"Malevolent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blush, the quiver of her lips, and the timid look of her eyes, and gravely answered: "I share your horror of an experience like that. But it does not endear your malevolent grandfather to me. He must be a ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... but I was not. I was merely sent stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my none too smoothly articulated bones—and my alleged mind! As in my schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and beaten ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... abstractedly by themselves, or that they may not be used innocently, or that they may not be made the occasion of innocent mirth. The evil is candidly stated to arise from their abuse. The nature of this evil is unfolded. Thus the malevolent passions, such as anger, envy, hatred, revenge, and even avarice, are stirred up, where they should be particularly prevented, in the youthful breast. A spirit of gaming, which may be destructive of fortune, health, and morals, is engendered. A waste of time[56] is occasioned, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... be angry with Marsh or to argue with him. In everything that was done, he saw the malevolent intent ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... without warning, as suddenly as though some malevolent demon had picked them out for destruction, from the low-lying bank of clouds that was advancing, a long black swaying clutch thrust at them from the clouds. For a second or two the funnel swayed as though there were eyes in its tip and then snatched at the earth with ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... sign of disapproval. That one breath was, in truth, indrawn, but whether or no there was ever an outlet for the same remained a question with the audience. A woollen cap was deftly and unexpectedly thrust between the malevolent lips and several pair of hands held it there until the little ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... like folly, even madness in his eyes. The young man was with difficulty living from hand to mouth, portraits and small orders barely keeping the wolf from the door. The return home and marriage would ensure his future materially and socially, and up to a certain point render him independent of malevolent criticism. For already Ingres was fiercely attacked by Parisian authorities on art: he had become important enough to be a target. After cruellest heart-searching and prolonged self-reproach, il gran riffiuto was made, youthful ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... like an engaged man,—like he ought to have acted," said Mrs. Cranston, with honest disdain of masculine flirts or malevolent rules of speech, due perhaps to long association with belles of the Blue ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... flickering pine torch fell obliquely on Thorne's dark figure and caught a gleam from the polished mountings of his gun, and another from the brass of the cartridge belt, which to the terrified darkeys looked like a cincture of fire, they became possessed with the idea that the most malevolent of all the spirits, perhaps the devil himself, was upon them. Calling on their Maker with more urgence than they ever did at "pray'r meetin'," they grabbed up their belongings and addressed themselves to flight. The bags, flopping up and down on their backs, held them to their ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... she flung it off, and stepped back, confronting me with a face as hard and an eye as malevolent as a demon. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... won't," rejoined he, angrily; "that is yet to be seen. How would you like to make yer appearance at court some fine morning, on the charge of murther, eh?" Mr. Stevens gave a perceptible shudder, and looked round, whereupon McCloskey said, with a malevolent grin, "Ye see I don't stick at words, squire; I call things by ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... her daughter with a gay grin, which, distorted by her toothless gums and the wreathing steam from the kettle, enhanced her witch-like aspect and was spuriously malevolent. She did not notice the stir of an approach through the brambly tangles of the heights above until it was close at hand; as she turned, she thought only of the mountain cattle and to see the red cow's picturesque head and crumpled horns thrust over the sassafras ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be organized and directed upon such humane and economical principles and according to the strictest method and order—an order amounting to definite science—will ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... the old maid exercised her vengeance in an underhand way, and the vicar was able to shut his eyes to it and refuse to believe in her malevolent intentions, the moral effect upon him was slight. But since the affair of the candlestick and the altered clock, Birotteau would doubt no longer that he was under an eye of hatred turned fully upon him. From that moment he fell into despair, seeing everywhere the skinny, clawlike ...
— The Vicar of Tours • Honore de Balzac
... long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... and dying man, in whom, to my astonishment, I recognised Cetywayo, King of the Zulus. At the foot of the bed stood another man—myself grown older by many years, and leaning over the bed, apparently whispering into the dying man's ear, was a grotesque and malevolent figure which I knew to be that of Zikali, Opener-of-Roads, whose glowing eyes were fixed upon the terrified and tortured face of Cetywayo. All was as it happened afterwards, as I have written down ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... gratifying. The butterfly assured me with indignation that it was only a cold in her head, which had been annoying her for days: that was what made her eyes act so, and I was a suspicious and malevolent old gentleman—and—and—and perhaps some day she and Mr. Martin ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... exasperated with himself because so much of his money was gone, and he had to do what he didn't want to do. The money instead of making things easier had messed them into an enraging tangle. Life always went against him—he saw the past as governed by a malevolent fate whose business had been a continual creating of pitfalls for his ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... wisdom, Thor's errands are warlike; in Lokasenna he is absent on a journey, in Harbardsljod and Alvissmal he is returning from one. His journeys are always to the east; so in Harbardsljod: "I was in the east, fighting the malevolent giant-brides.... I was in the east and guarding the river, when Svarang's sons attacked me." The Giants live in the east (Hymiskvida 5); Thor threatened Loki: "I will fling thee up into the east, ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was something like that of a peevish, perverse child toward an indulgent parent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a fit of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be met by a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman seemed actually ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could gain great ascendency: he thinks her a woman of violent passions, unbridled imagination, and ill-tempered, but not malevolent: one who has been so torn to pieces that she now turns upon her enemies, and longs to tear in her turn. He says she has certainly great powers of pleasing, though I neither saw nor felt them. But you know, my dear aunt, that I am not famous for judging sanely of ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do so, because reflections on the long, narrow pig-trough are construed as malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the great American people, and lead to angry comparisons. Yet, if all the streets of London were permanently up and all the lamps permanently down, this would ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... but the well-to-do sometimes cremate them. In Benares the face or hand of the corpse is scorched with fire to symbolise cremation and it is then buried. In the Punjab the ghosts of sweepers are considered to be malevolent and are much dreaded; and their bodies are therefore always buried or burnt face downwards to prevent the spirit escaping; and riots have taken place and the magistrates have been appealed to to prevent a Chuhra from being buried face upwards. [232] In Benares as the body ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... is generally something going on in her behalf. One day there is an ejectment at Ballycastle; the next an abortive attempt to evict at Cloontakilla. In the opinion of the poorer peasantry this eccentric lady is a malevolent fiend, an "extherminathor," a tyrant striving to make the lives of the poor so wretched as to drive them off her estate. "A sthrange lady is she, Sorr," cried one of her tenants to me. "Och, she's a divil of a woman, entoirely. All she wants is to hunt the poor ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... seems to take as much interest in my invention as if it were his own. How different a conduct from Jackson's!... Every day is clearing away all the difficulties that prevent its adoption; the only difficulty that remains, it is universally said, is the protection of the wires from malevolent attack, and this can be prevented by proper police and secret and deep interment. I have no doubt of its universal adoption; it may take time ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... Scotchman,—and in Shylock, a servile, fawning, obsequious, yet, when emergency arose, a passionate and vindictive Jew. In the Yellow Dwarf he was the jaundiced embodiment of a spirit of Oriental evil: crafty, malevolent, greedy, insatiate,—full of mockery, mimicry, lubricity, and spite,—an Afrit, a Djinn, a Ghoul, a spawn of Sheitan. How that monstrous orange-tawny head grinned and wagged! How those flaps of ears were projected forwards, like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the quick change of Premiers proceeds with kaleidoscopic rapidity. The attitude of the successive Prime Ministers has been described as (1) Tender and affectionate neutrality toward the Entente Powers; (2) Malevolent impartiality toward the Central Powers; (3) Inert cupidity toward all the belligerent Powers; (4) Genial inability; (5) ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... that Barney heard him say, but he spoke a name that the American did not hear. Maenck also looked his surprise, but his expression was suddenly changed to one of malevolent cunning and gratification. He turned toward Prince Peter with a few low-whispered words. A look of relief crossed the face of the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affairs is of such recent date, for presuming to stand forth as the champion of the fights and privileges of the City of London. No man of common spirit, however, could tamely submit to the insulting charges and coarse insinuations with which the Corporation has long been assailed by malevolent or ignorant individuals. That the civic system is free from spot or blemish, no one in his senses would pretend to assert. But it may honestly and truly be asserted that the Court of Aldermen have both the power and the inclination to amend whatever is defective, and to ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... black eyes too restless, but of that gleaming brilliance which heralds a refusal to grow old. So far, however, the daughter's features had not assumed an aspect of sharpness, like the mother's. One would have appraised the older woman vindictive—malevolent, possibly. ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... their uses; they are not wholly malevolent. Emerson says a weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet discovered; but the wild creatures discover their virtues if we do not. The bumblebee has discovered that the hateful toadflax, which nothing will eat, and which in some soils will ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... permanent peace permitting return to normal conditions, from the transfusion of radical theories from seething European centers pending such delay, from heartless profiteering resulting in the increase of the cost of living, and lastly from the machinations of passionate and malevolent agitators. With the return to normal conditions, this unrest will rapidly disappear. In the meantime, it does much evil. It seems to me that in dealing with this situation Congress should not be impatient or drastic but should seek rather to remove the causes. It should ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... things, however strange the forms in which they clothe their conceptions. The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgus subordinate to a benevolent Almighty, who has only lately revealed himself, faulty as they are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the "liberal" popular illusions that babies are ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... in the existence of an evil spirit, haunting dark caverns, wells, and places of mystery and gloom, and called Jinga. I heard from a settler that upon one occasion, a native travelling with him, refused to go to the well at night from fear of this malevolent being; supposed to keep an especial guardianship over fresh water, and to be most terrible and most potent in the hours of darkness. Miago had never seen this object of his fears, but upon the authority of the elders of his ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, was long after used as a malediction.[63] The indignation also that was felt by the people at large against the immorality of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Levine did not take place until the Sunday before the election. The fight in the Congressional district had increased in bitterness as it went on. Nothing but greed could have precipitated so malevolent a war. The town was utterly disrupted. Neighbors of years' standing quarreled on sight. Students in the University refused to enter the classrooms of teachers who disagreed with them on the Levine fight. Family feuds developed. Ancient family skeletons ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... "that I was born with the usual moral sentiments, and the usual feelings of kinship towards my fellow creatures. Circumstances, however, have wholly destroyed them. To me, men have become the puppets and women the dancing dolls of life. My interest in them, if it exists at all, is malevolent. I should like to see them all suffer exactly as I have suffered. It ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the shame and submission of a captive. Many hours later, near midnight, seated at a table of the Cafe Maranon, and surrounded by eight or ten of his companions, the lieutenant of the Third related with a malevolent smile his conquest of the nymph, calculating that he had managed to imprint at least twenty-five or thirty kisses on different parts of her bewitching face, and all the sons of Mars applauded and celebrated ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... upon their own means at Salisbury, or—as it was then styled—New Sarum. Mr. Keightley's personal inquiries, circa 1858, elicited the information that the family, now extinct, was highly respectable, but not of New Sarum's best society. Richardson, in one of his malevolent outbursts, asserted that the sisters were illegitimate; but, says the writer above referred to, "of this circumstance we have no other proof, and I am able to add that the tradition of Salisbury knows ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... the murmured conversation of the men; and also a measured pacing to and fro, which she took to be the step of Macleod. Quick rushes of feeling went through her, indignation, a stubborn obstinacy, a wonder over the audacity of this thing, malevolent hatred even; but all these were being gradually subdued by the dominant claim of hunger. Miss White had acted the part of many heroines; but she was not herself a heroine—if there is anything heroic in starvation. It was growing to dusk when ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... they supplied him with flint and steel, that he might strike fire when he wanted it. Moreover, they placed a hammer near him, which they supposed he would use with force against evil spirits, for they thought he had sovereign authority over all the mischievous and malevolent spirits that inhabited the air, mountains, and lakes. High festivals were held in honour of this deity, as noticed elsewhere, to supplicate for a propitious year, and at these festivals every excess of extravagant and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... hardest duty generally falls to the northerly winds, as it should do, for they are the strongest; although we southerly winds can blow hard enough when we choose. Our characters are somewhat different. The most unhappy in disposition, and I may say, the most malevolent, are the north and easterly winds; the N.W. winds are powerful, but not unkind; the S.E. winds vary, but, at all events, we of the S.W. are considered the mildest and most beneficent. Do ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... for him to reach me, and well he knew it, the scoundrel! With a malevolent expression on his face, his beady eyes gleaming with cruel intelligence, he began teetering. Teetering!—and with me out on the very edge of the bough, clutching at the twigs that broke continually with my weight. Twenty feet beneath me ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... Mme. de Rochefide by snubbing her; all the women followed her example, shunning the mistress of Calyste du Guenic. [Beatrix.] In short the Marquise d'Espard was one of the most snobbish people of her day. Her disposition was sour and malevolent, despite ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... words on June nights, of vague stirrings under moonlight, of embarrassing hand-clasps and fearful glances, might become, as it had become in the case of himself, Kennedy, and what was behind him, a thing of blind, malevolent force, a thing of sinister silence, a shadow ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... never refused us when we have had occasion to ask for the loan of a man or two, and it is not for us to refuse him." McGinty paused and looked round the room with his dull, malevolent eyes. "Who ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... harm. Sometimes good deities are so benevolent that they are neglected, superstitious fear directing all devotion towards the evil spirits to propitiate them and avert the calamities they are ever ready to bring upon the human race; sometimes the malevolent deities have so little power that the prayer of the pious is offered up to the good spirits that they may pour out still further favors, for man is a worshipping being, and will prostrate himself with equal fervor ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... disputes, what writer can be safe? Or who is there, that will not be deterred from taking up his pen in the cause of virtue? There are circumstances in every person's life, which, if given to the publick in a malevolent manner, and without explanation, might essentially injure him in the eyes of the world; though, were they explained, they would be even reputable. The cursory remarker has adopted this method of dispute; but Mr. Ramsay has explained himself ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... his part, showed a malevolent disposition to continue toward the friends of Thatcher an attitude at once benevolent and just. So many were demanding recognition amid cat-calling and whistling that the fairest and least partial of presiding officers might well have hesitated ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... by exulting, that, though he might have written nonsense, none of his critics had been so happy as to discover it. These indications of superiority, being thought to savour of vanity, had their share in exciting the storm of malevolent criticism, of which Dryden afterwards so heavily complained. "Tyrannic Love" is dedicated to the Duke of Monmouth; but it would seem the compliment was principally designed to his duchess. The Duke, whom Dryden was afterwards ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... had been forced to surrender to the royal power of the Day, and behold it shining lonesomely afar, in barren magnificence. "How have I endured it?" she moans, "How do I still endure it?" Nay, he comforts her, "We are now become the initiate of the Night. The malevolent Day, the cruel, can divide, but no longer deceive us. They whose eyes the Night has consecrated laugh to scorn Day's idle splendour, his braggart brilliancy. The fugitive flashes of his lightning cannot dazzle them more. He who has gazed longingly into the night of death, ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... are removed outside the moral order altogether; and in its place we are presented with a state of things in which innocence, honesty, love, and the rest are entirely at the disposal and under the rule of malevolent brutality; the result, as presented to us, being qualified only by such tact as the author may choose to display. That Mr. du Maurier has displayed great tact is extremely creditable to Mr. du Maurier, and might have been predicted of him. But it does not alter the fact that a form of fiction ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... even years afterward such places are recognized and avoided. The place and all about it are the especial locale of the tc[)i]'ndi, the shade or "spirit" of the departed. These shades are not necessarily malevolent, but they are regarded as inclined to resent any intrusion or the taking of any liberties with them or their belongings. If one little stick of wood from a tc[)i]'ndi hogan is used about a camp fire, as is sometimes done by irreverent whites, not an Indian will approach ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... of forming the most dangerous of these intermediate agents; but in my opinion, without justice. The most formidable, to my thinking, is the conductor of the orchestra. A bad singer can spoil only his own part; while an incapable or malevolent conductor ruins all. Happy indeed may the composer esteem himself when the conductor into whose hands he has fallen is not at once incapable and inimical; for nothing can resist the pernicious influence of this person. The most admirable orchestra is then paralyzed, the most excellent singers are ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... lowers her head, and then sits down on the nearest stone- bench. She sits for a long time, lost in thought. I watch her with a sort of malevolent pleasure, finally I pull myself together by sheer force of will, and ironically step before her. She startles, ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... a figure darkened the doorway—a slender, lithe figure that moved on springs. Out of its sardonic, devil-may-care face gleamed malevolent eyes which rested for a moment on Dailey, before they came home to ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... bottom this phenomenon, which appears to me to be the soul of all history, it is well to add this consideration: It is evident that there is a capital difference between our judgment of this phenomenon and that of the ancients; to them it was a malevolent force of dissolution to which should be attributed all in Roman history that was sinister and dreadful, a sure sign of incurable decay; that is why they called it "corruption of customs," and so lamented it. To-day, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... went over and sat down on a trunk near the wall. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a curious half-laugh, half- sob. He glared at the flap through which she had disappeared. A cunning, malevolent ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... growing hard and malevolent, and Blake now felt strangely repelled. It looked as if the man had been soured by his misfortunes and turned into an outlaw who found a vindictive pleasure in making such reprisals as he found possible upon society at large. This conclusion was borne out by ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... a retreat in her little house, the Hermitage. There it was that he began the tale of La Nouvelle Heloise, which was finished at Marshal de Montmorency's, when the susceptible and cranky temper of the philosopher had justified the malevolent predictions of Grimm. The latter had but lately said to Madame d'Epinay "I see in Rousseau nothing but pride concealed everywhere about him; you will do him a very sorry service in giving him a home at the Hermitage, but you will do yourself a still more sorry one. Solitude will ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... knew she laughed at him. Yes, laughed at him, for she had more than human intelligence. There was something demoniac in her cleverness, her immunity from harm, her prodigious energy, her malevolent mischief, her raillery. Actually, he had grown morbid about the beast; he had a superstitious feeling that in the end she would bring him bad ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... gentleman gave vent to a malevolent chuckle. "Upon my word, sir," said he, "I can only see one course open to you as a man of honour. You ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... young ladies, who supported the infant babe in a light and beautiful litter. As they passed the threshold, the baron dipt his finger in the font-stone and offered holy-water to his lady, who accepted it, as usual, by touching his finger with her own. But then, as if to confute the calumnies of the malevolent lady of Steinfeldt, with an air of sportive familiarity which was rather unwarranted by the time and place, he flirted on her beautiful forehead a drop or two of the moisture which remained on his own hand. The opal, on which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... me," said Sybil, who had listened, horror-stricken, to the sexton, shuddering, as it were, beneath the chilly influence of his malevolent glance, "is this true? Does your fate depend upon Eleanor Mowbray? Who is she? What has she to do with Rookwood? Have you seen ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... received this intimation with a malevolent grin. "Talking big eases the smart, don't it?" and he ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... no more been heard of it? And what had Winter and Furneaux meant by hinting that far wider issues were bound up with the affair than the authorities were yet at liberty to divulge? The attack on Forbes, sinister and malevolent in its scope and purpose, was, in a sense, open warfare. But it was impossible to guess what part, if any, the official representatives of China filled in the fray. Were they active allies of Scotland Yard or did they ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... God either took the heathen sacrificial ritual, veneered it with some sort of divine approval, and handed it over to his people for their use, or by some sort of evolution the book of Leviticus came up out of the heathen method of appeasing their malevolent deities! ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable^, disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c (corrupt) &c 659; virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c (morbific) 657 [Obs.]; deadly &c (killing) 361; destructive &c (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... receive an account of the price from the booksellers, of whom it may easily be imagined that they will be willing, since they cannot depreciate the books, to exaggerate the price: and I will boldly promise those who have been influenced by malevolent reports, that, if they will be pleased, at the day of sale, to examine the prices with their own eyes, they will find them lower ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What is the matter with you, my angel? Are ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... a cause so weak that it does not stir into ill-timed activity some wild, unpractical zealots who imagine it strong. There is never a cause so just but that the malevolent and the mercenary will seek to trade upon it. The South was helpless; the one thing needful was to get it on its feet, and though the bravest and the wisest saw this plainly enough there came to the front—particularly in Kentucky—a small but noisy ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... paler than when I last saw you, that I didn't know you, positively. Little ill, sir?" asked Patching. The artist was sure to observe and speak of any signs of illness on the faces of his friends and acquaintances. Some people called him malevolent for it. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... purpose? And you tell me so NOW, to prove to me that I'd better put myself under your protection?" She burst into a laugh that had in it all the piercing echoes of her Murrett past, and her face, at the same moment, underwent the same change, shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which the eyes burned black. "Thank you—thank you most awfully for telling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The plan's delightful—really quite delightful, and I'm extremely flattered ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... no move. His malevolent stare had become more intense. Suddenly he laughed, his teeth baring, but his ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... rage somewhat abated, though he still watched Dale and his men with sullen, malevolent eyes, had changed his position. Mary had brought a chair, and Owen sat on it, the rifle still resting on the window-sill, menacing ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... inaugurated his new career by an unhappy act of patronage. The appointment of Maturin Livingston, his son-in-law, and the removal of Peter B. Porter, the friend of Burr, showed a selfish, almost malevolent disregard of public opinion and the public service, a trait that, in a way, characterised his policy throughout. Livingston was notoriously unfitted for recorder of New York. He was unpopular in his manners, deficient in a knowledge of law, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was true, the worst was true. The audience, excited to the highest pitch, caught breath with malevolent delight. But the thrills were not exhausted. Miss Travers next told how in Dr. Wilde's study one evening she had been vexed at some slight, and at once took four pennyworth of laudanum which she had bought. Dr. Wilde hurried her round to the house of Dr. Walsh, a physician in the neighbourhood, ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... religion I understand best; but even if I had been a heathen, I couldn't have helped wishing well to a noble, handsome woman like Helen Markson. I tried to speak in a very low tone, but Mrs. Markson seemed to understand what I said, for she favored me with a look more malevolent than any I had ever received from my most impecunious debtor; the natural effect was to wake up all the old Adam there was in me, and to make me long for what ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... wind, made visible by fog, drove him forward, or, lying in wait, charged him angrily from the corners of deserted suburban streets. It was on one of these corners that something else, quite as indistinct and malevolent, leaped upon him with an oath, a presented pistol, and a demand for money. But it was met by a will of iron and a grip of steel. The assailant and assailed rolled together on the ground. But the next moment the old man was erect; one hand grasping ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hysterical shrieking, without wrong-doing to any one. The other is an offence against the common interests of society, and a breach of the law accompanied by crimes against humanity. The one is silent and beneficent; the other noisy, uprooting, and malevolent. But as the powers of growth and development are, in the long run, superior to those of destruction—else all would have gone by the board ages ago—the good done by Lord Ashbourne's Act will be a living force in the national ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton
... preserved by the perpetual contentions of avarice, knavery, selfishness, and ambition; and thus the worst of vices, and the worst of men, are often compelled, by providence, to serve the most beneficial purposes, contrary to their own malevolent tendencies and inclinations; and thus private vices become public benefits, by the force only of accidental circumstances. But this impeaches not the truth of the criterion of virtue, before mentioned, the only solid foundation on ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... tabernacles in the year 32, his relatives, always malevolent and sceptical, pressed him to go there. He set out on the journey unknown to every one and almost alone, and never again saw his ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... he had understood just in time to step aside as it pitched another peck of iron down that swarming slope. To face firearms is one of the commonest incidents in a soldier's life—firearms, too, with malevolent eyes blazing behind them. That is what a soldier is for. Still, Private Searing did not altogether relish the situation, and turned away ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... 'Is it possible for an espada to stand in the bull ring with his back to the bull, during a charge, as you have made him do frequently in the story?' 'Of course not,' he answered me at once, smiling his frankly malevolent smile, 'Of course not. That part was put in to show how much the public will stand for in a work of fiction. I believe one of the espadas tried it some time after the book appeared ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... discarded cloak, and for a last touch of the ridiculous, seeking for anything to restore his countenance, drank of the wine before him, deep as a porter after a heavy lift. It was little wonder if Ballantrae, reading the scene with malevolent eyes, laughed out loud and brief, and drank with raised glass, 'To the champion of ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Though he employed Corinthian cadences and diction, he kept continually checking them with the cynic twist of some deft colloquialism. To venture into his microcosm is to bid farewell to all that is simple and kindly; it is, however, to discover the terrible beauty that lurks behind corruption, malevolent though delirious. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... unavailing; so that there were continual frauds, concealments, and thefts, which animated every one against his neighbour, and produced infinite contentions and perpetual quarrels. Hence a perverse and malevolent disposition was constantly kept up among them, which rendered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... our immortal part acquires during this life certain habits of action or of sentiment which become for ever indissoluble, continuing after death in a future state of existence; and add that if these habits are of the malevolent kind, they must render their possessor miserable even in Heaven. I would apply this ingenious idea to the generation or production of the embryon or new animal, which partakes so much of the form and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... commonly observed to be much in use there, where the finest tricks of supplanting are practised, with greatest effect; so that pessimum inimicorum genus, laudantes; there is no more pestilent enemy than a malevolent praiser. All these kinds of dealing, as they issue from the principles of slander, and perform its work, so they deservedly bear the ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... other states that arise naturally and which foster the same conviction. It has already been pointed out that the generally accepted theory with uncivilised peoples is that all disease is due to the action of malevolent spirits. There is no need now to repeat proof of this, and in any case it lies to hand in any work that deals with uncivilised life. Nor need we go back to uncivilised times for evidence. One requires only to look but a very little way into the history of any country to find the supernaturalistic ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the brink the slimy water parted, and the yellow snout of a huge crocodile was raised above the surface! The saurian eyes, hungrily malevolent, rose next to view! ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... the evolutionary process was set going with full foreknowledge of the result and yet with what we should understand by a purely benevolent intention, as it is to imagine that the intention was purely malevolent. And the prevalence of dualistic theories from the earliest times to the present day—whether in the shape of the doctrine of the inherently evil nature of matter; of an Ahriman; of a hard and cruel Demiurge; of a diabolical "prince of this world," show ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the combat was at first sustained with more moderation. My passions, though hasty, were not malevolent; and the walk of two or three minutes' space gave me time to reflect that Rashleigh was my father's nephew, the son of an uncle, who after his fashion had been kind to me, and that his falling by my hand could not ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not thy virgin spirit hail him? Why first fetter us, slaves to virtue and to thee; then become the malevolent Typhoon, on whose wings our good genius flies for ever? In this—far worse than the iconoclasts of yore art thou! They but disfigured images of man's rude fashioning: whilst thou wouldst injure the once loved form of God's high ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... I was not an impressionable ignorant young girl. I had taken the exact measure of the fellow's utter worthlessness long before. He had never been for me a person of prestige and power, like that awful governess to Flora de Barral. See the might of suggestion? We live at the mercy of a malevolent word. A sound, a mere disturbance of the air, sinks into our very soul sometimes. Flora de Barral had been more astounded than convinced by the first impetuosity of Roderick Anthony. She let herself be carried along by a mysterious force which her person had called into being, as her ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... only to come out with the same joke, but by a typographical slip to spoil it by making the child define a parable as "a heavenly story with an earthly meaning"—the result being to evoke a paean of exultation from the few papers whose favourite sport it is to keep a malevolent weather-eye on Punch in perpetual hope of catching him tripping. Just such a little chorus of mischievous delight greeted the publication of Mr. du Maurier's joke in which an old maid complains that a serious drawback to the charming view from her windows is the tourists bathing ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... you to be called, listen to me. By the most ingenious and fiendish combinations possible for a human being to contrive, you wrecked my fortune and with it my hopes. You drove me ignominiously from Paris; in Rome you caused me to be starved and robbed by Luigi Vampa and his brigands; then with the malevolent magnanimity of an arch-demon you sent me forth into the world a fugitive and an outcast. Count of Monte-Cristo, Edmond Dantes, low-born sailor of Marseilles, modern Mephistopheles as you are, I will be even with you! You have had your vengeance; now you shall feel mine! Here in the Grecian ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... hesitation, during which a malevolent pleasure slightly disfigured the countenances of the two gentlemen with Julia; but when Florence pointed to a house across the street and remarked, "There's Great-Uncle Milford and Aunt C'nelia; they been lookin' out of their second ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... length, and despatched in hot haste to Lady Rashborough's. Beatrice had scarcely entered before Stephen Richford drove up. He looked anxious and white and sullen withal, and he favoured Mark with a particularly malevolent scowl. Richford knew the relationship that had existed at one time ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... and bared his teeth. If ever malevolent hate was written on a face it found expression ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... civilization, increased the evil which it found, and when it expelled the ancient goddesses, and confounded them as demons with Diana and Herodias, it added them and their votaries to the old class of malevolent sorcerers. There was but one step, but a simple act of the will, between the Norn and the hag, even before Christianity came in. As soon as it came, down went Goddess, Valkyrie, Norn, priestess, and soothsayer, into that unholy deep where the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... 'The malevolent passions 'my father always considered as the greatest foes to human felicity—they would not stay in his mind—he was of too good and too happy a nature. He forgot all, but the moral which he drew for his private use ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... the son of Sir Nabon] Then Sir Tristram looked closely into his face, and he perceived that it was wicked and treacherous and malevolent like to the face of Sir Nabon. Thereupon Sir Tristram said: "If a man shall slay the wolf and spare the whelp of the wolf, what shall the world be the better therefor?" Therewith he catched the son of Sir Nabon by the hair and dragged him down and smote ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... more than one title to our serious attention. It is an appeal, solemnly made to posterity by a man who played a conspicuous part in great events, and who represents himself as deeply aggrieved by the rash and malevolent censure of his contemporaries. To such an appeal we shall always give ready audience. We can perform no duty more useful to society, or more agreeable to our own feelings, than that of making, as far ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Ben Kyle by appointment at the foot of the Oxbow portage and he had found Kyle to be particularly malevolent and entirely willing—and Kyle had gone north to the Flagg drive in the pay of ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Will not your ladyship present me?" The countess' malevolent eyes turned a moment upon Mr. Caryll, smiling demurely at Lady Mary's elbow. In his face—as well as in the four words he had uttered—she saw that here was work of his, and he gained nothing in her favor by it. Meanwhile there ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... cut down or grubbed up. In one compartment of this old-fashioned garden were two immense horse-chestnut trees, of whose size the Baron was particularly vain: too lazy, perhaps, to cut them down, the spoilers, with malevolent ingenuity, had mined them, and placed a quantity of gunpowder in the cavity. One had been shivered to pieces by the explosion, and the fragments lay scattered around, encumbering the ground it had so long shadowed. The other mine had been more partial in its effect. About one-fourth of ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... man, woman, and child on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger, and the thumb of the other hand were the first three battleships to be lost to the Rats—lost as people realized that there was something out there underneath space itself which was alive, capricious and malevolent. ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... seemed to thaw into life, his limbs relaxed, his breast heaved, he was as he had always been: ancient, gnarled, malevolent. ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... wicked spirits were driven away. Great masses of troops and artillery having been drawn up with flying colours and all the pomp of war, "the general beginneth then to offer meat offerings to the criminal devils and malevolent spirits (for it is usual and customary likewise amongst them to feast the condemned before their execution), inviting them to eat and drink, when presently he accuses them in a strange language, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... for the carrying out of the object of their visit to the island—whatever that might be; instead of which the man on the poop, the man who had made fast his painter for him, and the cook—a fat-faced, evil-looking man with a most atrocious squint—who came to the galley door and stared with malevolent curiosity at him—were the only individuals visible. It was not, however, any part of Leslie's policy to exhibit surprise at such an unusual condition of affairs, so he simply advanced to the poop ladder, with the manner of one a little uncertain how ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... into the outer darkness. But the baron caught her by the waist, and saved her from Heaven knows what imaginable disaster; and the scene ended in a half-hysterical laugh. But the wind then set upon them both with a malevolent fury; and the baron was, I presume, obliged to draw her closer ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... you be wretched, mamma, because I prefer not to be present at your wedding? If I were there, I should be like the bad fairy at the princess's christening. I should look at everything with a malevolent eye." ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from 'Principia Discordia': "A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati. See {Religion} under {appendix B}, {Church of the SubGenius}, ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... proclamation of a Jewish God hostile to the God of redemption. The views of the majority of the Gnostics occupied a middle position between the two notions. These distinguished different components of the Old Testament, some of which they traced to the supreme God himself and others to intermediate and malevolent beings. In this way they both established a connection between the Old Testament, and the Christian revelation and contrived to show that the latter contained a specific novelty. This historico-critical conception, such as we specially see it in the epistle of Ptolemy to Flora, could ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... from the Lake of Geneva to the Mediterraenean its only purpose—other than that of doing all the mischief possible—seems to be frolic fun. And yet for more than two thousand years this apparently frivolous, and frequently malevolent, river has been very usefully employed in the service ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... opinion of ourselves. When any of these various appetites or desires are gratified, we feel satisfaction, and, on the other hand, when they are thwarted, we feel dissatisfaction. Similarly, we have a number of affections, of which others are the object, some of them of a malevolent or resentful, but most of them of a benevolent character, including a general desire to confer all the happiness that we can. Here, again, we feel satisfaction, when our affections are gratified, and dissatisfaction, ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... science of religions which relates to superhuman beings which are not gods. It deals both with benevolent beings which have no circle of worshippers or so limited a circle as to be below the rank of gods, and with malevolent beings of all kinds. It may be noted that the original sense of "demon" was a benevolent being; but in English the name now connotes malevolence; in German it has a neutral sense, e.g. Korndmonen. Demons, when they are regarded as spirits, may belong to either of the classes of spirits ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... intelligent cicerone anticipated our reflections in this place; nor did the creature-comforts of a good inn debase our Roman reveries, though we could well have pardoned their so doing. Madame Ran, of the Croix Blanche, was as mean and dirty as the hole in which she lived; and looked as malevolent as Canidia, Erichtho, or any other classical witch; and as to the inhabitants of Orange, though the revolutionary anecdotes which we have heard of them at Grignan might create some prejudice to their disadvantage, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... ferocious to her with their painted faces, stolid looks and speechlessness. One day she was frying a pan of doughnuts and had finished about half of them when she glanced up to see seven big braves, hideously painted, standing and watching her with what she thought was a most malevolent look. She was all alone, with nobody even within calling distance. One of the number looked especially ferocious and her terror was increased by seeing him take up a knife and test it, feeling the edge to see if it was sharp, always watching her with the same malevolent look. Quaking with fear, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... learned to ride as a boy? He had been told that the horse was a noble animal and the friend of man. He was afraid he would return to his dear Peggy with many of his young illusions shattered. The horse was the most ignoble, malevolent beast that ever walked, except the sergeant-major in the riding-school. Peggy was filled with admiration for his philosophic endurance of hardships. It was real courage. His letters contained simple statements of fact, but not a word of complaint. On the other hand, they were not ebullient with ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... above the head of one of the Beagle's sailors who slept under a tree outside the hut, and awakened him with its lugubrious "whoo-woo-woah!" and so frightened the superstitious tar, that he believed himself hailed by one of the malevolent ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... it. It is represented as: (a) outwardly Masonic, and (b) actually theurgic. (c) It is Manichaean in doctrine. (d) It regards Lucifer as an eternal principle co-existent, but in a hostile sense, with Adonai. (e) It holds that the beneficent deity is Lucifer, while Adonai is malevolent; (f) Certain sections of Palladists, however, recognise that Lucifer is identical with Satan, and is the evil principle. (g) This section adores the evil principle as such. Now, in each and all these matters the Palladian system conflicts ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... wonderful machinery of the Arabian Nights Tales. The Touaricks give them still greater powers, and make them a sort of delegated or deputy creators, according to the Magian system, but do not attribute to them the malevolent passions of an evil being. They are probably influenced by the Koran in this, which in the Surat, entitled "The Genii" (lxxii.) makes a portion of them to have been converted by hearing the reading of the Koran: "Say, it hath been revealed unto ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... supporting the tragic stage of Greece. The hopes of the Grecian drama was buried in the grave along with him. Of those who succeeded him we know nothing; nor should we know that any did succeed, if the history of Aristophanes did not inform us, that there were such, who served only as butts for his malevolent wit. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... a malevolent eye. Never fond of Mr. Judson, he looked on him now with positive loathing. It had not been easy for him to work himself up to the point where he could discuss with Joan the mysterious ways of Providence, for there was that about her which made it hard to achieve sentiment. That indefinable ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... their very best—or worst—to make the earth a miserable place. I can laugh as heartily as anybody at Dickens's "scolds" and female bullies; none the less however am I ready in all seriousness to reckon the shrew as an evil influence, as bad as some of the most subtle and malevolent scourges inflicted by physical nature. All of us have but a little span on earth, and we should be able to economise every minute, so as to extract the maximum of joy from existence; yet how many ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... than that which worldly deceits and disappointments bestow, his remarks, though shrewd, were bitterly sarcastic, and partook of all the ill-nature for which a very scanty knowledge of the world gives a sour and malevolent mind so ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Terror. A Powerful and Dramatic Story of the French Revolution. By the Author of "The Hypocrite" and "Miss Malevolent." (In ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... caught in a cursed cage, and prays some one to unlock the door and give her space and light, and let her soar away in ecstasy and glory. Nothing less than infinite space will satisfy her. Even the tempest, the demon, or a malevolent spirit might bear her away on unbridled wings. In one poem she apostrophizes Marie Bashkirtseff as warring with vast genius against unknown powers, but who now is in her coffin among worms, her skull grinning and showing its teeth. She would be possessed by her and thrilled as by ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper, but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought she'd run up the wall from me the first time I went to feed her! Ah ha! none o' yer thricks!" as the filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large space of grass round her, let fling a kick of malevolent exuberance at the two fox-terriers who were ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... race; others probably of Chinese or Korean derivation,—began at an early period to influence the popular use of incense in Japan. Incense is still burned in the presence of a corpse with the idea that its fragrance shields both corpse and newly-parted soul from malevolent demons; and by the peasants it is often burned also to drive away goblins and the evil powers presiding over diseases. But formerly it was used to summon spirits as well as to banish them. Allusions to its employment in various weird rites may be found in some of the old dramas and romances. One ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... Even in representations designed for the people such malevolent charges are found. These exaggerations are to be corrected not by concealment, but by a candid statement ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... old man fixedly, with that malevolent look of which none but an Italian really is capable. Vanderlyn saw, also, with amazement, that there were those among his countrymen—men evidently knowing him—who were as much impressed by what he said as, evidently, he believed the whole ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... your health," interposed Mrs. Savine. "Mending bicycles frequently leads to an accumulation of malevolent humors. Did I interrupt you, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... visitant, but the reference is to one of the wind gods. Minab[-o]zho became angered with the Kitshi Manid[-o], and the latter, to appease his discontent, gave to Minab[-o]zho the rite of the Mid[-e]wiwin. The brother of Minab[-o]zho was destroyed by the malevolent underground spirits and now rules the abode of shadows,—the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... condemn themselves to the most melancholy privations, and to the most severe sufferings. Is not this insulting Faraki? Is it not saying to him, I despise your gifts? Is it not misrepresenting him and saying, You are malevolent and cruel, and I know that I can no otherwise please you than by offering you the spectacle of my miseries? "I am told," added he, "that you have, in your country, faquirs not less insane, not less cruel to themselves." I thought, with some reason, that he meant the fathers of La ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Harry's desertion nearly killed her—that there was a moment, as she breasted the hill-top and found herself facing the malevolent red house where they had always told her that he did not really love her, when she thought she was about to fall dead from excess of experience and would have chosen to die so, if Richard had not waited for her. Yet it was also true that for long she hardly ever thought of Harry. Such fierce and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... of all government, but because of the inherent feebleness of that form of government, its inability to protect itself against any kind of aggression by any considerable number of its people having a common malevolent purpose. In a republic the crust that confined the fires of violence and sedition ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... his blotched gums showing in a grin between his thin lips, his dull eyes half veiled by the drooping of the leaden-hued lids. More than ever he was a mask of death, but of a death that possessed a grim humour, malevolent in its satirical cynicism. The justice of the King. Who should know that justice so well as Commines, its minister for almost a dozen years, or who so testify to its stern implacability? None escaped the rigid iron of its wrath. Their almost royal ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... bed-wagon, a man they called Blink, for want of a better name, was fighting his big sorrel silently, with that dogged determination which may easily grow malevolent. The sorrel was at best a high-tempered, nervous beast, and what with the wind and the flapping of everything in sight, and the pitching of half-a-dozen horses around him, he was nearly crazed with ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... eulogists have been silly. But the student of his peculiar nature must be an odd analyst who does not in the end conclude that Grey was on the whole more akin to the Christian hero painted by Froude and Olive Schreiner than to the malevolent political chess-player ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves |
