"Malign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interesting fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Breaker") was in those days the mortal enemy of the N'gombi people, who were wont to ascribe all their misfortunes to his machinations. To Bula Matadi (which was the generic name by which the Government of the Congo Free State was known) was traceable the malign perversity of game, the blight of crops, the depredations of weaver birds. Bula Matadi encouraged leopards to attack isolated travellers, and would on great occasions change the seasons of the year that the N'gombi's gardens might ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... surprise, And interpret your device.... Heralds high before him run; He has ushers many a one; He spreads his welcome where he goes, And touches all things with his rose. All things wait for and divine him,— How shall I dare to malign him? 448 EMERSON: Daem. and Celes., Love, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... followed the course of nature in condemning adultery as worthy of more severe punishment than murder itself. And "no crime today involves more sudden and terrible consequences in the individual; no crime is capable of exerting as malign an influence upon the innocent family and later descendants of the culprit; no crime leaves in its wake as many physical and ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... the whole of the horoscope as it was divulged to me in the lone watches of last night; but I have decided to omit all those portions where there is a possibility that the malign spirits around you have misinterpreted your past and future. When you were younger, you passed your days in happiness; you were very handsome, and you could charm the hearts of men without difficulty. There has been with you frequently, during your past years, a man some ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, and various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it every fifteen minutes. I never took but one dose; that was enough; it robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my nature. Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles of meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time, had it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaults from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention—but all to no purpose. The world for once became ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... her sacrifice. But she thought, "The world! What is that?" And thereupon, "All the same it shall not strike down this helpless creature." And the world became a monster, unfeeling, indeed immeasurably malign, lying far off with the teeming cells of its brain all plotting to rob her of her wretched victory, and with the claws of one outstretched paw already touching the threshold of ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... other: and in dark cellars of men's minds (empty and dark on this matter), there arose strange caricature Portraitures of Friedrich: and very mad notions—of Friedrich's perversity, astucity, injustice, malign and dangerous intentions—are more or less vocal in the Old Newspapers and Distinguished Correspondences of those days. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... picture of the terror of the Egyptians when they were "shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, they lay there exiled from eternal providence." Everything seemed to them to have a malign purpose. "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... eyes on Pratt. And Pratt suddenly felt a little afraid—there was anger in those eyes; anger of a curious sort. It might be against fate—against circumstance: it might not—why should it?—be against him personally, but it was there, and it was malign and almost evil, and it ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... was the policy he adopted with regard to the family of the Incas. He desired to establish the position of the King of Spain without a rival. He, therefore, sought to malign the preceding dynasty, persecuted the descendants of the Incas, and committed ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... piece of rascality. There was, however, one pleasant face in that household, though even that seemed tempered by sadness; this was the youngest brother, Charles. He was, or rather would have been, a cheerful, happy boy, but for the malign influence of his brother Robert, who seemed his opposite in almost everything. Robert was jealous, irritable and revengeful; Charles was open-hearted, mild and forgiving. Robert was cruel to both servants and animals; Charles was kind to all, and a favorite with all; even the dumb ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... prevailed. The young woman, for some reason untold, was deaf to his entreaties, and the rejection of this his best affection fell on him with a malign influence, just as he was setting his face to learn a trade which he hoped would enable him ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... was from Minneola and bent on trouble. 'Keep still,' says I, calm and dignified like, bent on preserving the peace, as was my duty. 'I'll not,' says he. 'You will,' says I. 'Tis a free country,' says he, coming toward me with one shoulder wiggling. 'But not for cowards who malign the dead,' says I. 'Well, they were thieves,' says he, shaking his fist and getting more and more into contempt of court every minute. 'You're a liar,' says I, maintaining the dignity of my office. 'And you're a thief too,' says he. 'A what?' says ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... love the part more than the whole, And love yourself more than all human kind, Who persecute good men with prudence blind Because they combat your malign control, See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school, Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind, Whose best our good to Deity refined, The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul. Deem you that only you have thought and sense, ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Emile Boutmy. In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history of Ireland. It ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... They became solitaries, animalesque and shy—such as we may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been. Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits, their ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... useless to oppose reason to such preaching as this. We shall therefore simply retort the Archbishop's epithets. Gross and materialistic are just the terms to describe a religion which traffics in blood and declares that without the shedding of it there is no remission of sin; whose ascetic doctrines malign our purest affections and defile the sweetest fountains of our spiritual health; whose heaven is nothing but an exaggerated jeweller's shop, and its hell a den of torture in which God punishes his children for the consequences of his own ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... scornful glance caught certain aspects of the human drama with camera-like precision. Other aspects of life, and nobler, he never seemed to perceive. The human comedy sometimes moved him to laughter, but his humor is impish and his wit malign. His imagination fled from the daylight; he dwelt in the twilight among the tombs. He closed his eyes to dream, and could not see the green sunlit earth, seed-time and harvest, man going forth to his toil and returning to his hearthstone, the America that laughs as it labors. He wore upon ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... allow my dearest friend to so malign you, Countess," said the Ambassador, seating himself beside her. "I expected to ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... countess walked hurriedly through the room, with folded arms, fiery eyes, and on her lips a smile—but what a smile! Alone in that gorgeous apartment, with her sinister beauty and her angry, flashing jewels, she might have been mistaken for a malign spirit who had just left her kingdom of darkness to visit the earth ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... that this man had either been the victim of some terrible necessity as regarded the occupation to which he had devoted himself, or that he was a man of dogged obstinacy, from sheer sang froid holding his ground amid malign forces when others would have fled ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... principality is but large enough to contain the court of the sovereign which is held in the little town of Monaco, and the establishment of the last of legitimate gamblers which is maintained at Monte Carlo. If the report of the world does not malign the prince, he lives, as does the gambler, out of the spoil taken from the gamblers. He is to be seen in his royal carriage going forth with his royal consort,—and very royal he looks! His little teacup of a kingdom,—or rather a roll of French ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... 'Don't malign your parents, old fellow. They gave you a brain inferior to that of few men. You will never meet a ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... these theories is that contained in the book itself. Surely no one has read Don Quixote with profit to himself who has been unable to see that the hero is not one whom the author desired to revile or to malign. Never was a satire like this, which leaves us full of love and sympathy for the object. And why cannot we believe the author when he avers that never did his humble pen stoop to satire? He meant, of course, the satire of persons as distinguished from the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... influence if we do not carefully study his physical attributes, his temperament and disposition. In face, form, and voice, nature did her utmost for Daniel Webster. No envious fairy was present at his birth to mar these gifts by her malign influence. He seemed to every one to be a giant; that, at least, is the word we most commonly find applied to him, and there is no better proof of his enormous physical impressiveness than this well-known ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... with Coverly in Dallas. He displayed the bewildering contents of his sample case, now guarded by a uniformed arm of the law, and explained how he had volunteered his services out of pure love of adventure, then how he had played into Mallow's hands while aware of his malign purpose at all times. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... leaves me in the best of Company—Company, which he may at another Time, find it his own Interest, if that governs him, to court & respect. We are even reduced to the Hutchinsonian Times, if a Citizen shall think himself constraind to malign his old Friend, merely because the Great Man has been prevaild upon to mark him as his Enemy.—But the History of all Ages & all Countrys shows, that there is no Absurdity into which Idolatry will not lead Men. Remember me to My Friend ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... old fellow, don't now forget to come back to us safe and sound in life and limb," cried Terence, laughing; "remember the fright I gave you and Jack. Don't give him and me the same, and we'll take care that Pigeon does not malign your character in ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... of incidents of the kind: incidents which are trifling beyond mention in the beginning, but which malign circumstance distorts and magnifies till they set nations daggers-drawn at each other's throats. Two students lured a "freshman" to their room and there invited him to drink a marvelous compound the beginnings of which were fat pork and olive oil; this while standing on ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... with malign satisfaction the progress of Le Gardeur's intoxication. If he seemed to flag, he challenged him afresh to drink to better fortune; and when he lost the stakes, to drink again to spite ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... mouthful of fresh air. Robin Turgis knew them all, admired them all, feared them all, and yet he held head against them because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and because he could keep his own counsel. Slender Ren de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan le Loup, who looked as vulpine as his nickname; these Robin Turgis eyed and catalogued ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... for me, being a Protestant, to counsel you to go to mass, is a thing you should not do, although I will boldly declare to you that it is the prompt and easy way of destroying all malign projects. You will thus meet no more enemies, sorrows, nor difficulties in this world. As to the other world," he continued, smiling, "I can not ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... understood and applied true principles of finance, supplies striking examples of the benefits a finance minister of the first order renders to his country, and the dangers of false theories. The marvelous restoration of its prosperity by the genius of Colbert, the ruin caused by the malign sciolism of Law, are familiar to all students of political economy. Nor has the United States been less favored. The names of Morris, Hamilton, Gallatin, and Chase ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... whether the others could hear what was being said, as there was a strip of lawn between them and where she sat, but she felt that it did not greatly matter. She had no pity for this man or his daughter, who preferred to malign the absent rather than to admit an unpleasant fact. She would strip them of any solace they might find in shams, after which there was a ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... "Injure any one? Why, of course I would not—I could not. My life is spent in making people have a pleasant time—though some are wicked enough to malign me." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... near the bed, emphasizing his speech with restless arms and violent motions of his head, as if to galvanize into response the still and prostrate form before him. On the opposite side of the bed stood the sepulchral Jarvis, flashing malign looks at Crown, but chiefly busy, with unshaking hands, preparing a beverage of some sort for ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... once seeing in dock of police-court at Lyons, a sailor brought up charged with some offence. On his arm was tattooed the legend, 'Pas de chance.' He told long story of honest endeavour, combined with strict honesty and tireless industry, ever frustrated by malign accident. In short, he was no sooner out of prison than he was sent back upon fresh conviction. He had no chance, and one time, in enforced retirement from the world, he indelibly inscribed the legend on his forearm. Moi aussi, je n'ai pas de chance. Ever since I joined this Government ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 19, 1892 • Various
... own former explorations, left the door to the street unlocked; so that a direct and practical path of escape might lie open in case of manifestations beyond our power to deal with. It was our idea that our continued nocturnal presence would call forth whatever malign entity lurked there; and that being prepared, we could dispose of the thing with one or the other of our provided means as soon as we had recognized and observed it sufficiently. How long it might require to evoke and extinguish the thing, we had no notion. It occurred to us, too, that our venture ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sounds a heap like a tea-kettle when she's renderin' this yere madrigal, an' that, an' the words, an' all the rest, makes me gloomy an' dejected. I'm shore pinin' away onder these yere malign inflooences, when my old gent notes I ain't recooperatin', an' so he guesses the cause; an' with that he gives Aunt Tilly a lay-off, an' tells her to send along her niece ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... shivering and wondering what malign power it was that had seized her. Malign it was, she did not for an instant doubt. She had asked, did ask, for so little. Only to see Morris for a moment every day. To see him anywhere in as public a place as you please, but to see him, to hear his voice, to look into his eyes, to touch ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... examined, concocted, and digested. But when, by repeated decisions and modifications, they are rendered pure and certain, they should be transferred by statute to the courts of common law, and placed within the pale of juries. The exclusion from the courts of the malign influence of all authorities after the Georgium sidus became ascendant, would uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most elegant and best digested of our law catalogue, has been perverted more than all others to the degeneracy ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the evening M. P—— took the whole Corps to see the Palais des Fetes, and I went again. By night I suppose it is even more "triste" than it was by day. In the darkness the gardens have taken on some malign mystery and have given it to the multitudes that move there, that turn in the winding paths among ghostly flowers and bushes, that approach and recede and approach in the darkness of the lawns. Blurred by the darkness and diminished to the barest indications of humanity, ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... the history of the Greely expedition, it seems almost as if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest Passage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years, conducting, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... defied the emperor and defeated his armies. Hoangti, finding himself opposed by an abler man than any he had under his command, employed against him the same secret arts by which he had before disposed of the valiant Ouki. A courtier was bribed to malign the absent general and poison the mind of the prince against the faithful commander of his forces. The intrigue was successful, Limou was recalled from his command, and on his refusing to obey was assassinated by ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the composure he could; and the girl began to hope she should remain undiscovered, and most likely she would have been so lucky, had not the Genius of Disaster, with aspect malign, waved her sable wand, and called her chosen servant, Handy Andy, to her aid. He, her faithful and unfailing minister, obeyed the call, and at that critical juncture of time gave a loud ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... this so large a charter from God | must be subject to that use for which God | hath granted it; which is the benefit and | relief of the state and society or man; | for otherwise all manner of knowledge | becometh malign and serpentine, and | therefore as carrying the quality of the | serpent's sting and malice it maketh the | mind of man to swell; as the Scripture | saith excellently, KNOWLEDGE BLOWETH UP, | BUT CHARITY ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... still more aroused after the crisis to which his strange visitor had hurried him so treacherously, and he resolved to overcome, by the force of genius, the malign influence which weighed upon his work and himself. He first repaired to the various clocks of the town which were confided to his care. He made sure, by a scrupulous examination, that the wheels were in good condition, the pivots firm, the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... men, Making thee a denizen Of His own celestial city. He shall to the world proclaim His omnipotence and glory, By the wondrous Purgatory Which shall bear thy sainted name. Lest thou think the promise vain Of this miracle divine, I will take this shape malign, Which came hither to profane Thy devotion, and within This dark cavern's dark abyss Fling it,— there to howl and hiss In ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... dark face of this lady been such as to inspire confidence in any one, not even when she painted, but that morning it greatly worried the servants, especially when they saw her move about the house from one part to another, silently, as if meditating something terrible or malign. Her glance reflected the look that springs from the eyes of a serpent when caught and about to be crushed; it was cold, luminous, and penetrating, with something fascinating, loathsome, and cruel in it. The most insignificant error, the least ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... May! And what means the new Bona Dea? and what would her suppliants say? Organised strength, solidarity, power to band and to strike, Hope that is native to Spring,—and Hate, in all seasons alike; Mutual trust of the many—and menace malign for the few. Citizen, capitalist,—ah! the hours of your empire seem few, An empire ill-gendered, unjust, blindly selfish, and heartlessly strong For the crushing of famishing weakness, the rearing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... part of his work does Tacitus use his great weapon, insinuation of motive, with such terrible effect. All the speeches or letters of the Emperor quoted by him, almost all the actions he records, are given with this malign sidelight upon them: that, in spite of it, we lose our respect for neither Emperor nor historian is strong evidence both of the genius of the latter and the real greatness of the former. The case of Germanicus Caesar is a cardinal instance. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... been at some pains to attach to themselves. The sultan, therefore, could still count on general support from the population of his empire's heart, and had at his disposal the resources of a country which no administration, however improvident or malign, has ever been ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... adherents and tools of the Slave-Power, as Howell Cobb of Georgia, his Secretary of the Treasury, John B. Floyd of Virginia, as Secretary of War, Jacob Thompson of Mississippi, as Secretary of the Interior, and Isaac Toucy of Connecticut, as Secretary of the Navy, before whose malign influence the councils of Lewis Cass of Michigan, the Secretary of State, and other Union men, in and out of the Cabinet, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... probably occurred on that day," we declare; "it may have taken place during that night. It coincided with that hardship, or with that mastery of life." But a child can suffer and can triumph as a man or a woman, yet remain a child. Like man and woman it can hate, envy, malign, cheat, lie, tyrannize; or bless, cheer, defend, drop its pitying tears, pour out its heroic spirit. Love alone among the passions parts the two eternities of a lifetime. The instant it is born, the child which ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... strut with blind conceit, All heedless of the hearts beneath your feet, Fling falsehoods as a sower scatters grain And, for security, invoke disdain. Sir, there are laws that men of sense observe, No matter whence they come nor whom they serve— The laws of courtesy; and these forbid You to malign, as recently you did, As servant of another State, a State Wherein your duties all are concentrate; Branding its Ministers as rogues—in short, Inviting ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... perpetual curate of the parish,—"that a pestilential disease did break forth in our town in the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... almost inevitably thwarted by some influence—shall we call it malign? or rather shall we consider (as perhaps we should in all short-comings) that 'tis only a matter of time and the comparative degree? a piece of circuition needed for variety of development, and, of necessity, to eventuate in forms fresher, more prononces, nearer perfect than any thing we now ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reproached the rash white man for his indiscretion; "nor could I," adds Mr. Oldfield, "induce him by any means to utter the awful sound of a dead man's name, for by so doing he would have placed himself in the power of the malign spirits." Among the aborigines of Victoria the dead were very rarely spoken of, and then never by their names; they were referred to in a subdued voice as "the lost one" or "the poor fellow that is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... means impassable, it was a distinct obstacle and one they preferred to tackle by daylight. Moreover, it indicated that their company was undesired. They were in the presence of an unknown quantity, the master of the Flying Ring. Whether he was a malign or a benevolent influence, this Father of the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... wheeled towards the forest as if spying for the unseen presence among the foliage, and Louis deftly dodged behind. The move put him between the fire and his antagonist, and the full profile of his queer, bending figure was shadowed clear past the woman. She turned like some vengeful, malign goddess, and I thought it all up with the daring trapper; but he doffed his red toque and swept the advancing fury the low bow of a French courtier. Then he drew himself erect and laughed insolently in the woman's face. His careless assurance ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was least expected. She was a good-natured, social, blundering body, whom girls condescended ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... the little people, and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... and most impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases it was amply merited. I have ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... any woman in England, and as pure for me," cried out Henry, "and as kind, and as good. For shame on you to malign her!" ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to malign the credibility of an old friend in that way, and me the father of a family. I'm almost ready to swear that you shan't have a yarn from me for the whole spring. To ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... already condemned him, and Margaret would condemn him when she knew all; for it was evident that up to last evening she had not been told. How did it happen that these overwhelming proofs had rolled themselves up against him? What malign influences were these at work, hurrying him on to destruction, and not leaving a single loophole of escape? Who would believe the story of his innocent ramble on the turnpike that Tuesday night? Who could doubt that he had gone directly from the Slocums' to Welch's ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... thing would put them right even yet,—but something which they have hopelessly missed, something which can never be. There was just one testing event which stood between them and their being made a vast deal more of. They would have been far better and far happier, they think, had some single malign influence been kept away which has darkened all their life, or had some single blessing been given which would have made it happy. If you had got such a parish, which you did not get,—if you had married such a woman,—if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... towards my mother, "which your sex shares with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the lover trust to her courage as ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... along malign'd the Prosperity of this Prince, took fire at the Offer, and here began another State Plot, which tho' it hookt in two or three sets of Men for different Ends, yet altogether join'd in affronting and ill treating their Prince, upon this Article ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... second time the weather, generally malign and irresponsible, favoured Priscilla. With the rising tide a light westerly breeze sprang up. She hoisted the sails and sat in the stern of the boat with an oar. She tucked the middle of it under her armpit, pressed her side tight against ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... that, in place of the malicious wink with which he proclaimed himself a victor in a game of draughts, his glass eyes, with their whites in sharp contrast to his swarthy wax skin, were both wide open and set in a glare of such ferocity and malign hatred that they seemed to flash the fire of life and lighten the gloom of the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... cried the witchfinder, lifting up his long right arm with a gesture of menace. "Those who defend the evil-doer, and malign the just and heaven-directed accuser, are not far from being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... of Antony and Cleopatra must have struck many students of the records of their age as one of the most inexplicable of tragic tales. What malign influence and secret hates were at work, continually sapping their prosperity and blinding their judgment? Why did Cleopatra fly at Actium, and why did Antony follow her, leaving his fleet and army to destruction? An attempt is made in this romance to suggest a possible ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... death took place from a malign spiritual influence, she was left untouched during two or three days, in the hope that she might revive; but no change took place, and now all hope was abandoned. In due course the corpse was taken to the cemetery of Toribeno. Numerous mourners and priests of different ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... as if she had been intelligent. Wilkinson had a gentle passion for the things of intellect; his wife seemed to exist on purpose to frustrate it. In no department of his life was her influence so penetrating and malign. At forty he no longer counted; he had lost all his brilliance, and had replaced it by a shy, unworldly charm. There was something in Wilkinson that dreamed or slept, with one eye open, fixed upon his wife. Of course, he had his blessed hours of deliverance ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... political status in the years preceding the Revolution. Not only was he one of the most fearless asserters of the great principles for which our forefathers fought and bled, but few men better than he saw more clearly the malign character of the arbitrary acts imposed upon the Colonies that brought about separation and laid the foundation of American independence. In resisting the enforcement of these Acts, Otis was actuated not only by disinterested ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... was no time for further prognostication; a second warder was at the door, beckoning impatiently, and Richard rose at once. The dull faces of the rest were all raised toward him with a malign aspect; they feared that some good news was come for him, that they were about to lose a companion in misfortune. Only one held out his hand, with a "Good luck to you, young gentleman; though I never see you again, I shall ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... who has no notion of what is doing politically in his own ward, who does not sense the malign influences which may be working in his neighborhood, in his very street, perhaps in the next house, who has not his eye on the unscrupulous small politician who leads the ward by the nose, who knows nothing of ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... postulated by Oriental science. Herophilus and Erasistratus and Galen would hardly have pursued their anatomical studies with equanimity had they believed that ghostly apparitions watched over living and dead alike, and exercised at will a malign influence. ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... naughty, pleasantly-malign smile of a terribly experienced dowager. And she seemed positively anxious that James should have Andrew Dean ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Chuzzlewit, in which American peculiarities are treated with the broadest caricature. The Notes might have been forgiven; but the novel excited a great and just anger in America. His statements were not true; his pictures were not just; his prejudice led him to malign a people who had received him with a foolish hospitality. He had eaten and drunk at the hands of the men whom he abused, and his character suffered more than that of his intended victims. In taking a few foibles for his caricature, he had left our merits untold, and had been guilty of the implication ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... not," said Miss Boncassen slowly. "I have seen them together and I think not. There might be somebody, though I think not her. But why do I say that? Why do I malign him, and make so little of myself? There is no one else, Lady ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... had excited in me, and I have observed him more particularly and found out more about him. Sometimes, after a long night's watching, he looks so pale and worn, that one would think the cold moonlight had stricken him with some malign effluence such as it is fabled to send upon those who sleep in it. At such times he seems more like one who has come from a planet farther away from the sun than our earth, than like one of us terrestrial ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... doubt, under some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was "a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, versifying a thought ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... the pulpit with failure staring him in the face, and whereas on the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had obviously fought against the malign influence which eventually had prevailed over him, this time he had not had the vigor to make a struggle. Certainly he had not broken down. It might be said of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was taken to insure him a good welcome, or, at least, to avoid any of those signs which would indicate that Johannesburg likes President Kruger no more than he likes Johannesburg; and even those who were most conscious of the President's malign influence did all in their power to make the visit a success, believing themselves to be in duty bound to make any effort, even at the sacrifice of personal sympathies and opinions, to turn the current of feeling and to ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... possessed the necessary literature, or could be used as a medium for instruction in modern science. In 1858 three universities were established; and although their system was ill-devised, under the malign influence of the analogy of London University, a very large and increasing number of young graduates, trained for modern occupations, began to filter into Indian society, and to modify its point of view. All speaking ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... and horned People from Under the Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won by seven years ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... Consumption, slow Decline, Put in their claims, on counts malign; And Plague preferred his rapid power To weed a nation ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he could not guess, except that he might be one of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... But, that we should be told by the old Bashaws, that we strive who can produce most extravagant Absurdities never heard before, and that we brag to be the Inventors of them ourselves, are the malign Reflections of those who see us exalted. Let Envy burst. You see, that the general Esteem which we have acquired, gives it for us; and if a Musician is not of our Tribe, he will find no Patron or Admirer. But ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... attains success. When you are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and malign you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you did not write, all in the ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... cousin much, for he used to bother him with bad jokes; but a strange malign instinct made him add a few ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... it be not vain to object that our fellow-subjects of Great Britain would malign or obstruct our industry when it is exerted in a way which ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... demands that his fiction should be governed by the same hard rules that govern real life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the victims move on to the final scene ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... Septimius, that Indian fierceness that was in him arousing itself, and thrusting up its malign head like a snake. "Never! If you would have me, you must take ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seem that some potent and malign influence, resident at the capital, some high functionary, by some species of occultation, controlling the action of the government, a Talleyrand in the pay of both governments, and balancing or ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... unhappy. She was a Swede, as you know, and in her blood ran the beliefs and superstitions of the Northland—some of them so strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of mountain and forest and water werewolves and beings malign. From the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be called the 'influences' of the place. She said it 'smelled' ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced; The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs The vanquished punished with malign revenge: Never had British priest to Saxon preached; And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills Nor man nor woman smiled. They had not lacked The timely warning. From his Kentish shores Augustine stretched to them paternal hands: Later, he ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... mixture of falsity in that claim to special inspiration by which he sought to gain hold of men's minds, there was no admission of having used unworthy means. Even in this confession, and without expurgation of the notary's malign phrases, Fra Girolamo shone forth as a man who had sought his own glory indeed, but sought it by labouring for the very highest end—the moral welfare of men—not by vague exhortations, but by striving ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Christmas, when in stalked Mrs. Headley to offer her counsel and aid—but this was lost in a volley of barking from the long-backed, bandy-legged, turnspit dog, which was awaiting its turn at the wheel, and which ran forward, yapping with malign intentions towards the ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... such guns would be freely made. No sooner does one nation adopt some rascal's costly device for taking life or protecting it from the taker (and these soulless inventors will as readily sell the product of their malign ingenuity to one nation as to another) than all the rest either possess themselves of it or adopt something superior and more expensive; and so all pay the penalty for the sins of each. A hundred million dollars is a moderate estimate of what it has cost the world to abstain from strangling ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... and wait but the wand of divination to be revealed. In a thousand similar ways are the actions and the motives of the Irish understood by those who are careless of them; or worse, misrepresented by those whose interest, and too often business, it is to malign them. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Greek and Christian, each at its best—the martyrs' hope, the singers' joy and health. In this "minor peace of the Church," so pure, so delicate, and so vital that it made the Roman life just then "seem like some stifling forest of bronze-work, transformed, as if by malign enchantment, out of the generations of living trees," he seemed to see the possibility of satisfaction at last. For here there was a perfect love and self-sacrifice, outwardly expressed with a mystic grace better than the Greek blitheness, and a new beauty which contrasted brightly with ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually or in the bulk—the Spirit overhead will look humanly malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... demands his liberty; but Wotan must have the ring as well. And here the dwarf, like the giant before him, feels the very foundations of the world shake beneath him at the discovery of his own base cupidity in a higher power. That evil should, in its loveless desperation, create malign powers which Godhead could not create, seems but natural justice to him. But that Godhead should steal those malign powers from evil, and wield them itself, is a monstrous perversion; and his appeal to Wotan to forego it is almost terrible in its conviction of wrong. It is of ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Mexico, to sing for a fixed period of two months, with the privilege of three months longer. This was the closing appearance in opera, as she contemplated, for the task of reinstating her family fortunes was almost done. Fate fulfilled her expectations with a malign sarcasm; for while her agent, M. Ullman, was absent in Europe gathering a company, Mme. Sontag was seized with cholera and died in a few hours, on June 17, 1854. Such was the lamentable end of one of the noblest women that ever adorned the lyric stage. Her funeral was ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over to keep the peace and never thenceforward "malign, traduce, or detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson] or any other eminent man transcending you in merit." One of the most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca. "His peculiarity" ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... "If I do, I malign them both. But I do not. I no more than condemn a fault that both must acknowledge ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye, directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed runners of the autumn grape. The guests were dilatory, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage of the centenary of eighty-nine; ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and nothing beautiful. Men of affairs had no concern with a feeling like that. Would Iver have it, or would Mr Disney? Surely not! It would be a positive inconvenience to them, or at best a worthless asset. He traced it back to Blent, to that influence which he had almost brought himself to call malign because it seemed in some subtle way enervating, a thing that sought to clog his steps and hung about those feet which had need to be so alert and nimble. Yet the old life at Blent would not have served by ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... chagrin, he took his hand away; it was as though Timmy's malign influence had fallen between them. His very tone changed; it was no longer tender, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... instant he forgot his surroundings. He recalled the stately old house and its beautiful park as he had last seen it, with all its glories rejuvenated by the money that was pouring in to the coffers of his detested relative. And now that malign old man was at rest, after a tardy admission of the grievous evil he had wrought to his brother's wife and son. Well, peace be to his crooked bones! Dick could have wished him safely in Paradise if the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... charming in its intelligent and animated expression, in its full eyes and somewhat large, but finely modelled, mouth. The material of the statue is a finegrained limestone, and its milky whiteness tends to soften the malign character of her look and smile. It is possible that Mutnozmit was the daughter of Amenothes III. by his marriage with one of his sisters: it was from her, at any rate, and not from his great-grandfather, that Harmhabi ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at during the operation. Wenham's bilious countenance was puckered up with malign pleasure as he read the critique. Lady Muffborough had not asked him to her parties during the last year. Lord Falconet giggled and laughed with all his heart; Lord Muffborough and he had been rivals ever since they began life; and these complimented Major Pendennis, who until now ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her to malign me!" returned Katherine, laughing. "Learned I certainly am not; but I am fond of indiscriminate reading, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... sounds,—frsh,—for that is the way the sea talks, and leaves all pure vowel-sounds for the winds to breathe over it, and all mutes to the unyielding earth,)—about this time of over-ripe midsummer, the life of Elsie seemed fullest of its malign and restless instincts. This was the period of the year when the Rockland people were most cautious of wandering in the leafier coverts which skirted the base of The Mountain, and the farmers liked to wear thick, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... say. Will you malign your native realms and reduce them to a level with the country upstairs? That is swarming with wild beasts ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... blamed poor little Ally. She looked on little Ally as the victim of a malign and tragic tendency, the fragile vehicle of an alien and overpowering impulse. Little Ally was doomed. It wasn't her fault if ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... From time to time he shot out his arm violently, as if he would push back some invisible foe, or would extricate himself from the meshes of a net that was closing in upon him. Again, he swore aloud, as one who curses a malign and ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... course of his dreams, Je tiens Jean Jacques Rousseau, with extreme vehemence—which words, in spite of the horribly sardonic tone of the dreamer, he interpreted favourably at the time, but which later event proved to have been full of malign significance.[366] (8) Rousseau constantly found Hume eyeing him with a glance of sinister and diabolic import that filled him with an astonishing disquietude, though he did his best to combat it. On one of these ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... marked affection and confidence shown Kate by everybody in the house a mitigation of this malign fabric of humiliation. Jack's fondness for Kate had not escaped the observant eyes of Dick, who had confided the secret to Rosa, who had likewise unraveled it to mamma, and, as she kept nothing from Vincent, the Atterburys had that sort of interest ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... neighbouring plantations. Palms, dates, and other trees of tropical growth, overshadowed the leaf-thatched cottages, in which truly peace and plenty might be said to reign. Although true happiness cannot exist where Christianity is not, and where the fear of the fetish and the malign influence of the spirit of evil rules supreme over the mind, the people were contented, and probably as happy as are any of the countless numbers of the still benighted children of Africa, Rumours of wars and slave-hunts reached them, but they had so long escaped the inflictions others ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... received, Mr. GREELEY designates the above report as "a lie—a lie—false and malicious, and uttered with intent to malign and defame." I publish ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... cleaner hand of Europe are transmitting to us, and place your foot upon its false and unspeakable divinities. The gods of wealth, of egoism, of alcohol, of fornication, we must not acknowledge; nay, we must resist unto death their malign influence and power. But alas, what are we doing to-day? Instead of looking up to the pure and lofty souls of Europe for guidance, we welter in the mud with the lowest and most degenerate. We are beginning ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... though after Heaven seen, The Spirit malign, but much more envy seized, At sight of all this World beheld so fair, Round he surveys (and well might, where he stood So high above the circling canopy Of night's extended shade) from eastern point Of Libra to the fleecy star that ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... three, it was well-nigh insupportable. Brenton dropped in upon him, half a dozen times a week, and Olive never missed a day, while Duncan was invaluable. Nevertheless, it was plain that the summer was wearing on the "puffic' fibbous," although his old-time beauty was bidding fair to outlast the malign attacks of fortune. Indeed, to Olive Keltridge, it seemed that Opdyke never had been one half so good to look upon as now, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... afterwards, but not at all in the moment of his going. Things were not clear to him then. He was still in the vague, but he was not to walk in vagueness forever. Fate which, by its malign action, had caused him to inflict a frightful injury upon the good woman he loved still held in reserve for him new and tremendous experience. He thought that in Welsley he had reached the ultimate depths which a man can sound. It ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... motives were always honorable, his opinions were generally carefully conceded and candidly asserted, his acts never savored of trickery. We wish as much could be said of many who have professed admiration of the man, as well as of many who have not scrupled to malign ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... leave behind him a memorial of his own government. He accordingly BUILT a WALL of bricks, twenty feet wide, sixty high, and extending to such a prodigious length that you could hardly trust your own eyes that it was so large, still less induce others to believe it. But he did not escape the malign rumour that he had ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... was, in fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!—but awkward he was, and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and covered him with ink simply for the fun of ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... the hearts of men are failing to confidently proclaim that God has not abdicated his throne, and that man is not the sport of malign and lawless forces. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... over Elsie in the last few days. It seemed to her father as if the malign influence which had pervaded her being had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... air is worse this year at Rome than ever, and that it would be madness to go thither during its malign influence. This was very bad news indeed to one heartily tired of Florence, at least of its society. Merciful powers! what a set harbour within its walls! * * * * * You may imagine I do not take vast or ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... not," said Miss Carleton, quickly; "from my first glimpse of her she has seemed to me like a malign presence about the place, a veritable ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... open- work stitchery of a linen pillow-slip she was mending as deftly as any embroideress of Tudor times. Over the old, crabbed yet delicately fine writing of the "Sieur" whose influence on Innocent's young mind had been so pronounced and absolute, and in Robin's opinion so malign, he pored studiously, slowly mastering the meaning of the verses, though written in a language he had never cared to study. He was conscious of a certain suave sweetness and melancholy in the swing of the lines, though they did not appeal to ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... elderly companion should delight in such absurdities bewildered me. I had been addressing my aunt as Mrs. Bashford—it seemed ridiculous to call her Aunt Alice—and in the heat of our argument as to whether witches are necessarily naughty and malign beings I had just uttered the "Mrs." when she bent toward me and said gravely and with no hint of archness: "Can't we make it Alice and Bob? I think that ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... third peril; and who knows what may be in it! For the Doctors look grave; ask privily, If his Majesty had not the small-pox long ago?—and doubt it may have been a false kind. Yes, Maupeou, pucker those sinister brows of thine, and peer out on it with thy malign rat-eyes: it is a questionable case. Sure only that man is mortal; that with the life of one mortal snaps irrevocably the wonderfulest talisman, and all Dubarrydom rushes off, with tumult, into infinite Space; and ye, as subterranean Apparitions are wont, vanish utterly,—leaving ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... charms, Smiled with superior love (as Jupiter On Juno smiles, when he impregns the clouds That shed May flowers), and pressed her matron lip With kisses pure. Aside the Devil turned For envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance; and to himself thus plained:— 'Sight hateful, sight ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she bares them a man has little chance. But I understand your feeling, one has the sense of a besetting menace. I felt it often last winter when I was new to the country, and it is a very nasty feeling—as if malign gods were at work to destroy one, or as if fate were about to ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... defloration by one of a host of aerial spirits, and that the wound thus inflicted is repeated afterwards every month by the same ghostly agency.[70] For a like reason, probably, the Baganda imagine that a woman who does not menstruate exerts a malign influence on gardens and makes them barren[71] if she works in them. For not being herself fertilized by a spirit, how can ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... of it, as the result of over-excitement and fatigue. He felt that Nature harmonized with his mood, for he had scarcely ever looked upon a gloomier sky. Yet, strange to say, no rain had fallen. It seemed as if the malign spell could not be broken. The wind that had been whirling the dust in clouds all night long grew fitful, and died utterly away, while the parched earth and withered herbage appeared to look at the mocking clouds in mute, despairing appeal. How could they be so near, so heavy, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe |
