rain in a few days. My poor little garden has suffered ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the wall. Her eyes were fixed upon the Lady Mary with a baleful despair, she gasped ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... undefinable something which made me feel that she was there; a breathing influence that woke every nervous sensibility within me, and made my heart-beats so irregular that I tried to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed. She was there, a creeping, baleful figure, blotting the moonshine with her tall shadow, as she passed, panther-like, to and fro before that closed door, or crouched against the wall in the same attitude of listening which I myself assumed. Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular references to the founding them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner, against the baleful effects of the spirit ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... command. Shipbuilders, pilots, and seamen, were brought from the Baltic, from Hamburgh, from Genoa. The whole surface of the obedient Netherlands, whence wholesome industry had long been banished, was now the scene of a prodigious baleful activity. Portable bridges for fording the rivers of England, stockades for entrenchments, rafts and oars, were provided in vast numbers, and Alexander dug canals and widened natural streams to facilitate his operations. These wretched Provinces, crippled, impoverished, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... tempest blows O'er trees, that boast a less-aspiring height. As the wild fury of the whirlwind pours, With direst ruin fall the loftiest towers; And 't is the mountain's summit that, oblique, From the dense, lurid clouds, the baleful lightnings strike. ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... comprehend the exhaustive explanation I made of the crisis in this country's affairs? Did I not give you twenty-four hours in which to think it over? What were you doing—muddling your brains with French wines?—that you could not reason clearly when relieved of my baleful fascination? Were you not protected on the following day by two men, who were more your friends than mine? I proposed a straightforward bargain, which you understood as well then as you do now. You realized to the full what the interests of the country demanded, and in a rare moment of disinterested ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the people. They seem to mingle with them more immediately, as their counsellors and comforters; and to go among them more, when they are sick; and to pry less than some other orders, into the secrets of families, for the purpose of establishing a baleful ascendency over their weaker members; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire to make converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in the markets early in the morning. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... usual interval of bashful hesitation, verging on nervous hilarity or hypocritical attention. For the last six months this question by the master had been invariably received each morning as a veiled pleasantry which might lead to baleful information or conceal some query out of the dreadful books before him. Yet this very element of danger had its fascinations. Johnny Filgee, a small boy, blushed violently, and, without getting up, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... long, but returned to stand beside the bunk, looking down upon Essie with eyes that in the dimness of the illy-lighted cabin shone with the baleful ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... freely, the gay talk, the eager recitals of that day's exploits served to disperse the cloud of gloom that had for a moment overspread the countenance of the prince. The queen alone, leaning on the table with fixed eyes and lips that never moved, sat at this strange feast pale and cold as a baleful ghost summoned from the tomb to disturb the joy of the party. Andre, whose brain began to be affected by the draughts of wine from Capri and Syracuse, was annoyed at his wife's look, and attributing it to contempt, filled a goblet to the brim and presented it to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... tobacco. I shall not in my remarks be offensively personal, because you all use it, or nearly all! I know by experience how it soothes and roseates the world, and kindles sociality, and I also know some of its baleful results. I was its slave, and by the grace of God I have become its conqueror. Tens of thousands of people have been asking the question during the past two months, asking it with great pathos and great earnestness: "Does the use of tobacco produce cancerous and other troubles?" ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... precious to me than social grandeur, I begged the Duke of York to find for himself a partner of exalted rank. He gave way to despair, and spoke of putting an end to his existence; in fact, he behaved as all lovers do whom passion touches to madness; so this baleful marriage took place. God is my witness that I opposed it, urged thereto by wisdom, by modesty, and by foresight. Now, as you see, from that cruel moment I have been exiled to alien lands, robbed of the sight ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... which infects everyone who gets possession of it with a mildly insane determination to keep it. An honourable man steals it and a nice woman smacks her baby for holding it, so you can see how really baleful its influence must have been when you consider that they were both Miss COLE'S characters. A very little of the occult will excuse a good deal of improbability, and the small amount that has crept into The Cypress Tree does not spoil the effect ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... Are you ready with the retort to every foul suggestion, "Get thee hence, Satan"? Cultivate a tender sensitiveness about sin. The finest barometers are the most sensitive. Whatever be your besetting frailty—whatever bitter or baleful passion you are conscious aspires to the mastery—watch it, crucify it, "nail it to your Lord's cross." You may despise "the day of small things"—the Great Adversary does not. He knows the power of littles; that little by little consumes ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... the least of the races in a poetic sense, have but slight regard for the interference of the stars in their poor little affairs, and in this respect are saner than many a nation which has given abundant proof of wisdom. One of their beliefs is that meteors are baleful, though under given conditions they derive from such phenomena longed-for assurance. A meteor is described as "Star run about." "That fella no good; him kill'em man!" Yet in circumstances to be mentioned they find in a meteor a sign that life has been restored ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... all responsibility for his utterances. Even now, when the sound of falling shackles is in the air, and the smoke of the torment of the oppressor fills the sky, old partisans of freedom cannot quite forget their stupid and hackneyed animosities, but still bemoan the baleful influence of this fiery itinerant. Representative of none but himself, disowned or hated by all parties, acknowledging responsibility to God and his own conscience only, he has done his work, and done it well,—done it amid careful questionings ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... diffusion of this creed, both to religion and the Church, renders it impossible that it should be allowed to pursue its unmolested course, without correspondent efforts, on the part of sound Churchmen, to counteract its baleful influence. ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... to my many ills! Never had this been done, but like a fiend Thou temptedst me with ceaseless devilish thoughts. Therefore I curse with bitterness of soul The hour wherein I saw thy baleful eyes. My eyes I curse for looking on those eyes! My ears I curse for hearkening to thy tongue! I curse thy tongue for tempting of mine ears! Each part I curse, that we call thine or mine; Thine for ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... hastened back, for I forgot to take my watch and was belated. I fear I am late, even now, for tiffin," demurely replied the Swiss maiden, dropping for the first time in her life into the baleful arts of the other daughters of Eve. She had broken the ice of propriety in which her past life had been congealed and an insidious pleasure now thrilled her quickened veins, as she felt herself possessed of a secret, one linking her to an attractive ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... united the virtues of a king, a hero, and a man; that his martial spirit was tempered by the love of private and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people, the friend of his neighbors, and the terror of the infidels. Superstition alone, in all the extent of her baleful influence, [93] corrupted his understanding and his heart: his devotion stooped to admire and imitate the begging friars of Francis and Dominic: he pursued with blind and cruel zeal the enemies of the faith; and the best of kings twice descended from his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... not a man to give up such a point, and at length a false submission and a feigned repentance soothed his resentment and obtained his pardon. They moved several miles from the place; but where they moved, there some at least, and those the worst, of the baleful brood stealthily followed. Whatever Ramouna's earlier love for Roland had been, it had evidently long ceased, in the thorough want of sympathy between them, and in that absence which, if it renews a strong affection, destroys an affection already weakened. But the mother and son adored ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... law-abiding and less given to acts of violence, than they had been in the previous period? Were the people more contented and less torn by factions, happier in their homes, less abandoned to the insanities of baleful superstitions? ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... "Black Mose," "bad man," "graveyard of his own," "good fellow when sober," etc. Sometimes, irritated and reckless, he lived up to his sinister reputation, and when some Eastern gentleman in brown corduroy timidly approached to say, "Fine weather," Mose turned upon him a baleful glare under which the questioner shriveled, to the delight of the driver, who vastly admired ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... badly art thou freighted!" Then, it seem'd, That the earth open'd between either wheel, And I beheld a dragon issue thence, That through the chariot fix'd his forked train; And like a wasp that draggeth back the sting, So drawing forth his baleful train, he dragg'd Part of the bottom forth, and went his way Exulting. What remain'd, as lively turf With green herb, so did clothe itself with plumes, Which haply had with purpose chaste and kind Been offer'd; and therewith were cloth'd the wheels, Both ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... yet better preserved, than his wife—a large, stout man, with a fierce face and black, baleful eyes. All cowered before him except La Zandunga, as they called his wife here in Bombardier Lane. He was at her mercy—a Spaniard resident on the Rock by permit granted to his wife—a native of Gibraltar, and liable to be expelled at any time ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... would that train never come? The whistle was sounding in the distance, but it would take ages to drag those heavy Pullmans up the grade from the bridge where they had yet to stop. She could almost have darted forward, seized her sister by the wrist, and whispered again the baleful reminder that of late had had no mention between them,—"Thou art another's;" but in her distress her weak blue eyes sought her husband's face. He saw it all, and shook his head. Then there was nothing to ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... fiercest of our foes. His bulk is greater than that of any beast of the land, and were he to meet a camel or an elephant, he would swallow it at a single mouthful." Abdullah enquired, "O my brother, what doth this baleful beast?"; and the Merman replied, "He eateth of the beasts of the sea. Hast thou not heard the saying, 'Like the fishes of the sea: forcible eateth feeble?[FN262]'" "True; but have you many of these Dandans in the sea?" "Yes, there be ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... in the air the gentle rapping of a 'wooden fish' bell. A voice recited the sentence: "Ave! Buddha able to unravel retribution and dispel grievances! Should any human being lie in sickness, and his family be solicitous on his account; or should any one have met with evil spirits and come across any baleful evils, we have the means to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... spray; this tree is thine enemy; hasten where the vine rises in clustering shade of silvered leaves; on her bough rest the sole of thy foot, around her sing and pour the shrill music of thy mouth; for the oak carries mistletoe baleful to birds, and she the grape-cluster; and the Wine-god ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... fixed, those eyes, like an owl's; or, better, a wildcat's, as though they never winked. From the pupils, which were very small, the little light-colored lines radiated across very large blue irises. There was something baleful and compelling in their glare, so that even Hallowell, cool customer as he was, forgot immediately all about the man's littleness and shabbiness and bent figure, and was conscious only of the cruel, ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... teacher, Thus foreshadow things to come, When the girl shall grow the creature Of false terrors vain and dumb, And entrust their baleful fetish with her being's ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... when we are weary of dark intrigues and impenetrable secrets we may turn to lighter reading. Yet it is significant of the taste of our ancestors that we cannot venture far without encountering a spectre of some sort, or a villain with the baleful eye, disguised, it may be, as a Spanish gipsy, a German necromancer or a Russian count. Many of the stories are Gothic novels, reduced in size, but with room for all ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... kill her, but seeing her blood flow, his love gets the better of him; he presses her to his heart, and persuades her to fly with him from the baleful air of the plain to the pure heights ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... impious disregard of the deprivation and misery of the operative and laborer, although arrayed side by side with the insolence and wealth pampered by the taxes torn from themselves—the total forgetfulness of the self-evident truth of the right of all men to labor, unrestricted by the baleful influences of the competition of capitalists—these facts, properly urged and set forth by the press, from the tribune and in the clubs, in connection with due enlightenment of the masses upon their rights as to ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... lives,—such an experience, for instance, as that of ignoring some begging Irishwoman's request for "a few pennies in the Lord's name," and thereupon receiving a volley of hair-raising curses and baleful predictions. 'Tis easy to believe in the Indian and the prophecy of a passing of possessions, even though it was fulfilled; but the time-clause involving the eagle and the lion was doubtless added after the bird had ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the day of final triumph arrive. Amongst the virtues of the good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... 'Neath the baleful star of Sirius, When the postmen slowlier jog, And the ox becomes delirious, And the muzzle ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... him, the ordinary appliances of the church have no attraction for him. The association must see to it that his social craving is met by that which is interesting enough to attract him, and yet is safe. To counteract baleful attractions, others which call forth strong sympathy, and appliances which cost, in every sense of the word, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... on behalf of religious liberty failed to save Beaufoy's motion from a crushing defeat. Pitt spoke against the proposal and carried the House with him by 294 votes to 105. This vote illustrates the baleful influence exerted by the French Revolution on the cause of Reform ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of some favourite brocaded gown, perhaps, were attached to the neck and shoulders, tiny lace tuckers were inserted, and gorgeous jewellery was simulated by wretched bits of tinsel trimming. The realism of the Stuart stump picture was never so atrocious as this baleful invention, which was as meretricious as ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... If, disregarding my last counsel, you go astray in the world, from the eternal abodes on high I will watch over you; I will appear to you, if God empower me to do so; and, at any rate, from time to time I will knock at the door of your heart to rouse you from your baleful slumber and draw your attention to the sweet paths of light that lead ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... one of Papua's yellow mornings when she shows herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen, alien, implacable, filled with the threat of latent, malefic forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an emanation out of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself—sinister even when she smiles. And now and then, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... of love; on the other the dread force of hate. Tenderness dwelt here; vengeance waited there. Close together were these three, but while Hilda heard even the very breathing of the lovers, they were unconscious of her presence, and heard not the beating of that baleful heart, which now, filled with quenchless hate, throbbed vehemently and rapidly in ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... those baleful reptiles was gliding across the path of the pioneers, as if to apprise them of the appropriateness of the name of the gulch, which was now near ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... the son of Hagal. King Hunding sent men to Hagal in search of Helgi, and Helgi had no other way to save himself than by taking the clothes of a female slave and going to grind. They sought but did not find him. Then said Blind the Baleful: ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... necessary to introduce some tragic element into our lives, and if that was the intention, I admit that the means were ingenious. To my mind the only hope of salvation for the human race lies in its gradual emancipation from that baleful passion which draws men and women so irresistibly to each other. Love and reason in a well-regulated human being, form at best an armed neutrality, but can never cordially co-operate. But few men arrive in this life at this ideal state, and women never. As it is now, our best energies are wasted ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that the real existence lies elsewhere; at another that these brief days of ours are the only business with which we have to do and that of it we must make the best. At one time we think our loves much more immortal than the stars; at another that they are mere shadows cast by the baleful sun of desire upon the shallow and fleeting water we call Life which seems to flow out of nowhere into nowhere. At one time we are full of faith, at another all such hopes are blotted out by a black wall of Nothingness, and so on ad ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... she had lied to him. She was hopelessly unworthy of one who, in obedience to the sentimental whim she had inspired, seemed contemptuous of his future. She would be worse than she already was, if she countenanced a course of action full of such baleful possibilities for himself. Almost before she knew what she was doing, she kissed him lightly on the cheek, and snatched the violets he was wearing in his coat, before slipping away, to lose ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... want of seasonable repose enervated the body. A foreign officer held the bank at the game of faro by which he made a very considerable fortune, and but too many respectable families in Britain had to lament its baleful effects. Officers who might have rendered honorable service to their country were compelled, by what was termed a bad run of luck, to dispose of their commissions and return penniless to their friends in Europe. The father who thought ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... in question seemed, from an astrological point of view, to be peculiarly favourable to the ascendancy of baleful influences. The moon hung above the western horizon, in her most formidable phase—just past the semicircle, with her gibbous edge malignantly feathered. Being now in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... grasped the Spaniard's sword she had stolen out of his boat and her other hand was hid behind her, wherefore I watched her narrowly, as she stood gazing down at this wounded man; and at first she scowled at him, but slowly her look changed and I saw her vivid lips curl in her baleful smile. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... ominous followed the rash words, and Samoval, white to the lips, pondered the imperturbable captain with a baleful eye. ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... way of immediate intelligence, and more able to judge of its result, was deeply affected by the most gloomy prognostics. He came home at about six in the morning, harassed, worn, almost wasted with fatigue, and yet more with a baleful view of all around him, and with a sense of wounded military honour in the inertia which seemed to paralyze all effort to save the king and his cause. He had spent two nights following armed on guard, one at the Tuileries, in his duty of garde du corps to the king; the other on duty ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... bent upon Robert was baleful. His capture by the three and the manner in which he had been compelled to disclose the letter had been humiliating, and Robert did not doubt that the man would seek revenge. He shivered a little, feeling that as a prisoner he was in a measure ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this word, with baleful charm, To change the sweetest name we know To one surcharged with subtile harm?— And what the strange, new name ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... four men saw the terrific emanation take its baleful effect. As before, the body commenced to expand and gradually took on a misty outline. Larger and larger it grew, until finally it had become a vast cloud of intangible nothingness which filled the room ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... you," said Mr. Grimes, watching her with his little eyes, in which there seemed to burn a very baleful look. ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... streaming from his nose and ears. He put up his hand. It came away stained red. Even tough old Ben Stubbs felt the baleful effect of ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... and shield the poor; Prudent in counsel, honest in debate, Patient to hear and judge, patient to wait; The calm, the wise, the witty and the proved, Whom millions honored, and whom millions loved; Swayed by no baleful lust of pride or power, The shining pageants ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... was in vain. Though a momentary respond was given by the soldiers to the sentiments of their magnanimous commander, the baleful influence of faction had corrupted many of them; and finding himself robbed of the confidence of the army, as well as of the assembly, and thus deprived of all hope of being useful to his country, he quitted France, with an intention of retiring to America, where he had just ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... eyed look around a room not yet dimmed by cigar smoke. I got the most baleful glare, I thought. He didn't need to worry. I'd been certified Normal by an ...
— Card Trick • Walter Bupp AKA Randall Garrett
... raised her head and favoured the interrupter with a baleful stare, whereupon Mr. Porson, scratching his neck feebly, glanced at ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... irritation, fretfulness, and impatience; and with a dejection, gloom, and despair, which made existence misery[191]. From this dismal malady he never afterwards was perfectly relieved; and all his labours, and all his enjoyments, were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence[192]. How wonderful, how unsearchable are the ways of GOD! Johnson, who was blest with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, was at ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... vanish into air. Now Slander taints with pestilence the gale; And mingling cries assail, The wail of Woe, and groans of grim Despair. Lo, wizard Envy from his serpent eye Darts quick destruction in each baleful glance; Pride, smiling stern, and yellow Jealousy, Frowning Disdain, and hagard Hate advance; Behold, amidst the dire array, Pale wither'd Care his giant-stature rears, And lo, his iron hand prepares ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... lands planted, the river widened, the forestry systematically organized. The estate appeared to have attained new strength and vigour when dissevered from the old manor-house; whose shadow might be supposed to have exercised a baleful influence on ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... mists bound about his brows, Went the swart Autumn, wading to the knees Through drifts of dead leaves shaken from the boughs Of the old forest trees, The gusts upon their baleful errands run O'er the bright ruin, fading from our eyes, And over all, like clouds about ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... doubt as to the meaning of the column of flame that turned the darkness into day behind them. It was so near that they could hear its ominous roar, while the black forest walls on either side of the river were bathed in a crimson glow from its baleful light. A vast cloud of smoke, through which shot millions of sparks, trailed and eddied above it, while, with the hoarse voice of escaping steam, the blazing craft sounded its ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... quantity of manure, and had it drawn upon the ground. Then it was that the Evil Genius who (like the wicked Enchanter that always kept his eye upon Don Quixote,) hath ever dogged my steps, made his baleful presence manifest by the most rampant hostility. The day on which the manure arrived, I went out in my pleasure-boat upon Melville Water, accompanied by my man Hannibal, to manage the head-sheets. On our return, at dusk, we found the manure ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... acts that then characterized the administration of the Crown. Whatever it cost Otis personally to engage in this defence, the result, as we all now know and admit, was only and wholly beneficent—in the defeat of an unrighteous autocracy, and the emancipation of a Continent from a fettering and baleful administration. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... keep the reckoning for thee, [O Ra, as thou] advancest, and thou restest there wherein are the offerings made to thee [As thou] advancest, [as thou] advancest toward the House the advance which thou hast made toward the House is a prosperous advance; let not any baleful obstacle proceed from thy mouth against me when thou workest on my behalf. I am Set who let loose the storm-clouds and the thunder in the horizon of heaven even as ...
— Egyptian Literature
... for us; and when, at last, these mightinesses turned upon us the cold and evil eye of their displeasure, how the heaped-up sea came pouring over here, trickling through there, and seeping under yonder, until our great dike toppled over in baleful tumult, "and all the world was in the sea"; how business, east, west, north, and south, went paralyzed with fear and distrust, and old concerns went out like strings of soap-bubbles, and shocks of pain and disease went round the world, and everywhere ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... as the Greeks and Romans, or lingering in strange and now meaningless ceremonies such as the one I have just described, this primitive idea of the individual who is harmful to the community. From being baleful he became sacred. They cast him out of their city, as the Jews did their scapegoat, to wander in desert places, and as the Greeks did in a city festival which was older than the Homeric gods among ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... The baleful sounds had hardly died away, and Mr Swiveller was still sitting in a very grim state in the clients' chair, when there came a ring—or, if we may adapt the sound to his then humour, a knell—at the office bell. Opening the door with all speed, he beheld the expressive ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the great prince of listlessness and sloth, who have great influence upon millions of all sorts and conditions of men; I am that stagnant pond where the spawn of every evil is bred, where the dregs of every corruption and baleful slime grows rank. What good wouldst thou be, Asmodai, or ye, chief damned evils, were I not? I, who keep the windows open and unguarded that ye may enter into the man when ye will, through his eyes, his ears and his mouth. I ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the slight name of danger, Taunt, and revile, with bitter gibes, the wretched; The brave are ever to distress a friend. Tho' my dear country (spoil'd by wasteful war, Her harvests blazing, desolate her towns, And baleful ruin shew'd her haggard face) Call'd out on me to save her from her foes, And I obey'd, yet to your gallant prowess, And unmatch'd deeds, I admiration gave. But now my country knows the sweets of safety, Freed ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... in these matters in past times have been more fortunate than myself in their observation of the course of public affairs. If to these evils be added the combinations and angry contentions to which such a course of things gives rise, with their baleful influences upon the legislation of Congress touching the leading and appropriate duties of the Federal Government, it was but doing justice to the character of our people to expect the severe condemnation of the past which the recent exhibitions of public sentiment ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... day, in spite of the absence of slavery and the presence of philanthropical societies, the average man of wealth gives hardly more than a passing thought to the discomfort and distress of the crowded population of our great cities. The ordinary callousness of human nature had, under the baleful influence of slavery, become absolute blindness, nor were men's eyes to be opened until Christianity began to leaven the world with the doctrine of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... which have escaped the notice even of the most celebrated among the fraternity. There may be too many trees, so that some must be cut down; or there may be too few, and it becomes necessary to plant more. Water-courses may not flow in proper curves; hills may be too high, too low, and of baleful shapes, or their relative positions one with another may be radically bad. Any one of these causes may be sufficient in the eyes of a disciple of Feng-shui to account for the sudden outbreak of a plague, the gradual or rapid decay of a once flourishing town. The Feng-shui of a house influences ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... mass-production of crises, and he created crises as rabbits create their young, nine at a time. In those fuddled incompetent days before the Great War the crisis was a little-known phenomenon. Here and there in the drab routine of peaceful corpulent years there flashed in the prosperous firmament the baleful light of a great anxiety. Agadir was one; CARSON and his gun-runners was another. But they were few; they came like rare comets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... were strong, active, clear-brained lads, who had not yet learned to smoke cigarettes or cigars, and gave no cause to fear that they would ever do so. It is not necessary to state that neither knew the taste of beer or alcoholic drinks, nor did they wish to learn. They understood too well the baleful effects of such indulgences to be in danger of ruining their bodies and souls, as too many other youths are ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks,' says I, 'and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this self-same sideshow at once and forever more. Amen. I'll go to see it myself to-morrow night and investigate its baleful charm. Shall man that was made to inherit the earth be bereft of his sweetheart first by a knife and fork and then by ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... which are at work to spoil servants, none are more baleful than the system, as at present conducted, of 'intelligence offices.' These agencies might be and ought to be among the most useful of our social institutions: they are, as a class, utterly worthless, and many of them are positively dens of thieves. Almost without exception they are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... obliged to command him to slacken his pace. "Is it not enough, you infernal Greaser, that you lame your own mule, but you must try your hand on mine? Or am I to put Jinny down among the expenses?" he added with a grin and a slight lifting of his baleful eyelid. ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... has ceased to exist? It is seldom that passion ceases in both parties at the same time, and then constancy is a veritable tyrant; I compare it to the tyrant of antiquity who put people to death by tying them to dead bodies. Constancy condemns us to the same punishment. Discard such a baleful precedent to the ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... of Samuel against him, and baleful passions, made Saul so wretchedly melancholy, that some of his attendants suggested to the monarch that he should try the soothing effect of music. The proposition was favorably received, and upon the recommendation of another friend, David, the son of Jesse, of whom Saul knew nothing ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... begin again. But there is now no hope that such arrangements can be permanent; that they can be other than poor temporary makeshifts, which, if they try to fancy and make themselves permanent, will be displaced by new explosions recurring more speedily than last time. In such baleful oscillation, afloat as amid raging bottomless eddies and conflicting sea-currents, not steadfast as on fixed foundations, must European Society continue swaying, now disastrously tumbling, then painfully readjusting itself, at ever shorter intervals,—till once the new rock-basis does ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... suspicions began to file back, stealthily, silently, along the underways of his brain. Her distress began to seem a little too theatric, her troubles self-induced—all but one—madness did in very truth seem to hover over her, a baleful, imminent shadow. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... capture seemed to be unavoidable. Coke tried to still the tumult by thundering a command to Norrie, second engineer, to throw open the throttle valve. He took the wheel in person, meaning to shape a course due east, and thus endeavor to avoid the cruiser's baleful glance. But some of the men realized instantly that this expedient would fail. They were in no mood for half measures. Norrie felt a bayonet under his left shoulder-blade. Coke was roared down, and a ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... lightning in the heart of the now slowly advancing cloud, and a few seconds after the low mutter of thunder reached our ears. And before the rumble of this had died away there suddenly darted from the bosom of the cloud a long, vivid, baleful, sun-bright flash that seemed to strike into the sea within a quarter of a mile of us, immediately followed by so stupendous a crash that it caused the very timbers of our boat to vibrate and tremble—or so I verily believed. And as though that flash had ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... knew, poor, noble, suffering soul, that it would have been wiser to have saved her spotless garment from the smirch by telling him the truth. Then she could have fought this invisible tarantula Thing, with the conjectural hairy claws, the baleful, glittering eyes, and the padding feet that dogged her in the dark, with a strong man's arm to aid her. God was in Heaven, and in Him were her faith and trust, but the comfort of a human counsellor ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the military guard that attended at the Crucifixion to keep order, and who—when the vail of the Temple was rent in the awful darkness that followed; when the rock of Golgotha was split asunder by an earthquake; when the artillery of heaven thundered, and in the baleful glare of the lightnings the shrouded dead flitted about the streets of Jerusalem—shook with fear and said, "Surely this was the Son of God!" Where this altar stands now, that Roman soldier stood then, in full view of the crucified Saviour—in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... grace which sanctifies the heart. If we have this grace the more gifts we possess the better—they are all consecrated to the service of God. If we have only gifts they may render us of grace, are beneficial, but under that of depravity, baleful in their effects. ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... cut the roots of anarchical crime in a few weeks. But with unfaltering repression on the one hand, and vigour and good faith in reform on the other, we see solid reason to hope that we shall weaken, even if we cannot destroy, those baleful forces. ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... blind in your wrath, with your heel on the Israelite's neck, And your hand on that baleful old blade, Persecution, 'twere wisdom to reck The PHARAOH'S calm warning. Beware! Lo, the Pyramids pierce the grey gloom Of a desert that is but a waste, by a river that is but a tomb, Yet the Hebrew abides and is strong. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... the dead dogs, the justice sat in his saddle, and from beneath his huge moustache he spat a volley of most un-magisterial oaths, delivered in a snarling, nasal tone foreign to the ears of his listeners. A minute or so he remained thus, then his baleful eyes met the steady, meaning stare of the motionless quartette and his face changed to a blank, irresolute expression. He made a motion of urging his horse forward, then, checking it abruptly, he wheeled about, loping ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... sometimes be purified only by a storm. Whatever, therefore, sickly sensibility or mawkish philanthropy may say against the course pursued by us, we hope that our citizens will not relax the code of punishment which they have enacted against this infamous and baleful class of society; and we invite Natchez, Jackson, Columbus, Warrenton, and all our sister towns throughout the State, in the name of our insulted laws, of offended virtue, and of slaughtered innocence, to aid us in exterminating this ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... not blame Inez for her opinion. I could understand it. Those often baleful eyes had a penetrating power that one might ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve |
