"Malevolence" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creature had been at times a heavy charge; I could not take her out beyond the garden, and I could not leave her a minute alone: for her poor mind, like her body, was warped: its propensity was to evil. A vague bent to mischief, an aimless malevolence, made constant vigilance indispensable. As she very rarely spoke, and would sit for hours together moping and mowing, and distorting her features with indescribable grimaces, it was more like being prisoned with some strange tameless ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the more perilous to oppose the trials because there was a mingling of personal malevolence in the fell business, and an individual who objected was in danger of being himself accused. No station, no age, no merit, was a sufficient protection. Mary Bradbury, seventy-five years of age, the wife of one of the ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... [Meeting of Musicians], in Leipzig at the beginning of June Dr. Brendel is expecting you, and I rejoice at the thought of meeting you again there. If the affair is not too much hampered in its natural course by local miseries and malevolence, it may do much for the bettering of our suffering musical position. In any case we will not fail in doing our part ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... stamped in the neat mintage of the Elzevir press. Of a Greek Aldus, or an Italian Giunta, he has never yet had the luxury to dream:—'trahit sua quemque voluptas;' and let Quisquilius enjoy his hobby-horse, even to the riding of it to death! But let him not harbour malevolence against supposed injuries inflicted: let not foolish prejudices, or unmanly suspicions, rankle in his breast: authors and book-collectors are sometimes as enlightened as himself, and have cultivated pursuits equally honourable. ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... sacrificed to some one satiated. It is sad that hope should be wicked. Is it that the outpourings of our wishes flow naturally to the direction to which we most incline—that of evil? One of the hardest labours of the just man is to expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to efface. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... daring or too dull; but it was apparently printed. Bentham's opinion of Cobbett was anything but flattering. Cobbett, he thought in 1812, was a 'vile rascal,' and was afterwards pronounced to be 'filled with the odium humani generis—his malevolence and lying beyond everything.'[308] Cobbett's radicalism, in fact, was of the type most hostile to the Utilitarians. John Hunt, in the Examiner, was 'trumpeting' Bentham and Romilly in 1812, and was praised accordingly.[309] ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... through one of the windows into the space behind the court; and at a time when Sir Herbert and Dr. —— were at open variance, that waspish advocate had, on one occasion, the bad taste to keep his seat at the rising of the court, and with characteristic malevolence of expression say to the footmen, 'Mind, my men, and take care of that judge of yours; or, by Jove, you'll pitch him out of the window.' It is needless to say that this brutal speech did not raise the speaker in the opinion of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... or provoke censure, and as it ripened into love, it may be traced, step by step, from the frankest and fullest of all possible unveilings of the heart. Rare indeed are the instances in which such revelations as we find in "Thraliana" could be risked by either man or woman, without giving scope to malevolence; and they should not only be judged as a whole and by the context, but the most favourable construction should be put upon them. When, in this sort of self-communing, every passing emotion, every transitory inclination, ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... not finish the sentence. Jovita rose straight in the air with a terrific bound, throwing the figure from her bit with a single shake of her vicious head, and charged with deadly malevolence down on the impediment before her. An oath, a pistol-shot, horse and highwayman rolled over in the road, and the next moment Jovita was a hundred yards away. But the good right arm of her rider, shattered by a bullet, dropped helplessly at ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... answered, with a flash of malevolence that did not escape me. "But this is a private favour, M. de Rosny. It is nothing that Madame de Sourdis can desire, either for ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... cruelty and malevolence with which his bloodshot eyes rested on Derrick, or the patience with which the dear old fellow bore his father's scathing sarcasms. It was while I was sitting by the bed that the landlady entered with a telegram, which ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... about God's malevolence and wickedness is entirely beside the point, nor does it even touch the difficulty that, in his heart, James Mill is aiming at. His main difficulty is nothing more than this: How can an infinite will that rules ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... into our thoughts or our hearts in this great matter; we ought not to allow ourselves to be governed by resentment or any kind of evil feeling, but we ought, nevertheless, to realize the seriousness of our situation. That seriousness consists, singularly enough, not in the malevolence of the men who preside over our industrial life, but in their genius and in their honest thinking. These men believe that the prosperity of the United States is not safe unless it is in their keeping. If they were dishonest, we might put them out of business by law; since most of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... there are not wanting those who hint that her husband sent her thither. From this beginning you will expect, I suppose, better news than I am going to tell you; but pray, my dear children, why may not I, who have always laughed at my own afflictions, laugh at yours, without the censure of much malevolence? I wish you could learn this temper from me; for, take my word for it, nothing truer ever came from the mouth of a heathen ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard's stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous murmur of ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... their intercessions. By a natural inference, the Bedouins have concluded that if the monks could bring rain, they had it likewise in their power to withhold it, and the consequence is, that whenever a dearth happens they accuse the monks of malevolence, and often tumultuously assemble and compel them to repair to the mountain to pray. Some years since, soon after an occurrence of this kind, it happened that a violent flood burst over the peninsula, and destroyed ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... and peered under the table at his enemy, a broad grin on his face. Fairfax took it for a grin of malevolence. ...
— What's-His-Name • George Barr McCutcheon
... pleaded with him until at the last minute "Cap" Smith ruined his clever escape by catching him midway down a porch pillar. Smith, sitting on the other side of Katharine Graham and wearing the smile of satisfied revenge, would doubtless enjoy telling it. There was so much of genial malevolence in that smile that Pellams, the woman-hater, who knew only enough of the co-eds to avoid them, wondered what sort of a girl he had been placed next to at supper. He had an intuitive idea that she had been given him ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart has not suffered for you—and yet I loved you so much!' A strong affection, such as she ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Desdemona to the earth, and drives every one from the hall. Then his overtaxed brain reels, and he sinks swooning to the floor. The shouts of the people outside acclaim him as the lion of Venice, while Iago, his heel scornfully placed on Othello's unconscious breast, cries with ghastly malevolence, 'Ecco il Leone.' The last act follows Shakespeare very closely. Desdemona sings her Willow Song, and, as though conscious of approaching calamity, bids Emilia a pathetic farewell. Scarcely are her eyes closed in sleep, when Othello enters by a secret door, bent on his fell purpose. ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Nehemiah that it was the violin in those alien hands which still focussed his attention as he stared gaspingly about. Leander was not here; probably had never been here; and the twanging of those strings had lured him to his fate. Well might he contemn the festive malevolence of the violin's influence! His letter had failed; no raider had intimidated these bluff, unafraid, burly law-breakers, and he had put his life in jeopardy in his persistent prosecution of his scheme. He gasped again at ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... diligently exerted. They cannot look back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which are those of your interests, to endless researches, which can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... happiness of my situation, while I admired the powers of a superior man as they are blended in his character with the softness and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempted from the taint of malevolence, vanity, and falsehood.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... who listened, to something beyond the reach of even McCord's faculties, her neck stiff and her ears flattened. I looked at McCord and found him brooding at the animal with a sort of listless malevolence. "Quick! She has kittens somewhere about." I shook his elbow ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... greediness, ill-will, malignity, self-seeking, brutality, harshness, inhumanity, niggardliness, stinginess, churlishness, illiberality, malevolence, selfishness, unkindness. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... began slowly to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... he proved mathematically that the mark was four times the size it ought to have been on that hypothesis. Miss Burns had not been attended professionally by any one as she was averse to doctors. Mr. Angus in his defence ascribed the whole of the legal proceedings against him to the malevolence of two interested parties, and had it not now been for their influence, the circumstance of Miss Burns' death would have passed over without remark. Mr. Angus, so far from desiring to harm Miss Burns, expressed himself as deeply indebted to her ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... hard eye was upon them—the eye of Agnes; for, by chance, Lord St. George was absent, having been summoned to attend the king at Windsor; and being left to herself, her busy mind, too busy to rest for a moment idle, plunged into mischief and malevolence. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... Wycherley borrows Viola; and Viola forthwith becomes a pandar of the basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of our meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind, which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence, disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy seems to him a vice; and those stern virtues which are neglected by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... venture openly to recommend. It would be absurd to suppose that he who was never by his respectable enemies represented as wantonly cruel or implacably vindictive, would have taken the most important step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence. He was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed which was inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not only of the Royalists, but of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had a sense of humour, replied: "I do not know how there can be such a thing as benevolent neutrality. A neutrality really benevolent towards one of the belligerents is really malevolent towards the other, consequently it is more or less undisguised partiality. Between benevolence and malevolence there is no room for neutrality." He only knew, he said, one kind of neutrality—the absolute neutrality towards both belligerents.[1] And he lived up to his knowledge so conscientiously that he earned the gratitude of neither, but saw himself ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... worthy." She looked long into his eyes, searching for a trace of the malevolence that glowed in those of his father. They were fair and honest and sweet, and she smiled to herself. She wondered what his mother ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... sure. But it was not all. There was some one in the shadows who meant harm, more harm than was already accomplished. There was malevolence at work. The discovery of the key in that position far from Stella's window assured him of it. The aspect of the key itself as it lay upon the table made the assurance still more sure. But whom was this malevolence ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... which his gaze was fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had dropped and his ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however be rendered to him. Malevolence was not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... conditions under which Coke's deed would be regarded as sublime; there are none which could deny his splendid audacity. The soldiers, who seemed to be actuated by the utmost malevolence, redoubled their efforts to hit the squat Hercules who had bellowed at them and their fellow artillerists from the bridge. Bullets struck the deck, lodged in the masts, splintered the roof and panels ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... girls all turned from Nancy and transferred to Sally their mounting malevolence. They would have liked to see her swept from her place. They could have scratched and bitten her with fury. And yet, a moment or two after she had spoken, there was a perceptible relief. Nancy stole out ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his society for all eternity. In strong contrast to the fiendish malevolence of Bertram stands the gentle figure of Alice, Robert's foster-sister, who has followed him from Normandy with a message from his dead mother. Isabella supplies Robert with a fresh horse and arms; nevertheless he is beguiled ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... entire career, right down to his last days, The General was at times personally assailed with a malevolence and bitterness that could hardly have been exceeded. It has constantly been suggested, if not openly stated, that he was simply "making a pile" of money for himself; and yet, as will be seen in our chapter on Finance he made the most comprehensive arrangements ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... its origin in the desire to extend the dominion of one's own will over other individuals, and to deny their will in order the better to affirm one's own. Consequently a lie is in its very nature the product of injustice, malevolence and villainy. That is why truth, sincerity, candour and rectitude are at once recognised and valued as praiseworthy and noble qualities; because we presume that the man who exhibits them entertains ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... father was; in what year her mother danced at the opera; what had been her previous history; and what her conduct during her married life—as I have no doubt that the greater part of the story was false and dictated by interested malevolence, it shall not be repeated here. But Becky was left with a sad sad reputation in the esteem of a country gentleman and relative who had been ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us Men overweeningly in love with their creations Must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer Petty concessions are signs of weakness to the unsatisfied Statesman who stooped to conquer fact through fiction The social world he looked at did not show him heroes The exhaustion ensuing we ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... haeva drum. They then go to the bath again, and the festivity of the evening is concluded with a repast of fruit, and young cocoanut milk. The whole village indiscriminately join the feast; and the demon of rank and precedence, with their appendages malevolence and envy, has never yet ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... long as he was out of reach he had looked on at the affray with the calmness of an Olympian god. But for some weeks past the other papers had seemed to be beginning to disregard his inviolability: they had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a rare malevolence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the attacks were cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Goldenring: they could see no other way of inducing him to stop Christophe's polemics. Their perception ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... are hauntings by agencies whom nobody supposes to be ghosts of inmates of the house. The following is an extreme example, as the haunter proceeded to arson. This is not so very unusual, and, if managed by an impostor, shows insane malevolence. {202} ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... of the emotional faculties is represented by Benevolence, Sympathy, Joy, Hope, Confidence, Gratitude, Love, and Devotion, all of which are the very antitheses of the attributes of animal feeling, described as Melancholy, Fear, Anger, Hate, Malevolence, and Despair. To the emotions we refer the highest qualities of character, while their opposites represent the animal or baser impulses. True, the emotions modify the propensities, as sympathy softens grief. They may subdue and refine the animal feelings, and thus veil them with a delicacy ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... still how infinitely inferior is that vast sum to the inconceivable cost of the eternal temple, with its myriads of worshippers, for which the Son of God paid the ransom, when he made the atonement for transgression, and built that imperishable temple which neither human nor satanic malevolence can ever destroy, and in which every spiritual worshipper will be crowned with an everlasting weight ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... perch on the inside rail the official starter eyed the nonwinners with undisguised malevolence. Some of them were cantering steadily toward the barrier, some were walking and one, a black brute, seemed almost unmanageable, advancing in a series of ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... part, and all that was admired was entirely his own. If it had been possible for modest merit to have repelled the shafts of slander, the work which he executed immediately afterwards in the church of S. Lodovico, representing the life of St. Cecilia, would have silenced the attacks of envy and malevolence; but they only tended to increase the alarm of his competitors, and excite them to redoubled injustice and malignity. Disgusted with these continued cabals, Domenichino quitted Rome, and returned to Bologna, where he resided ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... accept it. The chateau de Trianon is a small estate, but its mistress may at least find it a home where she will have liberty to enjoy nature without exciting the malevolence of her enemies. No one can watch you there, Antoinette; for your castle is not large enough to lodge your slanderers. It ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... braccia, and it was so well planned, both in the ordering of the columns and in the rest of the ornaments, that it would be impossible to make a work richer, more lovely, or more graceful than that one. And in truth, but for the malevolence of those who are ever spoiling the beautiful beginnings of any work in order to appear to have more understanding than others, this would now be the most perfect church in Christendom; and even as it stands it is more lovely and better designed than any other, although it has not been carried ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... Sovereign—to solicit at his paternal hand the removal of those wicked men, who by abusing the confidence of their Sovereign, and sacrificing their duty to his people, to the gratification of ambitious views or native malevolence, have belied the Irish nation; and by their obstinate and relentless cruelty have driven it to madness. We conjure you to think of us as of men enamoured of liberty and animated by that zealous attachment ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... and very ill-advised young man, Lorimer of Fairmead," he said, making an evident effort to restrain his fury—at which I took courage, for it was his cold malevolence that I disliked most. "Grace, you shall hear now once and for all what I tell him. Lorimer, you shall never marry ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... a downcome," said some, with a gleg look and a smack of the lip, trying to veil their personal malevolence in a common proverb. "He's simply in debt in every corner," goldered the keener spirits; "he never had a brain for business. He's had money for stuff he's unable to deliver! Not a day gangs by but the big blue envelopes ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England, through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the individually personal element of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a locked door, Miss Quincey sat up wrestling and battling with her blouse. To Miss Quincey in the watches of the night it seemed that a spirit of obstinate malevolence lurked in that deceitful garment. Like all the things in Hunter's shop, it was designed for conventional well-rounded womanhood. It repudiated the very idea of Miss Quincey; in every fold it expressed its contempt for her person; its collar was stiff with an invincible ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... kind protection of Guido Novello da Polenta, here Dante found an asylum from the malevolence of his enemies, and here he ended a life embittered with many sorrows, as he has pathetically told to posterity, 'after having gone about like a mendicant; wandering over almost every part to which our language ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... reason to believe in a happy issue to his cousin's labors. Sometimes he beheld an infanta in Margeurite Claes, to whom no provincial notary might aspire; then he regarded her as any poor girl too happy if he deigned to make her his wife. He was a true provincial, and a Fleming; without malevolence, not devoid of devotion and kindheartedness, but led by a naive selfishness which rendered all his better qualities incomplete, while certain absurdities of manner spoiled ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... his own. At present the half-savage brute he bestrode occupied all his attention. Yet he could not help feeling his advancing years tell upon him more heavily that evening; fearless as he was, his strength was no longer equal when measured with the untiring youthful malevolence of his unbroken mustang. For a moment he dwelt regretfully on the lazy half-developed sinews of his son; for a briefer instant there flashed across him the thought that those sinews ought to replace his own; ought to be HIS to lean upon—that thus, and thus only, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... the East; from whence this doctrine was transfused to the various swarms of the Gnostics. A thousand shades may be devised in the nature and character of Ahriman, from a rival god to a subordinate daemon, from passion and frailty to pure and perfect malevolence: but, in spite of our efforts, the goodness, and the power, of Ormusd are placed at the opposite extremities of the line; and every step that approaches the one must recede in equal proportion from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... grapes. For myself, I used to improve under the abbe's criticisms; this was an emphatic way of letting Edmee know how much I preferred her to all others. She, however, appeared to be more scandalized than flattered, and seriously reproved me for the tendency to malevolence which had its origin, she said, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the tall, swarthy man. The malevolence had gone from his eyes, he was grinning broadly, though there was respect of a fawning character in his manner as he stepped out from the group and halted within a ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... producing evil. Bad qualities.] Badness — N. hurtfulness &c adj.; virulence. evil doer &c 913; bane &c 663; plague spot &c (insalubrity) 657; evil star, ill wind; hoodoo; Jonah; snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet; amari aliquid [Lat.], thorn in the side. malignity; malevolence &c 907; tender mercies [Iron.]. ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage; misusage &c 679; injury &c (damage) 659; knockout drops [U.S.]. badness &c adj.; peccancy^, abomination; painfulness &c 830; pestilence &c (disease) 655; guilt &c 947; depravity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... best not to attract their attention to it, for they are very teasing to little children, and often give them a pinch which is supposed to come from a mosquito, and fearing that the cry might come from some little unhappy victim of their malevolence, I followed the sound until I came to a small house which looked as if it might be a forester's—a forester, Lady Laura, you know, is one who plants and trims the trees, and sees that the brushwood is cut ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... Sovereign; but Marcus Aurelius could not plead even such miserable apologies. He hated the Christians with the cool acerbity of a Stoic; and he took measures for their extirpation which betrayed at once his folly and his malevolence. Disregarding the law of Trajan which required that they should not be officiously sought after, he encouraged spies and informers to harass them with accusations. He caused them to be dragged before the tribunals of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... labors and properties. He took a childish delight in piling up money; but it became greed only when he believed some one with whom he had dealings was trying to get an unfair division of profits. Then it became something besides greed. It became an indignation that amounted to malevolence. I was concerned in a number of dealings with Mark Twain, and at a period in his life when human traits are supposed to become exaggerated, which is to say old age, and if he had any natural tendency to be unfair, or small, or greedy in his money dealings I ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... speech, we mean that harm to another person was intended to come of it, and that such harm was desired for its own sake as an end in itself. For the purposes of the criminal law, however, intent alone was found to be important, and to have the same consequences as intent with malevolence superadded. Pursuing the analysis, intent was found to be made up of foresight of the harm as a consequence, coupled with a desire to bring it about, the latter being conceived as the motive for the act in question. Of these, again, foresight ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... Saturday's article (June 28, '88) upon Mr. Hitchman's "Biography of Sir Richard Burton." No denizen of Grub Street in the coarse old day of British mob-savagery could have produced a more damning specimen of wilful falsehood, undignified scurrility and brutal malevolence, in order to gratify a well-known pique, private and personal. The "Saturday Reviler"—there is, I repeat, much virtue in a soubriquet—has grown only somewhat feebler, not kindlier, not more sympathetic since the clever author of "In Her Majesty's Keeping" styled this Magister Morum ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... black een of his. Oh, how they longed to get at him! It was not the least of the evils caused by Gourlay's black pride that it perverted a dozen characters. The "bodies" of Barbie may have been decent enough men in their own way, but against him their malevolence was monstrous. It showed itself in an insane desire to seize on every scrap of gossip they might twist against him. That was why the Provost lowered municipal dignity to gossip in the street with a discharged servant. As the baker said afterwards, it was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... their native quarry but for the ardent exertions of the individual who called them into life: to his never-slumbering talents you are indebted for whatever pleasure this haunt of the Muses is calculated to afford. If, in defiance of chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of the temple of Diana yet survives in the name of Erostratus, surely we may confidently predict that the rebuilder of the temple of Apollo will stand recorded to distant posterity in that ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... that I should never reach the Hotel de Bourgogne, although I left my carriage at the corner of the Rue Mauconseil: without Chapelle and Mauvillain, who know all the actors in Paris, I should never have succeeded in getting a place. Do not mistake this eagerness of the public; there was much more malevolence than curiosity in it. I paid my respects to Madame de Sevigne in her box, where I found Mesdames de Villars, de Coulanges and de La Fayette, escorted by the little Abbe de Villars and de Grignau the Frondeur. You may imagine what ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... anything of the episode in the stable he was received there with distinction. Military to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence, which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the man who had never loved the Emperor—a sort of monster essentially worse ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Theseus, able to drive away the evil things of Attica. But you may clear away your own. From yourself, from your own thoughts, cast away, instead of Procrustes and Sciron, [4] sadness, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, effeminacy, intemperance. But it is not possible to eject these things otherwise than by looking to God only, by fixing your affections on Him only, by being consecrated ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... The captain eyed him with leering malevolence. "You'll mind your eye then while you're on this craft, and you'll obey orders, without a word, or—down you go among those demons for punishment. Go to my room and bring up my small glass—the double one. Stay—while ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... mention, however, before leaving the Southern Hemisphere, that even the Fuegians, whose reputation has been so bad, appear under a much better light since they begin to be better known. A few French missionaries who stay among them "know of no act of malevolence to complain of." In their clans, consisting of from 120 to 150 souls, they practise the same primitive communism as the Papuas; they share everything in common, and treat their old people very well. Peace prevails among these tribes.(24) With the Eskimos and their nearest congeners, the ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... glass, china, pots, and pans; woe to the inhabitants of the country overrun by these vagabonds. There will infallibly be a mortality amongst the cattle, for the gipsies are very clever in killing them, without leaving any traces which can be converted into a charge of malevolence against them. They kill the cows by piercing them to the heart with a long and very fine needle, so that the blood flowing inwardly, it may be supposed that the animal died of disease. They stifle poultry with brimstone; they know that then they will give ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... alienation of Wentworth, the cause of which his act had wrapped in mystery! Afraid to tamper with the note I gave him for the cool, discerning eye of Wentworth, curiosity had at first led him to break the seal of that intrusted to his care in return, and dark malevolence to retain it rather than destroy, for the eye of his confederate. That he had dispatched it at once for Paris was very evident from the pencilling on the back of the letter; and that the snare was set for me already, in which the accident of the ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... private man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose of saving four or five rixdollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as his father; but Frederic's wit enabled him often to show his malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted, and to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and cudgelling. His ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a menacing letter, announced to the Romans that he was resolved to spare none of the adherents of his unfortunate competitors. He was irritated by the just auspicion that he had never possessed the affections of the senate, and he concealed his old malevolence under the recent discovery of some treasonable correspondences. Thirty-five senators, however, accused of having favored the party of Albinus, he freely pardoned, and, by his subsequent behavior, endeavored to convince ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... devoted to the production of pleasure and the avoidance of pain; but, if so, why is it not equally proper to say of the equally numerous arrangements, the no less necessary result of which is the production of pain, that they are evidences of malevolence? Translating these facts into moral terms, the goodness of the hand that aids Blake's "little lamb" is neutralized by the wickedness of the other hand that eggs on his "tiger burning bright," and the course of nature will appear to be neither ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... and she sat down suddenly on a chair at the table, glaring unutterable malevolence and misery. She arose with the abrupt stiffness of an automaton, poured herself a cup of cold coffee, and in the same jerky way sat down again. As if too hot for her lips, she filled her saucer with the greasy-looking, nondescript fluid, ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... (observe the protruding lower lip, 'nez retrousse,' and overhanging forehead). The head, in profile, turned to the right, is proudly planted on a massive neck and shoulders, and the short tufted hair stands up erect. The expression is that of fierce, insolent self-confidence and malevolence; it is engraved in facsimile in Ottley's 'Italian School of Design,' and it is described in that work, p. 33, as 'Finely expressive of scornfulness and pride, and evidently ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... expression in the benign face of nature. Christmas day was as hot as if it had come in midsummer; the natives were as naked, the trees as fully clad. The curious sun closed his great eye for a few hours in the twenty-four; the remainder of the time he glared down upon his victims with a malevolence that knew no bounds. Soft, sweet winds came with the typhoon season, else the poor whites must have shrivelled and died while nature revelled. Rain fell often in fitful little bursts of joyousness, but the hungry earth sipped its moisture through ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom which the importance of the subject requires, and which Mr. Gladstone, both by precept and by example, invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, and, we are sure, without malevolence. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... commercialized magnate, but it did him great injustice. Self-respecting and direct, he believed it to be the first function of government to protect property, and that property should organize for this purpose. Without malevolence, he conducted business for the sake of its profits, and regarded government as an adjunct to it. He possessed great capacity for winning popularity, and after his entry into public life in 1897 gained reputation as an effective speaker. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... me the chief affair: to see them go. I dwelled upon the idea fiercely; and presently slipped on, in a kind of malevolence, to consider how very poorly they were like to fare when David Balfour was no longer by to be their milk-cow; at which, to my own very great surprise, the disposition of my mind turned bottom up. I was still angry; I still hated her; and yet I thought I owed it to myself that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... persecutions similar to those from which, through your active and generous intervention, they have so lately escaped. The Christians still regard them with malevolence, and the statement in the ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... backward without error. Should the monster follow, the taste which had plastered the walls with paintings had consistently supplied a rack of murderous Oriental weapons from which he could snatch one to suit the occasion. In the mean time the snake's eyes burned with a more pitiless malevolence than before. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic play-actors, I went. For here was no harmless burning which I did—but the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such hisses and giggles of challenge ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... deferred.[125] Whatever may have been the real motive of Henry for exhibiting this new slight towards his royal bride, it is certain that the partisans of Marie did not fail to attribute it to the malevolence of Madame de Verneuil; and thus another subject of animosity was added ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... upon the assembled chiefs. Slowly the blood receded from the sinister face of O-Tar, Jeddak of Manator, leaving him a sickly purple in his wrath. His eyes narrowed to two thin slits, his lips were compressed to a bloodless line of malevolence. For a long moment there was no sound in the throne room of the palace at Manator. Then the jeddak ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of sufficient consequence to be envied; now I had soon to experience, that as you continue to advance in the world, so do you continue to increase the number of your enemies, to be exposed to the shafts of slander, to be foiled by treachery, cunning, and malevolence. ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... drowsy way Bobby hated more powerfully than before this detective who, with a serene malevolence, made him writhe in his net. Thought ceased. He drifted into a trance-like sleep. He swung in the black pit again, fighting out against crushing odds. The darkness thundered as though informing him that graver forces than any he had ever imagined had definitely grasped him. Then he understood. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... a beneficent Deity of such moral grandeur inevitably emphasized the baseness and the malevolence of the "Power of Evil". No longer are the gods merely glorified human beings who can work good or evil as they will; but there is now an all-powerful God controlling the morals of the universe, and in opposition to Him "the dragon, the old serpent, which ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... to the prefects of the frontier cities, and distributed by the royalists, was in circulation at Paris. The inferior papers had announced its appearance, and united in asserting, that such an act was unworthy of the allied sovereigns, and could only be the work of calumny and malevolence. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge whatever ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nail on the head that time," said Aunt Mary, without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then she re-read the note ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... Montrose's brilliant career more picturesque than the reality. Among the devoted champions who, during the wildest and most stormy period of our history, maintained the cause of Church and King, "the Great Marquis" undoubtedly is entitled to the foremost place. Even party malevolence, by no means extinct at the present day, has been unable to detract from the eulogy pronounced upon him by the famous Cardinal de Retz, the friend of Conde and Turenne, when he thus summed up his character:—"Montrose, a Scottish nobleman, head of the house of Grahame—the ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... a step and paused, his eyes devouring the lad and receiving in exchange a glance that was full of malevolence. ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... mind. All the facts of which he thenceforward hears, which bear in the least on his favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. He is fortunate if he do not suffer his theories to withdraw him from his means of earning a livelihood, or if he do not waste his substance ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... said William. He looked from one to the other, and seemed to take stock of Denham's unfashionable appearance. He seemed to wish to find some outlet for malevolence, but, failing one, he remained silent. The glance, the slight quiver of the upper lip, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... slowly to address the court in reply to the prosecution. As he faced his, judges now he met the smouldering eyes of Sir Terence considering him with such malevolence that he was shocked and bewildered. Was he prejudged already, and by his best friend? If so, what must be the attitude of the others? But the kindly, florid countenance of the president was friendly and encouraging; there was eager anxiety for him in the gaze of ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... ignorance and this false philosophy, and the inevitable neglect attendant upon them, those fearful plagues known as "the Black Death" could, almost without notice, sweep down upon a country, and decimate its inhabitants—it is not wonderful that these terrible scourges were attributed to the malevolence of the Evil One. ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... and even if I were not, I should not presume to levy a tax upon it in discussions with you; for, however vulnerable you may possibly be, I regard an argumentum ad hominem as the weakest weapon in the armory of dialectics—a weapon too often dipped in the venom of personal malevolence. I merely gave expression to my belief that miserable, useless lives are sinful lives; that when God framed the world, and called the human race into it, he made most munificent provision for all healthful hunger, whether physical, intellectual, or moral; and that it is ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... invented some new slander. No kind of stratagem, or malicious device in their power, did they omit. They came to surprise and ensnare me in my words; but God guarded me so well, that therein they only discovered their own malevolence. I had no consolation from the creatures. She who had the care of my daughter behaved roughly to me. Such are the persons who regulate themselves only by their gifts and emotions. When they do not see things succeed, and as they regard them only by their ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... fronts and great spouts sticking out of them, had an absurd appearance. They reminded Phillips of the prehistoric monsters which artists sometimes draw in our comic papers. They had the same look of stupid largeness. There was the same suggestion of gaping malevolence. In the cool blue light of the cave they looked grotesquely inappropriate. Phillips' first impulse was to laugh aloud. But he was a young man with a conscience. It was his duty to examine the cisterns, to find out if possible ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... the sober, second thought of the American people it is to be hoped that patriotism will prevail. That hatred and malevolence can continue indefinitely in the relations of the two grand divisions of the Republic, is as impossible as it would be unwise and wicked. Their destiny is too grand for the people of America to think of marring it by a continuance of strife. Year by year the traces of blood ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... places, crowned with nettles, defending the desert against those who clear the land. Thou art Esterello, the fairy that sends a shudder through the foliage of the woods and the hair of the terrified hermit; that fires with the desire of her perfumed embrace her suitors and in malevolence drives them to despair ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers. With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them. Not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is not hidden from us in modest privacy is a precious and splendid portion of our national history. Had the private conduct of Hampden afforded the slightest pretence for censure, he would have been assailed by the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had there been even any weak part in the character of Hampden, had his manners been in any respect open to ridicule, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Conrad and the Germans first, and then King Louis and the French, arrived at Constantinople in the course of the summer of 1117. Manuel Comnenus, grandson of Alexis Comnenus, was reigning there; and he behaved towards the crusaders with the same mixture of caresses and malevolence, promises and perfidy, as had distinguished his grandfather. "There is no ill turn he did not do them," says the historian Nicetas, himself a Greek. Conrad was the first to cross into Asia Minor, and, whether it were unskilfulness or treason, the guides with whom ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... last card around when Wyatt came in and his eyes lit up. Then his face stiffened, the light changed to a gleam of malevolence. Following Wyatt were the three partners, taking open order as they came through the entrance, about which the space was clear, Sandy in the middle, Mormon on the right flank and Sam on the left. The two last smiled ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... pointed with a frantic gesture of malevolence towards an aged man, wrapped in a large, dark, woollen cloak, who was vainly endeavouring to conceal himself ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... too intrepid. Prosperity, as Sir Charles observed, has been a snare to her, and set her above a proper regard to her reputation.—Merciless world! I do not love you. Dear Dr. Bartlett, you are not yet absolutely perfect! These hints of yours against Olivia, gathered from the malevolence of the envious, are proofs (the first indeed that I have met with) ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... vain are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to public contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim; and the cause of annoyance is recognised not in the ignorant malevolence of the powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before my grandfather entered into this union, and during that interval he had not been idle. He was only eighteen when he commenced ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... spoke these words, his urbane smile changed to a grin of impish malevolence. Even through my torpor I felt the venom ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan |
