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Nefarious   Listen
adjective
Nefarious  adj.  Wicked in the extreme; abominable; iniquitous; atrociously villainous; execrable; detestably vile.
Synonyms: Iniquitous; detestable; horrible; heinious; atrocious; infamous; impious. See Iniquitous.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nefarious" Quotes from Famous Books



... have done every thing. You have aided and abetted the escape of an outlaw. You have assisted him in his nefarious occupation of Dalton Hall. You have aided and abetted him in the imprisonment of Dalton's brat. You have aided and abetted him in the murder of my boy Leon. ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille

... bending over Randy, who was still unconscious. Mother and daughter had carried our hero from the yard to their room in the rear of the tenement. Nobody else had been around. The girl had witnessed Bill Hosker's nefarious deed and had at once summoned ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.

... wanting, in a single issue. Le Breton was entrusted with the business of printing them. The manuscript was set in type, Diderot corrected the proof-sheets, saw the revises, and returned each sheet duly marked with his signature for the press. At this point the nefarious operation of Le Breton began. He and his foreman took possession of the sheets, and proceeded to retrench, cut out, and suppress every passage, line, or phrase, that appeared to them to be likely to provoke clamour or the anger of the government. They ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... all passers-by could see and read it. Later in the day I went to tell Fadda Pierce of the trouble which had befallen me, and he consoled me with the assurance that the work of destruction had been wrought—not by a human being, as I had surmised, but by cutworms, a kind of reptile that plies its nefarious trade between two days for no other apparent purpose than that of making gentlemen farmers like ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... unprecedented epidemic now raging there. I had an opportunity of discovering, involuntarily, the designs of sundry malevolent persons who looked upon this terrible time as an excellent occasion for carrying out their nefarious designs. The dregs of the population have been roused to action, and only await the signal to pour their ignorant, brutal herds all over the kingdom. This is no idle tale I am telling you, General. I have heard their seditious mutterings, I have read their letters, I have seen the ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... September, as a sequel to the telegram we have just quoted, an enormous circular message of several thousand words was sent in code from Peking to all the Military and Civil Governors in the provinces instructing them precisely how to act in order to throw a cloak over the nefarious deed. After explaining the so-called "Law on the General Convention of the Citizens' Representatives" (i. e. national referendum) the following illuminating sentences occur which require no comment ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... misfortune to differ in matters of foreign policy, the Moscow Gazette had denounced me publicly by name as a person who was in the habit of visiting daily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—doubtless with the nefarious purpose of obtaining by illegal means secret political information—and the police had concluded that I was a fit and proper person to be closely watched. In reality, my relations with the Russian Foreign Office, though inconvenient to the ex-ambassador, were perfectly regular ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... as the hugeness of this nefarious business gradually dawned on them. For insurance swindlers and smugglers to work on such a large scale, very probably the organization branched over the whole civilized world. This vast shapeless vessel was a spider at the center of ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... surrounded by free States, we would advise the removal of negroes from the frontier counties to Kansas, where they will be comparatively safe. Abolitionists too well know the character of the Kansas squatter to attempt to carry out the nefarious schemes of the underground ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... the weather-worn structure. He had little doubt that this was the place dreamt of, or seen clairvoyantly, by Myra, that this was the place to which Ferrara had retreated in order to conduct his nefarious operations. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... Mistah," a man with a matted beard chimed in, and added with a wink: "She'll find it pleasant enough—fer a while. Some of those other niggers will go too, and they'd rather go to hell. They do treat 'em nefarious down thah on the wholesale plantations. Household niggers! there ain't none better off than them. But seven years in a cotton swamp,—seven years ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to resist the attacks of the Norsemen. England sent out many expeditions to destroy the pestiferous freebooters who swarmed from the African coast, and finally, in 1815, the United States sent Decatur to Algiers to annihilate the nefarious corsairs, who had thrived and become brazen in their recklessness during the three centuries of their ascendant power. The incursions of the Algerine pirates were made as far north as England, Ireland, and Iceland, and through them an iniquitous slave trade was developed. The law of nations did ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... Adelle Clark, more time than any one in her whole career hitherto had given to consideration of her. It was clear enough to him that Mrs. John Clark, honest woman though she appeared to be, could not cope with the situation that must present itself. Nor, of course, could the girl. The nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, was evidence enough that the ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... mostly in the northern suburbs of the city. Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases, politics were closely mixed up ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... I am told, is never to be seen except seated in one position at the same desk, and this desk is so constructed, as to hide his lower limbs in great part, while still enabling him to prosecute his nefarious work." ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... circle. Some uncharitably minded fighting men were wont to insinuate that the best beloved brands of jam, such as strawberry and raspberry, never got beyond the Beach, the A.S.C. who handled the supplies being suspected of a nefarious weakness for these varieties. One hesitates to listen to such calumnious suggestions, but it must be admitted that for many long weeks we received an overwhelming proportion of "Apricot Jam" with which, popular as it originally was, the men became so ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... had been arrested upon a charge of abetting Howel in his crimes, and that a search-warrant for the examination of his papers had brought to light other nefarious dealings, as well as an unsigned letter, supposed to be in Howel's writing, intimating his intention of going to America. This had caused inquiries to be made at the docks, and police emissaries to be despatched forthwith to America. A person answering his description ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... I did not feel sanguine about the lock-picking, seeing that one lock had baffled us already; and my disappointment and impatience must have been a revelation to me had I stopped to think. The truth is that I was entering into our nefarious undertaking with an involuntary zeal of which I was myself quite unconscious at the time. The romance and the peril of the whole proceeding held me spellbound and entranced. My moral sense and my sense of fear ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... again for the first time at one of the Thursday dances at Government House. In the glance she gave me I was glad to detect no suspicion of collusion. She plainly could not dream that Edward Harris in his nefarious exercise of parental authority had acted upon any hint from me. It was ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... son of the spreading palm; but this is not a desert, nor a gaudy caravan. This is a feast of all angels. This is the day when Nahoum the Nefarious is to be buckled up like a belt, and ridden in a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... him murderer in the largest and fullest sense of the word; because he was the cause of the murder of our English officers and sepoys, whom he kept unarmed, and unacquainted with the danger to which they would be exposed by the violence of his transactions. He sacrificed to his own nefarious views every one of those lives, as well as the lives of the innocent natives of Benares, whom he designedly drove to resistance by the weakness of the force opposed to them, after inciting them by tyranny and insult to that display of affection towards their sovereign ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... sad-faced old maid. She became smiling and animated. She no longer kept at home, but walked abroad. Her step was quick and strong; she looked on at the tree-choppers, the builders, and the painters, at their nefarious work, no more in helpless grief and indignation, but with an unmistakable expression ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... jails. When men are thrown together in a place where reputation is valueless, they have no inducement to conceal their vices. What is the consequence? They delight in recounting to each other their nefarious exploits: thus conscience is more and more corrupted, and the young and inexperienced are initiated into the skilful manoeuvres of adepts. Whoever has read the first edition of Ellwood's Life, (for the subsequent ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... the subservient attorney and his corrupt and arrogant friend depended to convict an innocent man of an infamous crime, that a private and nefarious object might thereby be enforced—that court were now destined to be arrested in their career of judicial oppression before they had time to add another stain to their already blackened characters: for, at this moment, a deep and piercing groan, issuing from one of the prison-rooms beneath, ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... under a very harsh code. Washington was a centre for the interstate slave-trade, and John Randolph, himself a slaveholder, could not restrain his indignation that "we should have here in the very streets of our metropolis a depot for this nefarious traffic;" but Congress ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... vagrants and gipsies. These seem to have observed their caste rules and to have intermarried among themselves; sometimes they obtained wives from other families who had no connection with Thuggee and kept their wives in ignorance of their nefarious trade; occasionally a girl would be spared from a murdered party and married to a son of one of the Thugs; while boys were more frequently saved and brought up to the business. The Thugs said [681] that ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... the Welsh Society at New York, facts were stated, showing the depravity and audacity of the crimps at Liverpool and New York. The President of the Society said that, owing to the nefarious practices against emigrants, the Germans first, then the Irish, after that the Welsh, and lastly the English residents of the city had taken the matter in hand by the formation of ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... said Mr. Briggerland. "I fear that he and Hoggins were engaged in some nefarious plan and that in making an attempt to enter—as, of course, they had no right to enter—a block of flats in Cavendish Place, poor Talmot slipped and fell from the fourth floor window-sill, breaking his leg. Hoggins had to carry ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... the tale of her gallantries, and even take a delight in them. And there were portraits of lovers, distinguished gentlemen, who presided in the houses of their former mistresses, and helped them in their nefarious business. Society women were thieves. The men were bawds, the girls were Lesbian. And all these things happened in the highest society: the society of rich people—the only society that mattered. For that made it possible to offer the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... keen, loathsome, malevolent, nauseous, obstinate, passionate, quarrelsome, raging, saucy, tantalizing, uncomfortable, vexatious, abominable, bitter, captious, disagreeable, execrable, fierce, grating, gross, hasty, malicious, nefarious, obstreperous, peevish, restless, savage, tart, unpleasant, violent, waspish, worrying, acrimonious, blustering, careless, discontented, fretful, growling, hateful, inattentive, malignant, noisy, odious, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... be chosen, the members of which shall hang about the various haunts of vice in back slums, and learn as much as possible of the nefarious projects of the desperate characters who frequent such dens. Each member should report daily, and if he is not familiar with the 'flash' dialect in which thieves converse (which is very improbable, if chosen as suggested), ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... arm grasp me tightly, and for a moment a chill ran over me at being caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a dwelling-house at night. But it was only Kennedy, who had already tucked the precious little tin ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... or tattered and decayed by age. Desolate, however, as it was, this was the apartment of the castle which had been judged most fitting for the accommodation of the Saxon heiress; and here she was left to meditate upon her fate, until the actors in this nefarious drama had arranged the several parts which each of them was to perform. This had been settled in a council held by Front-de-Boeuf, De Bracy, and the Templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... to justify my fears. The other side seemed to be sunk in dull security. The President went often to the Ministry of Finance, and was closeted for hours with Don Antonio; I suppose they were perfecting their nefarious scheme. There were no signs of excitement or activity at the barracks; the afternoon gatherings on the Piazza were occupied with nothing more serious than the prospects of lawn tennis and the grievous dearth of dances. The official announcements relative to the ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... numerous offspring. The village saw itself overrun with a race and a perpetuity of Corporal's cats! Perhaps, too, their teacher growing more expert by practice, the descendants might attain to even greater accomplishment than their nefarious progenitor. No longer did the faint hope of being delivered from their tormentor by an untimely or even natural death, occur to the harassed Grassdalians. Death was an incident natural to one cat, however vivacious, but here was a dynasty of cats! ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... ago, ere its transformation. Its patroness is the Madonna del Carmine—the same whose church in Naples is frequented by thieves and cut-throats, who make a special cult of this Virgin Motherand invoke Her blessing on their nefarious undertakings. ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... of the Universe. In Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica, 1824, Sir Richard is thus contemptuously referred to: 'This personage is the editor of The Monthly Magazine, in which many of his effusions may be found with the signature of "Common Sense."' It is not too much to say that but for Borrow this nefarious man would be utterly forgotten; as it is, he lives for ever in the pages of Lavengro, a hissing and a reproach. Authors have an ugly trick of getting the better of their publishers in the long run. After leaving London Borrow began the wanderings described ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... up silently. The fact that the room was still in darkness made it obvious that something nefarious was afoot. Plainly there was dirty work in preparation at the cross-roads. He stared into the blackness, and, as his eyes grew accustomed to it, was presently able to see an indistinct form bending over something ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... issued by the vice commission of Chicago leaves no room for doubt upon this point. The report estimates the yearly profit of this nefarious business as conducted in Chicago to be between fifteen and sixteen millions of dollars. Although these enormous profits largely accrue to the men who conduct the business side of prostitution, the report emphasizes the fact that the average girl earns very much ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... see perfectly what he meant by that, and I liked him more for this little generosity than I disliked him for his nefarious scheme. In fact, I did n't dislike him at all when I saw what an influence my judgment would have on him. I very soon gave him the full benefit of it. I had thought over his case with all the advantages of his own presentation of it, and it was ...
— The Path Of Duty • Henry James

... obvious that while these large interests are enlisted in favor of its continuance it will be difficult, if not impossible, to suppress the nefarious traffic, and that its results would be in effect but a continuance of the slave trade in another and more cruel form; for it can be but a matter of little difference to the African whether he is torn from his country and transported to the West Indies as a slave in the regular course ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt), And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios Who pursue a mild flirtation ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... mother, "it is a truth that wine attracts the bees, particularly sweet wine. But it is not to be wished that those nefarious flies should place themselves on the mouth of my Jacquot, as their sting is cruel. One day in biting into a peach a bee stung me on the tongue, and I had to suffer fiendish pains. They would be calmed only by a little earth, mixed up with spittle, which ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France

... anything but limp tulle this evening. No, I'm perfectly all right, I just want to rest for a little while and I promise I'll be positively incandescent at dinner. No, Juliet dear, I wouldn't keep you or anybody else away from Peter's nefarious projects ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... necessary for the collector to exercise the greatest caution in acquiring a valuable old book from any but a reputable bookseller. The fabrication of a page or so—especially a title-page—is a comparatively small matter to the nefarious dealer who hopes by this means to obtain for his copy the price which a perfect one would command. 'Perfect' copies of rare fifteenth-century works are made up from two or more imperfect ones, title-pages and leaves are ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... those who are to form our own group against those who belong to other groups. Those who belong to our own group are good; those who belong to hostile groups are wicked. The ends which are pursued by our own group are desirable ends, the ends pursued by hostile groups are nefarious. The subjectivity of this situation is not apparent to the gregarious animal, which feels that the general principles of justice are on the side of its own herd. When the animal has arrived at the dignity of the metaphysician, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... unsightly prey, was indeed a singular spectacle. Whatever had brought on this queer contest, the fisher had won—fairly, too, for aught I could see; and I hadn't it in my heart to intercept his retreat. But Ben, to whom a "black cat" was particularly obnoxious, from its nefarious habit of robbing traps, had no such scruples, and, bringing up his rifle with the careless quickness of an old woodsman, fired before I could interpose a word. The fisher dropped, and after writhing and snapping a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... that night when the four conspirators met to carry out their nefarious project. Dick was carrying a bag—in which was the joey—a bull's-eye lantern, various coloured feathers, and other small necessaries, and the party hastened in the direction of Mr. Ham's humble residence. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... said, "of Sant' Andrea, What helped it thee of me to make a screen? What blame have I in thy nefarious life?" ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... the Sullan restoration than the body of the Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as a clique for centuries and had every year become more enervated and embittered by age, and that all that was hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately traceable to that aristocracy. Sulla reorganized the state—not, however, as the master of the house who puts his shattered estate and household in order according to his own discretion, but as the temporary business-manager ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the brandy through "Billy." One of Brigson's most cursed legacies to the school was the introduction of this man to a nefarious intercourse with the boys. His character was so well-known that it had long been forbidden, under the strictest penalty, for any boy ever to speak to him; yet, strange to say, they seemed to take a pleasure in doing so, and just now particularly, it was thought ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... of it. The old friendship between my father and Squire Denistoun had never been broken; and now that death had taken away the last excuse for a rivalry which had been felt but to be renounced, Constantia and I— unconscious brats—shared holidays, as it chanced at my home or hers, in nefarious poaching beside Avon or in gallops between her northern moors and ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... used to catch them in quantities and with an ease unknown to Englishmen. I am told (by an expert) that using a grasshopper as a bait is no better than poaching, and that I might as well take to the nefarious "white line," or Cocculus indicus. That may be so according to the deeper ethics of the sport, but I am inclined to think many men would have no desire to fish at all after going through the preliminary task of filling a small tin ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... pursued, could not be forever continued, and after many warnings the supplies were stopped. Incapable of reformation, Justin Arnold, in order to obtain the means of dissipation, connected himself with a cleverly-organized band of swindlers and forgers, who so adroitly managed their nefarious business, that, till his capture, they had contrived to keep themselves clear of the law—the inferior tools and dupes having been alone caught in its fatal meshes. The defence, under these circumstances necessarily a difficult, almost ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... troublesome at any time, or if he should show any conscientious scruples when called upon to execute the will of his masters, they would turn him adrift without an hour's warning, and crush him, with the evidence of his guilt in their possession, if he had the hardihood to whisper a word about the nefarious transactions he ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... shall I say? or how am I to tell you what she is? Twenty years ago, she was the loveliest of slaves; to-day she is what you see her— prematurely old, disgraced by the practice of every vice and every nefarious industry, but free, rich, married, they say, to some reputable man, whom may Heaven assist! and exercising among her ancient mates, the slaves of Cuba, an influence as unbounded as its reason is mysterious. Horrible rites, it is supposed, cement her empire: the rites of Hoodoo. ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... enthusiastic love for his profession, and in describing a storm at sea his rather monotonous style of writing suddenly rises to eloquence. But in his exalted devotion to the Almighty War Lord, and to the Fatherland, he openly reveals his fanatical joy in the nefarious ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner

... magistrate who presided at the martyrdom of St. Romanus calls them in Prudentius "a rebel people"; that Galerius speaks of them as "a nefarious conspiracy"; the heathen in Minucius, as "men of a desperate faction"; that others make them guilty of sacrilege and treason, and call them by those other titles which, more closely resembling the language of Tacitus, have ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... subordinate officers, who have their own conceptions of loyalty. His career had begun in a tropical colony. He had liked his work there. It was police work. He had been very successful in tracking and breaking up certain nefarious secret societies amongst the natives. Then he took his long leave, and got married rather impulsively. It was a good match from a worldly point of view, but his wife formed an unfavourable opinion of the colonial climate on hearsay evidence. On the ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... of rising in opposition to these nefarious attempts was felt by the entire country. Not a man would ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... need to raise the question of the genuineness of this strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it, or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was designed—whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the friars. On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of treason, sacrilege, and violence. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... "steam-boating" in general, Ben Wilford was a very unskillful pilot. If he had understood the management of a boat half as well as Lawry, the nefarious scheme might have been successful. He saw his brother; he did not wish to have him come on board, for Lawry might be so obstinate as to induce one of his dissolute companions to fire at him. He rang the ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic

... the stock in the new Lallapaloosa Company at fifty cents upon the dollar, and if this nefarious deal is permitted to go through they will thus acquire a property worth ten millions for five hundred thousand dollars, of which they will use only one hundred and twenty-five thousand in payment of old indebtedness. ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... seen from the first how the issue would have to be met, and met it at the first opportunity. Griffin having defied his authority by openly inviting the Millionaire Baby up for the nefarious practice of matching pennies, Dink marched up the stairs ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... the prevailing type of Australian politician. The value of a member is too often measured by the services he renders to his constituents individually or the amount of money he can get the Government to spend in his constituency. Hence the nefarious practice of log-rolling in Parliament. Is it any wonder that some of the colonies promise to rival France in the proportion of unreproductive works constructed out of ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... by the Holy See—Peter the Fuller at Antioch, Peter the Stammerer at Alexandria. He denied that the Pope was the supreme maintainer of discipline, by making the two great sees of the East and South subordinate to himself. As the Pope expressed it in his sentence, he had done "nefarious things against the whole Nicene constitution," of which the Pope was special guardian. In fact, his conduct was an imitation of that pursued in the preceding century by Eusebius of Nicomedia, by Eudoxius, and all their party. ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... deserted me, and only the morning admonished me again to take courage. It seemed to me probable that the man who had induced me to commit this nefarious deed, as it now appeared to me, might not denounce me. I immediately resolved to set to work in my vaulted room, and if possible to assume an indifferent look. But alas! an additional circumstance, which I only now noticed, increased my anxiety still more. My cap and my girdle, as well ...
— The Severed Hand - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Wilhelm Hauff

... whom he feared and admired absolutely and he had been a most useful spy and agent for the Skipper in certain nefarious plots. It was well for the little hunchback that no one knew of his share in the betraying of old Juan Sebastian ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... intellect and boundless self-conceit happened to be the commander-in-chief of the government army when the insurrection collapsed. The politicians, whose nefarious scheming had prolonged the war, saw their opportunity for furthering their own interests by securing his popularity. They assumed him to be the greatest military genius that the world had ever produced; as evidenced ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... careful to omit any mention of the Paul Revere's captain, remembering just in time that hardy riverman's promise to blow his brains out if he even so much as breathed his name in connection with certain nefarious transactions,—and something told him that Cephas Redberry would put a short, sharp stop to any breathing at all on his part the instant he laid eyes on him. He was not afraid of Barry Lapelle but he was in deadly terror of Redberry. The more he thought of Ceph being landed in the same ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... would concur in upholding domestic slavery. It was a nefarious institution. It was the curse of Heaven on the States where it prevailed. Compare the free regions of the Middle States, where a rich and noble cultivation marks the prosperity and happiness of the people, with the misery and poverty which overspread the barren wastes of ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... sympathetic ears all the duplicity, all the treachery, all the insidious cunning and all the serpent-like wisdom of her unscrupulous sex. What she said neither I nor any of the sons of men are ever likely to know! but so proud of belonging to that nefarious sisterhood, so overweening in her sex-conceit did she render Liosha, that when they entered the little private sitting-room next door whither, according to the instructions conveyed by Barbara's parting glance downstairs, I had dragged a softly swearing Jaffery, she marched up to him ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... of every land abandoned women are so numerous, despite all these centuries of law-making and moralizing, that they find it impossible to earn a livelihood by their nefarious trade—are driven by sheer necessity to seek more respectable employment. The supply of public prostitutes is apparently limited only by the demand, while the number of "kept women" is constantly increasing, and society becoming ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... "I have no money. I have lived partly upon the woman who adopted me, and partly by nefarious means. Science is great, it is fascinating, it is the joy of my life, but one must live. I have tasted luxury. I cannot live as a workingman. The woman who adopted me is all the time at my elbow, telling me that I must marry Lois because of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... particular of your habits and such circumstances of your life as you are aware of. I now proclaim how you have wickedly and sacrilegiously turned the Old Free Grace Meeting-House into a slave-pen, whence for above a year you have conducted a nefarious and most inhuman commerce ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... sadly. "No, this low fellow is a white man and a scoundrel. He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name and dragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes. He has made Tui Tulifau drunk. He has made him very drunk. He has kept him very drunk all the time. In return, he has been made Chancellor of the Exchequer and other things. He has issued this false paper and compelled the people to receive it. He has levied a store tax, a ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... salt-water! Here, huddled together in confused, hopeless misery and ruin, lie, fettered and prostrate, even priest as well as potentate, undistinguishable victims of crude, unblenching violence, with its climax of nefarious sacrilege. We, common mortals, therefore, can hope for no deliverance from, or even succour in, the woful plight thus dismally contrived for us all by the fair-skinned race who have now become our masters." Such was naturally the train of thought that ran through ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... that devil's brew of rascals, jailbirds, murderers and cutthroats who libel all honest working men by calling themselves the Industrial Workers of the World; but in the light of their nefarious plots, I call them the Industrious WRECKERS ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... barbarous idea of carrying off the child. He had little difficulty in obtaining the assistance of a band of Indians; and, disguising himself as one of them, he led an attack on the place, and succeeded too well in his nefarious project. As the country was in a disturbed state at the time, the attack was supposed to have been instigated by American sympathisers, and the real culprit was not suspected. Making good his retreat, he did not stop till he had got many ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston

... flashed East, and Wickersham came posting back to Denver with the worst case of monopoly fright he had ever experienced. The day after his arrival the Tribune had something to say in every department of his nefarious mission, and every reference to him bristled with biting irony and downright accusation. Never was a "good fellow and a ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... bridle of my horse, and kept me waiting for a long time in the middle of a crowd, while they toilsomely bored through the passport, turning it up and down, and holding it up to the light, as though there were some nefarious mystery about it. My horse stumbled so badly that I was obliged to walk to save myself from another fall, and, just as my powers were failing, we met a kuruma, which by good management, such as being carried occasionally, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... soldiers, was soon forced to agree to the treaty of Nanking, by which the island of Hong-Kong was ceded to the English, several important ports were opened to British traders, and the perpetuation of the nefarious traffic in opium ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... white man who settles down in one of the South Sea Islands and lives by trading with the natives for copra—the dried kernels of cocoanuts—pearl shells, and the sea slug Beche de mer; often living by wrecking, kidnapping the natives, or any nefarious scheme. Many of them have been drunken, unprincipled scoundrels, their ranks in the old days having been recruited from the convicts escaped from ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... alone in his chamber, with his head resting upon his hand, anxiously pondered upon the possible issues of this nefarious day's doings, the sailor advanced, in broad daylight towards the land to keep ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... quarters of the captain and passengers. The stern is usually ornamented with carving, as English vessels used to be in old days. The dhow carries but one sail, lateen-shaped, and the mast stoops forward at a sharp angle. These craft have not unfrequently been engaged in the nefarious slave traffic carried on on the east coast ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... Ham's nefarious work appeared to be finished; and, without being able to decide what I should do, I hurried back to my chamber, even forgetting all about poor Bully in my agitation. I heard the step of Ham a moment later. The whining of the dog attracted his attention, and he let him in before he went ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... Laverick asked, "why I should answer questions from a person whom I discover apparently engaged in a nefarious ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... is the way you got covered with mud, is it?" exclaimed the driver, who, though apparently contented with this explanation, strongly suspected that his two customers had been engaged in some nefarious transaction. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... part enraged in the nefarious traffic of the White Nile are Syrians, Copts, Turks, Circassians, and some few EUROPEANS. So closely connected with the difficulties of my expedition is that accursed slave-trade, that the so-called ivory trade of the White ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... why hesitate? So Harrington ponders a moment and decides; yes, even to that level of iniquity had Abdul Hamid II sunk. The atomiser was one of the instruments of torture he made use of. And when the bad Sultan is finally checked in his nefarious career, and dragged off to prison, where he gets nothing but hard bread to eat and filthy water to drink, Bob retains the impression that all this came about because the Young Turks grew tired of having their throats washed ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... is, and I now enter into a compact with you, and every one of you, and with the help of God you and I joined together—giving you the best I can, and you giving me all your strength behind me—we will yet defeat the most nefarious conspiracy that has ever been hatched against a free people. But I know full well that this Resolution has a still wider meaning. It shows me that you realise the gravity of the situation that is before us, and it shows me that you are here to express your determination to see this ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... may be said in the first place, that they act as an annual register for tabulating the amount of danger to which society is exposed by the nefarious operations of lawless persons. By these statistics we are informed of the number of crimes committed during the course of the year so far as they are reported to the police. We are informed of the number of persons brought to trial for the perpetration ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... propitious field for Anarchist outrage lay before him. Others opined that he had contemplated committing an outrage in the immediate vicinity of the spot which witnessed his own death; and others, again, that, having manufactured his infernal machine for some nefarious purpose either at home or abroad, he was suddenly seized either with fear or remorse, and had journeyed to this unobserved spot in order to bury it. The papers hinted at accomplices and talked about the usual "widespread conspiracy"; ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... Saviour says on this subject; "it must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man through whom they come"—Witness some fulfilment of this declaration in the tremendous destruction, of Jerusalem, occasioned by that most nefarious of all crimes the crucifixion of the Son of God. Did the fact of that event having been foretold, exculpate the Jews from sin in perpetrating it; No—for hear what the Apostle Peter says to them on this subject, "Him being delivered by the ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke

... first-class quarantine station. In the words of Lieutenant Long "they fully looked the part," being of distinctly merciless cut of jib. They were roughly dressed and without collars, convincing proof of some nefarious design, for when the Latin-American entitled to wear them leaves off his white collar and his cane he must be ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... you know, was never heard of again. The reason was this. In some way the Arab slave-traders—who were thick in this district then and plied their nefarious trade almost openly—gained the belief that my expedition was a pretense for a plan of espionage on them and they attacked my camp one night and slaughtered every man in it but myself. Why they did not kill me I do not know, unless it was because of the intercession of a young Arab, a mere youth ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... society is not opposed to vivisection may deceive the uninitiated. Either vivisection is a good thing and hence should not be interfered with, or it is a nefarious business and should be stopped.... You and your society are either honestly misinformed, suffer from delusions, or are lying bigots. In my opinion, mainly the latter. You are my enemy, and the enemy of every man of intelligence interested in ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... and Coffee—The adulteration of articles of human food is a practice of the most nefarious description, and cannot be too strongly deprecated, although it has been carried to an alarming extent. There is scarcely an article of ordinary consumption but has been unlawfully adulterated, and in many cases ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... lack of delicacy of speech, and shortly afterward we went to bed. Owing to the root under the tent, and puddles here and there, we could not go to sleep for a time, and we discussed the "nefarious deed," as Tish aptly termed it, that ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... trade, which passed the commons in 1804 under the spell of Wilberforce's persuasive eloquence; but Pitt's government caused a royal proclamation to be issued, which at least checked the spread of the nefarious traffic in the newly conquered colonies. A larger measure failed to pass the house of commons in 1805, but in 1806 Fox and Grenville succeeded in committing both houses to an open condemnation of the trade. This ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... fact, known to the world, will carry as clear conviction to it, of the correctness of our knowledge of the treasonable views of the federal party of that day, as that disclosed by this, the most nefarious and daring attempt to dissever the Union, of which the Hartford Convention was a subsequent chapter: and both of these having failed, consolidation becomes the first chapter of the next book of their history. But this ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... punishment. Often, by thus making an example of a few, large numbers are prevented from doing further mischief. In the early history of nearly every one of our western territories, escaped convicts, murderers, thieves and the worst sort of humanity, mingled in with good men, have commenced their nefarious practices on a grand scale. These things have brought such sections of our country into bad repute abroad. It needs but time for communities to ferret these human monsters out and visit upon them a just retribution. The inland ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... you knew all!' said Theodora; 'and who—' then breaking off, 'Percy did tell papa that it was all Mr. Gardner's revenge for Arthur's not consenting to some nefarious transaction. Depend upon it, that was it! You asked Violet, you say. Percy said that, among the sentences he overheard on the quay, there was something about a wife who had crossed him, and who should suffer for it. He said it was spoken with a hard-hearted wickedness that, ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... votes required because men will not legislate away evils that they do not heartily wish away? Is government corrupted because men desire shield and opportunity for dishonest speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious combinations? The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate a better generation of men, if it be so we can not, except vi et armis, influence the generation ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... his nefarious work, and in a twinkling he had Dick's hands bound behind him and had a gag placed in the youth's mouth. Then he had the lad bound fast ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer

... militated against him. He was obliged to admit that he had been a protege of "that dreadful man Liszt," as the potentate of Weimar was characterised by Lady Macfarren, an all-powerful factor in the control of the institution; and that proving finally his abandonment to a nefarious modernity, ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman

... red-handed at his nefarious trafficking (them was the very words I used) ... I not only caught the blighter, but I put his ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... of San Martin's accusations was drawn up in the most minute manner, replying to every charge seriatim, and bringing to light a multitude of nefarious practices on the part of his Government, which had been previously kept back. Lest I might appear in the invidious light of an accuser, I was strongly dissuaded from its publication, as being unnecessary, the Chilian Government ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... mother, on hearing of the arrest of Rivers and Grey, had taken sanctuary at Westminster. Lord Hastings, a supporter of the king, was arrested and executed because he would not sanction Gloucester's nefarious schemes for obtaining the throne. About the same time Rivers and Grey were beheaded at Pontefract, whither they had been taken by Gloucester's orders. Soon afterwards the Queen was compelled to deliver up the young ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... etc., and the planton gave me a good shove in the direction of another flight of stairs. I obligingly ascended; thinking of the Surveillant as a spider, elegantly poised in the centre of his nefarious web, waiting for a fly to ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... that a suggestion of mine, made the fall before, had taken root. My proposition was to organize all the cattlemen on the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservation into an association for mutual protection. By cooeperation we could present a united front to our enemies, the usurpers, and defy them in their nefarious schemes of exacting tribute. Other ranges besides ours had suffered by fire and fence-cutters during the winter just passed, and I returned to find my fellow cowmen a unit for organization. A meeting was called at the agency, ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams

... gambling with religion to attain any object whatsoever, and especially of swearing by the Mother of God the renunciation of the Protestant faith and the adoption of Roman Catholicism. The Spaniards, who had a hand in this nefarious proceeding, were quite convinced that, though Hawkins had been a pirate and a sea robber and murderer, now that he had come over to their faith the predisposition to his former evil habits would leave him. These were the high moral grounds on which was based the resolve ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... by the vilest treachery; and they would have been successful but for my intervention. For it is certain that the facts could never have been brought to light, had I not compelled Sekosini to speak the truth. That being the case, how could their nefarious scheme have been defeated by our side playing the game, if by 'playing the game' you mean that we were not to compel, or even permit them to incriminate themselves? To me it seems to resolve itself into this—that if one side insists on playing the game while the other side ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... by a clump of dogwoods. A shack of rough planks that clung tenaciously to the mountain side facing Saltpeter, or as it was sometimes called—Swindle Cave. The former name came from the deposit of that mineral, the latter from the counterfeiters who carried on their nefarious trade within the security ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... they had resolved on no definite nefarious plan. Hickory looking down at Patsey's bare feet instantly took off his own shoes. The bold act sent a thrill through his companions. Wan Lee took off his cloth leggings, Polly removed her shoes and stockings, but with royal foresight, ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... authorities of the district had received the most positive information of the nefarious schemes of the rioters, they had not made the slightest efforts to protect the poor creatures threatened in their persons and property, but let the tide of ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... to do all in your power to prevent inquiries being pushed too far. Do not detect all those persons who have been accomplices in this odious transaction. Let not France, so long overwhelmed in consternation, by public executions, groan anew, beneath such inflictions. When the ringleaders of this nefarious attempt shall have been secured, let severity give place to pity for inferior agents, seduced, as they may have been by dangerous falsehoods or exaggerated opinions. As a woman, a wife, and a mother, I must feel the heartrendings ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott

... father to look to for succor, having forfeited his rights both as priest and as ruler, he saw the possibility before him that any one found him, might slay him, for he was outlawed, body and soul. Notwithstanding, God conferred upon the nefarious murderer a twofold blessing. He had forfeited Church and dominion, but life and progeny were left. God promised him to protect his existence, and also gave him a wife. Two blessings these by no means to be despised; and when he heard the first part of his sentence ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... last nefarious suggestion. In July Surrey captured and burnt Morlaix;[443] but, as he wrote from on board the Mary Rose, Fitzwilliam's ships were without flesh or fish, and Surrey himself had only beer for twelve days. Want of victuals prevented further naval successes, and, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... of a young detective saves the boys from the clutches of Chinese smugglers, of whose nefarious trade they know too much. How the Professor's invention relieves a critical situation is also an ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer

... call upon you to consider the drunkenness, the stock-gambling, the rampant dishonesties, the club-houses so far as they are nefarious, the excess of fashion, the horrors of unchastity, the bad books and unclean newspapers, and the whole range of sinful amusements; and with the plough-share of truth turn up the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... appointing him a secretary of the Foreign Office, and subsequently ordered him to Shanghai to direct the management of the official newspaper there. Instead of this, however, he dared to remain in Peking pursuing his nefarious designs against the dynasty, and had it not been for the protection given by the spirits of our ancestors he certainly would have succeeded. Kang Yu-wei is therefore the arch conspirator, and his chief assistant is Liang Chi-tsao, M. A., and they are both ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland

... Charles I., 1822. Laud is represented as mainly instrumental in the conduct of the whole of this nefarious proceeding, especially in procuring the ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer

... His Holiness must have a tremendous foot if he cannot put it fairly down on the floor of the Vatican. He and his Cardinals really wail over their loss of temporal power. It would be wiser and nobler to reconcile themselves to the inevitable, and to end the nefarious diplomacy by which they are continually striving to recover what is for ever lost. The whole world is aware of the scandalous misrule and the flagrant immorality which, under the government of the Papacy, made the Eternal City a byword and a reproach. Under the secular government, ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... Marie by the Spaniards, in times past, now found a new reward. She organized the Filipinos into squads for this training, arranged suitable targets for them, supervised the loading and cleaning of their guns, and by voluntary assent became the leader in a whole lot of nefarious mischief in the neighborhood. ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... increased issue is the cause of national distress, unless, indeed, it were possible to suppose that bankers were madmen enough to dispense their paper without receiving a proper equivalent—not only senseless, but positively nefarious, when the clear broad fact stares them in the face, that Scotland has in fifteen years thrown double the amount of capital into its banking establishments, increased its productions in a threefold, and in some cases a sevenfold ratio, augmented its population by nearly half a million, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... attributed to the determination of the eunuchs and others that the Emperor should not outlive his aunt, for some time past seen to be "drawing near the wood," lest his reforming spirit should again jeopardize their nefarious interests. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... is an incident, an accent merely, in the mighty music of the Avenue, a happy discord that makes for harmony. It is no longer nefarious, or even mischievous, now the reporters have got done attributing a malign meteorological influence to it. I wish I could say as much for the white marble rocket presently soaring up from the east side of Madison Square, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... the horrible surroundings, and the universal wave of human sympathy which had been evoked, looting began almost as soon as relief. As soon as it was possible to land, ghouls began to rob the bodies of the victims. The monsters plied their nefarious trade in small boats. Skimming along the shore they would watch for an opening when troops and rescue parties were elsewhere, then land, grab what they could, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... terrorism is far greater than will ever be known. To discredit starving men on strike, to defeat socialists in an election, to promote a political intrigue, to throw the entire legislature into the hands of the reaction, to conceal corruption, or to take the public mind from too intently watching the nefarious schemes of a political-financial conspiracy—for all these and a multitude of other purposes thousands of secret police agents are at work. The sordid facts of this infamous commerce are no longer in doubt, and one wonders how the anarchists can delude themselves ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... justifiable cause of war, it surely must be this, when our territory is invaded and our means of existence threatened. That the Indians fell upon their enemies by the most nefarious stratagems, or exposed them, when taken in war, to cruel torments (though such ferocity is not alleged in this instance), does not much affect the question. They were savages, and fought white men as they and their fathers had always fought each other. How then should a community of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... controlling force exercising its power to guard reason against the predominating character and nefarious tendencies created ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... that as it may, after I was thoroughly awake, and up, and down, I still forgot it. The fried potatoes were frying themselves fast to that abominable black dish in which they are put to sizzle, and which, by the way, is the most nefarious article in the entire kitchen list to get clean (save and excepting the dish-cloth). Well, as I was saying, they burned themselves, and I ran to the rescue. Then Minie wanted me to go to the yard with her, to see a 'dear cunning little brown and gray thing, with some greenish spots, that walked ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... the troublesome insects, which are so universal an annoyance. I think they simply exist to test our character, to see whether we have courage to go on, bugs or no bugs. We do the best we can to become familiar with the habits of these nefarious creatures and let you know what we know. So I might call attention to one or two other departments—but you know how much is being accomplished. You get regular reports. You have a committee to ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... avoiding disputes with outsiders, or turning them aside with a merry jest; and rivalries and quarrels with the armoury at the Eagle began to increase. The Dragon, no doubt, turned out finer workmanship, and this the Eagle alleged was wholly owing to nefarious traffic with the old Spanish or Moorish sorcerer in Warwick Inner Ward, a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... word, or they'll put us off and make us walk. "Veev la Liberty!"' I adds, copperin' the sentiment by shovin' a banana into the source of it. I was certain the general wouldn't recognize me. The nefarious work of the tropics had left me lookin' different. There was half an inch of roan whiskers coverin' me face, and me costume was a pair of blue ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... rounded figure, and stands some five feet ten. He wears an old brown coat, cut after the fashion of a surtout, that might have fitted him, he says, when he was a man. But it has lost the right cuff, the left flap, and a part of the collar; the nefarious moths, too, have made a sieve of its back. His trowsers are of various colors, greasy down the sides, ragged at the bottoms, and revealing two encrusted ancles, with feet stuck into old shoes, turned under at the heels for convenience sake. A remark from the cribber touches ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... that Wharton was none other than one Robert Butler, whose career as a criminal and natural wickedness may well rank him with Charles Peace in the hierarchy of scoundrels. Like Peace, Butler was, in the jargon of crime, a "hatter," a "lone hand," a solitary who conceived and executed his nefarious designs alone; like Peace, he supplemented an insignificant physique by a liberal employment of the revolver; like Peace, he was something of a musician, the day before his execution he played hymns for half an hour on ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... peregrinations among the continental cities, he had formed the acquaintance of a female, remarkable for her consummate loveliness and her boundless sensuality. Married to this Circe, the adventurer began to thrive beyond his most sanguine anticipations. It must be remembered, however, that in his nefarious proceedings, Balsamo was aided by a faculty of invention almost miraculous in its fruitfulness, and occasionally almost sublime in its audacity. By these means, he ultimately became the most astonishing impostor the world had ever beheld, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... and wide, and universal. Even the record of Andrew Johnson, our seventeenth President, was exhumed. He was charged with conspiracy against the United States Government. Because he came from a border State, where loyalty was more difficult than in the Northern States, he was accused of making a nefarious attack against our Government. I did not accept these charges. They were freighted with political purpose. I said then, in order to prove General Grant a good man, it was not necessary to try and prove that Johnson ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... altered and enlarged; but no tree was rooted up, nothing with which there was any association of bygone times was ever removed or changed. Mr. Squeers, having come within the meshes of the law over some nefarious scheme of Ralph Nickleby's, suffered transportation beyond the seas, and with his disappearance Dotheboys Hall was broken ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... what an artist Fielding was, I do not see how we can blame Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his purpose blend so happily that his work was all the better for his benevolent intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious school pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking the Court of Chancery, and very much less successful still with the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely because he was less in the ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... would bring an action against him on their own account. All through, Mr. Pickwick's behaviour to them had been outrageous. He chose to assume, quite gratuitously that it was they—not Mrs. Bardell—who got up the case; that they had worked on her for their own nefarious ends. Nothing could be more absurd. The landlady was eager enough to protect her own interests—her female friends worked on her, and the loss of so valuable a lodger, which the incident must have entailed, inflamed her more. We can see from Sam's interview with her that ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... maintained as a blind for its underground activities; or that Perkins was holding a position which suited him exactly and which he would not have given up for wealth or glory—that of being the guiding genius who planned nefarious things for the men higher up, and saw to it that they were carried out by the men lower down. He was in constant personal touch with his superiors, but in order to avoid any chance of betrayal he never saw his subordinates personally. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... accused of violating the trade laws of Spain. In order to wring a confession from the master, Captain Jenkins, his captors hung him up to the yard arms of his ship until he was nearly dead, and then let him down, thinking he would confess. But on his stoutly denying that he had been engaged in any nefarious dealings, and since no proof could be found against him, the captain of the Spanish ship cut off one of the English captain's ears, and insolently told him to show it to his countrymen as a warning of what Englishmen might expect who were caught ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson

... The importing merchants were obliged to turn over to the custom house officials five hundred dollars for every wagon-load, great or small; and no matter what the intrinsic value of the goods might be, salt or silk, velvets or sugar, it was all the same. The nefarious duty had to be paid before a penny's worth could be transferred to their counters. Of course, with the end of Mexican rule and the acquisition of the Province by the United States, all opposition to the traffic of the Old Santa Fe Trail ended, traders were assured a profitable market ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... been noted, the transfer of his monopoly by the Governor of Bressa to Genoese merchants, instead of increasing the exportation of negroes to America, resulted in almost stopping the nefarious trade, hence no considerable amount of mischief is traceable to the adoption of Las Casas's suggestion, which was only one of many enumerated in his scheme. Had the project as he framed it been accepted in its entirety and loyally carried out, no increased injustice would have been ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... externally to a wall—had at length betrayed it. That the accident had happened to himself, and not to a lad balancing a plankful of art-lustre ware on one shoulder, was sheer luck. And now the odd-man, with the surreptitious air of one engaged in a nefarious act, was putting a new tread on the stairs. Thus devoutly are ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... speed on the submarine, which escaped the steamer by a few meters only by immediately diving. He confessed that in so doing he had acted in accordance with the instructions of the Admiralty. One of the many nefarious franc-tireur proceedings of the British merchant marine against our war vessels has thus found a belated ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... that he was judged without being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government. He left that position to go into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious stock-company that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police. Cerizet proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it to be a revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said, would never forgive ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... trouble me?" he murmured. "What can I do?" And yet it seemed to him impossible to wait in passive inactivity until a red glare in the sky should announce that the nefarious design ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... general opinion of observers appears to be that it was there notably free from the brutality usually supposed to attend it. The Census Report of 1899, prepared under the auspices of the American authorities, states that "while it was fraught with all the horrors of this nefarious business elsewhere, the laws for the protection of slaves were unusually humane. Almost from the beginning, slaves had a right to purchase their freedom or change their masters, and long before slavery was abolished they could own property and contract marriage. As ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... the walls attracted the attention of two guards, who, after following us for some time, stopped us to question our proceedings. The production of the Statthalter's letter which I carried with me satisfied them that we had no nefarious designs, and it was returned to me with the remark (made rather regretfully, I thought) that it was all "in order." Travellers will find it advantageous to obtain some kind of "permit" if their tastes are likely to lead to the exhibition of unusual curiosity in relation ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson



Words linked to "Nefarious" :   villainous



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