"Malignity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each engrossed in his own thoughts. Musard stared gloomily at Phil with unseeing eyes. He was as one who had passed through unimagined horrors in a space not to be measured by time, to emerge with a fatigued sense of the black malignity of unknown gods who create the passions of humanity for their own brutal sport. His moving lips betrayed a consciousness loosened from its moorings, tossed in a turbulent sea of disaster. Then they formed the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... in rags, and with hair like the worn tags of a black woollen carpet. His age might have been anything between twenty-five and sixty; it was impossible to form any opinion on the point. Just now, however, his yellow monkey face was convulsed with an expression of intense malignity, and he was standing there in the sunshine cursing rapidly beneath his breath in Dutch, and shaking his fist after the form of the retreating Boer—a very epitome of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... with the place where it had happened. Here, a heart-broken woman, kneeling to her child, had been spurned from his feet; here, a desolate old creature had prayed to the Evil One, and had received a fiendish malignity of soul, in answer to her prayer; here, a new-born infant, sweet blossom of life, had been found dead, with the impress of its mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two lovers had been stricken ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... punishment shall have done its work—when the awful sufferings with which the gospel threatens the impenitent and disobedient, will have humbled the stubborn, purified the polluted, and eradicated malignity, impiety, hypocrisy, and every evil disposition; that a period will come (which it may be the unspeakable bliss of those who enter the joy of their Lord to accelerate, which, at least, it will be their delight to anticipate,) when he who 'must reign till he hath ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... struggle which now commenced, and was continued through the succeeding eighteen months, was one of no ordinary character. Our previous elections had been conducted with warmth and zeal; but into this canvass was infused a bitterness and malignity which the agitation of the Slavery question only engenders. Why it always produces this result, is worthy of the investigation of the moralist and philosopher. Other great evils, political or moral, are discussed with freedom, and measures for their amelioration or prevention meet with no ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... why will you deliberate thus? If we delay a moment, all is lost for ever. Pluck up a little resolution, and we shall soon be out of the reach of her malignity. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its struggle with the "exception": there you have a spectacle fit for Gods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on "good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis," ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... dissatisfaction with the existing government. Thus Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, once lord-keeper the favorite of King James, the possessor for a season of the power that was turned against him, experienced the rancorous and ungrateful malignity of Laud, who, having been brought forward by Williams into the favor of the court, not only supplanted by his intrigues, and incensed the King's mind against his benefactor, but harassed his retirement by repeated persecutions. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... wounds, but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of vitriol. Nature must have meant the man for a Spanish Inquisitor, sent into the world before St. Dominic had provided a trade for him, or any vent for his malice—so rancorous in his malignity, so horrid and unrelenting the torture to which he subjects his sovereign and the beautiful Theodora. In this case, from the withering scowl which accompanies the libels, we may be assured that they are such in the most aggravated form—not malicious ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... hours, and that he shunned you, like one with a guilty conscience? Let him advance in years, his face lose its broad colour, his hair grow scant and grey, his figure, per chance, stoop a little, his eyes acquire the malignity of miserly old age—and there you have the hero of a Dunfield legend. Even thus ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... then, for doubting that, among insects, contagious and infectious diseases, of great malignity, are caused by minute organisms which are produced from pre-existing germs, or by homogenesis; and there is no reason, that I know of, for believing that what happens in insects may not take place in the highest animals. Indeed, there is already strong evidence that some diseases of an ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... being great. He had a wit that was accompanied with an unaffected greatness of mind, and a natural love to justice and truth; a wit that was in perpetual war with knavery, and ever attacking those kind of vices most, whose malignity was like to be the most dissusive, such as tended more immediately to the prejudice of public bodies; and were a common nusance to the happiness of human kind. Never was his pen drawn but on the side of good sense, and usually employed like the arms of the ancient heroes, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that never existed, or I should be said by yours to cast upon you, and for such causes as they would not fail to invent, the heaviest of all censures, the tacit condemnation of a friend. And, however anxious each would be to do justice to the other, calumny would drown our voices, or malignity affect not to believe us. Thus circumstanced, I should, were that practicable, request you to reassume that seat, which I could no longer fill with honour to you, or safety to myself. Though this cannot be done ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... her sister in the darkness, the storm without continued to rage. It had shown no mercy to the hapless leaves, neither did it lessen any of its malignity now as it tore along the straight road leading to the penitentiary of St. Vincent de Paul, and overtook the sadly bedraggled figure clad in bridal robes. The heavy rain had wet her through and through, and she ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... Acland, with profound contempt, and dislike the notion of personal contact or collision with them, as representatives of the foulest state of ill feeling that can be generated in the worst manufacturing regions—of sordid avarice, selfishness, envy, and malignity; but they are active—ever up and doing, and steadily applying themselves, with palatable topics, to the corruption of the hearts of the working classes. So, unless the persons to whom we allude choose to cast aside their morbid aversions—to be "UP ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Hanno had concluded, there was no occasion for any one to contend with him in debate, to such a decree were almost all the senators devoted to Hannibal; and they accused Hanno of having spoken with more malignity than Flaccus Valerius, the Roman ambassador. It was then said in answer to the Roman ambassadors, "that the war had been commenced by the Saguntines, not by Hannibal; and that the Roman people acted unjustly if ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... purchasers, the beauty of the paper and of the press work (for both are very beautiful) might contribute to their circulation. To the version of M. Crapelet[120] was prefixed a Preface, combining such a mixture of malignity and misconception, that I did not hesitate answering it, in a privately printed tract, entitled "A ROLAND FOR AN OLIVER." Of this Tract, "only thirty-six copies were printed." "So much the better for the Author"—says M. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the rope out of his timid leader's hand, and shaking me into a sort of aching jelly! I used to think that horses were made vicious either by being teased or by violence in breaking; but this does not account for the malignity of the Japanese horses, for the people are so much afraid of them that they treat them with great respect: they are not beaten or kicked, are spoken to in soothing tones, and, on the whole, live better than their masters. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... For pure malignity? Because there is no other reason to prompt such a wickedness. They have no excuse for jealousy, even if they were capable of entertaining it, for when two young people are fond of each other no pressure is ever made upon them to suffocate their love or to fix their affections upon another ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... apparently in this they confound him with a later Herod) he affected divine honours. To mention such slanders, as the sceptical Bayle has said with special reference to the case of Knox, is all that is needed to refute them. They are the product of malignity so evident that it defeats itself. I know but one parallel to them in our literature, and it has the excuse that it has come down to us from the dark ages.[251] Some would persuade us that the time has come when we might afford to forget old controversies and to shake hands ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... shrouded in mysterious insinuations; but it soon gained strength and audacity, and received the unblushing sanction of at least one prelate. The answer of the Nation was confined to one indignant line. Proof was demanded and was not offered; but its very absence only deepened the malignity of the slanderers. Even in the midst of this storm the muse of Thomas Davis sang no discordant strain, nor did his pen trace one angry word. On the contrary, he summoned his whole energies to the task of harmonising the jarring elements around him. His inspiration ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... character—on the part of the so-called Southern Confederacy. From the hour of firing upon Fort Sumter to the present moment, the war has not been waged by the rebels as if in defense of the great principles of truth and justice, but with the malignity, the cruelty and barbarity which would, in many instances, put to blush the savages upon our western borders. In our dealing with them, the honor, integrity, fidelity and dignity of the nation have never been forgotten; and ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... fire from a church steeple. At Fort Griswold, the commander and half the garrison were butchered. After this fort had been taken, a British officer entering asked, "Who commands here?" "I did," said Colonel Ledyard, as he advanced to surrender his sword, "but you do now." With fiendish malignity, the officer seized the weapon and thrust it into the bosom of the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... Chimene as fair as ever, and as adorable. It is only pinchbeck that perishes under the acids of satire: gold defies them. Yet I sometimes ask myself, does the existence of popularity like yours justify the malignity of satire, which blesses neither him who gives, nor him who takes? Are poisoned arrows fair against a bad poet? I doubt it, Sir, holding that, even unpricked, a poetic bubble must soon burst by its own nature. Yet satire will assuredly be written so long ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... they profited by the occasion, without, however, lingering too long over one and the same subject, but flitting from one topic to another like bees that meet as they go with different sorts of flowers. Envy, malignity, or cabal had no voice amongst them; they adored the works of the ancients, refused not the moderns the praises which were their due, spoke of their own with modesty, and gave one another honest advice when any one of them fell ill of the malady of the age and wrote a book, which happened ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... many bitter enemies, and they will, I presume, continue to snarl at my heels like mongrel curs. Their miserable attempts to injure me will only rebound back upon themselves. I am above the reach of their malignity, and shall pursue my own independent course regardless ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... the wickedness, the triumphant mischief of the thing. The sketch of Addison—who had offended Pope by praising a rival translation of Homer—as "Atticus," is as brilliant as any thing of the kind in Dryden. Pope's very malignity made his sting sharper than Dryden's. He secreted venom, and worked out his revenges deliberately, bringing all the resources of his art to bear upon the question of how to give ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... few seconds Harold had been thinking. And as he had been thinking for the good, the safety, of Stephen, his thoughts flew swift and true. This man's very tone, the openness of his malignity, the underlying scorn when he spoke of her whom others worshipped, showed him the danger—the terrible immediate danger in which she stood from such a man. With the instinct of a mind working as truly for the woman he loved as the needle does to the Pole he spoke quietly, throwing ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Joscelyn had left Spring Valley, Cyrus, who was reading a paper by the table, got up with an angry exclamation and stuffed it into the stove, thumping the lid on over it with grim malignity. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... beginning. The Spaniards and Flemings participated in the mutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. The unscrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their grasping and venal ambition, enraged and disgusted the haughty Spaniards. This international malignity furnishes one of the keys to a proper understanding of the great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to acquire honesty and independence. "The clank of chains," said the reverend gentleman, "is now seldom heard, and the deportment of free laborers, grateful and respectful, has succeeded to the scowl of malignity, with which the assigned white slaves regarded their owners." He asserted that the gangs recalled the men from intemperance; that they were attentive to religious teaching; that the parties, although ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... well as daring in thy malignity," said Cromwell; "but credit me, I will cry quittance with you ere I am ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the word, and envied the burglar with his six months. What spirit of malignity had hindered Mr Sniff from letting him lose himself in a felon's cell rather than turn him out "free" into a world every creature ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... acrimonious attack! "to which the provocation is not easily discoverable;" and says, "that the severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience." The Doctor speaks, too, of the "incessant and unappeasable malignity" of Pope towards Cibber, and takes the part of that worthy in the quarrel. Colley was absolutely poet-laureate of England; and having no longer any patience in his pride, "gave the town" an abusive pamphlet, in which he swore that he would no longer tamely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... no excitement whatever. There was Peppajee, hunched up against the rock in that uncomfortable attitude which permits a man to come at the most intimate relations with the outside of his own ankle, upon which he was scowling in seeming malignity. There was his hunting-knife lying upon a flat stone near to his hand, with a fresh red blotch upon the blade, and there was his little stone pipe clenched between his teeth and glowing red within the bowl. Also ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... Men had begun to grow used to the thought that when they left their homes in the morning they might return to them no more, or that they might return to find that one or more of their dear ones had been struck down and carried off in the course of a few hours. So terrible was the malignity of the disease, that often death supervened after a few hours, although others would linger—often in terrible suffering—for many days before death (or much more rarely, recovery) relieved them of their pain. This good ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... were a good deal less scrupulous than this. By way of bringing home to Froude "ecclesiastical malignity of the most frantic kind," he cited the case of Bishop Coxe. "To Hatton," Froude wrote in his text, "was given also the Naboth's vineyard of his neighbour the Bishop of Ely." In a long note he commented upon the Bishop's inclination ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... This honest historian thus expresses himself at the close of his work:—"My design has but one end—that our posterity may learn by these notices the root and the causes of so many troubles which we have suffered, while they expose the malignity of those men who have raised them up or prolonged them, as well as the goodness of those who did all which they ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... conflict is in store for thee. Feel'st thou within thee strength enough to smother Each impulse of malignity and hate? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... account would have it that a dispute over a boundary fence marching between the Tatum homestead on Cache Creek and one of the Stackpole farm holdings ripened into a prime quarrel by reasons of Stackpole stubbornness on the one hand and Tatum malignity on the other. By yet a third account the lawsuit and the line-fence matter were confusingly twisted together to form a cause ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Homer which is applied once or twice to features in a landscape—for instance, to a river: 'The gods call it Xanthos, mankind Skamandros.' So we might say of the downfall of Greece: the Greeks attributed it to the malignity of God, but the divine oracles gave ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... trembling anxiety to receive her sentence. The Abate considered each aggravating circumstance of the marquis's menace, and each sentence of Julia's speech; and his mind experienced that vice is not only inconsistent with virtue, but with itself—for to gratify his malignity, he now discovered that it would be necessary to sacrifice his pride—since it would be impossible to punish the object of the first without denying himself the gratification of the latter. This reflection suspended his mind ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... Famine and Slaughter, on the other hand, is literary in every sense of the word, requiring indeed, and very urgently, to insist on its character as literature, in order to justify itself against the charge of inhuman malignity. Despite the fact that "letters four do form his name," it is of course an idealised statesman, and not the real flesh and blood Mr. Pitt, whom the sister furies, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, extol as their patron in ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... Nazareth, set forth by himself. Now this supposed Summa of Nazarene theology distinctly affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a Heaven, and of a Hell of fire; it teaches the Fatherhood of God and the malignity of the Devil; it declares the superintending providence of the former and our need of deliverance from the machinations of the latter; it affirms the fact of demoniac possession and the power of casting ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... time, almost a century, to justify their insertion in our collection, where they would have very uselessly occupied a considerable space. Captain Betagh appears to have been actuated by violent animosity against Captain Shelvocke, whose actions he traduced and misrepresented with the utmost malignity, the innocent cause of his having suffered captivity among the Spaniards in South America, of which some account will be found in the subsequent section. Of all these charges, we have only deemed it expedient to insert the following statement of the circumstances connected ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... time, he could not have been more astonished if he had been charged with picking a pocket. For criticism of his own judgment he was prepared. He knew well that acute differences of opinion might arise. The dishonesty and malignity imputed to him were outside the habits of his life and the range of his ideas. He lived in a society where such things were not done, and where nobody was suspected of doing them. He had fulfilled, to the best of his ability, Carlyle's own injunctions, and he had faithfully ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... right. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just." Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures. Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... principles it is easy to perceive the real nature and causes of the insidious warfare, which is maintained, in various forms, against the essential doctrines of the Gospel. It is just an effusion of the malignity of the unsanctified heart. Its prevalence is an exact fulfilment of prophecy; and therefore an irrefragable proof of the truth and divine authority of that system which it is labouring to destroy. The emphatic declaration of the apostle, in the text, strikingly describes the state of feeling ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... March, 1686, after a buffalo-hunt, he was murdered by Duhaut and L'Archeveque, two adventurers, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. They had long shown a spirit of mutiny, and the malignity of disappointed avarice so maddened them that ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... of men, of low degree, yet full of malice; not less dingy, nor less filthy, nor less vile than beetles; who nevertheless by a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, tho they can never do good to any mortal, become frequently troublesome to the great. They frighten by their ugliness, they molest by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz round us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... no uneasiness at a threatening demonstration, a determination was made to preserve it for critical examination. As soon as the snake was touched the cloudy veils were withdrawn, and the eyes flashed with the fire of malignity. It appeared to be spiteful because it had been caught napping. The specimen was not preserved, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... benevolence set the world in order; those possessed of extreme maliciousness turn the world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons gifted with benevolence are its natural fruit. Malignity and perversity constitute the spirit of evil, which permeates heaven and earth, and malicious persons are affected by its influence. The days of perpetual happiness and eminent good fortune, and the era of perfect peace and tranquility, which now prevail, are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... pound-weight per diem for two months together. They give them also to oxen mingled with bran, chop'd or broken; otherwise they are apt to sprout and grow in their bellies. Others say, they should first be macerated in water, to extract their malignity; cattle many times perishing without this preparation. Cato advises the husband-man to reserve 240 bushels of acorns for his oxen, mingled with a like quantity of beans and lupines, and to drench them well. But in ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... wrath of Napoleon from the King of Prussia; but the whole malignity of that Corsican nature broke out against the high-spirited patriot as soon as fresh victories had released Napoleon from the ill-endured necessity of self-control. On the 16th of December, when Madrid had again passed into the possession of the French, an imperial order appeared, ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... We do not attribute the spirit of Dr. Ingleby's book to any inherent malignity or deliberately malicious purpose of its author, but rather to that relentless partisanship which this folio seems to have excited among the British critics. So we regard his reference to "almighty smash" and "catawampously chawed up" as specimens of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... ceremonies at the present Imperial Court. His ancient inveteracy against your country has made him a favourite with Bonaparte. The indelicate and scandalous attacks, in 1796 and 1797, against Lord Malmesbury, in the then official journal, Le Redacteur, were the offspring of his malignity and pen; and the philippics and abusive notes in our present official Moniteur, against your Government and country, are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often shares with ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... plea of necessity for crime is glaringly impious. Many and varied departments of honest and honorable industry are before you, all promising a generous reward; and, neglecting them for a wicked and mischievous occupation, you must bear the odium of a most sordid avarice, or implacable malignity. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... so doing, my life would assuredly be forfeited, for my innocence could never be established before the iniquitous and bloody tribunal to which I should be brought. Neither, for the same reason, will I surrender Alizon, who, with a refinement of malignity, has been similarly accused. I shall now proceed to make preparations for my defence. Go, if you think fitting—or stay—but if you do stay, I shall calculate upon your ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have gone so far as to say it would be cheap at half a million. We have the authority of a near relative of that gentleman for asserting, that the satisfactory testimonials which he possesses of the correctness of his narrative, are sufficient to satisfy the most incredulous, and to silence malignity itself." ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... to have material for accusing Him! And how heartlessly careless of the poor sufferer they are, when they use him thus! He for his part stands silent. Desire and faith have no part in evoking this miracle. Deadly hatred and calculating malignity ask for it, and for once they get their wish. Having baited their hook, and set the man with his shrunken hand full in view, they get into their corners and wait the event. Matthew tells us that they ask our Lord ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... rough chuckle, more expressive of malignity than mirth, the man turned himself round, applied vigorously to his pipe, and sank into a silence which, as mile after mile glided past the wheels, he did not seem disposed to break. Neither was Philip inclined to be communicative. Considerations ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... even if he suspected her, would never venture to cause her arrest, went fearlessly among her neighbours. She was not aware that the enquiry had passed from Caffarelli's hands into those of the prefect of Rouen, and was now managed by a man whose malignity and stubbornness ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... war and politics, the eldest of twenty-one brothers, a family of notable intelligence and force of character, and many of these he placed over the provinces. Fatteh Khan, however, excited the king's jealously by his powerful position, and provoked the malignity of the king's son, Kamran, by a gross outrage on the Saddozai family. He was accordingly seized, blinded and afterwards murdered with prolonged torture, the brutal Kamran striking the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sank huddling on the floor; then Mark looked up; at the window a few feet from him was a face, more horrible than he had supposed a human face, if it was human indeed, could be. It was deadly white, and hatred, baffled rage, and a sort of devilish malignity glared from the white set eyes, and the drawn mouth. There was a rush from behind him; the old hound, who had crept up unawares into the room, with a fierce outcry of rage sprang on to the window-sill; Mark heard the scraping of his claws upon the stone. Then the hound ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wiser in these matters than the philosophers. Are we to suppose that the depths of malignity in an Iago, or the "dark backward and abysm" of remorse in a Macbeth, are things ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... the children you and I remember, who used to come in at dessert and have each a biscuit and a glass of water, in which last refreshment I was always convinced that they drank, with the gloomiest malignity, "Destruction to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... insomuch that there is not only no personage so important or exalted—for of that I do not complain—but no person so humble, harmless, and retired as to escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by the venal crew to gratify the idle curiosity or still less excusable malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic life—to hunt them down and drag them forth as a laughing stock to the vulgar, has become in our days with some men the road even to popularity, but with multitudes the means of earning ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... displayed to any of their number who suffered from any physical defect. Many times in the day would the afflicted one be reminded of her infirmity; the consequent tears incited the tormentors to a further display of malignity. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... could not have been protected by any steel piece. I do not consider this conclusive against the Lord of Hers, or even incapable of explanation; but real and unequivocal guilt itself could not justify the untiring malignity of the Baron of Stramen. His brother's soul would be much better honored by his prayers, than by imprecations and the clash of steel; we cannot avenge the dead, for their bodies are dust, and their souls absorbed in things eternal; ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... region the near affinity of realism to pessimism, to atheism, is plain enough; its necessary dealing with the base, the brutal, the unredeemed, the hopeless darkness of the infamies of heredity, criminal education, and successful malignity, eating into the being as well as controlling the fortune of their victims, is manifest; and what answer has ever been found to the interrogation they make? It is not merely that particular facts are here irreconcilable; but laws themselves are discernible, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... some gibbering maniac, but I was fighting my craven appetite for strong drink. Oh how hard the struggle has been; its fierceness is only known to God and myself. It comes upon me when I am least prepared to defend myself, and tortures me with the cruel malignity of a devil. And then I beat it back, and it comes upon me again. But I must triumph or go under; for if it is not liberty with me it ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... doctor, taken by surprise, awkward and sheepish, knelt too. The missionary's prayer had a savage eloquence. He was extraordinarily moved, and as he spoke the tears ran down his cheeks. Outside, the pitiless rain fell, fell steadily, with a fierce malignity that was ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... home, Where none but demigods should dare to roam? Or worse, thou wondrous world! oh! doubly worse, Did heaven design thy lordly land to nurse The motley dregs of every distant clime, Each blast of anarchy and taint of crime Which Europe shakes from her perturbed sphere, In full malignity to ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... formidable character as Basset was in existence. If he did not appear in the village it was an accidental circumstance, it being only at irregular intervals that he ever made his appearance there. Thus, then, passed a week longer; the petulant constable on the watch, and the steady malignity of Davenport gradually becoming impatient for gratification. But the little drama had a course of its ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... terrible to bear. We can just bear it when it comes by accident or for our good—as it generally does in modern life—except at school. But when it is caused by the malignity of a man, full grown, fashioned like ourselves, all our control disappears. Philip's one thought was to get away from that room at whatever sacrifice ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... malignity displayed toward the children of divorced wives by the women who succeeded them in the affections and homes of their husbands, that in Roman literature attached to the name of a stepmother (noverca) the most hateful associations, which certainly have no place in modern Christendom, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... deceive you out of pure malignity, who would rather injure you than not, who, perhaps, have an old, by you long-forgotten, grudge, and become your apparent friends to pay you back—these are few. Human nature, with all its depravity, is seldom so completely debased. But there are ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... deadly lull to any fiery temperament engaged in plotting to destroy a victim, but Anna had the patience of hatred—that absolute malignity which can measure its exultation rather by the gathering of its power to harm than by striking. She could lay it aside, or sink it to the bottom of her emotions, at will, when circumstances appeared against ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... know but of one well attested instance of a bite being received from a snake. A soldier was bitten so as to draw blood, and the wound healed as a simple incision usually does without shewing any symptom of malignity. A dog was reported to be bitten by a snake, and the animal swelled and died in great agony. But I will by no means affirm that the cause of his death was fairly ascertained. It is, however, certain that the natives show, on all occasions, the utmost horror of the snake, and will not eat it, although ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but, instead of that, I shall only ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... awful stop is put to our inquiries. But, why should I conceal my sentiments? Considering the attributes of God, I believe, that whatever punishment may follow, will tend, like the anguish of disease, to show the malignity of vice, for the purpose of reformation. Positive punishment appears so contrary to the nature of God, discoverable in all his works, and in our own reason, that I could sooner believe that the Deity paid no attention to the conduct of men, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... vindication of the measure, enforcing its object, spirit, and provisions. He expressed his abhorrence of the maxim, that any nation was destined to be the natural and unalterable enemy of the other; it was a libel on the constitution of political societies, and supposed the existence of infernal malignity in human nature. In most of our wars, he said, France had been the aggressor; but her assurances and frankness in the present negociations were such as to entitle her to a return of confidence. Even from the recent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... than the Church has been to Him. While it has limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable malignity. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... each word we have said!" exclaimed the Queen, in her turn violently surprised and agitated. "Out, monster of folly and malignity!" ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... reply was in a prose letter, on which Dr. Johnson has passed a condemnation. 'It exhibits,' he says, 'nothing but tedious malignity.' But he was partial to the Herveys, Thomas and Henry Hervey, Lord Hervey's brothers, having been kind to him—'If you call a dog Hervey,' he said to Boswell, 'I ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... Fretful— though he is my friend. Sneer. Why, 'tis certain, that unnecessarily to mortify the vanity of any writer is a cruelty which mere dulness never can deserve; but where a base and personal malignity usurps the place of literary emulation, the aggressor deserves neither quarter nor pity. Dang. That's true, ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan
... fallen bird he did not pick it up for a possible pot-pie as I thought he would do. He ground it into the soft earth with the heel of his boot, stamping on the poor thing again and again. And never have I seen on human countenance such an expression of satisfied malignity! ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... brethren have obtained that admission, which, it seems, it was a libel to propose. In what way to account for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? has the bigoted malignity of any individuals been crushed? Or, has the stability of the government, or has that of the country been weakened? Or, are one million of subjects stronger than three millions? Do you think that the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Col. Starbottle thoroughly appreciated the convincing proof of Tretherick's unfaithfulness and malignity afforded by the damning evidence of the existence of Tretherick's own child in his own house. He was dimly aware, however, of some unforeseen obstacle to the perfect expression of the infinite longing of his own sentimental nature. But, before ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to the sleeper to be that of a panther, wearing the shape of man, yet fierce and cruel as any ever found in the wilds of the river of the Abnakis. With this fierce and cruel disposition was coupled a cunning beyond that of the fox, and a malignity greater than the rattlesnake's. Their fierceness and cruelty, and the malignity and savage ferocity of their natures, were hidden, however, under a show of peace. They laughed, and grinned, and did the other things, which mortals do when they are, or pretend to be, pleased, making ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... surrounded Gloucester, which was then much smaller than now, and the bastions came down to the river, with outlying works to defend a small suburb on the opposite bank. The Cavaliers were in great strength in Western England, and the malignity of the Gloucester pin-makers seriously embarrassed them. On August 10, 1643, the siege began with a summons to surrender, which the authorities refused. Parts of the suburbs were then burned, and next morning a bombardment began, red-hot balls and heavy stones being plentifully ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... inspection, which was not, indeed, the case. If that arm could save Sisily, it was at her service. But what was the good of that? What was the good of his own efforts to help her? Charles had a suffocating feeling of the futility of human effort when opposed by the malignity of Fate. He asked himself with aching heart what was to be the outcome of it all? He had failed. What then? It was not until that moment that he realized how strongly he had been buoyed up by the false optimism of hope. ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... dagger!" echoed the excited voice of the morio, whose appearance had undergone a transformation. The indescribable vacancy with which he had listened to the minstrel was replaced by an expression of revolting malignity. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... bitter hate and malignity were the tones of the witch doctors voice and the expression of his burning eyes that, despite his sober common sense, Dick could scarcely repress a shudder at the veiled threat conveyed by the man's parting words; but ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... they said of me was true you must admit that I am avenged at this moment," said Marie, with a look of malignity which ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... as yet too young,' he said severely, 'to understand the mystic value of men's acts and words. A word may be well meant and innocent, and yet the cause of much disaster, possessing in itself some special virtue of malignity. You all know how the jann[4] attend on careless words; how if I call a goat, a dog, or cat by its generic name without pointing to the very animal intended, a jinni will as like as not attach himself to me, since many of ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... assaults Pope replied by a long letter, suppressed, however, for the time, which, as Johnson says, exhibits to later readers "nothing but tedious malignity," and is, in fact, a careful raking together of everything likely to give pain to his victim. It was not published till 1751, when both Pope and Hervey were dead. In his later writings he made references to Sappho, which fixed the name upon her, and amongst ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... ancestors. The descendant of Agag, the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The contempt with which Mordecai regarded him roused all the ancient malignity of the Amalekite, and his ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... been at his shop door and seen the entry of the traveller! And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. Critchlow to jump in the dark at a horrible conclusion, and to be right after all. For Sophia Mr. Critchlow had always been the personification of malignity and malevolence, and now these qualities in him made him, to her, almost obscene. Her pride brought up tremendous reinforcements, and she approached ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... are improvisations regulated by an exquisite artistic instinct. Her imagination is alert in discovering, combining, and presenting the happiest meanings of reality. She is gay, witty, ironical, malicious, and all this without a trace of malignity; amiable rather than passionate, except in the ardour of her maternal devotion, which sometimes proved oppressive to a daughter who, though not unloving, loved with a temperate heart; faithful to friends, loyal to those who had fallen into misfortune, but neither sentimental nor romantic, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... two women making their appearance at the same moment, Oaklands turned to leave the room. As he did so Wilford, for the first time, raised his head, thereby disclosing a countenance which, pale as death, was characterised by an expression of such intense malignity as one might conceive would be discernible in that of a corpse reanimated by some evil spirit. After regarding Oaklands fixedly for a moment, he said, in a low, grating tone of voice, "You have foiled me once and again—when next we meet, it wilt, be my turn!" Oaklands merely smiled contemptuously, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... touched to the quick by her eagerness and her beauty, now intensified by the glow of excitement which gave a roseate warmth to her cheeks and deeper darkness to her eyes. All ignorant and unsuspecting as she was of the world's malignity and cruel misjudgments, how could it be explained to her that a woman of such youth and loveliness, electing to dwell alone with a man, even if the man were a hopeless paralytic, would make herself the subject of malicious comment and pitiless scandal! ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... to bring her in peace to the grave; wherein she was not deceived: for he achieved it, but with much pains and carefulness, and not without the forces and many jealousies of the court and times, wherewith the Queen's age and the malignity of her settling times were replete. And so I come to his dear friend in court, Secretary Cecil, whom, in his long absence, he adored as his saint, and counted him his only MECENAS, both before and after his departure from court, and during all the time of his command in Ireland; well knowing ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... to amuse but, in amusing, he also intended to pillory the aristocracy and his wit is as keen as the point of a rapier; but, when we bear in mind the fact that he was an ancient, we will find that his cynicism is not cruel, in him there is none of the malignity of Aristophanes; there is rather the attitude of the refined patrician who is always under the necessity of facing those things which he holds most in contempt, the supreme artist who suffers from the multitude of bill-boards, so to speak, who lashes the posters but holds in pitying ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... blow to him, for time was softening the asperity of his temper, and he had just made up his mind to make friends with his son. He attributed the failure to inform him of Oliver's illness and death to the malignity ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... thing, perhaps, than the oversight itself lies in this—that not any critic throughout Europe, two only excepted, but has failed to detect a blunder so memorable. All the rampant audacity of Bentley—'slashing Bentley'—all the jealous malignity of Dr. Johnson—who hated Milton without disguise as a republican, but secretly and under a mask would at any rate have hated him from jealousy of his scholarship—had not availed to sharpen these practised and ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... opposition in principle, Berlioz united a caustic and vigorous mode of expression. His name was a target for the wits. "A physician who plays on the guitar and fancies himself a composer," was the scoff of malignant gossips. The journals poured on him a flood of abuse without stint. French malignity is the most venomous and unscrupulous in the world, and Berlioz was selected as a choice victim for its most vigorous exercise, none the less willingly that he had shown so much skill and zest in impaling the victims of his own artistic and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... spend much time in devotions, and are very decided in their views as to the malignity of the influence. The bishop comes to-day, and we hope he will have Mass said in the house. We shall then have ten Roman Catholics in the household—two visitors, three clergy, two visitors' maids, and three of our own servants. That should ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... love Astraea? If there be a mortal I hate in the core of my heart, it is Astraea. Are you satisfied?" he replied, with an expression of fiendish satisfaction in his face, as if he were glad of the excuse for giving vent to his malignity. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... his gig with the man-servant, saying that he would not be back till next day. In her master's absence, a little girl who served as maid-of-all-work ran out to keep company with her sweetheart. These accidents destiny turned to account with diabolical malignity. At about midnight, Madame d'Imbleval was seized with the first pains. The nurse, Mlle. Boussignol, had had some training as a midwife and did not lose her head. But, an hour later, Madame Vaurois' turn came; and the tragedy, or I might rather say the tragi-comedy, was enacted amid the ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that a prodigious giant, the lord of a great island close to our kingdom, Pandafilando of the Scowl by name—for it is averred that, though his eyes are properly placed and straight, he always looks askew as if he squinted, and this he does out of malignity, to strike fear and terror into those he looks at—that he knew, I say, that this giant on becoming aware of my orphan condition would overrun my kingdom with a mighty force and strip me of all, not leaving me even a small village to shelter me; but that I could avoid all this ruin ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... mocked and despised and sneered at every day of my life here by your supercilious, superior, empty-headed men?" flashed back Drishna, his eyes leaping into malignity and his voice trembling with sudden passion. "Oh! how I hated them as I passed them in the street and recognized by a thousand petty insults their lordly English contempt for me as an inferior being—a nigger. How I longed ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... and impoverished life of Vauvenargues his friendships were the main adventure. We have mentioned a name which is too frequently the object of malignity on English lips, the name of Voltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform energy of this giant of literature did not take some unseemly directions and several unlovely shapes. But the qualities of Voltaire must, in the eyes of any unbiassed observer, vastly overtop his ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... others, was discharged; and the day after, engaged himself for a few months to a farmer in the neighborhood where he had been last employed. But hardly a week had gone by, when the old story of his being a rebel, or a runaway prisoner, or a Yankee, or a spy, began to be revived with added malignity. Like bloodhounds, the soldiers were once more on the track. The houses where he harbored were many times searched; but thanks to the fidelity of a few earnest well-wishers, and to his own unsleeping vigilance and activity, the hunted fox still ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... I quake at? Our proper vice takes form in one or another shape, according to the sex, age, or temperament of the person, and, if we are capable of fear, will readily find terrors. The covetousness or the malignity which saddens me when I ascribe it to society, is my own. I am always environed by myself. On the other part, rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which is joy fixed ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his vice and contumacy, and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also; but should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... poor Broadway with Washington Street. Don't be hard upon it, Isabel; every street can't be a Boston street, you know," said Basil. Isabel, herself a Bostonian of great intensity both by birth and conviction, believed her husband the only man able to have thoroughly baffled the malignity of the stars in causing him to be born out of Boston; yet he sometimes trifled with his hardly achieved triumph, and even showed an indifference to it, with an insincerity of which there can be no ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride; the loss of infinite happiness to himself is compensated in thought, by the power of inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil—but of the abstract love of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle all other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From this principle he never once flinches. His love ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... retrospects evoked by the present outbreak of malignity against our nation. The slanders of the hour recall those let loose to cloak previous deportations in days of panic less ignoble. Then it was the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, who was dragged to London and arraigned for high treason. Poignant memories ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... harassed by pecuniary difficulties; forced to quit his country, home, and child; friendless—we have seen it too clearly since his death—pursued even on the Continent by a thousand absurd and infamous falsehoods, and by the cold malignity of a world that twisted even his sorrows into a crime; he yet, in the midst of inevitable reaction, preserved his love for his sister and his Ada; his compassion for misfortune; his fidelity to the affections of his childhood and youth, from Lord Clare to his old servant Murray, and his nurse ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... break and rend and tear—all the birds represented were of a predatory kind. Even the fishes are those which are born to destroy, to wound, to torture. The collection, I assure you, was an object lesson in human malignity. This being has enough evil in his face to frighten even a strong man. It is little wonder that the sight of it put that poor girl ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... nation on earth, whether friends or enemies, will unite in despising you. 'Tis an incendiary war upon society, which nothing can excuse or palliate,—an improvement upon beggarly villany—and shows an inbred wretchedness of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful imbecility of an ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... added to the malignity of his enemies. Roosevelt was warned that he was "shadowed" night and day, but he laughed their scheming to scorn. It is an article of faith with him that an honest man has nothing to fear from plotters, and ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... They are men worth knowing." He does not probe philosophically into complex causes of poverty and crime. His social creed was well formulated by Dowden in these words: "Banish from earth some few monsters of selfishness, malignity, and hypocrisy, set to rights a few obvious imperfections in the machinery of society, inspire all men with a cheery benevolence, and everything will go well with this ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the perils of infancy. It is evidently an established and well-understood thing among them: all seem to be aware of their destiny, to eat or be eaten. What else can they do? Human beings would do the same under the same circumstances; and I have never seen the least sign of personal spite or malignity in the spider. There is no pursuit, for there is no escape; and we can only conclude that, as the new-born fish's first nourishment is the contents of the yolk-sac, partly outside, though still a portion of its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... life, absolutely simple, truthful, and receptive, reaching out its tender faculties like the sensitive antennae of a new-born insect, that feel forth upon the unknown with the faultless instinct of eternal mind—one has only to imagine that condition to realize that the most ingenious malignity could hardly contrive anything to offer it so perplexing, cramping, and discouraging as the unintelligible and unreasonable absurdities of English literary spelling. That it somehow generally wrestles through is only a demonstration of the wrong that is done to it; and ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... is to be subjected to the scrutiny of a parish meeting on Tuesday, when, though the minute accuracy of a professional accountant is not to be expected of one whose province is not to serve tables, it will be evident that only malignity to the Church could have devised the attack to which your paper has ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other ladies, thought Hazlitt surly and cared nothing for his treatise on human nature. Therefore (it is true Hazlittian logic) no woman cares for sentiment. The sex which despised him must be despicable. Equally characteristic is his profound belief that his failure in another line is owing to the malignity of the world at large. In one of his most characteristic Essays he asks whether genius is conscious of its powers. He writes what he declares to be a digression about his own experience, and we may believe as much as we please of his assertion that he does not quote himself as an example of genius. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the sofa. The breaking-up of her short hour of happiness had been too sudden, too abrupt, and too cruelly brought about for a fondly doting, although heroic, woman. There was an evident malignity in the words and manner of the one-eyed messenger, an appearance as if he knew more than others, which awed and confused both Philip and herself. Amine wept not, but she covered her face with her ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... she had set up was gradually changing his god-like radiance for a sombre hue, his heavenly countenance for one of dark malignity. So must all false idols change. The brighter and more beautiful they appear at first, the blacker and more hideous will ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... sermon preached before the Parliament, about the beginning of the reign of King Charles I. affirms the power of prayer to be so great, that though there be a conjunction or opposition of Saturn or Mars, (as there was one of them then) it will overcome the malignity of it. In the life of Vavasor Powel, is a memorable account of the effect of fervent prayer, after an exceeding drought: and Mr. Baxter (in his book aforementioned) hath several instances ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... your children be taken from you to serve my purposes!" Through the dense fog she fancied that he glared upon her in bitter hatred—his deep-set eyes flashing with demoniac fire, and his smile, now extending, now contracting, into all the varied expressions of triumphant malignity! She pressed her hand on her eyes to shut out the horrid vision, and, a prayer, a simple prayer, rose to her lips. Like oil upon the troubled waters, it soothed and composed her spirit. She could not arrange, or even remember, a form ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... he uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomed exercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. His colour became a violent pink. "Lunatic!" he said. "Dangerous Lunatic! He didn't do anything—anything bad ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... and Vegetables, &c. Secondly, of the Requisits to a perfect knowledge of the Metallick Art, and of the Qualities of the Mine-master; then of the Diseases of Mine-men, and their Cure, and the waies of purging the Mines of the Airs malignity; as also of Metallognomy, or the signs of latent Mettals, and by what Art they may be discovered. Thirdly, several Accounts sent to the Author, upon his Inquiries by the Mine-masters themselves, or other cheif ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... free and joyous and full of good will. You fear and dislike him of the sneering laugh. How does God laugh? He says, "I will laugh at their calamity and mock at their misfortune," speaking of some who have sinned. Think of the malice and malignity of that in an infinite God when speaking of the sufferings He is going to impose upon His children. You know that it is said of a Roman emperor that he wrote laws very finely, and posted them so high on the walls that no one could read them, and then he punished the people who ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... two centuries, Armed and threatening either, Turned unto him submissively, As waiting fate together; He made a silence, and arbiter He sat between the two. He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending, Mark of immense malignity, And of a pity unending, Of hatred inappeasable, Of deathless ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... seemed to savour of something different from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty as a Christian man, and all the conscience that he had stimulated his hatred. The flute was broken: the French books were sent out of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only way," she gasped in a sort of triumphant malignity. "The only thing that keeps old folks like me happy is the sense that they can make other people step around. To be old and rich and have poor descendants is almost as much fun as to be young and beautiful and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... forms of dramatic exhibition, and poetry ceases to be expressed upon them. Comedy loses its ideal universality: wit succeeds to humour; we laugh from self-complacency and triumph, instead of pleasure; malignity, sarcasm, and contempt succeed to sympathetic merriment; we hardly laugh, but we smile. Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... began to be much warmed by many little kindnesses on the part of the latter as she observed Miss Burney's somewhat careworn brow. It has since been confided to me that the account given of her by Miss Burney to her friends was one of uncontrolled malignity; but though my testimony is humble, it is sincere, and I can describe Mrs Schwellenberg, apart from her acknowledged devotion to her Royal Mistress, as possessing a much more kindly heart than Miss Burney would consent to allow her. Her imperfect knowledge ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... which it degrades the character of rational and moral beings.—What evils spring from the love of money, and from the desire of power;—from the contests of rivals, and the tumults of party,—what envy, hatred, malignity, and revenge.—What complicated wretchedness follows the train of ambition,—contempt of human suffering, countries depopulated, and fields deluged with blood. Such are the results of desire, when not ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... enough. One might have thought that Tom would have been satisfied with merely blacking his face, and leaving to chance the identification of the negro who might be apprehended. He would hardly have implicated, out of pure malignity, his grandfather's old servant, who had been his own care-taker for many years. Here, however, Carteret could see where Tom's own desperate position operated to furnish a probable motive for the crime. The surest way to head off suspicion from himself was to direct it strongly toward ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... penny-a-liners, or (worse insult still) apologised for, with half-hearted shrugs, by lukewarm advocates. The purest in life and the most unselfish in purpose of all mankind, he was persecuted alive with the utmost rancour of hate, and pursued when dead with the vilest shafts of malignity. He never even knew in his scattered grave the good he was to do to later groups ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... good-nature. Her large blue eyes, on fit occasions, became affectionate and caressing. But if any one dared to wound or ruffle her pride, gainsay her orders or harm her interests, her countenance, usually placid and serene, betrayed a cold but implacable malignity. Mrs. Grivois entered the cabinet, holding in her hand Florine's report of the manner in which Adrienne de Cardoville had ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... countenance that made Philip recoil so sharply from the sight of his own handiwork—he had fought too often at school to be chicken-hearted about a little bloodshed; and, besides, he knew that his cousin was only knocked about, not really injured—but rather the intense and almost devilish malignity of the expression that hovered on the blurred features and in the half-closed eyes. But no attempt was made by George to translate the look into words, and indeed Philip felt that it was untranslatable. ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... involved name, and fame, and fortune, and friends, and life, all that was most dear to man. Ages rolled on. If the followers of truth increased in number, so also did vice intensify her power and her malignity; the people sank into deeper corruption, the state drifted ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... service; but all these united are insufficient to support enduringly a system of munificence against this formidable antagonist. For selfishness may entirely submerge the sympathies, so that he who can weep with his bereaved neighbor at the grave of his child, may, with the malignity of a fiend, be inwardly pleased at the death of an enemy. Selfishness may so control the conscience, that it will utter no upbraiding accents; and so bewilder the keen-sightedness of reason, that one may put darkness for light, and bitter for sweet, and ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... to think they would have been willing to go to quite such lengths, though they seem to have shown enough malignity toward their patriotic fellow-countrymen to make it evident that they had something of the spirit of the cruel and ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live wire. I listened. Behind the stateroom door there followed a silence, grimly intense; then a dull pounding; then the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... without relating another instance of the pleasant malignity of M. de Lauzun. In marrying a daughter of the Marechal de Lorges, he had hoped, as I have already said, to return into the confidence of the King by means of the Marechal, and so be again entrusted with military command. Finding these hopes ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... were before St. Jean d'Acre, he expressed himself greatly dissatisfied with Junot, and complained of the injury he had done him by his indiscreet disclosures, which he began to regard as the inventions of malignity. I perceived afterwards that he never pardoned Junot for this indiscretion; and I can state, almost with certainty, that this was one of the reasons why Junot was not created a marshal of France, like many of, his comrades whom Bonaparte had ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... they are, the more they indicate envy. The same eyes, when dry, show the possessors to be faithless, traitorous, and sacrilegious; and if these eyes are also yellow and cold, they argue insanity. For hollow eyes are the sign of craft and malignity; and if they are wanting in darkness, they also show foolishness. But if the eyes are too hollow, and of medium size, dry and rigid,—if, besides this, they have broad, overhanging eyebrows, and livid and pallid circles round them, they indicate impudence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... cannot help closing this book with kindly feelings towards the editor, inasmuch as it aids in the good work of restoring the true portrait of the man who has suffered more than any other from the mischievous malignity of foes and the more mischievous indiscretion of certain ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... resist the forces of nature, and their terrible ability to injure him, would inspire a sense of terror; which in turn would give rise to the twofold notion of omnipotence and malignity. The savage of the present day lives in perpetual fear of evil spirits; and the superstitious dread, which I and most others have suffered, is inherited from our savage ancestry. How much further back we must seek it may be left to the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... readily to La Rochefoucauld, and the Germans to Lichtenberg. Certainly a word of La Rochefoucauld beside the psychologizing proverb looks like the scintillating, well-cut diamond beside a moonstone. "We imitate good actions through emulation, and bad ones through a malignity in our nature which shame concealed and example sets at liberty"; "It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow"; "While the heart is still agitated by the remains of a passion, it is more susceptible to a new one than when entirely at rest"; "Women ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg |
