"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or Misery, is also highly suitable to his Character; as the Comfort he draws from their disturbing the Peace of Heaven, that if it be not Victory it is Revenge, is a Sentiment truly Diabolical, and becoming the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... why Bruennhilda does not travel with her husband—the explanation is made only too obvious afterwards. He travels to the Rhine, and there meets Hagen, Guenther and Guenther's sister Gutruna. Hagen, the son of Alberich, is more or less like Mime, a half-super-natural being, malignant, diabolical, with only one idea, that of getting possession of the gold, and, above all, of the Ring. He knows of Siegfried's "deed," and knows that Siegfried is coming that way; but he keeps the story to himself, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... all with your heads very close together, hatching diabolical plots and conspiracies against poor ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... religious, who are gathered together in the unity of peace. Now study leads to dissent: wherefore different schools of thought arose among the philosophers. Hence Jerome (Super Epist. ad Tit. 1:5) says: "Before a diabolical instinct brought study into religion, and people said: I am of Paul, I of Apollo, I of Cephas," etc. Therefore it would seem that no religious order should be established for the purpose ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... 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. The tone ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... this kind of snuff, is seven inches long: it appeared to me to be the leg-bone of a large sort of plover. The niopo is so stimulating that the smallest portions of it produce violent sneezing in those who are not accustomed to its use. Father Gumilla says this diabolical powder of the Ottomacs, furnished by an arborescent tobacco-plant, intoxicates them through the nostrils (emboracha por las narices), deprives them of reason for some hours, and renders them furious in battle. However varied may be ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... she complained, "why didn't you give me your confidence? If I had had the least notion of the dreadful things that were going on I should certainly have telephoned to Eastbourne before starting. But don't you see the diabolical cleverness of the scheme? The telegram arrived just in time to allow me to catch the 1:25 p. m. train, and rendering it idle to think of making a trunk call if I would obey an urgent message from my mother. Then again, when I reached Eastbourne, why should ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... at the flight of his niece. How was it that he had never suspected the cause that disturbed her thoughts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more excuse therefore for an uncle!" So he resumed his musing on elevated art, quieting his displeasure—for his comrades jeered him—by ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... of friends. Chippy now entertained the most respectful regard for police-constables, for it was part of his duty; but it had not always been so. In his days of sin, before he became a boy scout, he had guyed and chaffed Martin many a time and oft, and had exercised a diabolical ingenuity in tricks for his discomfiture. Therefore a sudden appearance, springing out of the darkness as a supporter of law and order, might not be taken as it was meant, and Chippy was quite ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... popery—the order of priests, monks and nuns, together with the cloisters and other institutions, the whole world might well say, Amen. For these the devil's devices curse, condemn and impede everywhere God's Word and his blessing. These things are evils so pernicious, so diabolical, they do not merit our love. The more we serve the ecclesiasts and the more we yield to them, the more obdurate they become. They rant and rage against the Word of God and the Spirit, against faith ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... 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 ...
— 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
... with Thatcher had been born of a diabolical humor which he rarely exercised, but which afforded him a delicious satisfaction. It was the sort of revenge one reserved for a foe capable of appreciating its humor and malignity. The answer of laughter ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... pause between their deaths: courage and daring the greatest that all the chances of war can show. Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire and animate ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... suppose that his lie could long outlive Walter Clifford's return; but he was getting desperate, and longing to stab them all. Unfortunately fate befriended the villain's malice, and the husband and wife did not meet again till that diabolical poison ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... moment he stood 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 ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier," he was formulating in his mind the programme of the "Drang nach Osten," the great push towards the East. The Russo-Turkish war; the humbling of the victorious Slav colossus by the Congress of Berlin; the diabolical treachery contained in the Resolutions of the said Congress (not one of which but contains the germ of some revolt or movement on the part of the races of the Turkish Empire); the separation of Bulgaria and Roumelia, united by the Treaty of San Stefano; the subsequent reunion, directed against Russia, ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... all our attempts after 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 sun in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to take tea at Mrs. Ireland's lodgings, an English lady who is here with her two daughters, accomplished and highly agreeable people. I was told by them that after I left Rome a most diabolical attempt was made to poison the English artists who had made a party to Grotto Ferrata. They were mistaken by the persons who attempted the deed for Germans. They all became exceedingly ill immediately after dinner, and, as the wine was the only thing they had ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... felt himself simply a victim, the iron bit that destiny had put into his mouth would have chafed him less intolerably. If the curses he muttered half aloud when he was alone had had no other object than Dunstan's diabolical cunning, he might have shrunk less from the consequences of avowal. But he had something else to curse—his own vicious folly, which now seemed as mad and unaccountable to him as almost all our follies ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... weakness is it, but wilful working all, That reigneth in man through mind diabolical. He shall have therefore ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... and went into the steerage. George becoming alarmed at this conduct of his unnatural brother, again took the rattle for the purpose of alarming some one; Comstock arrived in time to prevent him, and with threatenings dark and diabolical, so congealed the blood of his trembling brother, that even had he possessed the power of alarming the unconscious and fated victims below, his life would have been the ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay
... from Bohemia, and from other parts of the German empire. 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, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... immorality in the Corinthian Church. Paul had struck at it with heat and force, sternly commanding the exclusion of the sinner. He did so on the ground of the diabolical power of infection possessed by evil, and illustrated that by the very obvious metaphor of leaven, a morsel of which, as he says, 'will leaven the whole lump,' or, as we say, 'batch.' But the word 'leaven' drew up from the depths of his memory a host of sacred associations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... States. On the death of my parents, I had been sent to England to my grandparents. It was they who had apprenticed me on the Glenmore. I hope the captain of the Glenmore will forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in the Winnipeg police station. Such cruelty! Such brutality! Such diabolical ingenuity of torture! It explained why I had deserted the Glenmore ...
— The Road • Jack London
... left the apartment, the bishop rose, and deprecated the action that had been taken, and characterized it as childish and absurd. He declared that no man was safe one moment whilst "that diabolical wretch" still lived; that the only security for us all was in his immediate extirpation from the face of the earth, and that no amount of money could seal his lips, or close his hands. It would be no crime, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... came from a couple of hundred yards away—a hollow, diabolical kind of mocking laugh which sent ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... "possession" see F. W. H. Myers's work on Human Personality and Survival after Death, Vol. I. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London.) Professor William James half humorously remarks: "The time-honored phenomenon of diabolical possession is on the point of being admitted by the scientist as a fact, now that he has the name of hysterodemonopathy by which to apperceive it." Varieties of Religious Experience, ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... She was a fair musician, but she did not like music—like many German women. But, like them, she thought she ought to like it, and she took her lessons conscientiously enough, except for certain moments of diabolical malice indulged in to enrage her master. She could enrage him much more by the icy indifference with which she set herself to her task. But the worst was when she took it into her head that it was her duty to throw her soul into an expressive passage: ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... have fearlessly challenged comparison with any ship afloat for cleanliness and neatness of appearance, the hands no longer felt that they were continually being "worked up" or "hazed" for the sole, diabolical satisfaction of keeping them "at it." Of course, the incidence of the work was divided, since so many of the crew were quite unable to do any sailorizing, as we term work in sails and rigging. Upon them, then, fell all the common labour, which can be done by any unskilled man ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... retreat under the rifles of their inexorable companions. The trenches had been so dug with such a regard for the slopes of the ground that in some places a triple line of fire was secured. His artillery, consisting of several heavy pieces and a number of machine guns (including one of the diabolical 'pompoms'), was cleverly placed upon the further side of the stream, and was not only provided with shelter pits but had rows of reserve pits, so that the guns could be readily shifted when their range was found. Rows of trenches, a broadish river, fresh rows ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... partnership when the one is forced against her will, and the other uses every kind of diabolical means to assist his mastery? I am coming with you because there is no way out of it. You understand. Nothing but force can save me—I see that. Your code of life is based on brute strength devoid of any kind ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... most indispensable qualification will be independence. They perhaps will be able to show, that happiness or even universal comfort is not, and never has been, within quite so easy reach, that it cannot be taken by storm, and that as for the institutions left us from the past they are no more diabolical than they are divine, being the fruit of necessary development far more than of free-will or calculation. Such teachers would be the free clergy of modern civilization. It would be their business to investigate and to teach the true relation of man to the universe ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... has taken into her head, I raise a terrible storm which lasts at least a week. She makes me tremble when she begins her outcries; I don't know where to hide myself. She is a perfect virago; and yet, in spite of her diabolical temper, I must call her my darling and ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... understand you, Sir, (she reply'd) for, by my Hopes of Heaven, I have not seen him neither since that Day I left you. Hey! pass and repass, (cry'd the old suspicious Father) presto, be gone!—This is all Conjuration. 'Tis diabolical, dealing with the Devil! In Lies, I mean, on one Side or other; for he told me to my Teeth, at least, he said in my Hearing, on the Bowling-Green, but two Nights since, that he hop'd to see your Ladyship (for I suppose you are his Mistress) that Night e're 'twas dark: Upon which ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled 'Un Menage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a group of novels—or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable length—unrivaled in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... other of the minor noble families in Italy, prevented their founding a substantial dynasty. Their power, based on force, was maintained by craft and crime, and transmitted through tortuous channels by intrigue. While false in their dealings with the world at large, they were diabolical in the perfidy with which they treated one another. No feudal custom, no standard of hereditary right, ruled the succession in their family. Therefore the ablest Malatesta for the moment clutched what he could of the domains that owned his house for masters. Partitions ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... mounted a goods box, and under feelings of great excitement, hatred, and malice, delivered a speech abusive of the whole American party, excepting none, in coarse, bitter language, in a style peculiarly his own—adapted alone to the foul precincts of Billingsgate—rounding his periods with a diabolical and infernal grin, alone suited to a display of oratory ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... purpose at that crisis. Germany was preparing energetically but quietly for war; it was highly essential that its most formidable potential foe, Great Britain, should be deceived as to the Imperial plans and lulled into a sense of security. The diabolical character of Prince Lichnowsky's selection for this purpose was that, though his mission was one of deception, he was not himself a party to it and did not realize until it was too late that he had been used merely as a tool. Prince Lichnowsky was not ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... superstition among them. It was considered unlucky to throw any dog or animal overboard; but the strange stories told about the way in which Snarleyyow first made his appearance in the vessel, added to the peculiarly diabolical temper of the animal, had often been the theme of midnight conversation, and many of them were convinced that it was an imp of Satan lent to Vanslyperken, and that, to injure or to attempt to destroy it would ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cottages on either side. I thought you held my hand; I felt it just as plain as I clasp yours now. Presently a rough ugly man overtook us, and bid you let me go; and that you refused, and held me all the tighter. Then he gave you a diabolical look, and touched you on the face, and you broke out in loathsome black spots, and screamed in such agony and frightened me so, that I awoke all in a shiver of terror, and did not get over it ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... power; he hated and adored her at the same time. He would not have believed that two sentiments so opposite could dwell in the same heart, and by their union constitute a passion so strange, and as it were, diabolical. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... any impertinent Marplot appears to blast him, to change this unwieldy frame into the substance of the viewless winds. How often must a theoretical statesman like myself, have regretted that incomparable invention, the ring of Gyges! How often must he have wished to be possessed of one of those diabolical forms, described by Milton, which now were taller than the pole, and anon could shrink into the ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... 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 ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... spirit store at Bramley, and corrupted the whole country round with his wares, doing far more for the devil and sin than the preachers could do for God and holiness. Yet no one seemed to think there was anything dishonorable or diabolical in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... for his injustice and wickedness, for "great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings." ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... 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?" asked a voice from ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... with numerous satellites peeping out from under the leaves. About this time, a short diversion was caused by the reappearance of one of the large hounds, whose mind was not at ease as to the completeness of the previous elimination of the cats from the salle-a-manger; and the diabolical noise and scuffle which ensued upon his investigation of a dark corner, showed that his doubts had been well grounded. Then I discovered that there was no butter to be had, and no milk; and when coffee was mentioned, a pan was brought out for making that beverage, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... and her child for the sake of a diabolical seducer, whom she had followed to Alexandria, and who there had abandoned her. Alone and friendless, in want and guilt, she remained behind with a hard-hearted and covetous hostess, who had brought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ceremony. This was enough to determine Napoleon to rid himself of the presence of Lannes. But under what pretest was the absence of the conqueror of Montebello to be procured? It was necessary to conjure up an excuse; and in the truly diabolical machination resorted to for that purpose, Bonaparte brought into play that crafty disposition for which ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tribunal, composed of twelve members, with full powers to inquire into and pronounce judgment on every circumstance connected with the late troubles. He named himself president of this council, and appointed a Spaniard, named Vargas, as vice-president—a wretch of the most diabolical cruelty. Several others of the judges were also Spaniards, in direct infraction of the fundamental laws of the country. This council, immortalized by its infamy, was named by the new governor (for so Alva was in fact, though not yet in name), the Council ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... which did exist as to novels arose from an idea that the matter of love would be treated in an inflammatory and generally unwholesome manner. "Madam," says Sir Anthony in the play, "a circulating library in a town is an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. It blossoms through the year; and depend on it, Mrs. Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves will long for the fruit at last." Sir Anthony was no doubt right. But he takes it for granted that the longing for the fruit is an evil. The ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... to-day to call on the Commissioner,[317] and saw, at his Grace's Levee, the celebrated divine, soi-disant prophet, Irving.[318] He is a fine-looking man (bating a diabolical squint), with talent on his brow and madness in his eye. His dress, and the arrangement of his hair, indicated that much attention had been bestowed on his externals, and led me to suspect a degree of self-conceit, consistent both ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... highest raptures in a quite different region. The severer Greeks reprobated music without words; Saint Augustine complained of chants that rendered the sacred text unintelligible; the Puritans regarded elaborate music as diabolical, little knowing how soon some of their descendants would find religion in nothing else. A stupid convention still looks on material and mathematical processes as somehow distressing and ugly, and systems of philosophy, artificially mechanical, are invented to try to explain natural mechanism ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... understood, by the rules of his diabolical art, that Aladdin had arrived to this height of good fortune, than his face became inflamed with anger, and he cried out in a rage: "This sorry tailor's son has discovered the secret and virtue of the lamp! I believed his death to be certain; ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... was at work upon that diabolical task of mine, there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves, since their nasty red caps gave ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the idler, "that our usages with regard to vermin and reptiles might be so amended as to be more temperately diabolical; but please to remember that the gentle agonies with which we afflict you are wholesome and exhilarating compared with the ills we ladle out to one another. During the reign of His Pellucid Refulgence, Khatchoo ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Africa, who believe in witchcraft. He was not only considered invulnerable, but that he could make others so by his charms; and that he could and certainly would provide all his followers with arms. He was artful, cruel, bloody; his disposition in short was diabolical. His influence among the Africans was inconceivable. Monday was firm, resolute, ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... baby, when out of a sort of cupboard chapel a worthy chaplain, an old friend of my mother's, Monsignore Corbi, was seen to advance. The monsignore, who was exceedingly ugly, and very short in stature, had a huge mitre on his head, and looked so diabolical altogether that the child writhed in terror at the sight, and screamed in the most unearthly manner, while to quiet it the dignitary yelled in a squeaky voice, Bello, bello! ("Pretty, pretty!"), which only terrified it all ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... execution of Joachim Budde, who was beheaded at the festival; and had she not, in addition, whipped her dear little Casimir, which unseemly act had only lately come to her knowledge? and had she not also made every man in the castle that approached her mad for love of her, all by her diabolical conduct? No—away with the wretch: she merits her chastisement a thousand and a thousand-fold!" And old Ulrich exclaimed likewise, "Away with ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... business, and the disease worked its own cure. He wrote an account of a terrible murder, supposed to have occurred at "Dutch Nick's," a station on the Carson River, where Empire City now stands. He made a man cut his wife's throat and those of his nine children, after which diabolical deed the murderer mounted his horse, cut his own throat from ear to ear, rode to Carson City (a distance of three and a half miles) and fell dead in ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... this poor creature endured every variety of agony which diabolical ingenuity could inflict. I will not continue the narration. It is too harrowing to be contemplated. But it is needful to go thus far to show what the Indians were without the ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... for sins after it, does not quite efface them, as wounds that are healed leave still scars. (Cat. 18, n. 20.) He attributes great virtue to the exorcisms for purifying the soul, (Procat. n. 9,) and says, as incantations give a diabolical virtue to defile the soul, so does the invocation of the Holy Ghost give a virtue to the water, and gives it the power to sanctify. (Cat. 3, n. 3.) He says the same of the blessed oil, (Cat. 20, n. 3, p. 3,) and establishes ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... peculiarly sensitive to this unfortunate necessity, always arranged that it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes madly from ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... hearing, and of my capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds—that this little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had served them, what was to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... made was a burst of laughter, so diabolical in its sound, that a superstitious man would have been terrified by it. But De Guiche was not so impressionable as that. "I think," he said, "that everything is now settled, Monsieur de Wardes; so have the goodness to take your place first, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... them no further; nothing could induce them to worship there. Such queer ideas as they entertained of the hated strangers. Masses and chants were nothing more than evil spells. As for the priests themselves, they were no better than diabolical sorcerers; like those who, in old ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Panciatichi, have come to prepare him for execution; but the one is listening awe-struck to the only kind of confession which they can obtain from him, while the other plies his beads in a desperate endeavour to exorcise the spiritual enemy, "ban" the diabolical influences, it is conjuring up. The speaker is no longer Count Guido ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... a diabolical idea struck her, and she went herself to the telephone, and genteelly wiped the place where Withers ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... (without his baggage) and a mud turtle. We bombarded the officer with questions, but he wouldn't answer many of them; only he said that nothing but a direct hit with a six-inch shell would penetrate its hide; and it could go through any hole or walk right over a house. It was some diabolical device all right, and we went back chuckling over the surprise that the Germans would get next day. That night we went in, marching in single file. It was pitch-dark and the Germans were shelling furiously, ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... Dick cut in savagely: "she stands it just as long as she can, and then she takes it out of me in some diabolical fashion." ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... stories in verse about historic events, falsified and fanciful, and love tragedies full of wonderful events mixed with divine prodigies and diabolical magics—all lengthy, exaggerated, puerile, and absurd in the extreme. None of the characters is native. All are Turks, Arabs, knights, errants, ambassadors, dukes, warriors in armor provided with magic arms and with balsams ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... "What a diabolical scheme!" cried Walter in horror, "they mean to slaughter the Indians for their plumes as they come down the river ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... room, on pretense of laying aside his wraps. If only there was some reason for this embarrassment! And another sign had not escaped him—Athalie's expression. In her eyes shone the fire of a diabolical triumph, the light of a malicious joy. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... legend, related first by cardinal Benno in 1099, describes him as deep in necromantic knowledge, which he had gathered during a journey through the Hispano-Arabic provinces. He is said to have carried in his travels a sort of a diabolical oracle, a brazen head which uttered prophetic answers. After his election, in 999, he inquired how long he should remain in power; the response was "as long as he avoided saying mass in Jerusalem." The prophecy was soon ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... her, and her inner life, if still isolated, was a shade more expanded than of old,—yet she had no desire for greater change, and she had no keener vision for the world outside herself than before. She saw nothing of that diabolical thing which her father and madame had been so long plotting as the outcome of their friendship, the parable of which her education had been the text. If her intelligence was warping out from the narrow limits in which her mother had confined it, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... a high Tory both in church and state. In the latter end of the reign of Charles the Second, his pen was exercised in the cause of the Duke of York: the Republican faction he most cordially detested; and as each animal is conscious of its proper arms, the heralds' revenge was emblazoned on a most diabolical escutcheon. But the triumph of the Whig government checked the preferment of Blue-mantle; and he was even suspended from his office, till his tongue could learn to pronounce the oath of abjuration. His life was ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... bottomless 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 ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... arm. They don't wait till you can hit them, he said, but rush straight at you, swift as an arrow, upraised on their massive posterior coils, hissing like a steam-engine, and swelling out their throat with diabolical rage. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... interesting about this story is not the outlandishness of these diabolical pharmacopoeia so much as the psychology of the persons who invent and manipulate them. Think. This is happening at the present day, and it is the priests who have invented philtres unknown to the sorcerers of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... two-pair of stairs window into the street, where he was found by the Watchman with his skull fractured, and in a state of insensibility. We believe all attempts have hitherto proved fruitless to bring the actual perpetrator or perpetrators of this diabolical deed ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... rule"—pointing at it with the marlingspike—"that is the captain's work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had that club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one's brains out with, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical passions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir"—removing his hat, and brushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull, but which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever having been a wound—"Well, the captain there will ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... its foot 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 ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathise in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... spectre. The hag made, as it seemed, a single and swift stride to the bed where I lay, and squatted herself down upon it, in precisely the same attitude which I had assumed in the extremity of horror, advancing her diabolical countenance within half a yard of mine, with a grin which seemed to intimate the malice and the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... persons, who may be disaffected towards the state. As, on these occasions, the accuser is not confronted with the accused, a man may falsely impeach his enemy, and accomplish an unjust revenge, without fear of punishment, or detection. That Montoni should have recourse to these diabolical means of ruining a person, whom he suspected of having attempted his life, is not in the least surprising. In the letter, which he had employed as the instrument of his revenge, he accused Morano of designs against the state, which he attempted to prove, with all the plausible ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... replied, as well I might, that I could claim no merit of my own, and that if I spoke with any effect, it was only by the grace of God. As I uttered these last words, a horrible kind of sneer came over his countenance, which made me shudder, for there was something diabolical in it. I said little more, but listened attentively to his discourse. At last he said that I was engaged in a paltry cause, quite unworthy of one of my powers. 'How can that be,' said I, 'even if I possessed all the powers in the world, seeing that I am engaged ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... my family, and that her mother had driven them away. Perhaps, the mother realised the change in the girl. Perhaps, too, she realised what must happen, if she drove her away. Yet she did drive her daughter away. From her own point of view, it was diabolical to do so. Her anger, her exasperation and her outraged desire to rule drove her to doing what she must have felt was the worst thing she could do. And she did it in the name of virtue! Perhaps it was for the best: I believe it was, but she did not and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... apparition presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and putting on the fictitious nose, while he drew his white nightcap over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the lips ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... gentlemen of that profession solicited their captains in pain for leave to go and administer help to the sick and wounded. The necessities of the poor people were well known; the remedy was easy and apparent; but the discord between the chiefs was inflamed to such a degree of diabolical rancor, that the one chose rather to see his men perish than ask help of the other, who disdained to offer his assistance unasked, though it might have saved the lives of his fellow-subjects." [Smollett, IBID. (Anderson's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... advanced to kiss their Graces' hands, but Bishop Francis, after he had drawn his symbolum with chalk before him on the table, namely, H, H, H, that is, "Help, helper, help," cried out, "Back, Satan! stir not from thy place; and know that if thou shouldst attempt any of thy diabolical sorceries upon my dear lord and brother here (as for me, this honourable, consecrated, and priestly robe saves me from thy power) thou shalt be torn limb from limb, and thy members flung to feed the dogs, while thou art yet living to behold ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... appeared as the fair heiress of Bernshaw. Counter spells were adopted, her powers of witchcraft were suspended, and before many days had passed Lord William had the happiness to lead his newly-wedded bride to his ancestral home. But within a year she had renewed her diabolical practices, causing a serious breach between her husband and herself. Happily a reconciliation was eventually effected, but her bodily strength gave way, and her health rapidly declined. When it became evident ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... keeps the strictest watch on the Princess Elizabeth, who learns in her retirement the art of dissimulation and lying; she forms an alliance with Spain; she makes Cardinal Pole Archbishop of Canterbury; she gives almost unlimited power to Gardiner and Bonner, who begin a series of diabolical persecutions, burning such people as John Rogers, Sanders, Doctor Taylor of Hadley, William Hunter, and Stephen Harwood, ferreting out all suspected of heresy, and confining them in the foulest jails,—burning even little children. Mary even takes measures to introduce the Inquisition and restore ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... grievously afflicted, and she makes every effort to warn her friends of their error. But there is one amid the mourners who knows that she is endeavouring to tell of the black stain. And this one, whose face she cannot readily distinguish, maliciously, and with diabolical ingenuity, withdraws the attention of the others, so that they do not ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... most diabolical cases which came before me while a Judge was one which, although it occupied several days, can be told in the course of a few minutes. I mention it, moreover, not so much on account of its inhuman features ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... at some of the "brace games," which at that time had police protection, so far as that could be given. He had interfered between the couple, and was, I am sorry to say, quite successful as an interferer; but he was a diabolical failure when he attempted to duplicate White's work as lecturer, and the act, after playing a date or two, sank out of sight and I have heard nothing more of her professionally. Lately I have learned that she died in London in 1900 and ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... profess extraordinary sanctity, there was a strong feeling against all such works. Sir Anthony Absolute, two or three years before Evelina appeared, spoke the sense of the great body of sober fathers and husbands, when he pronounced the circulating library an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge. This feeling on the part of the grave and reflecting, increased the evil from which it had sprung. The novelist having little character to lose, and having few readers among serious people, took without scruple liberties which in ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... paces from the house with the green blinds when the most diabolical outcry suddenly arose out of the stillness of the night. Mechanically he stood still; another passenger followed his example; in the neighbouring floors he saw people crowding to the windows; a conflagration ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your Majesty must be overwhelmed with congratulations at your Majesty's escape from the aim of the assassin,[24] yet Viscount Palmerston trusts that he may be allowed to express the horror with which he heard of the diabolical attempt, and the deep thankfulness which he feels at ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... characters. There is not a single good woman in the book: the officers' wives are licentious, unprincipled, and eaten up with social ambition. The chief female character is a subtle, clever, heartless, diabolical person, who plays on her lover's devotion in the most sinister manner, and eventually brings him to the grave by a device that startles the reader by its cold-blooded, calculating cruelty. Surely no novelists outside of Russia ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... This purpose was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... skin-deep harmony of form, he divines the deep-seated recalcitrance of matter. He realises disproportions and deformations which must have existed in nature as mere inclinations, but which have not succeeded in coming to a head, being held in check by a higher force. His art, which has a touch of the diabolical, raises up the demon who had been overthrown by the angel. Certainly, it is an art that exaggerates, and yet the definition would be very far from complete were exaggeration alone alleged to be its aim and object, for there exist caricatures that are more lifelike than portraits, caricatures ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... forward with one leg toward Alberto, and then drew himself back suddenly, as if in a state of harassing indecision. (Applause.) Then he cast a diabolical look (worthy of the elder Booth in Richard III) at the young lover, and shrieked, "Wretch! villain! I will—I will—" He hesitated to add what he would do, but shook his fists in a highly natural manner at the object of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... portion" [Jer. 12:10; cf. LXX]. And, forsooth, following profane men, trusting to their own senses, they have calumniated His holy Church espoused to Christ our God, and have not distinguished between holy and profane, styling the images of the Lord and of His saints by the same name as the statute of diabolical idols. Seeing which things, our Lord God (not willing to behold His people corrupted by such manner of plague) hath of His good pleasure called us together, the chief of His priests, from every quarter, moved with a divine zeal and brought hither ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... could be nothing less than gaining possession of the Coolidge fortune. To that end they had coolly planned the sinking of the Seminole in mid-lake, with the helpless girl locked securely in her cabin. It was a cowardly, diabolical crime, and yet, no doubt, they had figured it as the safest method of completely disposing of her. And, but for the accident of his presence on board, and his having been awakened by that incautious ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... such a scene as this were it not certainly true; and we relate it, reader, not for the purpose of harrowing your feelings, but for the sake of showing what diabolical deeds we men are capable of, unless guarded therefrom by the loving and tender spirit of Jesus Christ. We say "spirit" advisedly, for we are well aware that false professors of that blessed name have, many a time, committed ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... against the poorer classes of mankind; and whose priests in the forms of its various sects, Greek or Catholic, Lutheran or Protestant, have in these last days rushed forth to urge the nations to slaughter each other with every diabolical device of Science, and to glorify the war-cry of Patriotism in defiance of the principle of universal Brotherhood—such a Church can hardly claim to have established the angelic character of its mission among mankind! And ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... shakes, and the satanic laugh with which it concludes, are so dear to lovers of descriptive music." Its title alone almost ensures its success beforehand. The listener is, however, less impressed by the hidden diabolical inspiration than by ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... commands had been carried out, was very vexed that the stranger should escape with his life, and turning to the two brothers he said, 'He has certainly accomplished the first task, with the aid no doubt of his diabolical magic; but what shall we give him to do now? Let us make it as difficult as possible, and if he fails he ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... Hungerford, succeeded to the estate. For a time he sided with the famous 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
... pinprick Parliament into giving it to them; and until they learn something of the people they are dealing with, their whole agitation, so far as the House of Commons is concerned, is simply and utterly damned. It is perfectly astonishing to recall with what diabolical ingenuity they have contrived to infuriate all their opponents, to alienate all their sympathizers, and to stir up against themselves every prejudice in the average man's breast. A few years ago they found ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... of unconsciousness, Bas Rowlett drew a deep breath of satisfaction. The diabolical thought had come to him that by shaking the prone figure he could cause a hemorrhage that would assure death—and the evil fire in his eyes as his hands stole out toward his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... who concocted the diabolical scheme to one day get possession of your inheritance. He coerced my poor mother into acquiescense, and she became his wretched tool instead of an honoured wife and helpmate. One night, when you were three weeks old, ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... could bring misfortune to whomsoever he looked upon. The peasants dreaded to meet him, and ceased to hunt him. His size was described as something enormous, his teeth, his claws, and his eyes as being diabolical beyond human conception. In the meanwhile Mr. Bruin had it all his own way in the mountains, killed a young bull or a fat heifer for his dinner every day or two, chased in pure sport a herd of sheep over a ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Perhaps no more diabolical scheme could have been more cleverly planned to ruin the character of a fellow-being. But it is ever thus, and shall be until the arch fiend, who first plotted in the Amaranthine bowers of Eden, shall be cast out forever beyond the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... that guns, canoes, and other presents were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds, "they must be sent home satisfied at any cost." Such were the pains taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the small-pox; and the ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and successful diplomacy in the matter of the Long House. That house you have most cleverly divided against itself; and it must fall—it is tottering now, shaken to its foundations of centuries. Also, I have the pleasure to refer to your capture of the man Beacraft and his papers, disclosing a diabolical plan of murder. The man has been condemned by a court on the evidence as it stood, and ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... drive their opponents into violence and into 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
... less favourable to us than to the enemy, whose movements were completely masked, and when the clouds cleared some of his batteries on new positions were ready to join the diabolical concert that went on at intervals until dark. The concert, however, was mere sound and firing signifying nothing—except in its effect on nerves already unstrung—as we had no serious casualties that day. And the next brought peace, for the Boers do not willingly fight on Sunday, and we have no ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... 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 Modocs! But pardon; I'm interrupting ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... under that lifeless weed human beings spun swiftly along, freighted with the most terrific engine of destruction. What strange warfare! Who could have fancied that when savages began to use clubs to maul each other it would end in this diabolical refinement! Weapons, weapons, weapons—the history of man's undying savagery working under new forms of civilization! The war submarine—what a monstrous ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... are surely enough to show the diabolical cruelty with which the siege of Antioch was carried on by both sides. The wily governor of Antioch decrees a truce, and breaks it as soon as he has provisioned the city. What would possibly have been refused to arms was given, after seven months' siege to policy and stratagem. Bohemond ...
— Peter the Hermit - A Tale of Enthusiasm • Daniel A. Goodsell
... chemistry, alchemy, and magic, and are persuaded that, by the assistance of demons, whom they invoke, they can obtain all that they desire. The hope of avoiding death prevailed upon a great number of mandarins to study this diabolical art, and certain credulous and superstitious emperors ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... somewhat abated, so that I shall endure her presence without any desire to damage either her curch or vasquine. Meanwhile, keep fast that door—I would not for my life that any of these heretics saw her in the unhappy state, which, brought on her as it has been by the success of their own diabolical plottings, they would not stick to call, in their snuffling cant, the ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... festooned with tumblers, a gaudy pitcher, which would have thrown Tearsoul and Lelie into ecstasies of delight. It was almost as wonderful a specimen of art as my chintz hanging. The groundwork is pure white, upon which, in bas-relief, are executed two diabolical-looking bandits, appallingly bewhiskered and mustached, dressed in red coats, yellow pantaloons, green boots, orange-colored caps with brown feathers in them, and sky-blue bows and arrows. Each of the fascinating vagabonds is attended by a bird-of-paradise-colored dog, with ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... throttling him, he awoke in a spasm of terror. O'Hagan was sitting bolt upright with the impression that someone had flashed a lantern in his face, though the barn was absolutely pitch dark. "I've had a most diabolical nightmare. It was the drink," he said to himself, and decided to go to sleep again. But the excessive heat of the barn would let him rest no longer. The atmosphere seemed to be hot and pungent, and he groped about ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... be revenged on the scoundrel for his insolence—to drive him from the neighbourhood—and I know not what other menaces of formidable import. The devil, in the old stories of diablerie, was always sure to start up at the elbow of any one who nursed diabolical purposes, and only wanted a little backing from the foul fiend to carry his imaginations into action. The noble Captain MacTurk had so far this property of his infernal majesty, that the least hint of an approaching ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... documents! They referred to the reiterated complaints of a fidgety old gentleman who for years past had been accusing the Department of every imaginable iniquity. According to this irritable old gentleman, a diabolical ingenuity had been exercised in preventing him from receiving a single letter through a long ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, nor courage, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... countries, discontented characters, I well know; as also that these characters are actuated by very different views: some good, from an opinion that the general measures of the government are impure; some bad, and, if I might be allowed to use so harsh an expression, diabolical, inasmuch as they are not only meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially, as a great means toward the accomplishment of it, to destroy the confidence which it is necessary for the people to place, until ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... were seated round the table, after it had been disposed of, Mr. Pickwick, to the intense horror and indignation of his followers, related the adventure he had undergone, and the success which had attended the base artifices of the diabolical Jingle. 'And the attack of rheumatism which I caught in that garden,' said Mr. Pickwick, in conclusion, 'renders ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... up. Monsieur Profond was swimming, heavily diabolical, before her. That—the reason! With the most heroic effort of her life so far, she managed to arrest that swimming figure. She could not tell whether he had noticed. And just then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the chief error in shoeing lies in that the foot is deprived of its normal base or support on the sides—the three-calked shoe being an unstable support—and that this manner of shoeing city horses working on pavements is an "inhumane" practice, a "diabolical method." ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... will pretend to grieve more than they really do, and that takes off from their true grief. I then went to the Duchess of Hamilton, who never grieved, but raged, and stormed, and railed.(18) She is pretty quiet now, but has a diabolical temper. Lord Keeper and his son, and their two ladies, and I, dined to-day with Mr. Caesar,(19) Treasurer of the Navy, at his house in the City, where he keeps his office. We happened to talk of Brutus, and I said ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... diabolical cruelty overspread the handsome countenance of Dolores; and when the laggart fish-woman had reached the nearer end of the bridge, near the customs office, the girl burst into an insolent, ridiculing laugh. She touched agueela ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it was not the deliberately deadened sound of that slight weapon which had startled the guests in the dining-room on the night of the murder. The report they had heard was made by the heavier pistol in front of him. It was a ruse of terrifying simplicity but diabolical ingenuity. The wick of the tinder-lighter was an admirable slow match, obtainable in any tobacconist's shop for a few pence, which, by means of this trick, had established a false alibi for the actual ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... 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 hurled ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... 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
... himself 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
... of the dwarf, a loving, young, timid, obedient, and pretty blue-eyed little woman, treated like a dog by her diabolical husband, whom she really loved but more greatly feared.—C. Dickens, The Old ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... upon the landing to allow the visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an irresistible attraction ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Smith because he was a man who gave the hotel keepers much trouble, and had to be thrashed, as well as the payment of money by Mr. Jenne, proves the animus of the assault, while the general evidence indicates a wide-spread conspiracy, embracing others than the accused, to cause the diabolical crime. The publicans of Brome, and, indeed, the liquor traffic as a whole, lie under the terrible suspicion of sympathy with this crime. It is not beyond the traffic. Its record is traced in blood as well as tears. The Templar is quite ready to believe ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... divinity schools or small bucolic pastorates, the devout preachers thought Sabbatarianism of as much consequence as morals, and vastly more important than health or earthly happiness. They believed in diabolical possession, and were prone to magnify the wickedness of the heathen, as one does hard tasks. When Christianity had power in Tahiti, the bored natives were sometimes scourged into church, and fines and imprisonment for lack ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... his work. Even with the promise of a speedy third volume before me, I feel by no means sure of living to see Mary Powell back in her husband's house; for it is just at this crisis that Mr. Masson, with the diabolical art of a practised serial writer, leaves us while he goes into an exhaustive account of the Westminster Assembly and the political and religious notions of the Massachusetts Puritans. One could not help thinking, after having got Milton fairly through college, that he was never ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... coloring, "that excessive pain made me wild, and I should have been tempted to have had recourse to any means to thwart him in his diabolical purpose. As you have said, however, the past night has effected a change in my feelings towards the man, and death from my hand, under any circumstances, is the last thing he has now to apprehend." Gerald sank his head upon ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... why Brother 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 open hand came down on his dust-colored ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... and all the High-street lighted up from one End to another, with a Galaxy of Candles. We collected a Largess for the Multitude, who tippled Eleemosynary till they grew exceeding Vociferous. There was a Paste-board Pontiff with a little swarthy Daemon at his Elbow, who, by his diabolical Whispers and Insinuations tempted his Holiness into the Fire, and then left him to shift for himself. The Mobile were very sarcastick with their Clubs, and gave the old Gentleman several Thumps upon his triple Head-piece. Tom Tyler's Phiz ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... as well as cruelty to ourselves; for even under Pritchard's care we were not safe and did not know what minute would be our last. Not content with murdering them in cold blood, they must needs perform diabolical deeds which causes me to shudder when I think of it. They danced around them with demoniac glee, kicking and pulling them in every direction, and we were the unwilling witnesses of such behaviour. And when we had them buried ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... murder and torture through a large section of Africa, and yet was received in every court, and was eventually buried after a panegyric from a Cardinal of the Roman Church—a church which had never once raised her voice against his diabolical career. Consider the similar crimes in the Putumayo, where British capitalists, if not guilty of outrage, can at least not be acquitted of having condoned it by their lethargy and trust in local agents. Think of Turkey and the recurrent massacres ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... guard in the corridor? Passing, ever passing, the diabolical humorist seemed to chuckle inwardly, as though to stand death-watch were the most ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... proceeds at the antique shop. Ten thousand dollars' worth of first-water sparklers! Everybody that was anybody in gangland knew this. The Wolf had seen the psychological and profitable moment to strike—again that was all! And again it was diabolical—but again it ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say, Magna est veritas et proevalebit. Psha! great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day. Take an instance or two out of my own little budget. ...
— English Satires • Various
... 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 squealing voices ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... fan overhead whirred incessantly, and the bright, flashing blades smote his eyes with diabolical precision. The circular motion, instead of cooling him, brought beads of ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... to rub its eyes over Germany's treacherous, fiendish, employment of chemicals both on documents and on humans. Lackadaisical mankind did not then dream of the thoroughness and elaboration with which Deutschland was preparing her many deep and diabolical designs. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of that diabolical 'tootum-too,' I swear by Allah I'll take your life, and give your body to the crows ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... that the greater part of the hotels, and groggeries in this county will not only be kept open to sell, in defiance of the law, but also to give rum away, when they can in no other manner accomplish their diabolical purpose of making men drunk. This town and county is to be made a perfect saturnalia of drunkenness, and the Licensed Victimizers—I cannot call them by any other name—promise to pay all the cost, though it should amount ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... "either this vision, like the preceding ones, came from God, and was a good vision, and it is my natural perversity which has misrepresented it, as wine turns sour in a dirty cup. I have, by my unworthiness, changed instruction into reproach, of which this diabolical jackal immediately took advantage. Or else this vision came, not from God, but, on the contrary, from the devil, and was evil. In that case I should doubt whether the former ones had, as I thought, a celestial origin. I am therefore incapable of that discernment which is necessary for ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... and poverty brought his deliberations to a close. He determined to follow the advice and directions of the stranger. There could be no harm in it. He only intended to inquire how such wealth might be possessed; but if in any way diabolical or wicked, he would not need to have anything further to do in the matter. Thus reasoning, and thus predetermined how to act, our self-deluded stitcher of seams bent his way, on the following forenoon, to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... where the dogs could only ascend by a very narrow cleft in the rocks, and there he waited for the first dog. Soon a hideous black hound appeared, and with flashing eyes and gaping jaws sprang at our hero. He was received with a sweep of the scimitar, which cleft his diabolical head in twain, and he rolled down the deep declivity, all mangled and bleeding, to the foot, missing the path and falling from rock to rock, so that when he was found by the party who followed they could not tell by what means he ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... many of my readers, like myself, have often performed, is a curious anti-illustration, by the way, of the absolute wickedness of human dispositions. Why doesn't a man always strike out the first of the two words, to gratify his diabolical love ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.) |
