"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... don't you? The noise of a battery in action is diabolical, and the very thought of it makes me shiver. There go the senseless lorries, all packed with music for a more hellish orchestra than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and tear your ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... and explained as well as was possible why it could not be delivered at once, with the added information to soften his coming disappointment that the machine sometimes failed. The fellow merely gathered the notion that I was but a sorry magician at best, who had my diabolical hocuspocus only imperfectly under control, and he did not entirely succeed in keeping his sneers invisible. I offered quinine and such other medicines as were to be found in my traveling case, but he had no faith ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... divided against itself can not stand, and that the Republic can not permanently exist half slave and half free; and they urged that this baptism of fire and blood would be impious if the cause which produced it should be spared to canker the heart of the nation anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds. A Union with slavery spared and reinstated would not be worth the cost of saving it. To argue that we were fighting for a political abstraction called the Union, and not for the destruction of slavery, was to affront common sense, since nothing but slavery had brought the Union ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... indicated. The belief, however, did not reach its complete development, or acquire its most horrible features, until the pagan habits of thought which had originated it were modified by contact with Christian theology. To the ancient there was nothing necessarily diabolical in the transformation of a man into a beast. But Christianity, which retained such a host of pagan conceptions under such strange disguises, which degraded the "All-father" Odin into the ogre of the castle to which Jack climbed on his bean-stalk, and which blended the beneficent lightning-god ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... figures on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe were in motion. Looking more closely he became convinced that these figures were a party of little demons, each duly provided with horns and a tail, and dancing hand in hand, with gestures of diabolical merriment, round the circumference of the pipe bowl. As if to confirm his suspicions, while Master Gookin ushered his guest along a dusky passage from his private room to the parlor, the star on Feathertop's ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... written by Cowper at this time, and expressing his despair, were unfortunately preserved; they are a ghastly play of the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of self-control, and amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Diabolical, they might be ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... They may do their best; and ye may tell them so, if ye like. I was born a free man; I live in a free country; I am the subject of a free king and constitution; and I'll be shot before I submit to such rank, diabolical papistry." ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... surprise the diabolical expression with which the young man uttered these words. Just as, ordinarily, faces are colored by blood, his face seemed dyed by hatred ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... struggle Tuesday night, between Page and—shall I say Fluette?—in the hall, Burke had in some way secured the ruby, and with diabolical cleverness had pressed it into the bar of soap! A bit of manipulation under the water-tap had removed all traces. Think of the brain that could light upon a hiding-place like that in the stress of such a moment! And I had paused by that very bar of soap, philosophizing ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... can't tell you over the public air. It's—I've seen him! He's diabolical! I know ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the manner in which this disputation at Marburg was conducted with the previous character of the contest, in which the one party had denounced their opponents as diabolical fanatics, and the other as reactionary Papists and worshippers of 'a god made of bread,' it will be evident that some results of importance at least had been attained by the discussion itself and the mode in which it had been held. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... talked about it in taverns—he was talking about it all that month. Ah, he likes being always surrounded with company, and he likes to tell his companions everything, even his most diabolical and dangerous ideas; he likes to share every thought with others, and expects, for some reason, that those he confides in will meet him with perfect sympathy, enter into all his troubles and anxieties, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... LEINSTER 310 Bell, of the Secret "Trade," Strikes into the South American Jungle to Find the Hidden Stronghold of the Master—the Unknown Monster Whose Diabolical Poison Swiftly and Surely Is Enslaving the Whole Continent. (Part Two of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... delivered in the state of ecstasy, to do so without reference to the moral standing of the ecstatics. When one of his opponents (the physician who addressed to him the satirical letter already referred to) ascribes to him the position, that one must decide the divine or diabolical state of a person alleged to be inspired by reference to that person's morals and conduct, he replies,—"God forbid that I should advance so false a proposition!" And he proceeds to argue that the Deity often avails Himself, as a medium for expressing His will, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... Baths of Constantine brought us into the Christian era, although that example was not of Christian sentiment or art. It is possible that the dance of Salome with its diabolical reward may have prejudiced the Apostolic era, for we find no example of dancing, as exhibiting joy, in Christian Art of that period. The dance before Herod is historical proof that the higher classes of Hebrews ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... the sanctimonious air which the murderer maintained during his trial—preserving throughout the aspect of a devout person, who believed himself to have been hurried into his accumulation of crime by an uncontrollable exertion of diabolical influence; and on his copy of the "Life of James Mackean, executed 25th January, 1797," I find the following ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... dark and diabolical manner, he repeated his success; and came back with a bag of money and not so much as ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... year, lest any unforseen accident should leave them parishioners in a place where they knew they must perish miserably; so that great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... master? Was it the instinct of knowing that he was starting for a perilous voyage? Was it a presentiment of dangers to come? The sailors decided that it was for the latter reason, and more than one pretended to joke who believed seriously that the dog was of a diabolical kind. Pen, who was a brutal man, was going to strike him once, when he fell, unfortunately, against the angle of the capstan, and made a frightful wound in his head. Of course this accident was placed to the account of the fantastic animal. Clifton, the most superstitious ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... war with Spain. Portugal had not fulfilled the terms of her treaty, especially that clause which secured the English from the supervision of the diabolical Inquisition, and other nations were only waiting an opportunity to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... the highway was lined with snapped and twisted telegraph wires. At various places great water-tanks and reservoirs had been toppled over and smashed as though some diabolical power had made cockshies of them. I peered down upon the broken bridge of a railway line, and stumbled across uprooted rails torn from their sleepers and ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... temptation, and the wind would carry me away." It was all that he could do to refrain from articulating such words as he imagined would amount to the sin against the Holy Ghost; and for a year together he was haunted with such diabolical suggestions that he was weary of his life, and fain would have changed condition with a horse or a dog. During this dreary term it is no wonder that his heart felt hard. "Though he should have given a thousand pounds for a tear, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... a friend than an enemy," cried Minoret, frightened at the atrocious grin which gave to Goupil's face the diabolical expression of ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... negro servant to powder it well ere it was worn. He was horrified to see Pompey give the wig a liberal sprinkling of gunpowder from the powder-horn, instead of starch from the dredging-box; and the explosion of the old wig was no longer assigned to diabolical, thaumaturgical, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Solyman, having devastated the country around him, and being all unprepared for the storms of winter, was compelled to retire. He struck his tents, and slowly and sullenly descended the Danube, wreaking diabolical vengeance upon the helpless peasants, killing, burning and destroying. Leaving a strong garrison to hold what remained of Buda and Pest, he carried thousands with him into captivity, where, after years of woe, they ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... by fear and delusion were no longer accessible. Even had the sound sense of a single individual attempted resistance, it would have been useless; the giant avalanche could not be stayed. A diabolical plot was concocted, and it was the Prefect, Count d'Estournel, who perfected it in such wise that it promised the best success. Toward one o'clock at night a carriage drove into the castle grounds; Clarissa was compelled to enter it; the President, the Magistrate, the Prefect, were her companions. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Mallet was shaken to its foundations by a tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or village gone raving mad, was ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... planted on two-thirds of our vast national domains, and there unquestioned, absolute and bloody in its sway—with the terrible strength and boundless resources of the whole country at its command—it cannot be otherwise than that the Slave Power will consummate its diabolical purposes to the uttermost. The Northwest Territory, Nebraska, Mexico, Cuba, Hayti, the Sandwich Islands, and colonial possessions in the tropics—to seize and subjugate these to its accursed reign, and ultimately to re-establish the foreign Slave Trade as a lawful commerce, are ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... it into the hands of a Committee of Conference to be manipulated afresh, and, if possible, moulded into a shape that might give Democratic recusants an excuse for treason to the North and submission to the Power that demanded it. And the invention was worthy of the diabolical sagacity and ingenuity which have always marked the politics of Slavery. The maxim, that every man has his price, was assumed to apply as well to men when collected into bodies corporate as to individuals; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the same animal that had mauled him so severely a few weeks before, and was now, as it happened, tied up in his kennel—an old wine barrel—just outside the kitchen door. Hendrik peeped out of the window, and having ascertained that the dog was secured, he proceeded, with a diabolical chuckle, to settle his account with the poor animal. He had left his gun behind on the grass, but he still held his assegai in his hand, and going out of the kitchen door with it, he showed himself within a few feet of the kennel. The dog recognised ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... mostly do all the year round—is in itself a luxury. And so it is, if the day is hot, to dine chiefly off fish and fruit, and such fruit! and then to exchange the dining-room for the cool portico, with the sea-breeze sweeping through it, and, pipe in hand, to sink into a slumber that even the diabolical shrieks of the parrots, tied by the leg in a line below, are powerless to disturb. Or, if you be energetic —I speak of Madeira energy—you may stroll down the little terraced walk, under the shade of your landlord's vines, and contemplate the growing ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... becomes disgusting. He even dared once to follow me into church, but I cried 'Avaunt!' in a tone so peremptory, that he fled for a moment. He joined me, however, as soon as service was over, and walked from Tenth Street to Madison Square, with his grizzly arm thurst through mine, and his diabolical jeers drumming on my tympana. In dreams he perches on my breast, and ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... of it, but I could not give credit to such a monstrosity." "So much the worse," replied I; "in the world in which we live we should always be on our guard." "Sire," added the chancellor, with the most diabolical address, "I am persuaded that M. de Choiseul is the most honourable man in the world, and that he would shudder at the bare idea of any attempt upon the life of your majesty; but his relations, friends, and creatures believe, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... later refer, "Captain Cranstoun made an assignation with Miss Blandy to meet her in the grounds of Park Place, which had long been their trysting-place; and here it was that in a walk which still goes by the name of 'Blandy's Walk,' he first broached his diabolical plan." Park Place, according to the same authority, had shortly before been purchased by General Conway and Lady Ailesbury from Mr. Blandy, as "trustee" ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... contemptuousness of self-conceit and puffy disdain, which John Bull visits on all "un-English" things, especially when they happen under their unfortunate aspects. In not a few of these same comments there was a tone of exultation, malignant and almost diabolical, as at the discomfiture of a hated and dangerous rival. We have read at least three English newspapers for each week that has passed since our troubles began; we have been readers of these papers for a score of years. In ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... runs in a narrow valley, bordered by a double chain of granite mountains. It was there that the Egyptians, in the days when they worshipped demons, carved their idols. Paphnutius saw an enormous sphinx carved in the solid rock. Fearing that it might still possess some diabolical properties, he made the sign of the cross, and pronounced the name of Jesus; he immediately saw a bat fly out of one of the monster's ears, and Paphnutius knew that he had driven out the evil spirits which had been for centuries in the figure. His zeal increased, and picking up a large stone, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... There's no mistaking his sex, or identity either," gasped Mr. Joe, backing himself away from this diabolical figure until he was stopped by the wall, from which he cried out, "Here, Jerry, ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... coarse, stern face of the minister, and her dislike of the clergyman was shared by all we children, especially by my elder brother Harry (then sixteen years of age), who called him 'the flogging parson' and the 'Reverend Diabolical Howl.' This latter nickname stuck, and greatly tickled Major Trenton, who repeated it to the other officers, and one day young Mr Moore of the 102nd, who was clever at such things, made a sketch of the cleric as he appeared when preaching, which set ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... with an air of infallibility on dreams which they both find and interpret, and stimulating bad feeling between nations by abusive writing which is as empty of real conviction as the rage of a pantomime king, and would be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear diabolical—though we were to find among these a man who was benignancy itself in his own circle, a healer of private differences, a soother in private calamities, let us pronounce him nevertheless flagrantly immoral, a root of hideous cancer in the commonwealth, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... evil who are evidently under the control of Satan had in vain tried ordinary means of temptation with the patriarch. Probably reporting their want of success to some of the principalities and powers of evil, these likewise had essayed their diabolical arts, but had not succeeded in leading Job to swerve from his integrity. Last of all, the great arch-enemy himself had found all his own efforts ineffectual to harass and lead astray GOD'S beloved servant. He found a hedge around him, and about ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... the missionaries have long since given up attempting to proselytise grown persons, reserving all their efforts for children. Holding, as they did, in great dread all fetish, or obeah, practices; usually someone amongst them, more cunning than the rest, professed an acquaintance with the supposed diabolical ritual; and gained influence with, and extorted money from, his more timid comrades. Officers now in the 1st West India Regiment can remember the time when, there being many Africans in the regiment, the feathers of parrots or ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... these, and you will find abundant cases in which "mystical ideas" are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. In delusional insanity, paranoia, as they sometimes call it, we may have a DIABOLICAL mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down. The same sense of ineffable importance in the smallest events, the same texts and words coming with new meanings, the same voices and visions and leadings and missions, the same ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... language. The vast mass of authority which those writers loved to array, and by which they shaped the whole course of their reasoning, is calmly and unhesitatingly discarded. The passion for the miraculous, the absorbing sense of diabolical capacities, have all vanished like a dream. The old theological measure of probability has completely disappeared, and is replaced by a shrewd secular common sense. The statements of the witches were pronounced intrinsically incredible. The dreams of a disordered ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... was forty cubits broad on every side. On the south side they found a chalice of the material of the network and a paten of the material of the pillar. After passing again out of the network, they sailed for eight days towards the North, and here begins what may be called the diabolical portion of ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... something more than plump, so that climbing ladders is not my favorite form of exercise. But I went up that one with the agility and grace of sixteen. Melissa followed me, and we found ourselves on the roof—fortunately it was a flat one—panting and gasping, but safe, unless that diabolical ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... treating it as known fact; Letters to Denis in occasional paroxysms, as rumor of detestable nature, probably true of one who is so detestable, at least so formidable, to a guilty sinner his Guest. Others, not to be called diabolical, as Herr Dr. Busching, for example, speak of it as a thing credible; as good as known to the well-informed. And, beyond the least question, there did a thrice-abominable rumor of that kind run, whispering ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... we held a hurried conversation. I learned then that Fuero and his associates had many years before organized a society for the development of the light-ray in its various forms. They had soon realized in their experiments its diabolical power of destruction, and had taken oath then that they would not use it, or allow it to be used, except under the most critical ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... Earl of Warwick, the king-maker, who took part with Edward the Fourth, but afterward "falling off," and endeavoring for the restoration of King Henry the Sixth, was seized on, and tried for his life at Salisbury, before that diabolical tyrant, crook-back Duke of Gloucester, afterward Richard the Third, where he had judgment of the death of a traitor, and suffered accordingly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... was painting a picture by means of sounds. His descriptive powers were wonderful. Anybody with the least touch of imagination could bring before "his mind's eye" the infernal revel that the artist was depicting. The enchantments of the witches were visible. You could hear their diabolical songs, you could fancy their mad and wild dances; while, when the cock crew (imitated by the way in a most astonishing manner), you would feel that there was a rushing of bodies through the air, which were scattering in all ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... ne plus ultra, or quintessence of diabolical stench, yields the tempting savor which irresistibly attracts many animals to their final doom. It is contained in a pouch beneath the insertion of the tail of the animal, and is spread abroad by the [Page 152] creature with lavish extravagance when ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... awesomeness about its beauty. Even the surroundings will soon begin to take on shape, and the boles and tossing boughs, and naked, dead, and broken fragments starting from the dank soil, assume form, attitude, countenance, in a hundred divers contortions—gnome-like, grotesque, diabolical. Strange, too, if the wayfarer threading the steamy mazes of these unending glades does not soon think to hear ghostly whisperings in the awed silence of the air, does not conjure up unseen eyes marking his every step—for the hot moist depression is such ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... professing Christians are like Amasa of old, their ear is well pleased with the fair sound of "Art thou in health, my brother?" and they, too, take "no heed to the sword" in the inquirer's hand. Judas, too, in his day, illustrates strongly that same diabolical compound of "deceit and violence," only the enemy finds no unwary Amasa in Jesus the Lord. "Betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss" tears the vail from him at once; and in the same way the feeblest believer who abides in Him, is led of that same spirit; and "good words and fair speeches" do ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... the question,—but rather from the apprehension of committing me. He trusted me with this other matter, however, probably not knowing, first, that I was ill, and had been in bed all yesterday, and, next, that this diabolical plot for assassinating the King and admitting the enemy into the heart of the land has been discovered. The letter came about an hour after Lord Byerdale's, and just in time to save me from denying that I was out of my own house all yesterday. But ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... communion this morning," thought he, "and at the very word duel he will listen to nothing more. However, the matter must be arranged; it must be.... What would I not give to know the truth of the scene between Gorka and Florent? By what strange and diabolical ricochet did the Palatine hit upon the latter when his business was with the brother-in-law?... Will he be angry that I am his adversary's second?... Bah!... After our conversation of the other day our friendship is ended.... Good, ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... they did those of the priest. He added, that it was from love for his mother that he had done so; that, in consequence of the same love, they were now going to bury her, and that none but themselves could or ought to do so sacred an office! Mr. Hunt did all in his power to prevent so diabolical an act; but the only reply he received was, that she was their mother, and they were her children, and they ought to put her to death. On reaching the grave, the mother sat down, when they all, including children, grandchildren, relations, and friends, took an ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... heart of a Messalina. She was dear to Roderigo both as daughter and as mistress, and he saw himself reflected in her as in a magic mirror, every passion and every vice. Lucrezia and Caesar were accordingly the best beloved of his heart, and the three composed that diabolical trio which for eleven years occupied the pontifical throne, like a mocking parody ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that McKay should look to himself. We must manage, through his interest and authority, to make a thorough search for this villain Benito, and get him expelled from the Crimea. That would make McKay safe, if only for a time, although I suppose Cyprienne would soon devise some new and more diabolical scheme. If I could only get on a little faster! It is most annoying about the horse. I will go straight to headquarters on foot, taking the camp of the ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... hideous uproar Charles seems to have retained a certain diabolical coolness. He kept himself mostly out of sight, but now and then he thrust the gleaming barrel of his rifle through one of the shattered window panes and fired at his besiegers. He worked the weapon with incredible ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... thought you a strong man," Aynesworth continued, aggrieved and contemptuous. "I nearly went mad with fear when I heard that it was you who were the self-appointed guardian of Juliet Lundy. I looked upon this as one more, the most diabolical ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... up in the smoke-house and burning the compound in divers sconces and Wide-Awake torches, giving up the entire night to his diabolical orgies. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... who are fully conversant with the Soul, beholding the swallowing up of the Moon and the Sun by Rahu, the falling of stars from their fixed positions and the diversions of constellations from their orbits, knowing the sad separation of all united objects and the diabolical behaviour of creatures in devouring one another, seeing the absence of all intelligence in the infancy of human beings and the deterioration and destruction of the body, marking the little attachment creatures have to the quality of Sattwa in consequence of their being overwhelmed by wrath ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they),—but to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refreshing Bohea in the distance—to be necessitated to rouse ourselves at the detestable rap of an hag of a domestic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her announcement that it was "time to rise"; and whose chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror to all ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... the corridor," Henson gasped, "going—going to bed, you see; and one of those diabolical dogs must have got into the house. Before I knew what I was doing the creature flew at my throat and dragged me to the floor. Telephone for Walker at once. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... it that it passes from the original author to him like an angel the former has entertained unawares. This may not entirely apply to the Italian reformer, Bernardino Ochino, to whom, rather than to Tasso, Milton seems indebted for the conception of his diabolical council. Ochino, in many respects a kindred spirit to Milton, must have been well known to him as the first who had dared to ventilate the perilous question of the lawfulness of polygamy. In Ochino's "Divine Tragedy," which he may have ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... under the influence of alcohol for his cruelty and pleasure in whipping. She had, besides a strongly sadistic mother, two older brothers, of whom the elder was frightfully violent and brutal, often choking his brothers and sisters, while the other found an actually diabolical pleasure in destroying and demolishing everything. Our patient exhibited already at two years old as well as through her whole life a pleasure in striking blows, and also conversely a special pleasure in receiving them, further at four years ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... all this storm! Mrs. Condiment, mum, you deserve to be ducked! Yes, mum, you do! Wool! Wool! you diabolical villain!" ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... drugs in the spirit of that admirable firm of soap-boilers which assures its customers that the soap they make "contains no chemicals." Drugs are supposed to be a mystic diabolical class of substance, remote from and contrasting in their nature with all other things. So they banish a tonic from the house and stuff their children with manufactured cereals and chocolate creams. The drunken helot of this system of absurdities is the Christian Scientist who ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... who sat judges on those cases may, by the serious consideration of the formidable aspect and perplexed circumstances of that afflictive providence, be in some measure excused, or at least be less censured, for passing sentence on several persons as being the instruments of Satan in those diabolical operations, when they were involved in such a dark and dismal scene of providence, in which Satan did seem to spin a finer thread of spiritual wickedness than in the ordinary methods of witchcraft: hence ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... made no discoveries that will help us much, I have learned just enough to understand that there is a diabolical plot on foot." ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... antipodes, the Archbishop of Mentz declared him a heretic; and the Abbot Trithemius, who was fond of improving steganography or the art of secret writing, having published several curious works on this subject, they were condemned, as works full of diabolical mysteries; and Frederic II., Elector Palatine, ordered Trithemius's original work, which was in his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... witticisms and bad jokes; faces are empurpled, eyes inflamed and expressionless, unintentional confidences tell you the whole truth. Bottles are smashed, and songs trolled out in the height of a diabolical racket; men call each other out, hang on each other's necks, or fall to fisticuffs; the room is full of a horrid, close scent made up of a hundred odors, and noise enough for a hundred voices. No one has any notion of what he is eating or drinking or saying. Some are depressed, others ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... enemy has fallen into the ambush, as Baron van Berger would say. I will be back as soon as possible, but I must take time to rout our amiable Duke. He is the real enemy, and the most difficult opponent, but I am confident. With my most diabolical scheming, little cousin, I am going to have great fun. All the same, I foresee that I sha'n't be able to stay away long." And he ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... peace had proved abortive, and had been grossly misrepresented, that we had done everything which could be expected from the best of subjects, that the spirit of freedom rises too high in us to submit to slavery, and that, if nothing else would satisfy a tyrant and his diabolical ministry, we are determined to shake off all connections with a state so unjust and unnatural. This I would tell them, not under covert, but in words as clear as the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... is under the teaching and influence of the grace of God, will detect such horrid notions, and cry out against them. God forbid that ever I should listen one moment to such diabolical sentiments! for they are hatched in hell, and propagated on earth, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "What a diabolical scheme!" cried Walter in horror, "they mean to slaughter the Indians for their plumes as they come down the river from ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... times about their spiritual symptoms. They are almost without exception the victims of the same epidemic of moral inertia and emotional heavings. They do not rise to the dignity of being sinners, and personally I would not believe they had souls at all if I had not seen them develop the diabolical soul to such amazing degrees of perversity. But of all people I have the least hope of their redemption, because they are too smart to be ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... Boer sleeps in his clothes," he observed grimly. "Cleanliness, may be next to godliness; but it is mighty near the edge of the diabolical to put yourself back into clothes that are only fit for the dust bin. When I am field marshal of a long campaign, my first act will be to establish swimming tanks and laundries as a branch of the Army Service Corps. Meanwhile, see here!" His ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... fairies of all forms, and which later on were to lead him far out of the beaten track. Shelley's little sisters were the confidants of his childhood, and their sympathy must have made up then for the lack of it in his parents. Some of their childish games at diabolical processions, making a little hell of their own by burning a fagot stack, &c., shows how early his searching mind dispersed the terrors, while it delighted in the picturesque or fantastic images, of superstition. Few persons realise to themselves how soon highly imaginative children ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the diabolical visitations to which Father Vianney was frequently exposed, reached his colleagues, they laughed aloud. They declared that he was a dreamer, whose brain ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... as one too remote for contemplation. At the same time I reflected that I kissed a pretty model at Janot's when we met alone on the stairs. I wondered whether the diabolical perspicacity of women had seen traces of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... round which these excited men danced hand-in-hand like children round a Maypole. Their manners, however, were hardly childlike, for they jumped, and yelled, and sang with the ruddy firelight glowing on their countenances, till they looked like a lot of demons performing some diabolical incantation. All around was the dark night, and rocks, and trees, which gave a most weird aspect to the scene when viewed from ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... of debauchery; and his death seemed the judgment of the Almighty on one whose body had long been perishing, and whose soul had been made over to the prince of demons as the price of assistance through the means of diabolical magic, which he constantly practised. The King, though now without this instrument of his malicious contrivances, turned his thoughts entirely upon the destruction of the Huguenots. To effect this, he strove to engage my brother against them, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... theatre, and sure I am that not a man amongst them can be more anxious to put me aside than I am to sink into the profoundest retirement—but because I see, under a display of popular and fascinating disguises, the most diabolical attempts to destroy the best fabric of human government and happiness that has ever been presented for the ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... Menahem embraced the Christian faith, and their father, as was natural, was suspected of skepticism, the Biur and the Meassefim were pronounced, like libraries by Sir Anthony Absolute, to be "an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge." So also with Wessely's Epistles, which were destroyed in public, together with Polonnoy's Toledot Ya'akob Yosef. Haskalah itself was not impugned, and as theretofore translations and original works on science were encouraged, and the wish was ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... tightly ensnared, was to be followed out to its horrible conclusion. The motive back of the two men's action now stood revealed. They expected to frighten the two boys into giving up the skin map and into keeping secret their knowledge of the Cave of Gold. But, what a fiendish plot! And with what diabolical cunning it had all been worked out and was ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... you would not like him to speak or hear about you, you are in that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar,—when you begin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at what the Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins of the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves—on the way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,—how instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... Thereupon the whole Seniorum Conventus sat in solemn committee upon this war-worn nose, and decided that its owner need fight no more. But he was not only brave; he possessed the invention of Prometheus, combined with the diabolical sense of humour which so much distinguished the late Mephistopheles. He offered to go on fighting if he might be allowed an iron nose. Goetz of Berliehingen, he said, had won battles with an iron hand, and the case was analogous. The proposition was put to the vote and carried unanimously ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... a vague but general panic. The officers accused Mahony of treachery to the Spanish general, and the national jealousy of foreigners made their tale easily believed; but Peterborough had taken another step to secure the success of his diabolical plan against the honor of his ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... to sleep. Moralizing of that sort gets less and less common with experience in the business, and this time the moralizing may have seemed to some premature. But wherever the minie ball sang its diabolical mosquito song there was death in the air, and I was soon to see brought into camp, under a flag of truce, the lifeless body of the heir of Mount Vernon, whose graceful riding I had envied a few days before. However, there was no serious fighting. The advance on the enemy's position had developed ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... provost would catch the pair. He instantly sent word to him, that by the king's express commands he was to return to town, in order that he might seize at the said lord's house an English nobleman, with whom he was vehemently suspected to be arranging a plot of diabolical darkness. But before he put this order into execution, he was to come to the king's hotel, in order that he might understand the courtesy to be exercised in this case. The provost, joyous at the chance of speaking to the king, used such diligence that he was in town just ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... refuses to pay any attention if she wise. Some of these spirits are very subtle, very knowing; some are full of flattery, and very persistent; others present themselves as still in human form, and seek to terrify with their terrible faces, some diabolical, some appearing to be in a great agony and undergoing changes more astonishing and horrible than can be even imagined before experienced—and melting only to be re-formed into that which is yet more fearful. Have nothing whatever to do with spirits. Do not resist them when they come, but drop ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... ghastliness to the mutilated forms they bent over to examine. To my last day I shall remember, with unfading horror, the aspect of those remnants of mortality, in all the hideousness stamped upon them by the unnamable atrocities practised during that diabolical orgy of murder and mutilation, rape, lust, and rapine. This is war! Away, in the splendid pavilion of the vanquished, the conquering marshal, surrounded by his generals and officers, was installed in triumph, secure of his country's applause and his emperor's ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... paws on the genius's foot and he remained as immovable as a statue. Rosalie embraced her father's knees and implored the mouse to take pity upon her but the little wretch gave one of her sharp, diabolical laughs ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... "Ah, no! our Lord first served." Sick, and deprived of all religious aid, it was no wonder that as the long trial dragged on and question followed question Jeanne's firmness wavered. On the charge of sorcery and diabolical possession she still appealed firmly to God. "I hold to my Judge," she said, as her earthly judges gave sentence against her, "to the King of Heaven and Earth. God has always been my Lord in all that ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... be little doubt but that this false letter was, by her means, conveyed to some Saxon or Austrian post- office, and thence, according to its address, sent to me. He had daily opportunities of infusing suspicions into the King's mind concerning me; and, unknown to me, of pursuing his diabolical plan. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... proceeded to violence against those whom the preacher had denounced. A sermon which Bernardino once preached in Rome (1424) had another consequence besides a bonfire of vanities on the Capitol: 'After this,' we read, 'the witch Finicella was burnt, because by her diabolical arts she had killed many children and bewitched many other persons; and all Rome went to see ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... themselves warmly. 'Them Timmins lot' were always spying about. They daren't attack the large meetings, but they had a diabolical way of scenting out the small ones. The meetings at the shoemaker's had been undisturbed for some few nights, then a Timminsite passing by had heard hymns, probably listened at the keyhole, and of course informed the main ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Jones stopped at Rio Janeiro for a month, to lay in supplies. He now decided to leave the ship, although he had become somewhat attached to the friendly captain, who was after all a worthy man, and never would have engaged in the diabolical traffic of human beings, but for his little angel daughter's sake. He said that his child was so good and beautiful, that she deserved a large fortune. Each time that he sold a black, he would quiet any faint qualms of conscience by saying, "It is ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... the entire South there are seven white non-slaveholders for every three slaveholders. He would organize these non-slaveholding whites into an independent political party and would hold a general convention of non-slaveholders from every slave State to adopt measures to restrain "the diabolical excesses of the oligarchy" and to annihilate slavery. Slaveholders should be entirely excluded from any share in government. They should be treated as criminals ostracized from respectable society. He is ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... series of indescribable sounds broke the stillness of the night, and the tramp of feet was heard outside the house. Mr. R. called out, "It's a serenade, H. Get up and bring out all the wine you have." Annie and I peeped through the parlor window, and lo! it was the company of volunteers and a diabolical band composed of bones and broken-winded brass instruments. They piped and clattered and whined for some time, and then swarmed in, while we ladies retreated and listened ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Confederate officer, the choice of all your kindred, is eager to give you his name and loving protection. He will take you far away from war's rude alarms, with its attendant and horrible perils. We have no common foe to deal with, but monsters animated by unquenchable hatred and a diabolical spirit. I should betray my trust and be recreant to my duty did I not avail myself of the one avenue of safety still open to you. See, your cousin's brave men are mounted, armed, and ready to act as your escort. Dr. Williams is here to perform his good offices, although other invited ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... knew of that terrible creature when I first met with her, and fancied that she had inherited her mother's character! It was weak indeed to compare the mean vices of Mrs. Gracedieu with the diabolical depravity of her daughter. Here the doctrine of hereditary transmission of moral qualities must own that it has overlooked the fertility (for growth of good and for growth of evil equally) which is inherent in human nature. There are ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... irresolute. He could only guess what Conward's plan had been, but that it had been diabolical and cowardly, and that it concerned Irene, he had no doubt. His impulse was to immediately confront Conward, force a confession, and deal with him as the occasion might seem to require. But his eye fell on the boy, with his shock of brown hair ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... the celebrated odour of the skunk is mild and refreshing, compared to the unutterable loathsomeness of that of the kauri-bug. I can well believe it. How well I remember one of my first nights in the bush! It appears that one of these diabolical insects had got into my blankets. I rolled over and crushed it in my sleep. Inured as I had been by circumstances to bad smells, this conquered me. I awoke perspiring from a frightful nightmare. I rushed ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... thoughtfully he added, "And when we trace this crime to its cause, when we remember the source whence the assassin drew his inspiration, and then look at the result, we stand yet more astounded at this most barbarous, most diabolical act. . . . We can trace its cause through successive steps back to that source which is the spring of all our woes. No one can say that if the perpetrator of this fiendish deed be arrested, he should not undergo the extremest penalty of the law known for crime; none ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... force, of gentleness rather than rigor, of charity and good works, as more effective than the most trenchant of material weapons. And, while he recommended his hearers to pray for the conversion of the erring, he exclaimed: "Let us remove those diabolical words, names of parties, factions, and seditions—'Lutherans,' 'Huguenots,' and 'Papists'—and let us retain only the name of 'Christians.'"[986] In concluding his address, he did not forget to dwell upon the lamentable condition of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... you all with your heads very close together, hatching diabolical plots and conspiracies against ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... vigorous youthful growth, of old age, of decay, and of death. In form, in color, in texture, and in cell structure, they imitate so closely the cell structures of organic growth as to suggest something uncanny or diabolical. And yet the author of them does not claim that they are alive. They are not edible, they contain no protoplasm—no starch or sugar or peptone or fats or carbohydrates. These chemical creations by Dr. Leduc are still dead matter—dead colloids—only one remove from crystallization; on the road to ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... New Testament the most important books, the first three Gospels, our main authorities for the life of Christ, are manifestly grafts upon a stock of unknown authorship and date. They betray a belief in diabolical possession, a local superstition from which the author of the Fourth Gospel, who evidently was not a Palestinian Jew, was free. There is discrepancy between the first three Gospels and the fourth, notably as to the day and consequent significance of Christ's celebration of the Passover. ...
— No Refuge but in Truth • Goldwin Smith
... destructive. If this is true, we want a new definition for the most flagrant of all crimes: a definition which shall leave out the element of time, and call these actions the same—equally hateful, equally diabolical, equally censured by the righteous government of Heaven—which proceed from the same motives, and lead to the same result, whether they be done in a moment, or spread out through a series of years. Habitual unkindness is demoralizing as well as cruel. Whenever it fails ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... end of an array (C implementations typically have no checks for this error). This is relatively benign and easy to spot if the array is static; if it is auto, the result may be to {smash the stack} — often resulting in {heisenbug}s of the most diabolical subtlety. The term 'overrun screw' is used esp. of scribbles beyond the end of arrays allocated with 'malloc(3)'; this typically trashes the allocation header for the next block in the {arena}, producing massive lossage within malloc and often a core ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... render this a point of indifference to the nation, but what must either render us totally desperate, or soothe us into the security of idiots. We must soften into a credulity below the milkiness of infancy to think all men virtuous. We must be tainted with a malignity truly diabolical to believe all the world to be equally wicked and corrupt. Men are in public life as in private, some good, some evil. The elevation of the one, and the depression of the other, are the first objects ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... acts of desperation!!! I know that he will complain, and that he has just cause of complaint, and I dread the consequence, because I know full well their arts, and the power which they have to carry their diabolical plans into execution. If he be troublesome, they will stick at nothing, and I should not be the least surprised if they were ultimately to have some of their spies to swear ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... breathe for her creator. Indeed, the miracle is only half completed. Her white hair seems still to be of stone, and her white gown shimmers like moonlight, or is it satin? From her shoulders the dark fur flows. But her lips are already reddening and her cheeks begin to take color. Two diabolical green rays out of her eyes fall upon ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... a frigate!" cried the captain. "She shows English colours! hurrah! hurrah!" The enemy saw that the chance of capturing us was gone. Sweeping round us, with diabolical malice he gave a parting broadside, which killed one man and wounded another, and then under all the sail he could set ran off before the wind. The frigate had now also made more sail and closed as rapidly. She came close to us. "Are you in a sinking state?" ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... and while she lay sick in bed, read the indictment to her. They ordered her to leave the place. She refused to go, claimed her innocence, but to no purpose. "They chased Francis with guns and dogs on the public streets in daylight; shaddowed the cabin and gave unmistakable evidence of a diabolical purpose." She soon after returned ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... more carefully for his warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... all belonged to a century previous. Yet Father Jose was not astonished. His adventurous life and poetic imagination, continually on the look-out for the marvelous, gave him a certain advantage over the practical and material-minded. He instantly detected the diabolical quality of his visitant, and was prepared. With equal coolness and courtesy he ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... shoots a monkey in South Africa, and wounds it, allowing it to escape, there usually come droves of its kinspeople, screaming and chattering the most diabolical language, seeking to revenge the wrong done their tribe. Nothing demonstrates plainer that they have a common language; otherwise, how could they understand that one of their number had been wounded? It is because of the communication ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... smoothing away of a small annoyance in the road of that hour's great work. For the end was justified beforehand between him and Hall. It was not a matter of vengeance, but of justice. This man had once attempted to take away his life by the most diabolical cruelty that human depravity ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... could justly be brought. A few days previous to this murder a man named Washburne was whipped to death by four ruffians, of whom Cavins was one. His only crime was that he was a Northern man. His body was thrown into the St. Francis river, after the diabolical deed was consummated. I had heard these horrible recitals until my blood curdled, and I saw there was no hope but in leaving this ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... deep-chested acclamations of "Allah, Allah!" at the prospect of undergoing similar sensations to those described by the khan, whereupon that unsympathetic individual vents his hilarity in a gleeful, heartless peal of laughter, and tells them, with a diabolical chuckle of delight, that they will most likely fare ten times worse than himself on account of the inferiority of their horses compared with the gray. Much threatening, bantering, and persuasion is necessary ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... never think of him, even now, reclining in his bunk, and with short breaths panting out his maledictions, but I am reminded of that misanthrope upon the throne of the world—the diabolical Tiberius at Caprese; who even in his self-exile, imbittered by bodily pangs, and unspeakable mental terrors only known to the damned on earth, yet did not give over his blasphemies but endeavored to drag down with him ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... diabolical and too improbable for anybody to believe. Jack could hardly think it possible when his new friend told him. But the stranger persisted so—it's hard for me even to think of him as quite really my father—that Jack at ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... the angry lava-waves of a volcano; it is always of a very high temperature, and occasionally runs over the rim of the basin, but never rises violently into the air. It looks like black sulphur (bitumen), and has a brimstone smell. Certainly it is a diabolical pit, and worth coming far to see, but it shows none of the phenomena which tempt travellers ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... walls a few boarders,—for most of the household were away. Some of the Indians held tin pans, and on these, as an accompaniment, they beat time with iron instruments, their heavy blows making a deafening din, and their harsh, guttural notes, uttered in unison, made the diabolical uproar. Mr. Payson's inspection of the performers in this strange concert was anything but satisfactory to him. The manner of the savages was impudent and brutal beyond anything he had yet seen in them, and he fancied that their sneering and malignant grimaces and serpent-like ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... and to revenge herself she tries to tempt the good girl to go wrong; she talks to her of men and pleasures; this is a good idea, I think, for I feel sure it is women far more than men who lead women astray. Then the first woman whom he has loved for her beauty merely, comes along and continues the diabolical work of the first, by suggesting—I don't know, anything—that the young girl should go in for dress; the young man finds out the scheme, and to save the girl he murders her, he is thrown into prison, he ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... the other bullet into her ribs, so that she rolled right over three times like a shot rabbit. I instantly got two more cartridges into the gun, and as I did so the lioness rose again and came crawling toward me on her fore paws, roaring and groaning, and with such an expression of diabolical fury on her countenance as I have not often seen. I shot her again through the chest, and she fell over on to her side ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... see the most heavy, grievous and detestable things are committed, that the Rule we laid down before as a Maxim might be induputably verified, to wit, that from the beginning they ran headlong from bad to worse, and were overcome in their Diabolical acts ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... blood and curl the hair of his fair listeners with abject terror. Pale as a corpse, you know, and with that cadaverous face, lit with those malignant-looking eyes, his slender figure, and his long thin legs and arms and hands, and his whole diabolical talent and adroitness brought into play— why, I want to say to you, it's enough to scare 'em to death! Never a smile from him, though, till he and Hedrick are safe out into the night again— then, of course, they hug each other and howl over it like ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the diabolical devices that those men resorted to to inflict acute physical agony were inconceivable— unutterable, Colonel." He paused.... "After all, no worse, perhaps, than the tortures that have been inflicted ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... in a spirit of diabolical fun, resolved to present the New York police with a baffling murder mystery, he could not have carried out the design more effectively than in the manner of his taking off. Not a clue to the perpetrator of the crime or the manner of its accomplishment, ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... equal to the emergency. As the intruder advanced to lay hands upon her Hannah Darling offered to go with him of her own free will, but immediately after leaving the house cleverly eluded the Indian, slipped in again at the door and fastened it. The despicable savage advanced to the window with diabolical threats, whetted his knife before their eyes and finally seized a club to make forcible entry only to find himself confronted at the doorway by the plucky girl with a loaded musket in her hands. Her spirit was now thoroughly aroused; she ordered him off ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... which to the eternal disgrace, not only of our holy religion, but even of our nature, these poor people, whose ignorance is their excuse, have been instigated to, both by the French and English colonies, who, with a fury truly diabolical, have offered rewards to those who brought in the scalps of their enemies. Rousseau has taken great pains to prove that the most uncultivated nations are the most virtuous: I have all due respect for this philosopher, of whose writings I am an enthusiastic ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... our own country, the editors of abolition papers, the writers of negro novels and other abolition productions; together with the numerous agents and other notable functionaries, that are employed to carry out their diabolical schemes and machinations; are all well paid for their services. Like the young lawyer alluded to, in the preceding pages, they receive a "large fee," and can therefore "afford to lie." But by far the larger portion of them are operated on by different ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... was tied to a tree and left in view of the Indian populace. The children ran fearfully by; the braves gazed long at the great foe of their race; the warriors passed in gloomy silence. The savages' tricks of torture, all their diabolical ingenuity of inflicting pain was suppressed, awaiting the hour of sunrise when this hated Long Knife was ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices of ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... has diabolical skill. And then he won't fight fair. He killed young Atwater on a foul, you know. Slipped on the wet grass, and Chartersea had him pinned before he caught his guard. But there is Lady ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have been a missionary as well as an explorer, for it was recorded that he "set out to discover the remote countries of America and to bring off those savages from their diabolical superstitions to the embracing of the Gospel," which would probably account for his having a Bible in his hand when he went down with his ship—an event which in later ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... pit, from which issued a smoke darkening the whole face of the heavens. The pit is hell, whence came the smoke,—the diabolical system of delusion. From the same place comes the character afterwards to appear under the aspect of a beast, (ch. xi. 7.) Locusts constituted one of the plagues of Egypt, and they are the emblem of a destroying army. (Exod. x. 14-19; Joel i. 4-6.) And this is their import here. They ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... "but you will find that the birds have flown." He walked up to one of the windows, and drummed on the glass with his fingers. "People say," remarked he, "that Mascarin never makes a mistake. One cannot help admiring his diabolical sagacity and unfailing logic. From the most trivial event he forges a long chain of evidence, as the botanist is able, as he picks up a withered leaf, to describe in detail the tree it came from. A pity, almost, that ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... glare came from below, but a soft violet radiance. It shone full upon him—past him—to light up and give detail to those faces that had been featureless before. Chet had just one moment of fascinated staring into the diabolical, pasty faces where narrow, red eyes stared back into his. Then ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... fellow," said he gravely. "Don't start on that trail, it is assuredly a bad one: Nibet is not Fantomas. Nibet does not count for much, one might say, for nothing at all; he can scarcely be called a tiny wheel even in the great machine driven on its diabolical course by our fiendish enemy ... we ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... diabolical laugh, Long Robin rose to his feet and leaned over the well. He seemed to be raising from it some heavy weight, and Cuthbert heard a heavy thud fall upon ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... it—diabolical persecution and selfishness. That was the worst day the college ever knew. At the funeral, when the provost read, 'For that it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister out of the miseries of this sinful world,' Big Wallington, the wildest chap among the grads, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting toddies. So I brought whisky along—a couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted delicious going ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... positions. Innovation struck the ball at first too impetuously: but Establishment took it at the rebound, and returned it with triple violence. Brunswickian manifestoes, and exterminating wars, were not ill adapted to raise the diabolical spirit of revenge. An endeavour to starve a nation, which it was found difficult to exterminate by fire and sword, was not a very charitable act in Madam Establishment. Her swindling forgeries were little better; and that her turn should come, to be starved and swindled, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
