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Malevolence   Listen
Malevolence

noun
1.
Wishing evil to others.  Synonym: malignity.
2.
The quality of threatening evil.  Synonyms: malevolency, malice.






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"Malevolence" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... income being the immediate cause of misery, it is fitting that we should know why, misfortune and malevolence aside, the workingman's income is insufficient. It is still the same question of inequality of fortunes, which has made such a stir for a century past, and which, by a strange fatality, continually reappears in academic programmes, as if there lay the real ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... imaginable 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 of the upper structure, but not ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... together as silently and naturally as two waves close a trough in the ocean, but without disturbance or upheaval. They fell into an embrace, into a coalescence as inevitable as the well they obliterated was fortuitous. They closed like the jaws of a trap somehow above malevolence, leaving only the top of the ladder projecting upward from the smooth and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... No thought of malevolence could come from that head with its gentle blue eyes that showed the peace within, but fear struck ever stronger into those who watched him, and in one place a woman fainted; for the great body continued to grow, and grow ever ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall

... surprising that, beholding from infancy such examples, Ammalat—though he has retained the detestation of meanness natural to pure blood—should have adopted concealment as an indispensable arm against open malevolence and secret villany? The sacred ties of relationship do not exist for Asiatics. With them, the son is the slave of the father—the brother is a rival. No one trusts his neighbour, because there is no faith in any man. Jealousy of their wives, and dread of espionage, destroy brotherly love and friendship. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... 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 what we ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... blackness; profound in expression of understanding, yet inhuman in degree of wickedness. These were now fixed upon me, piercing my soul with their hatred, and rooting me to the spot whereon I stood. At last the figure spoke in a rumbling voice that chilled me through with its dull hollowness and latent malevolence. The language in which the discourse was clothed was that debased form of Latin in use amongst the more learned men of the Middle Ages, and made familiar to me by my prolonged researches into the works of the old alchemists and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... endeavor to become infernal spirits. It is too well exemplified in the present time, where the faults and errors of humanity, checked by the imperfect, timorous virtues, have been overpowered by those who have stopped at no crime. It is a dreadful part of the example, that infernal malevolence has had pious apologists, who read their lectures on frailties in favor of crimes,—who abandon the weak, and court the friendship of the wicked. To root out these maxims, and the examples that support them, is a wise object of years of war. This is that war. This is that moral war. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of course," said Saunders. "We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled with pure malevolence—to you and all mankind. After you spiked it through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in that safe, you know, for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinking ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... 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 you're there make up the berth and tidy things ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... enough for the others to hear. Mildred's face grew red with white streaks across it, like the prints of a lash. The subtlest feature of his malevolence had been that, whereas on other days he had taken her aside to criticize her, on this day he had spoken out—gently, deprecatingly, but frankly—before the whole company. Never had Mildred Gower been so sad and so blue as she was that ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... taste, what man of real knowledge, would not think his time well employed in an enquiry so curious, so interesting, and instructive? If Lauder's facts were really true, who would not be glad, without the smallest tincture of malevolence, to receive real information? It is painful to be thus obliged to vindicate a man who, in his heart, towered above the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against an injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his editor, and the protector of his memory. Another writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... By an untoward chance, a bundle of these, sent to the agent of the Bishop in Spain, was taken on the voyage by an English corsair. The worthy pirate (no doubt a Protestant) was, if we can believe the Jesuits, extremely scandalized at the bad faith of those who used such means of wreaking their malevolence. ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... prosecution for the crime of poisoning against Asprenas Nonius, who was, at the time, linked in the closest friendship with Augustus. Not content with accusations against the first men in Rome, he chose to vent his malevolence in lampoons and defamatory libels, against the most distinguished of both sexes. It was this that provoked Horace to declare war against Cassius, in an ode (lib, v. ode 6), which begins, Quid immerentes hospites vexas, canis. See an account of his ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... proceeded from early impressions, or whether an awe imperceptibly crept over him, through his frequent communings with old people (when he was in more advanced life) who had no doubt of the existence of witches and spirits, good and bad, visiting the earth, and performing acts of benevolence or malevolence, according to the inclination or caprice of the uncanny or unearthly agent, we cannot say; but of one thing there can be no doubt, that even in years of maturity he believed there were spirits that appeared to men, and assisted them ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... 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, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... But the word used to mean the noise of the shaking of a house moved by a goblin; and the invisible shaker was also called Yanari. When, without apparent cause, some house would shudder and creak and groan in the night, folk used to suppose that it was being shaken from without by supernatural malevolence. ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... with a malignant eye each friendly glance exchanged by the couple in front, and listened to the snatches of their talk with a malevolence that was fanned to fury by their obvious heedlessness of her presence. She felt that the crisis called for decisive action. There was only one person alive to whose judgment Cynthia Vanrenen would bow, and Mrs. Devar began seriously ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... difficult for the chief of a party to direct. Moreover, Conde, as the Duchess de Nemours remarks, knew better how to win battles than hearts.[1] He found a dangerous pleasure, as did his sister the Duchess de Longueville, in braving malevolence. "In matters of consequence, they delighted to thwart people, and in ordinary life they were so impracticable that there was no getting on with them. They had such a habit of ridiculing one, and of saying offensive things, that nobody could put up with them. When visits were paid ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... It must have been about this time that he formed an intimacy with Petrarch, which, notwithstanding marked diversity of temperament, character and pursuits, was destined to be broken only by death. Despite his complaints of the malevolence of his critics in the Proem to the Fourth Day of the Decameron, he had no lack of appreciation on the part of his fellow-citizens, and was employed by the Republic on several missions; to Bologna, probably with the view of averting the submission of that city to the Visconti in 1350; to Petrarch ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... army to take that course which he did not 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 nine tenths of those who had stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... had ideas in his groups, but he was not sculpturesque. His friends protest against this judgment, and attribute it, ad nauseam, to "malevolence" and "envy." What if his technique was less brilliant than that of Hals, they say; what if his shadows are less transparent than those of Rembrandt (and they will make no meaner comparison)? He is "teeming with noble thoughts," and these will put his work "on a level with the masterpieces of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... of mendacity" which, culminating in the Worcester Congress, was mainly responsible for the second invasion of the Colony, had been inaugurated by the inflammatory speeches delivered in the last session of Parliament by the Afrikander members during the debates on the Treason Bill. The spirit of malevolence displayed at this period by the anti-British Press, whether printed in Dutch or in English, may be inferred from the list of convictions reported on April 19th by Sir W. Hely-Hutchinson to the Colonial Office. Mr. Albert Cartwright, editor ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold

... 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 was justified. Waldhaus at once ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... here command either first-rate articles or materials, without incurring the risk of suspicion and interruption. While most of the simple villagers are kindly disposed towards me, there are a few who regard me with distrust and malevolence, and would readily avail themselves of an opportunity to bring me under the censure of the priesthood and the government. Besides, the governor of Mergui would probably be glad to lay hold of any plausible evidence against you, as affording ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... affair that you suspect. I see a great deal in your view of her to make you uneasy, but nothing that would not be capable of explanation, above all to such a man as my brother. It would appear like mere malevolence." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... following comment concerning the belief among emigrants to Maryland: "The tempest lasted two months in all, whence the opinion arose, that it was not raised by the violence of the sea or atmosphere, but was occasioned by the malevolence of witches. Forthwith they seize a little old woman suspected of sorcery; and after examining her with the strictest scrutiny, guilty or not guilty, they slay her, suspected of this very heinous sin. The corpse, and whatever belonged to her, they cast into the sea. But the winds did ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... we experienced a singular example of the persistency and malevolence of the typical Italian beggar. This time it was a woman and her child, both extremely dirty, the latter evidently alive with vermin. The woman, on my wife's refusing to give her anything, deliberately told her poor neglected child ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... misgivings in his mind; a consciousness that he did owe explanation and apology to Feltram, and an insurmountable reluctance to undertake either. The old dislike—a contempt mingled with fear—not any fear of his malevolence, a fear only of his carelessness and folly; for, as I have said, Feltram knew many things, it was believed, of the Baronet's Continental and Asiatic life, and had even gently remonstrated with him upon the dangers into which he was running. A simple fellow like ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... St. James the Apostle, I noticed a sailor with a stern, hard, almost black face and fierce, dark eyes, who—had such a thing been possible—might have stepped, just as he stood, out of the pages of "Amyas Leigh." He was regarding me with an expression in which, if there was no actual malevolence, there was at least not the slightest indication of friendliness or good will. Taking from my haversack a box of the cigarettes with which I had provided myself in anticipation of a tobacco famine among the Spanish sailors, I sprang over the bulwark, and, with as cordial a smile ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... attempting to cross, at times when the river was swollen by a rapid rise, which even a day's rain will produce. These calamities, along with any other fatal accidents which happened in the neighbourhood, are usually attributed to the malevolence of Peggy. The stepping-stones are alluded to in our first volume as the place where King Henry VI was taken, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... sometimes confesses secret commerce[121] and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepit parts of our species, in whom human nature is defaced by ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... present at this interview, seemed terrified with the apprehension. My daughters also, finding that he was gone, came out to be informed of the result of our conference, which, when known, alarmed them not less than the rest. But as to myself, I disregarded the utmost stretch of his malevolence: he had already struck the blow, and now I stood prepared to repel every new effort. Like one of those instruments used in the art of war, which, however thrown, still presents a point ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... Caffyn to himself, with one of his peculiar impulses to safe and secret malevolence. 'If you will get them all together, dear Mrs. Langton,' he replied, 'I'll see what I can do.' And accordingly he entertained them with a harrowing little poem about a poor child dying of starvation in a garret, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... said Andrew quietly. "We'll have no litter around this camp." Larry la Roche stared at him in hushed malevolence. "Stand up and get 'em," repeated Andrew. As he saw the big hands of Larry twitching he smiled across the fire at the tall, bony figure. "I'll give you two seconds to ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... the castle afforded a singular scene. The Highlanders, from different islands, glens, and straths, eyed each other at a distance with looks of emulation, inquisitive curiosity, or hostile malevolence; but the most astounding part of the assembly, at least to a Lowland ear, was the rival performance of the bagpipers. These warlike minstrels, who had the highest opinion, each, of the superiority of his own tribe, joined to the most overweening idea of the importance connected ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... are perfectly in the right, Mr Toobad. Evil, and mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and rancour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love—all prove the accuracy of your views, and the truth of your system; and it is not impossible that the infernal interruption of this ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... good deal of his time in endeavouring to mask, under a cloak of boisterous good humour, a really remarkable combination of malevolence and imbecility. He was what you call a remittance man. He got so much a quarter—a miserable sum it was—to keep out of England. He travelled about formerly. But no amount of travel, no association with his ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... interfere for us with our common 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 to monarchy, limited by law, which has given immortality ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... 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 Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... disappeared, their milk bottles vanished, Mr. Appleboy's fish lines acquired a habit of derangement equaled only by barbed-wire entanglements, and his clams went bad! But these things might have been borne had it not been for the crowning achievement of her malevolence, the invasion of the Appleboys' cherished lawn, upon which they lavished all that anxious tenderness which otherwise they might have devoted ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... the restaurant was converted into the assembly room of a Nobles' Club. The company met at nine o'clock. Princess Ligovski and her daughter were amongst the latest to make their appearance. Several of the ladies looked at Princess Mary with envy and malevolence, because she dresses with taste. Those who look upon themselves as the aristocracy of the place concealed their envy and attached themselves to her train. What else could be expected? Wherever there is a gathering of women, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself. Youth is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the earnest of some future good, and because the prospect of life is far extended; but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to be hoped from their affection or esteem. Something they may take away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be useless, and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... 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 ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... thing only. They will keep your secret. The second sort of woman will reveal your secret to a friend; the third will make of it a tale against you. And this they do instinctively, as dogs will bark or asses bray, without malevolence or ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... her, 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 ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... London, and proposed amendments to the bill in every stage of its progress. It was during that time he was assailed by Mr. Roebuck with all the little malevolence of his envenomed nature. He failed in every attempt to remedy the defects of the bill, which passed its last stage in the Commons on the 10th day of July. On the 17th of the same month, Mr. O'Connell, speaking in the ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... staring into each other's eyes, the distance of ten steps between them, their right hands idle while their left hands upon twitching reins curbed the impatience of two mettled horses. As was usual their regard was one of equal malevolence, of brimming, cold hatred. But slowly a new look came into Norton's eyes, a probing, penetrating look of calculation. Galloway was again opening his lips when the sheriff ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... from the Revue Nationale of M. Laboulaye. Any extended comment from our pen would only serve to weaken the effect of this eloquent and truthful passage. We may, however, express our gratification to find that some generous spirits in Europe still remain superior to the jealousies and the malevolence which have so largely affected the ruling classes there, and led them so generally to hope for and to predict the downfall of our suffering country. Hitherto we have indeed recognized the truth that 'the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... of, the tall man turned composedly to the task of putting out the American flag again. Through the glass Cleggett perceived that his face was twisted by a peculiar smile; a smile of joyous malevolence. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... in women! Some, like ministering angels, strew flowers and scatter blessings along the rugged paths of life; while others, by their malevolence and pride, increase its ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... courage in his veins. At dawn Ulysses is awakened by Telemachus, and soon after the house is once more invaded by the suitors, who with their own hands slay the animals provided for their food. Once more they display their malevolence by ill treating the beggar, and taunt Telemachus, who apparently pays ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... inflexible, and yet, on the other hand, full of contradictions, just and again brutal, and as the law of the Old Testament exhibits the same features, so the god of creation was to Marcion a being who united in himself the whole gradations of attributes from justice to malevolence, from obstinacy to inconsistency.[377] Into this conception of the creator of the world, the characteristic of which is that it cannot be systematised, could easily be fitted the Syrian Gnostic theory which regards him as an evil being, because he belongs to this world and to matter. ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... herself or others. Nor was she more attractive than her surroundings. Her skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray rings added dulness to her black eyes. Scrawny of figure, hard and repelling of features, an atmosphere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her presence. She took little note of what was happening, though occasional, furtive glances gave intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's presence. When stimulated to expression there were explosions of violent abuse, directed chiefly against her older sister, explosions ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... personal. But observe how basely she treated her relatives, those poor girls, the Greys, Catharine and Mary, sisters of poor Lady Jane, whose fair and clever head Mary I. had taken off. The barren Queen, too jealous to share her power with a husband, hated marriage with all "the sour malevolence of antiquated virginity," and was down upon the Lady Catharine and the Lady Mary because they chose to become wives. Then she imprisoned her cousin, Mary Stuart, for nineteen years, and finally had her butchered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... so perfectly still that the movement was as startling as if a statue had changed its pose. After looking at the offender with cold malevolence, Shaw went on to speak of law-courts, of trials, and of the liberty of the subject; then he pointed out the certitude and the inconvenience of being found out, affecting for the moment the dispassionateness ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... cash or commodities. The theatre is decorated inside and outside with flags as for a festival (matsuri). Such is actually in progress. The representation is that of the Yotsuya Kwaidan. From manager and actor (even in the presentation of the figured screen of the moving picture) the malevolence of the O'Iwa Inari—the Fox-witched O'Iwa—is to be averted. Hence all the signs of worship as at her very shrine; hence the unwillingness of author or publisher to handle the story, at least in its full form. This is ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... forces which limit and belittle us; it is one of us thrown living upon the stage, there to struggle against fatality, against social law, against one of his fellow-mortals, against himself, if need be, against the ambitions, the interests, the prejudices, the folly, the malevolence of those who ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... of man; look backward a few days, thy father was great and happy, fresh as the vernal rose, and strong as the cedar of the mountain; the nations of Asia drank his dews, and art and commerce delighted in his shade. Malevolence beheld me, and sighed: 'His root,' she cried, 'is fixed in the depths; it is watered by the fountains of Oxus; it sends out branches afar, and bids defiance to the blast; prudence reclines against his trunk, and prosperity dances on his top.' Now, Almamoulin, look upon me withering ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... entirely ignorant; 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." . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... producing evil. Bad qualities.] Badness. — N. hurtfulness &c. Adj[obs3].; 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][obs3], thorn in the side. malignity; malevolence &c. 907; tender mercies [ironically]. ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage; misusage &c. 679; injury &c. (damage) 659; knockout drops [U. S.]. badness &c. adj.; peccancy[obs3], abomination; painfulness &c. 830; pestilence &c. (disease) 655; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... appetite, nor her spirits, flagged. In spite of her confirmed habit of tantalizing Grandpa—and this was from no malevolence of motive, but simply as the conscientious fulfilment of a sacred religious and domestic duty—she was the most delightful soul ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... occasion of having exhausted all capacity for sin, is embodied in the "Saturday Night." It is all a beautiful dream. The real Scottish cotter is quite another kind of person. The religion of the live cotter is well seasoned with fear, malevolence and absurd dogmatism. The amount of love, patience, excellence and priggishness shown in "The Cotter's Saturday Night" never existed, except in a poet's imagination. In stanza Number Ten of that particular poem is a bit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... pre-eminence it claims is from an acknowledged superiority of talent and information and literary attainment, and it does not build one tittle of its influence on ignorance, or prejudice, or authority, or personal malevolence. It takes up a question, and argues it pro and con with great knowledge and boldness and skill; it points out an absurdity, and runs it down, fairly, and according to the evidence adduced. In the former case, its ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... justicative, the 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... triumphantly, and her triumph was clearly one of sheer malevolence. Howard lifted his face to hers, letting her read his blazing wrath. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... entrepreneur is no longer, as such, a blood-sucker and 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 the antagonism has been overcome. In Germany this was effected largely through ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... embassy of the most honorable kind. 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... occasion, walking in company with another young lady through a field, when a bull came running up to them with all the marks of malevolence. Her friend began to run towards the stile, but was prevented by Miss B., who told her, that as she could not reach the stile soon enough to save herself, and as it is the nature of these animals to attack persons ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous

... free citizens of the United States has promised the just reward, and given the merited applause; let it be known and remembered that the reputation of the federal armies is established beyond the reach of malevolence; and let a consciousness of their achievements and fame still excite the men who composed them to honorable actions, under the persuasion that the private virtues of economy, prudence, and industry, will not be less amiable in civil life than the more splendid qualities of valor, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... that his long arms and legs brought down a third couple. In a few minutes there was a squirming heap on the floor; screams and oaths were heard, people grew angry and kicked one another, while Solem skillfully directed the disaster with sincere and wholehearted malevolence. Couple after couple met their Waterloo over those already fallen. The commissionaire poked them with his stick, exhorting them to get up; the constable himself assisted him, and the music stopped. In the meantime, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... Poocah seems to be to obtain a rider, and then he is in all his most malignant glory. Headlong he dashes through briar and brake, through flood and fall, over mountain, valley, moor, and river indiscriminately; up and down precipice is alike to him, provided he gratifies the malevolence that seems to inspire him. He bounds and flies over and beyond them, gratified by the distress, and utterly reckless and ruthless of the cries, and danger, and suffering of the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... toward us. As I watched him approach I realized more than ever the justice of Mr. Bundercombe's description. He was undersized, bent nearly double, and on his wizened face and shining out of his narrow black eyes was an indescribable expression of malevolence. Even the smile with which he greeted me ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... 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 away from Palermo ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... groans Day and night with travail of their strenuous bones. They know her for their mother, sister, spouse, Heart of their passion, idol of their vows; They ward her, and she is their sure defence 'Gainst the sad waters' leagued malevolence. The Ship, the Ship: they are her slaves, and she Their Liege, their Faith, their Fate, their History. Lo! they have bought her buoyancy with their blood And their ribs cling the keel that cleaves the flood. Their watches in the night, their ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... staying for tea," she thought, with an impatient shrug of her shoulders. "He belongs to the tame-cat species, and has an inexhaustible flow of gossip, spiced with mild malevolence. The kind of frivolous ill-nature which says: 'I would not do anyone harm for the world, but one may as well ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... hundred and sixty-one braccia, and the width fifty-four 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, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... his rooms, but the lawyer had left the key under the mat at the door, presumably at an early hour. Gilmore wondered idly if Langham had not made a point of getting away before he himself should arrive; he rather thought so, and he smiled with cheerful malevolence at his own reflection in ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... 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 pulse ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I believe, with very little surprise, that by this conduct I had in a short time united mankind against me, and that every tongue was diligent in prevention or revenge. I soon perceived myself regarded with malevolence or distrust, but wondered what had been discovered in me either terrible or hateful. I had invaded no man's property; I had rivalled no man's claims: nor had ever engaged in any of those attempts ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... groaning, their bodies twisting in convulsions. Others laughed madly—laughed at the dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite Annadoah. Losing all control they were carried away by their delirious malevolence; their voices reached a high shrill pitch. Their arms clawed the air. Through the dead curses were invoked upon Olafaksoah, the great trader, who had cowed them and robbed them. They begged of the tornarssuit that ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... Japanese to return the fire. The airman von Pluschow actively directed the replies. The latter seemed not, indeed, impartially distributed. The marked attention paid to British troops and ships afforded an illustration of that attitude of peculiar malevolence which Germans have adopted towards the British nation and name. The German airman singled out the British camp, recognizable by its white tents, for his bombs, while for the German artillery it had an inordinate attraction. Officers ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... bad friends with our white neighbors. We further request, that a law be made, equally applicable to the Half-breed and Indian, punishing all parties who set fire to our forest or plain. Not many years ago we attributed a prairie fire to the malevolence of an enemy, now every one is reckless in the use of fire, and every year large numbers of valuable animals and birds perish in consequence. We would farther ask that our chiefships be established by the Government. Of late years almost every trader sets up his own Chief and ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, a safe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known to rise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on some work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentious complexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet than warlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal is for the death, damage, discomfort and destruction of the party of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... 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

... individual was a species of moral assassination. It was odd that an individual could not be libeled with impunity, and yet that society might be set by the ears. The government were equally protected with all others against the malevolence and virulence of the press. He would again repeat, but he would say nothing as to what the law ought to be, but he stated what it was. What he conceived to be the true liberty of the press was this, that any man might, without permission, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper

... in the second volume of Amelot de la Houssaie, Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise, a translation of the famous Squittinio. This book, which has been exalted far above its merits, is stained, in every line, with the disingenuous malevolence of party: but the principal evidence, genuine and apocryphal, is brought together and the reader will easily choose ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... paradoxist's 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

... Ditty, his one eye glowing with malevolence. "We'll take it if we have to kill every last one of you to ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... these views, which to some scrupulous persons may seem to savour too much of malevolence, he had one prospect, which few readers will regard with any great abhorrence. And this was the estate of Mr Western; which was all to be settled on his daughter and her issue; for so extravagant was the affection of that fond parent, that, provided his child would ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... his cattle." And farther on: "If he has done it for me in common with himself, having both of us in his mind, I am ungrateful and not merely unjust, unless I rejoice that what was profitable to him is profitable to me also. It is the height of malevolence to refuse to recognize a kindness, unless the giver ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... wild Inconsistencies in the Thoughts of a Man in love, that I have often reflected there can be no reason for allowing him more Liberty than others possessed with Frenzy, but that his Distemper has no Malevolence in it to any Mortal. That Devotion to his Mistress kindles in his Mind a general Tenderness, which exerts it self towards every Object as well as his Fair-one. When this Passion is represented by Writers, it is common with them to endeavour at certain Quaintnesses ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... sacerdotal order, the consular dignity, the government of provinces, and even the cabinet of the prince, were seized by that execrable race as their lawful prey; where nothing was sacred, nothing safe from the hand of rapacity; where slaves were suborned, or by their own malevolence excited against their masters; where freemen betrayed their patrons, and he who had lived without an enemy died by ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... another writer tells us that they "possess the comfortable assurance that nearly all diseases, and consequently deaths, are caused by the enchantments of hostile tribes, and that were it not for the malevolence of their enemies they would (with a few exceptions) live for ever. Consequently, on the first approach of sickness their first endeavour is to ascertain whether the boollia [magic] of their own tribe is not sufficiently potent to counteract that of their foes. Should the patient recover, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... places, began to open his small bag and take from it a roll of paper and several flat documents. Laying the latter in the centre of the table and slowly unrolling the former, he consulted, with his foxy eyes, the faces surrounding him, and smiled with secret malevolence, as he noted that every chair and every form was turned away from the picture before which he had bent with such obvious courtesy on entering. I alone stood erect, and this possibly was why a gleam of curiosity was noticeable ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... promised by Quarrier would ever be given. And yet, it was not disagreeable to picture Quarrier's rage when he found that the bribe had been expended to no purpose. If he had felt animosity against the wealthy man before meeting him face to face, he now regarded him with a fiercer malevolence. It was hard to relinquish Lilian, and harder still to have no means of revenging himself upon her and her pretended husband. Humiliated by consciousness of the base part he had played, he wished it in his power to inflict upon ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... to contend that our rulers are actuated by any personal malevolence or even, at first, by unlawful personal ambition; they are, as I have said, for the most part lawyers, and law is their fetish—their magical cure-all and philosopher's stone. They almost persuade themselves, perhaps, that we the people make the laws; whereas not more than ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... glanced up and saw them watching him from the bridge. His face altered suddenly to a malevolence so terrible that both the men stepped back. Harrigan was trembling like a hysterical girl. He looked in the face of McTee and saw that the Scotchman had blanched. For a long moment they exchanged glances, and then McTee went down from the bridge ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... the axiomatic offence of stealing the pennies from his eyes; yet if I have sometimes erred in my surmise at what Ormskirk or de Puysange or Louis de Soyecourt really said at certain moments of their lives, the misstep was due, Madam, less to malevolence than to inability to replevin their superior utterance; and the accomplished shade of Garendon, at least, I have not travestied, unless it were through some too ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... 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 ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... alteration in her was due to the gratitude she secretly felt towards the Gueldmar family, for having saved from destruction,—albeit unconscious of his parentage,—Sigurd, the child she had attempted to murder. The hideous malevolence of Lovisa Elsland's nature had shown her that there may be bad Lutherans,—the invariable tenderness displayed by the Gueldmars for her unrecognized, helpless and distraught son,—had proved to her that there may be good heathens. Hearing thus ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... does not?) of his 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... became 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 satisfied with these proceedings, he had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... 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

... had no other effect than drawing Erasmus into the field, who celebrated and honoured More; whose high patronage was the greatest compliment the most ambitious writer could expect, so that the friendship of Erasmus was cheaply purchased by the malevolence of a thousand such critics as Brixius. About the same time of life he translated for his exercise one of Lucian's orations out of Greek into Latin, which he calls his First Fruits of the Greek Tongue; and adds another oration of his own to answer that of Lucian; for as he had defended him who ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... consumed, and he and his wife were in such poverty that he was at last compelled to seek a situation. He procured a place at the Sub-Prefecture, where he remained nearly ten years, and only reached a salary of eighteen hundred francs. During that time "he longed, with ever-increasing malevolence and rancour, for those enjoyments of which he was deprived" by his lowly position. In 1848, when his brother Eugene left for Paris, he had a faint idea of following him, but remained in the hope of something turning up. In opposition to his father, he expressed Republican principles, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... an indifference to please in a stocking down at heel—but there may be a malevolence in a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... infer that Mr. Ault was originally actuated by any greed as to this special accumulation of property, or that he had any malevolence towards Mr. Mavick; but the eagerness of his personal pursuit led him into collisions. There were certain possessions of Mr. Mavick that were desirable for the rounding-out of his plans—these graspings were many of them understood by the public ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Believer, betrayeth Allah and His Apostle. Avoid dissensions and litigation; and leave that which causeth doubt in thee for things which breed no doubt:[FN372] so shalt thou be at peace. Enjoin beneficence and forbid malevolence: so shalt thou be loved of Allah. Adorn thine inner man and Allah shall adorn thine outer man. Accept the excuse of him who excuseth self to thee and hate not any one of the Moslems. Draw near unto those who withdraw from thee and excuse those that misuse thee: so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Recreation Grounds were made the scene of as brutal an exhibition of savagery as has ever marred the fair fame of this town. Our readers will remember how on a previous occasion, when the fine statue of Sir Eustace Briggs was found covered with tar, we attributed the act to the malevolence of the Radical section of the community. Events have proved that we were right. Yesterday a body of youths, belonging to the rival party, was discovered in the very act of repeating the offence. A thick coating of tar had already been administered, ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... my own corncrib, damn you!" shouted the farmer with unexpected malevolence, "and you're ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... an advanced age, and I was only not a boy, yet he never received my notions with contempt. He was a whig, with all the virulence and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart. I honoured him and he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... 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 ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... be communicated to Congress. The British Minister has hastened to conclude an eventual treaty of peace with the United States, and to grant them in the utmost extent every advantage they could desire. The malevolence with which that power has carried on the war in America, did not forebode this extreme facility in them, and it has been an agreeable surprise to the belligerent powers, and you will easily judge, Sir, that our satisfaction ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... 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 ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... on the earth-floor in an attitude of utter abasement, at the feet of her companion,—an aged dame of tall and imposing appearance, who, standing erect, looked down upon her with an air of mingled contempt and malevolence. The hut was rather dark, for the roof was not sufficiently destroyed to have the advantage of being open to the sky. The sunlight fell through holes of different shapes and sizes,—one specially bright patch of radiance illumining ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... that the Tsar himself protected Pushkin, for Pushkin had got into touch with him in order to influence him more successfully. Nevertheless, this acquaintance was only a new source of suffering to the poet. In the case of certain less known writers the malevolence of the higher authorities often took on a tragic turn. For a single poem in which the poet Polezhayev described a students' debauch, the author was reduced by Nicholas I to the rank of a common soldier. Sokolovsky, another writer of this time, not being able to get ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... thousand devils leaped into Farrel's eyes. The storm of passion that swept him was truly Latin in its terrible intensity. He glared at the girl with a malevolence that terrified her. ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... 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

... 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

... received at home and abroad. I am not conscious of the least malevolence to any particular person through all the characters; though some persons may be so selfish, as to engross a general application to themselves. A writer in polite letters should be content with reputation; the private amusement he finds in his compositions; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... fancy, but Francis could have sworn that he saw the glitter of a sovereign malevolence in the other's dark eyes. If so, it was but a passing weakness, for a moment later the half good-natured, half cynical smile was back again upon the ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... of occasions during the previous history of the Government there had been heated controversies between the Congress and the Executive, but never before characterized by the intensity, not infrequently malevolence, that had come to mark this and never before had a division between the Executive and the Congress reached a point at which a suggestion of his constitutional ostracism from office had been seriously entertained, ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let those, who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time to be governed too much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope without offence. One or two of these maxims, flowing from an ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... to 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

... is held to be harmful and socially disastrous, and evidence of either fear and cowardice or malevolence, the essential honesty of people is usually summed up in the term sincerity. The advance of civilization is marked by the appearance of toleration, the recognition that belief is a private right, especially as concerns religion, and that sincerity in belief is more important than the nature of belief. ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... much personal ambition; and it does not seem certain, though Gaveston might be vain, and his master weak and foolish, that Lancaster and his friends did not exaggerate their faults, and excite the malevolence of a nation never tolerant either of royal favorites or of an expensive court. Pembroke was Aymar de Valence, son of one of the foreign brothers who had been the bane of Henry III.; but now, becoming a thorough Englishman, he bore the like malice to the ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... procession of nature; could produce rain, avert pestilence, famine, and death in all its forms. There was no idea of the certain; all depended upon divine pleasure—or displeasure, rather; heaven was full of inconsistent malevolence, and earth of ignorance. Everything was done to appease the divine wrath; every public calamity was caused by the sins of the people; by a failure to pay tithes, or for having, even in secret, felt a disrespect for a priest. To the poor multitude the earth was a kind ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... her in his favorite bulldozing manner when he dealt with a woman. All the malevolence of the human bloodhound seemed ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve

... fright at my violence, he inflicted 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 fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, 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 I pen the ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... son of Duncan, From whom this tyrant holds the due of birth, Lives in the English court and is receiv'd Of the most pious Edward with such grace That the malevolence of fortune nothing Takes from his high respect: thither Macduff Is gone to pray the holy king, upon his aid To wake Northumberland, and warlike Siward: That, by the help of these,—with Him above To ratify the work,—we may again Give to our tables meat, sleep to our nights; ...
— Macbeth • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... "Five Spot," for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman readjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of "Five Spot" with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... anything respecting Napoleon. That malevolence which fastens itself upon men who have the misfortune to be somewhat separated from the crowd has, because there is always more profit in saying ill than good, attributed to me several works on Bonaparte; among others, 'Les Memoires secrets d'un Homnae qui ne l'a pas quitte', ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... under his severity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was of a piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed for frightening Cynthia and her little brother long ago, and he wondered what final malevolence it portended. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... slightest consideration in Acredale, treated him here with the chivalrous decorum that the code of the South demanded in those days to a guest. Wesley ground his teeth under the burden, not quite sure whether it was mockery or malevolence. He watched with malignant attentiveness the imperceptible change of tone and manner that marked the family's treatment of the Spragues. There was none of the grave ceremoniousness he resented in the Atterburys' behavior ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... having protected her last night from the wicked aims of unbridled lust. This observation introduced a series of jokes at the expense of Pallet, who hung his ears, and sat with a silent air of dejection, fearing that, through the malevolence of the physician, his adventure might reach the ears of his wife. Indeed, though we have made shift to explain the whole transaction to the reader, it was an inextricable mystery to every individual in the diligence, because the part which was acted by the ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... misery. The air was a depressing compound which defied analysis; but was apparently composed of equal parts of snow, drizzle, and stinging sleet; the wind caught it in sudden whirls, and dashed it around corners and into the eyes and the coat collars of wayfarers with gusty malevolence. ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... letter addressed to the editor of the Society Journal appeared the next day signed Isabel Corunna (nee De Grammont) with its paralysing statement in a few concise words, New York was startled to its foundation. Public opinion which for a week had been at the culminating point of distrust, malevolence and resentment, turned the corner in a moment and for the moment believed implicitly in the faith of the lady it had abandoned. The greatest sympathy was shown Madame La Princesse Corunna, or Princess Corunna, or Miss De Grammont that was, or whatever her ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... in which he had started and dropped down lazily upon the grass to wait until Udo was ready to mount. He was not thinking of Udo. He was wondering if Princess Hyacinth had an attendant of surpassing beauty, or a dragon of surpassing malevolence—if, in fact, there were any adventures in Euralia for ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... very depths of my soul, bleeding still from cruel wounds, I ask that my more intimate feelings and secret hopes may no longer be delivered to the malevolence of the public. I ask for peace, the peace which I need to conquer the affection of Mlle. de Saint-Veran and to wipe out from her memory the thousand little injuries which she has had to suffer at the hands of her uncle and cousin—this has not been told—because of her position as a poor ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc

... for Buck when he showed up—and picked a prune out of the dish. It was his first morsel of food since the morning when he had tried to eat his breakfast while Buck Olney stared at him with the furtive malevolence of a trapped animal. That was three days ago. The prune tasted even better than it looked. Ward picked ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... vengeance. In the nether world this trifling dissension might have been expected to bear its crop of violent language and straightway pass into oblivion; but Miss Peckover's malevolence was of no common stamp, and the scene of to-night originated a feud which in the end concerned many more people than ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... renewal of the sweet bondage; a curiously subtile compliment to the deceased. If I may be pardoned the enormity of the heresy, I think Shakspeare blundered supremely, when he gave Iago's soul to a man. Diabolical cunning, shrewd malevolence pure and simple, armed with myriads of stings for hypodermic incisions that poison a man's blood, should be appropriately costumed in a moss-green velvet robe, should wear frizzled bangs as yellow as yonder bouquet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson



Words linked to "Malevolence" :   venom, maleficence, cruelty, beastliness, spitefulness, harshness, malignity, malevolent, nastiness, vengefulness, benevolence, hate, evil, cattiness, spite, evilness, hatred, bitchiness, maliciousness, meanness, vindictiveness, cruelness



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