"Malignity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such a remedy must be admitted as full proof of the malignity of the disease. And in further excuse of Andrew Fletcher, it should be remembered that he belonged to a country where many of the feudal virtues (as well as most of the feudal vices) were at that time in full vigour. But let us return to our historical ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... such a question as the Origin of Species would be listened to with profound attention, and discussed with respect; and there was certainly no man whose personal character should have afforded a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with malignity and spiced ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Turkish, what they would be glad to do with us. As we sat eating our lunch in the shelter of a hovel by the roadside, while the horses were baiting, a party of the fanatics watched us with growing malignity and a truculent interchange of sentiments of an evidently unfriendly nature. To puzzle them as to our status, I took the pains to repeat in conversation with my colleague the formula of adherence to the faith as it is in Islam, a scrap of Arabic I ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... debt, and in this country no politician under the rank of a baronet can ever safely be in debt. Burke's finances are, and always have been, marvels and mysteries; but one thing must be said of them—that the malignity of his enemies, both Tory enemies and Radical enemies, has never succeeded in formulating any charge of dishonesty against him that has not been at once completely pulverized, and shown on the facts to be impossible. {159} Burke's purchase of the estate at Beaconsfield in 1768, only two years ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... him if possible, and I do so to-day. I also swore to reward his companion, Monsieur de Beaufort—the time is not yet come for that, but it will," and he smiled in so terrible a fashion that Adrienne could have cried out in fear. The fierce malignity of his look so filled Mr. Morris with disgust that he could scarce bear to ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... timid leader's hand, and shaking me into a sort of aching jelly! I used to think that horses were made vicious either by being teased or by violence in breaking; but this does not account for the malignity of the Japanese horses, for the people are so much afraid of them that they treat them with great respect: they are not beaten or kicked, are spoken to in soothing tones, and, on the whole, live better ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... How great and agreeable then must our surprise be, after perusing the histories of long navigations in former days, when so many perished by marine diseases, to find the air of the sea acquitted of all malignity; and, in fine, that a voyage round the world may be undertaken with less danger, perhaps, to health, than ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... temple frets him, And his impiety doth wish to crush The God he has abjured. To ruin you No snare he can devise will be unwrought. Sometimes he pities you, and frequently He even praises, and affects for you A treacherous gentleness; and by this means He deepens his malignity's dark dye. Now, to that queen he paints you terrible; Now, seeing her insatiate lust for gold, He feigns that in a place, to you but known, You hide the treasures David had amassed. At last, the sombre Athaliah's seemed For two days buried in a dark chagrin. I saw her yesterday, and watched ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... that was servant at Belvoir Castle, but being displeased, she contracted with the devil, who conversed with her in form of a cat, whom she called Rutterkin, to make away those children, out of mere malignity, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... under the spell of sorrow and heartache, but full of "indignant protest" (this is the meaning of the word "to groan") against the havoc of death as the work of that being whom we so familiarly call "Devil," without stopping to measure his dignity, malignity and power, ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... distinguishing characteristic of that face was the eyes. Of the most perfect steel blue he had ever seen, they seemed, as they turned upon him in that intense glance, to glint and scintillate like the points of two rapiers in a brilliant sword play, while their look of concentrated fury and malignity, more demon-like than human, was stamped ineffaceably upon ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... full truth of his assertion. It came to Franklin in a form which astounded him, while it opened his eyes and fixed his indignation upon a class of men who from that moment onward were to him the exponents of all malignity and baseness. The evidence came in the shape of the originals, the autographs, of the above-named letters, written by natives of the American soil, office-holders under the Crown, who, while pampered and trusted by their constituents on this side of the water, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... bring her in peace to the grave; wherein she was not deceived: for he achieved it, but with much pains and carefulness, and not without the forces and many jealousies of the court and times, wherewith the Queen's age and the malignity of her settling times were replete. And so I come to his dear friend in court, Secretary Cecil, whom, in his long absence, he adored as his saint, and counted him his only MECENAS, both before and after his departure ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... and public rewards to a very large amount, by combinations of individuals and by legislative bodies at the south, have been offered to any persons who shall abduct or destroy me. 'Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.' This malignity of opposition and proximity of danger, however, are like oil to the fire of my zeal. I am not deliriously enthusiastic—I do not covet to be a martyr; but I had rather die a thousand deaths, than witness the horrible oppression ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... from the Greek,—differ in attributes and powers. In the drop of water you see how the animalculae vary, how vast and terrible are some of those monster mites as compared with others. Equally so with the inhabitants of the atmosphere: some of surpassing wisdom, some of horrible malignity; some hostile as fiends to men, others gentle as messengers ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... conflict is in store for thee. Feel'st thou within thee strength enough to smother Each impulse of malignity and hate? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... did Kentucky and Kentuckians, the malignity with which he bore down on his Kentucky troops, his hatred and bitter active antagonism to all prominent Kentucky officers, have made an abhorrence of him part of a Kentuckian's creed. There is no reason why ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... We do not attribute the spirit of Dr. Ingleby's book to any inherent malignity or deliberately malicious purpose of its author, but rather to that relentless partisanship which this folio seems to have excited among the British critics. So we regard his reference to "almighty smash" and "catawampously chawed up" as specimens of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... I wish I were with MD; I long for spring and good weather, and then I will come over. My riding in Ireland keeps me well. I am very temperate, and eat of the easiest meats as I am directed, and hope the malignity will go off; but one fit shakes me a long time. I dined to-day with Lord Mountjoy, yesterday at Mr. Stone's, in the City, on Sunday at Vanhomrigh's, Saturday with Ford, and Friday I think at Vanhomrigh's; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... that the wayward passions of this unhappy man caused a separation from his wife, and finally spread a solitude around him. Being displeased at the marriage of his son and heir, he displayed an inveterate malignity toward him. Not being able to cut off his succession to the Abbey estate, which descended to him by entail, he endeavored to injure it as much as possible, so that it might come a mere wreck into his hands. For ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... cause of his ruin; and now he bent all the energies of his dark nature to destroy the reputation of the man whom he had betrayed and plundered. Of all the beings self-delivered to the rule of unscrupulous malignity, with whom it has been my fate to come professionally in contact, I never knew one so utterly fiendish as this discomfited pilferer. Frenzied with his imaginary wrongs, he formed the determination to labor, even if it were for years, to ruin ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... into a marketing crowd? It is a sort of anti-Teutonic propaganda by the Central Powers to which they seem to have been incited by their own evil genius. It is as if they could convince us that there is an essential malignity in Germans, that until the German powers are stamped down into the mud they will continue to do evil things. All of the Allies have borne the thrusting and boasting of Germany with exemplary patience for half a century; England gave ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... When impious men have inclined to doubt the presence of the demons, and we ourselves felt our convictions shaken, because they refused to answer to unknown questions in Greek or Arabic, the reverend fathers have, to establish our belief, deigned to explain to us that the malignity of evil spirits being extreme, it was not surprising that they should feign this ignorance in order that they might be less pressed with questions; and that in their answers they had committed various solecisms and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... wholesome distance from humidity and stagnant water, it is no more unhealthy than our own cities in summer. It is doubtful if Havana, even in the fever season, is any more unhealthy than New Orleans at the same period of the year. Fevers of different degrees of malignity prevail from May to November, and occasionally throughout the year. Among these the yellow fever is the most dangerous, and sooner or later all resident foreigners seem to suffer from it, as a sort of ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... had not as yet returned from Rome, nor was it known whether the Roman senate had pronounced in favour of peace or war; nor as yet had the period of the truce expired. Scipio, therefore, considering that the malignity of their offence was heightened by the fact, that, though they had solicited peace and a truce, they had cut off all hopes of the former and violated the latter, immediately despatched Lucius Baebius, Lucius Sergius, and Lucius Fabius, ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... brilliant banqueting of our enemies let me absorb a fearful mortal venom, whereby I shall bring to an end both our ignominy and their rejoicing!" Friedrich shudders, in spite of himself, at such incarnate malignity as seems represented by that crouching form, those hate-darting eyes. The sense seizes him, too, in the dreadful soreness of his lacerated pride, how much this woman is responsible for what he has suffered. ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... very innermost recesses of the cave a faint glow of crimson light which grew and grew, until with startling abruptness it resolved itself into two huge eyes, red and menacing. The sight was so unexpected, and, by reason of its intense malignity, so appalling, that I was simply dumbfounded. I could do nothing but stare at the Thing—paralysed and speechless. I made a desperate effort to get back my self-possession; I strove with all my might ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sure, when your flights are bold, that you have the right. "Thrice armed is he who hath his quarrel just." Hope has been defamed more than any other of the joys of life, just as the most charitable become the target of the greater portion of the malignity of fault-finding fellow-creatures. Treat Hope fairly, my young friend, and she will never desert you, neither will she poison your expectations, as did the hags ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... died in Greece, 1824. Respecting his celebrated Satire on the poet Rogers, which appears in this collection, we read the following in a London periodical:—"The satire on Rogers, by Lord Byron, is not surpassed for cool malignity, dexterous portraiture, and happy imagery, in the whole compass of the English language. It is said, and by those well informed, that Rogers used to bore Byron while in Italy, by his incessant minute dilettantism, and by visits at hours when Byron did not care to see him. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... misstatement. That such was the feeling of intelligent Americans towards England, at the beginning of our troubles, we have no doubt. But for the scurrility heaped upon us by what claims to be the higher British press we were totally unprepared,—and for this good reason, that such malignity of criticism as is possible in America could never have suggested it. Let us not be misunderstood. We acknowledge the "Rowdy Journal" and Mr. Jefferson Brick. Undoubtedly, newspapers exist among us of which the description ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... and noblest heroes, captured by the rebels, the feeble remnant of the tens of thousands imprisoned there, a majority of whom had perished of cold, nakedness, starvation, and disease, in those charnel houses, victims of the fiendish malignity of the rebel leaders. These poor fellows, starved to the last degree of emaciation, crippled and dying from frost and gangrene, many of them idiotic from their sufferings, or with the fierce fever ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... heartless cruelty the girls displayed to any of their number who suffered from any physical defect. Many times in the day would the afflicted one be reminded of her infirmity; the consequent tears incited the tormentors to a further display of malignity. ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but, instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... life of Vauvenargues his friendships were the main adventure. We have mentioned a name which is too frequently the object of malignity on English lips, the name of Voltaire. No one would pretend that the multiform energy of this giant of literature did not take some unseemly directions and several unlovely shapes. But the qualities of Voltaire must, in the eyes of any unbiassed ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... not high; sensuality is confounded with love, ribaldry mistaken for wit The best that can be said of him that he contrasts favourably with his contemporary dramatists; Virtue is not always uninteresting in his pages. He is free from their heartlessness, malignity, and cruelty. The plot of The Beaux-Stratagem is comparatively inoffensive, and the moral of the whole is healthy. Although a wit rather than a thinker, Farquhar in this play shows himself capable of serious feelings. It is remarkable how much Farquhar repeats himself. Hardly an allusion ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... are contrasting this poor Broadway with Washington Street. Don't be hard upon it, Isabel; every street can't be a Boston street, you know," said Basil. Isabel, herself a Bostonian of great intensity both by birth and conviction, believed her husband the only man able to have thoroughly baffled the malignity of the stars in causing him to be born out of Boston; yet he sometimes trifled with his hardly achieved triumph, and even showed an indifference to it, with an insincerity of which there can be no ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh-and-blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... wheeled; his face, dark and sinister, was lighted with envenomed malignity; an unnaturally clear perception replaced the stupor of his brain, and, bending toward Saint-Prosper, his eye rested upon him with such rancor and malevolence the soldier involuntarily drew away. But one word fell from the land baron's lips, low, vibrating, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... small place like Barbie that such malignity is most virulent, because in a small place like Barbie every man knows everything to his neighbour's detriment. He can redd up his rival's pedigree, for example, and lower his pride (if need be) by detailing the disgraces of his kin. "I have grand news the day!" a big-hearted Scot will exclaim ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Congressional district, declaring that I had "the temper of a hedgehog, the adhesiveness of a barnacle, the vanity of a peacock, the vindictiveness of a Corsican, the hypocrisy of Aminadab Sleek and the duplicity of the devil." I rather enjoyed these paroxysms of malignity, which broke out all over the State among the Governor's conservative satellites, since my only offense was fidelity to my political opinions, the soundness of which I was finding fully justified by events; for the friends of the Governor, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... debates among our physicians as to the reason of this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of rage and a hatred against their own kind, as if there were a malignity, not only in the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man, prompting him with evil will, or an evil eye, that as they say in the case of a mad dog, who, though the gentlest creature before of any of his kind, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... (Berks), about fifty years of age, when about a month old had the smallpox at a time when three others of the family had the same disease, one of whom, a servant man, died of it. Mr. Langford's countenance was strongly indicative of the malignity of the distemper, his face being so remarkably pitted and seamed as to attract the notice of all who saw him, so that no one could entertain a doubt of his having had that disease in a most inveterate manner." Mr. Withers proceeds to state that Mr. Langford was seized a second time, had ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Tuscan sea, and the coasts of Africa, Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, of all piratical adventurers; which he effected in forty days, by his own indefatigable endeavors and those of his lieutenants. But, as the consul Piso was indulging his malignity at home, in wasting his stores and discharging his seamen, he sent his fleet round to Brundusium, and went himself by ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... sort of "love" I have in my mind is not so much "hate" as a kind of dull and insensitive hostility, a kind of brutal malignity and callous aversion. Perhaps what we are looking for as the true opposite of love may be ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... aggravating circumstance of the marquis's menace, and each sentence of Julia's speech; and his mind experienced that vice is not only inconsistent with virtue, but with itself—for to gratify his malignity, he now discovered that it would be necessary to sacrifice his pride—since it would be impossible to punish the object of the first without denying himself the gratification of the latter. This reflection suspended ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the transition seemed to have begun; there was no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox—we may venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic—is not given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack, and Tom was an excellent bovine lad, who ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... from being transported by any sudden and violent feeling of resentment to an inconsiderate act of revenge, Astyages began, calmly and coolly, and with a deliberate malignity more worthy of a demon than of a man, to consider how he could best accomplish the purpose he had in view. When, at length, his plan was formed, he sent for Harpagus to come to him. Harpagus came. The king began ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Pope replied by a long letter, suppressed, however, for the time, which, as Johnson says, exhibits to later readers "nothing but tedious malignity," and is, in fact, a careful raking together of everything likely to give pain to his victim. It was not published till 1751, when both Pope and Hervey were dead. In his later writings he made references to Sappho, which fixed the name upon her, and amongst other pleasant insinuations, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... amiable host observed that in his opinion Mr. . . . . had over-rated the merits of the poetry; but had they been tenfold greater, they could not have compensated for that malignity of heart which could alone have 35 prompted sentiments so atrocious. I perceived that my illustrious friend became greatly distressed on my account; but fortunately I was able to preserve fortitude and presence of mind enough to take up ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... salvation. It informs us of our original, how pure and innocent; and our present condition, how guilty, polluted and miserable! and the happiness or misery which awaits us in a future state. From this book we may learn, the malignity of sin, the holiness, spirituality, extent, and sanction of the law of God; and consequently, the just and certain condemnation due to our disobedience. It shews us, likewise, the way of our recovery. How perfectly the mediation of Christ ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... thee!" - Is it that Teuton genius flowers Only to breathe malignity Upon its friend of earlier hours? - We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours, We have loved your burgs, your pines' green moan, Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers; Your shining souls of deathless dowers Have won us as they were ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... been put into history, either by astonishing the reader with prodigies, by titillating human malignity with satire, or by flattering the families of tyrants ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... "The natives do not allow that there is such a thing as a death from natural causes; they believe that were it not for murderers, or the malignity of sorcerers, they might live for ever."—GREY'S Travels in Western Australia, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... any point of science or literature, they profited by the occasion, without, however, lingering too long over one and the same subject, but flitting from one topic to another like bees that meet as they go with different sorts of flowers. Envy, malignity, or cabal had no voice amongst them; they adored the works of the ancients, refused not the moderns the praises which were their due, spoke of their own with modesty, and gave one another honest advice when any one of them fell ill of the malady of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the mother-heart to madness. The religious guides of the people used unsparingly the appeal to fear. The belief in witchcraft, which long had scourged Europe, broke out in a panic of fear and cruelty. It was a tragic culmination of the worst elements,—superstition, malignity, ministerial tyranny. Then came the reaction, and with it a triumph of the wiser sense, the cooler temper, the layman's moderation, which thenceforth were to guide the commonwealth on a ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... wonderful how he could turn from such a man without a conciliatory or a sympathizing expression. The poor fellow's face looked haggard with want; he had the aspect of a man who had not known what it was to live in comfort and plenty for weeks, perhaps months, past, and yet there was no ferocity, no malignity in his countenance; it was worn, dejected, austere, but still patient. How could Moore leave him thus, with the words, "I'll never give in," and not a whisper of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the Scholars, and probably the Commoners, for forty-eight weeks in each year. All undergraduates had to attend lectures or disputations for twenty-four hours in every week. These tasks were arranged with careful malignity to begin at 6 A.M., and resumed at 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. Nor were examinations wanting. The Bible was to be read during dinner in Hall by a Bible Clerk or Scholar, and heard attentively and reverently. Latin was to be spoken in Hall, and English only when the presence ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock. I had no eyes to ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their social hours: I treasured up their wit, and their sentiments on the various topics which they had discussed in conversation. Respected as they were, it must, however, be acknowledged that they did not escape the malignity of criticism. It was objected to Secundus, that he had no command of words, no flow of language; and to Aper, that he was indebted for his fame, not to art or literature, but to the natural powers of a vigorous ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... was safe, and that the prefect of Calvados even if he suspected her, would never venture to cause her arrest, went fearlessly among her neighbours. She was not aware that the enquiry had passed from Caffarelli's hands into those of the prefect of Rouen, and was now managed by a man whose malignity and stubbornness would not be ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... carelessness of their political action. The soldier is not always remembered nor honored as he should be. But, what to the future of the great Republic is more important, there is great danger of our people under-estimating the bitter animus and terrible malignity to the Union and its defenders cherished by those who made war upon it. This is a point we can not afford to be mistaken about. And yet, right at this point this volume will meet its severest criticism, and at this point its testimony is ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." And truly, not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... limbs sank huddling on the floor; then Mark looked up; at the window a few feet from him was a face, more horrible than he had supposed a human face, if it was human indeed, could be. It was deadly white, and hatred, baffled rage, and a sort of devilish malignity glared from the white set eyes, and the drawn mouth. There was a rush from behind him; the old hound, who had crept up unawares into the room, with a fierce outcry of rage sprang on to the window-sill; Mark heard the scraping of his claws upon the stone. Then the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... character, insomuch that there is not only no personage so important or exalted—for of that I do not complain—but no person so humble, harmless, and retired as to escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by the venal crew to gratify the idle curiosity or still less excusable malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic life—to hunt them down and drag them forth as a laughing stock to the vulgar, has become in our days with some men the road even to popularity, but with ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... what he, as man, can do as well. He may fly or swim, if be is in the shape of bird or fish; if he has taken the form of a wolf, or if he goes on a gandrei, or wolf's-ride, he is fall of the rage and malignity of the creatures whose powers and ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... world into disorder. Purity, intelligence, spirituality and subtlety constitute the vital spirit of right which pervades heaven and earth, and the persons gifted with benevolence are its natural fruit. Malignity and perversity constitute the spirit of evil, which permeates heaven and earth, and malicious persons are affected by its influence. The days of perpetual happiness and eminent good fortune, and the era of perfect peace and tranquility, which now prevail, are the offspring of the pure, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... was eloquence lost; for, at that very dinner, conversation chancing to turn upon the subtile malignity of Fanny Matilda's smiles, Fanny Matilda being there present, in less time than it takes to tell it twenty crayon smiles writhed and wriggled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... court, by her graces and her high distinction, she displayed there, for the cause of the good, all the resources of her mind and the riches of her heart. But none of the seductions and agitations she met there disturbed the limpidity of her pure soul. Malignity, itself at bay, was forced to recognize and avow that in the Duchess of Reggio no other stain could be found than the ink-stains she sometimes allowed her pen to make upon her finger. In her greatness, this noble woman saw, before all, ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Shakespeare's admits and requires some closer than common scrutiny. Coleridge has admirably described the first great soliloquy which opens to us the pit of hell within as "the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity." But subtle and profound and just as is this definitive appreciation, there is more in the matter yet than even this. It is not only that Iago, so to speak, half tries to make himself half believe that Othello has wronged him, and that the thought of it gnaws him inly ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... his exposition, and the sergeant-at-law was about to conclude a case which Nigel could in no way controvert, when help came to him from an unexpected quarter. It may have been a certain malignity with which the sacrist urged his suit, it may have been a diplomatic dislike to driving matters to extremes, or it may have been some genuine impulse of kindliness, for Abbot John was choleric but easily appeased. Whatever the cause, the result was ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence, as she expected, he at once answered, 'Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance[857].' His definition of Network[858] has been often quoted with sportive malignity[859], as obscuring a thing in itself very plain. But to these frivolous censures no other answer is necessary than that with which we are furnished by his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... account of my father's ascension to heaven. Know ye now what my fixed resolve is. I think no time must be lost in avenging this injury upon the wretch Takshaka that killed my father. He burnt my father making Sringin only a secondary cause. From malignity alone he made Kasyapa return. If that Brahmana had arrived, my father assuredly would have lived. What would he have lost if the king had revived by the grace of Kasyapa and the precautionary measures of his ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... an offence of great malignity and mischief; it is for the offence of conspiracy, which is charged to have been committed by the eight persons whose names are upon this indictment; and it is for you to consider upon the statement of the evidence I shall make to you, how far that offence ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Parris. Verily, malignity hath ever cowardice in conjunction with it. Satan loveth best to afflict those who can make no defence, and fastens his talons first in ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to notify the savages, to my great regret, of the malignity of this liar, stating that he had confessed the truth; at which they were delighted, reproaching me with the little confidence I put in them, who were chiefs and my friends, and who always spoke the ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain V3 • Samuel de Champlain
... we were before St. Jean d'Acre, he expressed himself greatly dissatisfied with Junot, and complained of the injury he had done him by his indiscreet disclosures, which he began to regard as the inventions of malignity. I perceived afterwards that he never pardoned Junot for this indiscretion; and I can state, almost with certainty, that this was one of the reasons why Junot was not created a marshal of France, like many of, his comrades whom Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the King chose to lay down a different policy, the Cardinal had to carry it out as best he could—or else to retire in disfavour. And he could not afford to retire in disfavour, since, if the royal countenance were once withdrawn, the malignity of his many enemies would be given rein, and his utter ruin would be inevitable. Therefore, while watching for any opportunity to convert the King from his martial designs, he made a desperate ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... the flower-pots, of the grass borders where the cat had often stretched itself in the sun, her eagerness to see the chamber of death, her stealthy visits to that chamber, her growing uneasiness, deepening to acute apprehension, and finally to a deadly malignity—all lead me irresistibly to ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... clergy had joined his bitterest enemies. Then he touched the corporate spirit, and perceived that for authority to lay a hand on ecclesiastical privilege is to metamorphose goodwill into the most rancorous malignity. Meanwhile, the letters in which Turgot explained his views and wishes to the cures, by them to be imparted to their parishes, are masterpieces of the care, the patience, the interest, of a good ruler. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... he thought, he could serve him better now by silent observation than by protestation. Lord Chiltern, who had been implored by Phineas not to leave him, continued to pour forth unabating execrations on the monstrous malignity of the accusers. "I do not know that there are any accusers," said Mr. Low, "except the circumstances which the police must, of course, investigate." Then the men came, and the nature of their duty was soon explained. They must request Mr. Finn to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... caustic and vigorous mode of expression. His name was a target for the wits. "A physician who plays on the guitar and fancies himself a composer," was the scoff of malignant gossips. The journals poured on him a flood of abuse without stint. French malignity is the most venomous and unscrupulous in the world, and Berlioz was selected as a choice victim for its most vigorous exercise, none the less willingly that he had shown so much skill and zest in impaling the victims of his own artistic and ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... understand, that they take it ill; but (upon the terms I ought to be with such a man) I would not ask him for this money, but commissioned one of the players, his equals, to receive it. This is the whole matter; but as to the secret grounds of this malignity, they will make a very pleasant history when ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his little charge a look of intense malignity. 'Well! Of all the ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... new dynasty, it was fitting he should attract as he did the deepest tenderness and solicitude of the chief. Malignity and envy, which ever seek to defame and villify the great, gave slanderous explanations of this almost paternal attachment; but wise and thoughtful men saw in this adoptive tenderness only what it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... from California for just such emergencies. Donohoe's first service for Mr. Rogers was a vicious onslaught on Heinze, of Montana, in the New York Commercial. This was an attack of such unusual vulgarity and malignity that it won Donohoe his spurs, for soon afterward, when by a characteristic trick Mr. Rogers obtained possession of the New York Commercial, he made Donohoe its editor. I may mention that Heinze sued the Commercial for $300,000 damages, and apropos of the suit an ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... it, but most particularly the formidable expression of my uncle's countenance while he talked, though hypothetically, of murder, combined to arouse all my worst suspicions of him. I dreaded to look upon the face that had so recently worn the appalling livery of guilt and malignity. I regarded it with the mingled fear and loathing with which one looks upon an object which has tortured them ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... being middle-aged; then aid, a patron, servant, etc. Also a tribe of the Jinn usually made synonymous with "Marid," evil controuls, hostile to men: modern spiritualists would regard them as polluted souls not yet purged of their malignity. The text insinuates that they were at home amongst ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... a summary and condensed view of the essentials of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, set forth by himself. Now this supposed Summa of Nazarene theology distinctly affirms the existence of a spiritual world, of a Heaven, and of a Hell of fire; it teaches the Fatherhood of God and the malignity of the Devil; it declares the superintending providence of the former and our need of deliverance from the machinations of the latter; it affirms the fact of demoniac possession and the power of casting out devils by the faithful. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... still they do not possess what can properly be called a destructive or malignant character. On the other hand, every kind of heterologous formation whenever it has not its seat in entirely superficial parts, has a certain degree of malignity, and even superficial affections, though entirely confined to the most external layers of epidermis, may gradually exercise a very detrimental effect. Indeed, suppuration is of this nature, for suppuration ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... different from the sincere and noble tribute which a good man renders to goodness. Still, it is valid testimony to the truth that the mere approbation of goodness is not the love of it. It is true, that these panegyrics of virtue, when read in the light of Rousseau's sensuality and Voltaire's malignity, wear a dead and livid hue, like objects seen in the illumination from phosphorus or rotten wood; yet, nevertheless, they are visible and readable, and testify as distinctly as if they issued from elevated ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... through an evening, she would be gay and melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed spontaneous. She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or confiding at will. Her apparent good nature was real; she had no temptation to descend to malignity. But at each moment her mood changed; she was full of confidence or craft; her moving tenderness would give place to a heart-breaking hardness and insensibility. Yet how paint her as she was, without ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... care of the building of the temple; who, upon receiving that epistle from Cyrus, came, and immediately laid its foundations; "and although it hath been in building from that time to this, it hath not yet been finished, by reason of the malignity of our enemies. If therefore you have a mind, and think it proper, write this account to Darius, that when he hath consulted the records of the kings, he may find that we have told you nothing that is false about ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Colepepper had hastened the catastrophe. As this communication related to the plan which Hildebrod had been pleased to form, of promoting a marriage betwixt Nigel himself and the rich heiress of Trapbois, the fear of losing an opportunity not to be regained, together with the mean malignity of a low-bred ruffian, disappointed in a favourite scheme, was most likely to instigate the bravo to the deed of violence which had been committed. The reflection that his own name was in some degree implicated with the causes of this horrid tragedy, doubled Lord Glenvarloch's anxiety in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... overwhelming malignity oppresses me. In spite of much baffling ambiguity and the frequent evasion of conscious guilt, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt that these barbarians ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... people are dominated by their servants, their clothes, and their family connections; much as Merovingian kings, we were taught in our "Cours de Dictees," were dominated by the mayors of the palace. Instead of which, bar accidents (and the malignity of bottle-glass and shoe-nails), I am free, and am helped to ever greater freedom ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... ce petit cachot ou il se trouve loge, qu'il apprenne the earth, et soi-meme a son juste prix. Il ffre, mais elle est ployable a tous sens; et ainsi il n'y en a point. Un meme sens change selon les paroles qui l'expriment. He has touches even of what he calls the malignity, the malign irony of Montaigne. Rien que la mediocrite n'est bon, he says,—epris des hauteurs, as he so conspicuously was—C'est sortir de l'humanite que de sortir du milieu; la grandeur de l'ame humaine consiste a ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... made to destroy him by Sir Phillip Holbeaut. He had, therefore, for a time taken service with the Count of Savoy, and was away from England, to the satisfaction of Walter and Dame Vernon, when the marriage took place; for he had given proofs of such a malignity of disposition that both felt, that although his succession to the estates was now hopelessly barred, yet that he might at any moment attempt some desperate deed to satisfy his feeling of disappointment ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... insanely driven by 'the soul of the Gironde.' A mere coincidence, of course! It was a mere coincidence, too, that the Girondist, Dufriche-Valaze, who, at the trial of Louis XVI., especially gratified the personal malignity of Madame Roland by the insolence with which he treated the royal captive, should have tried to save his own head when he and his comrades at last were writhing in the iron grip of Robespierre, by eagerly denouncing his friend ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in her chair, not noticing the presence of her niece, who stood for a moment looking and hesitating before accosting her. Her countenance bore, when she was alone, an expression of malignity which made Fanchon shudder. A quick, unconscious twitching of the fingers accompanied her thoughts, as if this weird woman was playing a game of mora with the evil genius that waited on her. Her grandsire Exili had the same nervous twitching of his fingers, and the vulgar ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... got from London. A polygonal line of fortifications surrounded Gloucester, which was then much smaller than now, and the bastions came down to the river, with outlying works to defend a small suburb on the opposite bank. The Cavaliers were in great strength in Western England, and the malignity of the Gloucester pin-makers seriously embarrassed them. On August 10, 1643, the siege began with a summons to surrender, which the authorities refused. Parts of the suburbs were then burned, and next morning a bombardment began, red-hot balls and ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... pope," says Canon Farrar, "could pronounce his sentences with more dignity and verve. He is what has been called 'that terrible creature, the perfect priest.'" Violent, unforgiving, and harsh, he is the soul of the conspiracy. His strong determination is reflected in the weak malignity of his colleague, Annas, as well as in the priests and scribes. "While he lives," Caiaphas says, "there is no peace for Israel. It is better that one man should die, that the ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... past eleven when Tinker came riding over the hills at the head of his merry, but imaginary men. Horribly hungry, but warmed by the sun to a quite passable malignity, the money-lender watched his coming from the top of the tower, pondering how to catch him and thrash him within an inch of his life. He did not know that far more active men than he had cherished vainly that arrogant ambition, but Tinker's ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity, but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have past through variations ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... should not like to think they would have been willing to go to quite such lengths, though they seem to have shown enough malignity toward their patriotic fellow-countrymen to make it evident that they had something of the spirit of ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... Science and the base malignity of our latest adversaries have debased modern warfare, as waged by them, from its ancient dignity and honour; and they have conducted it so as to make it difficult to believe that from the Kaiser down to the subaltern on land and the petty officer at sea that nation can ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... paper never flinched before the storm of malignity which was gathering about his head. He pursued the even tenor of his way, laboring at the case more than fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after week, his assaults upon the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Acland, with profound contempt, and dislike the notion of personal contact or collision with them, as representatives of the foulest state of ill feeling that can be generated in the worst manufacturing regions—of sordid avarice, selfishness, envy, and malignity; but they are active—ever up and doing, and steadily applying themselves, with palatable topics, to the corruption of the hearts of the working classes. So, unless the persons to whom we allude choose to cast aside their morbid aversions—to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... be proud of the terror he inspired in those who feared no God in whom vanity was stronger than conscience: but that terror made no individual man better; and while he indulged his own besetting sin, he administered to the malignity of others. Your professed satirists always send me to think upon the opposite sentiment in Shakspeare, on "the mischievous foul sin of chiding sin." I remember once hearing a poem of Barry Cornwall's, (he read it to me,) about a strange winged creature that, having the lineaments of a ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... favourable, he did not suffer himself to sink into despondence. He easily discovered that the only stage on which a poet could appear with any hope of advantage was London; a place too wide for the operation of petty competition and private malignity, where merit might soon become conspicuous, and would find friends as soon as it became reputable to befriend it. A lady who was acquainted with his mother advised him to the journey, and promised some countenance or assistance, which at last he never received; ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... to say so," cried Esther. "But you must ascertain first that Philippe is a boxer; for these old English fellows, my dear, have a depth of malignity——" ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... among the guiltiest toward my mother—still I delayed HIS punishment to the last; and, for his child's sake, I would have pardoned him—nay, I had resolved to do so, when a fierce Jew, who had a deep malignity toward this man, swore that he would accomplish HIS vengeance at all events, and perhaps might be obliged to include Margaret in the ruin, unless I adhered to the original scheme. Then I yielded; for circumstances armed this man with momentary power. But the night fixed on was ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... said to her I know not, but his face was one malignity as he leaned toward her across the small table. She faced his snake's eyes, her own dark with an intensity which should have warned him, and half beneath her breath, as though she told him of some danger with which she had nothing to do, as one might ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... places; the size of the eye sockets which appeared monstrous, was emphasised by the fact that the eyes were considerably sunken; the lips were curled downwards and tightly shut, and the whole expression of the withered mouth, as indeed that of the entire face, was one of bestial, diabolical malignity. Lady Adela's heart momentarily stopped, her blood ran cold, she was petrified; and as she stared helplessly at the dark eyes pressed close to hers, she saw them suddenly suffuse with fiendish glee. The most frightful change then took place: the upper lip writhed away from ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... lightly and placed it negligently among his other ornaments, smiling at the King as he did so with the air of one who graciously condescends to accept a gift out of kindly feeling for the donor. Zabastes meanwhile had witnessed the scene with an expression of mingled impatience, malignity, and disgust written plainly on his furrowed features, and as soon as the hubbub of applause had subsided, he struck his staff on the ground with an ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was so completely absorbed, that she did not perceive that most of the audience were intent upon her. Those who act any part may be ridiculous in the playing it, but those are safe from the utmost malignity of criticism who are perfectly unconscious that they have any part to perform. Emma had been abashed at her first appearance in an assembly of strangers, and concerned by the idea that she had kept them waiting; but as soon as this embarrassment ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... remissness of applying remedies to some, and the unwariness in giving a kind of countenance to others, too much of that poison insinuated itself into minds not well fortified against such infection, so that much of the malignity was transplanted, instead of being extinguished, to the corruption of many wholesome bodies, which, being corrupted, spread the diseases more powerfully and more mischievously." [Footnote: Life, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... instinctive appetites of the brute, but derive from the wreck of his intellectual powers, which he cannot utterly destroy, just so much of a higher nature that they are sins, and not instincts, belonging to the malignity of diabolic nature, rather than to the mere negative evil of ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... hopes of life as soon as he was apprehended, as having no friends to make intercession likely to procure a pardon. He was, indeed, a poor young creature, rather stupid than wicked and his vices more owing to his folly than to the malignity of his inclinations. He seemed to have a just notion both of the heinousness of that crime which he had committed and of the shame and ignominy he had brought upon himself and his relations. He was particularly affected with the miseries which were ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... Then came the period during which, from being the most popular American author, he became the most unpopular man of letters to whom the nation has ever given birth. "For years," says Lounsbury, "a storm of abuse fell upon him, which for violence, for virulence, and even for malignity, surpassed anything in the history of American literature, if not in the history ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... head of which was the Cayuga chief Logan.[18] This very celebrated [118] Indian is represented as having hitherto, observed towards the whites, a course of conduct by no means in accordance with the malignity and steadfast implacability which influenced his red brethren generally; but was, on the contrary, distinguished by a sense of humanity, and a just abhorrence of those cruelties so frequently inflicted on the innocent and unoffending, as well as upon those who were ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... use and benefit, making almost a man of her, and an unshackled man, owing no dues to posterity. Those estates in the hands of a woman are in the hands of her husband; and the husband a gambler and a knave, they are in the hands of the Jews—or gone to smoke. Let them go. A devilish malignity bequeathed them: let them go back to their infernal origin. And when they were gone, his girl would soon discover that there was no better place to come to than her home; she would come without an asking, and alone, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Jack soon came to the rescue, angry, wounded, and forever after alien- ated from his early home and his mother. Many times would Frado steal up into Jenny's room, when she knew she was tortured by her mis- tress' malignity, and tell some of her own encounters with her, and tell her she might "be sure it wouldn't kill her, for she should have died long before ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... words with intense malignity, nearly screaming in the bitterness she felt towards the beautiful daughter of better education than herself, almost of different station. It was all but a triumph for her that this had happened. It brought her daughter down; she turned the ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... noise. Pope whispers poetic perdition—he deals in drops of concentrated bitterness—he stabs with a poisoned bodkin—he touches his enemies into stone with the light and playful finger of a fairy—and his more elaborate invectives glitter all over with the polish of profound malignity. His knowledge of human nature, particularly of woman's heart, is great, but seems more the result of impish eavesdropping than of that thorough and genial insight which sympathy produces. He has listened at the keyhole, not by any "Open Sesame" entered ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... any dissent from his opinions, afterwards complained in a private letter [6] to Hurd, that Johnson's remarks on his commentaries were full of insolence and malignant reflections, which, had they not in them "as much folly as malignity," he should have had reason to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... presented before the court; but the sight of the poor cripple, racked and bruised with recent tortures, and his steadfastness in recanting his late confession, wrought more with the judges than the fear of the duke, and he was acquitted. But the feeble and ferocious bishop, moved partly by malignity and partly, no doubt, by sincere and cowardly terror, was resolved to kill him; and by some fiction declaring him to have been in the minor orders, he clapped him into the bishop's prison, claiming to try him by ecclesiastical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... to avoid that horrid duel in the morning. He had always escaped by a margin so narrow that no precedent of the past gave assurance of luck for the future. He was mortally afraid that at last he had challenged such a monster of brute courage, malignity, and strength that nothing terrestrial could ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... considered as a whole, is strictly moral. The Catholic priest is not praised for burning his fellow-creature at an auto-da-fe, and for wallowing in licentiousness; nor is the Calvinist commended for his unrelenting malignity to all those whose tenets are different from his own, and for crying down the most innocent pleasures and relaxations which a bountiful and just God has been pleased to place within the reach of ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity towards those who are often the beginners of their own fortune, and not a love of the self-denial and mortification of the ancient Church, that makes some look askance at the distinctions and honors and revenues which, taken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said I, "I am Carn Sais;" whereupon, with a strange mixture in his face of malignity and contempt, he answered in English that he didn't ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... departed and assembled the whole Chapter, and, causing Sister Marie to appear on her knees before him, he said to her with wondrous malignity— ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... gall and wormwood to Brown, who pursued Macdonald with a malignity which has no parallel in our happier times. Nor, it must be confessed, did Macdonald fail to retort. Though not a resentful person, nor one who could not control his feelings, he never disguised his personal antipathy {47} towards the man who had persistently and for many ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... and especially, as the wise man says, to know the plague of my own heart, is the true and the only key to all other true knowledge: God and man; the Redeemer and the devil; heaven and hell; faith, hope, and charity; unbelief, despair, and malignity, and all things of that kind else, all knowledge will come to that man who knows himself, and to that man alone, and to that man in the exact measure in which he does really know himself. Listen again to ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... is at least as difficult to stay a moral infection as a physical one; that such a disease will spread with the malignity and rapidity of the Plague; that the contagion, when it has once made head, will spare no pursuit or condition, but will lay hold on people in the soundest health, and become developed in the most unlikely constitutions: is a fact as firmly established by experience as that we human ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... yell of agony, Mr. Ellis let go his hold, and fell upon a pile of rubbish below, whilst a cry of triumphant malignity went up from the crowd ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... we believe, in his twenty-sixth year. Milton's Latin verses show tenderness, a fine eye for nature, and a delicate appreciation of classic models, but give no hint of the author of a new style in poetry. Pope's youthful pieces have all the sing-song, wholly unrelieved by the glittering malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy," Chatterton, than ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... gasped in a sort of triumphant malignity. "The only thing that keeps old folks like me happy is the sense that they can make other people step around. To be old and rich and have poor descendants is almost as much fun as to be young and beautiful ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... this—long before, I hope—I shall have solved the great mystery—if, indeed, we solve it. If the water runs down to-morrow, and there is every prospect that it will do so, I must have the opportunity of making such an end as even malignity cannot suspect of being voluntary. There are plenty of fish in the water; if I hook one in 'The Trows,' I shall let myself go whither the current takes me. Life has for weeks been odious to me; for ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... helpless state into which Babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of Uruazagga. Elam was pressing upon her eastern, and Assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... them, or to check their influence in this contest. But they have mistaken their men. Like other vipers, they will find, before these matters end, that they bite a file—a file of good American steel, and tempered to that degree of hardness that all their malignity, intense and active as it is known to be, will not be able to ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... in this they confound him with a later Herod) he affected divine honours. To mention such slanders, as the sceptical Bayle has said with special reference to the case of Knox, is all that is needed to refute them. They are the product of malignity so evident that it defeats itself. I know but one parallel to them in our literature, and it has the excuse that it has come down to us from the dark ages.[251] Some would persuade us that the time has come when we might afford to forget old controversies ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... have seen the effect of fortune's influence on the man whose adventures I have now related. So long as his star was propitious, he succeeded in everything; but whenever it changed, his efforts to correct its malignity were fruitless. The transient instances of success which seemed to arrest the current of his misfortunes soon plunged him into greater evils than those which he had escaped. Circumstances that were unforeseen, and steps that ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... the defendant pair. Another account would have it that a dispute over a boundary fence marching between the Tatum homestead on Cache Creek and one of the Stackpole farm holdings ripened into a prime quarrel by reasons of Stackpole stubbornness on the one hand and Tatum malignity on the other. By yet a third account the lawsuit and the line-fence matter were confusingly twisted together to ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb |
