"Malignity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. As it was, however, he deemed it not amiss at one and the same time to punish skulking envy and impotent malignity; to vindicate his reputation with his townsmen against unprovoked calumny; and to render the repetition of any obnoxious remarks from the same source altogether 'of none effect' and unworthy of heed. This he accomplished by his 'Defence' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... to Baal: this 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 ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... in prospect," reply I, with distinct malignity. A moment's silence. My bomb-shell has worked quite as ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... happier man than Swift. He was much smaller, too, in soul as well as in body, and his gall-organ was proportionably less. Pope's feeling to humanity was a tiny malice; Swift's became, at length, a black malignity. Pope always reminds us of an injured and pouting hero of Lilliput, 'doing well to be angry' under the gourd of a pocket-flap, or squealing out his griefs from the centre of an empty snuff-box; Swift is a man, nay, monster of misanthropy. In minute and microscopic vision of human infirmities, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... its tender faculties like the sensitive antennae of a new-born insect, that feel forth upon the unknown with the faultless instinct of eternal mind—one has only to imagine that condition to realize that the most ingenious malignity could hardly contrive anything to offer it so perplexing, cramping, and discouraging as the unintelligible and unreasonable absurdities of English literary spelling. That it somehow generally wrestles through is only ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... thus with all the assaults ever made upon the character of Washington. They always failed to injure it in the slightest degree; and the sharpest and best-tempered shafts of malignity fell blunted and harmless from the invulnerable ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... relative of that gentleman for asserting, that the satisfactory testimonials which he possesses of the correctness of his narrative, are sufficient to satisfy the most incredulous, and to silence malignity itself." ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... was the malignity displayed toward the children of divorced wives by the women who succeeded them in the affections and homes of their husbands, that in Roman literature attached to the name of a stepmother (noverca) the most hateful associations, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... is of your making, secretly held, all these years, with unrelenting malignity. The devil himself is not wicked enough to send an innocent, loyal lad to his doom in his own mother's house, with his father as his executioner. Oh, uncle, uncle, repent and make reparation before it is ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... birth, infancy, and childhood. Many a tear was dropped by the auditors, and many a prayer wafted to Heaven for his happiness. Joseph took up the story where she left it: he told the rising dawn of youth and virtue, darting its ray through the clouds of obscurity, and how every stroke of envy and malignity brushed away some part of the darkness that veiled its lustre. He told the story of the haunted apartment, and all the consequences of it; how he and Oswald conveyed the youth away from the Castle, no more to return till he came ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... gave forth no uncertain sound. The conflict was stern, and involved name, and fame, and fortune, and friends, and life, all that was most dear to man. Ages rolled on. If the followers of truth increased in number, so also did vice intensify her power and her malignity; the people sank into deeper corruption, the state drifted on to ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... I saw little of President Johnson, who fought his fight in his own way, had his hands completely tied, and barely escaped impeachment; the Congress, meanwhile, making a whipping-post of the South, and inflicting upon it every humiliation that malignity could devise. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... craven appetite for strong drink. Oh how hard the struggle has been; its fierceness is only known to God and myself. It comes upon me when I am least prepared to defend myself, and tortures me with the cruel malignity of a devil. And then I beat it back, and it comes upon me again. But I must triumph or go under; for if it is not liberty with me it will ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... said of me was true you must admit that I am avenged at this moment," said Marie, with a look of malignity which startled ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... feuds, and storming each other's fortified posts as though they were the castles of barons living in mediaeval times. We see savage Micmacs and Etchemins of Acadia, only too willing to aid in the quarrels and contests of the white men who hate each with a malignity that even the Indian cannot excel; closely shorn, ill-clad mendicant friars who see only good in those who {93} help their missions; grave and cautious Puritans trying to find their advantage in the rivalry of their French neighbours; a Scotch nobleman and courtier who would ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... a resolution declaring that if the French should land, or a dangerous insurrection should break out, it would be the duty of the clergy to take up arms against an enemy whom the Bishop of Rochester described as "instigated by that desperate malignity against the Faith he has abandoned, which in all ages has marked the horrible ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the child's terrible existence among the timber-stacks affected them all. It seemed as if the malignity of life would not relax its hold on this innocent victim, but would persecute her as long as life remained, and made all their love useless. Morten stayed with her during the days in which she fought her battle with death; he sat watching her from a corner, only venturing ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... afterwards connect the idea of joy with the place where it had happened. Here, a heart-broken woman, kneeling to her child, had been spurned from his feet; here, a desolate old creature had prayed to the Evil One, and had received a fiendish malignity of soul, in answer to her prayer; here, a new-born infant, sweet blossom of life, had been found dead, with the impress of its mother's fingers round its throat; and here, under a shattered oak, two lovers had been stricken by lightning, and fell blackened ...
— The Lily's Quest (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... provoked the malice of a powerful adversary, or for notorious dissatisfaction with the existing government. Thus Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, once lord-keeper the favorite of King James, the possessor for a season of the power that was turned against him, experienced the rancorous and ungrateful malignity of Laud, who, having been brought forward by Williams into the favor of the court, not only supplanted by his intrigues, and incensed the King's mind against his benefactor, but harassed his retirement by repeated persecutions. It will sufficiently illustrate the spirit of these times ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... 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 heavy stones being plentifully thrown into the ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... be amply sufficient for the purpose of protecting her majesty. "For," he added, "observe what we have to guard against—it is not any traitorous attempt against the peace of the nation by conspiring to take away the life of the sovereign, but it is the folly or malignity of wretches who are guilty of acts prompted by motives which are scarcely assignable. The law, in its charity to human nature, has omitted to provide for the case of any being formed like a man who could find a satisfaction in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... seconds Harold had been thinking. And as he had been thinking for the good, the safety, of Stephen, his thoughts flew swift and true. This man's very tone, the openness of his malignity, the underlying scorn when he spoke of her whom others worshipped, showed him the danger—the terrible immediate danger in which she stood from such a man. With the instinct of a mind working as truly ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... will become friends with each other, leaving you out of their soul-communion altogether, or else they will wonder in a loud voice what on earth you can find in your other friend to make him seem so attractive to you! In any case, a tiny thread or malignity is woven into that fabric of an inner life in which there should be ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... false friends, who deceive you out of pure malignity, who would rather injure you than not, who, perhaps, have an old, by you long-forgotten, grudge, and become your apparent friends to pay you back—these are few. Human nature, with all its depravity, is seldom so completely debased. But there are many who are only ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... already observed to you, contains all that is needful to make us wise unto 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 is suited to vindicate the honour of the law, and to display ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... derived from the fact of her having stood a siege from Captain Gambier. But she loved a creature of earth too well to put up a hand for saintly honours. The passion of her life centred in devotion to her half-brother. Those who had studied her said, perhaps with a touch of malignity, that her religious instinct had its source in a desire to gain some place of intercession for him. Merthyr had leaned upon it too often to doubt the strength of it, whatever its purity might be. She, when barely more than a child (a girl of sixteen), had followed him over the then luckless Italian ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a moment followed, when I heard the words "one," "two," "three," in tolerably rapid succession, and, at the utterance of the last, I pulled trigger. My antagonist had done so at the first. His eye was fixed upon mine with deliberate malignity—THAT I clearly saw—but it did not affect my shot. This, I purposely threw away. The skill of my enemy did not correspondend (sic) with his evident desires. I was hurt, but very slightly. His bullet merely ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... reserved[57]; and though I tell nothing but the truth, I have still kept in my mind that the whole truth is not always to be exposed. This, however, I have managed so as to occasion no diminution of the pleasure which my book should afford; though malignity may sometimes be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... gallant adventures. He was with him on board the Pallas when her boats had gallantly cut out the Tapageuse brig, and afterwards in her action with the Minerva, a ship nearly double her size; but his gallant commander having been, by the malignity of his foes, compelled to leave the navy, he himself had very little prospect of ever getting ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... must inevitably destroy or be destroyed by the other. He could see nothing but deception in the attempts of certain philosophical or theological phrasemakers to minimize or explain away the eternal malignity of death, man's most relentless foe. A human being could fall no lower than to accept death as a friend. Thus in ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... 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
... of a man. They inherit an instinct of fear of those who hate them from a long line of ancestors who have suffered at the hands of cruel men. They can tell by a look, by a motion, by the tone of a voice, whether to expect from anyone kindness or malignity. The cat had purred complacently on the first day of my arrival, and had hunched up her white, furry back towards my hand, and had smiled with her calm, light-blue eyes. Now, when I approached her, she seemed ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... 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 ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... dashing in his face. He could not doubt the truth of Esther's words. All he had seen and heard tallied too well with it to leave in his mind any room for doubt. A plot of some sort he had always suspected—he would have been foolish indeed to have come to any other conclusion; but a plot of such malignity and such diabolical scope would never have presented itself to his mind. He found it hard to believe that such a terrible thing could be menaced against the King and the nobles of the land, many amongst whom must surely be of the ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Bacchus too. To thy fields both the god and the goddess have been freely bounteous. Food and drink may be had from them on easy terms. Alas! as in all other lands—one only excepted—Nature's divine views have been thwarted, her aim set aside, by the malignity of man. As over the broad world the blight of the ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... compassion or to pave the way to pardon. Both ideas are alike repugnant to my feelings. That the public in general have felt indignation at the sentence that has been passed upon me does honour to their hearts, and tends still to make my country dear to me, in spite of what I have suffered from the malignity of persons in power. But, sir, I am not here to complain of the hardship of my case or about the cruelty of judges, who, for an act which was never till now ever known or thought to be a legal offence, have laid upon me a sentence more heavy than they ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... from the office of Governor of the County of Armagh—an office which might be considered as hereditary in his family, and to which his estate in that county gave him a kind of indefeasible right, is one instance of a number. It will ever be remembered as a damning proof of the foolish and wicked malignity of the Irish administration against the friends of the ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... late years Mr. Otis, "with his mob-high eloquence," had given way to an abler man, Samuel Adams, than whom, Mr. Hutchinson thought, there was not "a greater incendiary in the King's dominion, or a man of greater malignity of heart, [or one] who less scruples any measure however criminal ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... 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 land ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... a few days more," he argued stubbornly within himself, "hit's ergoin' ter be even wusser. I'm my own man now—an' licensed ter ack fer myself." He rose and stiffened resolutely, against the tide of doubt, and his fine face darkened with the blood malignity of his heritage. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... he 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 any expression of ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... by pecuniary difficulties; forced to quit his country, home, and child; friendless—we have seen it too clearly since his death—pursued even on the Continent by a thousand absurd and infamous falsehoods, and by the cold malignity of a world that twisted even his sorrows into a crime; he yet, in the midst of inevitable reaction, preserved his love for his sister and his Ada; his compassion for misfortune; his fidelity to the affections of his childhood and ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Apparently, however, no solid endowment was offered him in his own university, and he owed such preferment as he had (it was never very great) to a chance opportunity of preaching at St. Paul's and a recommendation to Laud. That prelate—to whom all the infinite malignity of political and sectarian detraction has not been able to deny the title of an encourager, as few men have encouraged them, of learning and piety—took Taylor under his protection, made him his chaplain, and procured him incorporation at Oxford, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... downfall of Tammany surely did. Drunk with the power and plunder of four long unchallenged years, during which the honest name of democracy was pilloried in the sight of all men as the active partner of blackmail and the brothel, the monstrous malignity reached a point at last where it was no longer to be borne. Then came the crash. The pillory lied. Tammany is no more a political organization than it is the benevolent concern it is innocently supposed to be by some people who never learn. It neither knows nor cares ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... of these climes seem to have been as senseless as they were fiendlike. It is often difficult to find any motive for their atrocities. These crimes are thoroughly authenticated, and yet they often seem like the outbursts of demoniac malignity. Anything like a faithful recital of them would torture the sensibilities of our readers almost beyond endurance. Mothers and maidens were hunted and torn down by bloodhounds; infant children were cut in pieces, and their quivering limbs ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... poison into every heart, and carrying havoc into every home—enervating all that is strong, defacing all that is beautiful, and casting its blight over the fairest and happiest scenes of human life—and which from day to day, and from year to year, with intolerant and interminable malignity, sends its thousands and tens of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning and never-satisfied grave!"—[Loud and long applause.] The experience which they had had, that all the dangers, all the bloodshed ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 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
... that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that this charming individual was, in all probability, the coachman," said Mrs. Grahame, with mild malignity. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... virtue of their songs, they could attract pearls and precious stones from the depths of the sea or the bowels of the earth; that God had covered them with a thick cloud, by means of which they could shelter themselves from the malignity of their enemies, and that they could thus render themselves invisible from all eyes; that the eight first brethren of the "Rose-cross" had power to cure all maladies; that, by means of the fraternity, the triple diadem of the Pope would ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... (though apparently in this they confound him with a later Herod) he affected divine honours. To mention such slanders, as the sceptical Bayle has said with special reference to the case of Knox, is all that is needed to refute them. They are the product of malignity so evident that it defeats itself. I know but one parallel to them in our literature, and it has the excuse that it has come down to us from the dark ages.[251] Some would persuade us that the time has come when we might afford to forget old controversies and to shake ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... otherwise to be contended with, and its grim irony went deeper than human reach. Nemesis was merciless; an error was punished like a crime, and the more confident you had been that you were right, the most severe was the probable penalty. But it was part of Fate's malignity that, though the offender was punished, though Justice took care that her own interests were not neglected nor her own majesty slighted, even where a humane judge would have shrunk from inflicting a disproportionate penalty,[11] yet for the wronged one ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... some of the great qualities of Napoleon, but he also resembled him occasionally in a singular lack of delicacy and good taste. We do not, however, find that he ever showed such mean malignity as the French general did when persecuting Madame de Stael, because in her Germany she had omitted to mention his ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... yesterday with that Irish scoundrel. Malignity is his element, and mischief his delight! I suspect by his assiduity that he is poor just at present; for a more industrious demon black Cocytus does not yield. He is already provided with associates, and has found another principal ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... incredulity, the friend promised to give him decisive evidence of the 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, were actually ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... whether the bite of any of them be mortal, or even venomous, is somewhat doubtful. I know but of one well attested instance of a bite being received from a snake. A soldier was bitten so as to draw blood, and the wound healed as a simple incision usually does without shewing any symptom of malignity. A dog was reported to be bitten by a snake, and the animal swelled and died in great agony. But I will by no means affirm that the cause of his death was fairly ascertained. It is, however, certain that the natives show, on all occasions, the utmost horror of the snake, and will ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... their Sentiments therein being Confirmed by the Experience of many Ages." For another curious turn given to this theory, with reference to sanitary science, see Deodat Lawson's famous sermon at Salem, in 1692, on Christ's Fidelity a Shield against Satan's Malignity, p. 21 of the second edition. For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Barrett Wendell, pp. 91, 92; also the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria in this work. For Fromundus, see his Meteorologica (London, 1656), lib. iii, c. 9, and lib. ii, c. 3. For Schott, see his Physica Curiosa (edition ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... 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
... Scattered about were palm branches and eggs, and round the neck and limbs of the patient were placed various charms. The brightness of her greeting died away. Edem was suspiciously voluble and frank, flattered the goodness and ability of the white people, but said they could not understand the malignity of the black man's heart. "Ma, it has been made known to us that some one is to blame for this sickness, and here is proof of it—all these have been taken out of my back." He held out a parcel which, on opening, she found to ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... greediness, ill-will, malignity, self-seeking, brutality, harshness, inhumanity, niggardliness, stinginess, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... heart," said Berry, "are proof against its malignity. Don't you come too near. And look at this sere and yellow leaf. Now, that represents one franc. When I think that, upon offering that to a bar-tender, I shall not only not be assaulted, but shall actually receive a large bottle of beer ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... inexplicable distresses. He had been at first so gay an activity, and then he was shattered; fragments of him were still as gay and attractive as ever, but between were outbreaks of anger, of hostility, of something very like malignity. Only very slowly did they realise the truth of their relationship and admit to themselves that the fine bud of love between them had failed to flower, and only after long years were they able to delimit boundaries where they had imagined union, and to become—allies. If ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... their ferocity, with their arms, they suffered from each other all that malignity could dictate, or precipitance could act. Every provocation was revenged with blood, and no man that ventured into a numerous company, by whatever occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound. If they are now ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... stretching far down the white beach; then I fell upon my face in the sand, sobbing like a baby. O God, how could such deeds be done? How could creatures shaped like men prove themselves such fiends, such hideous devils of malignity? It sickened me with horror, and I shrank from those dead bodies as if each had been a grim and ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... songs into the exercises of the schools under his charge. In histories and other books where the initials 'U.S.' occurred he had the same erased, and 'C.S.' substituted. He used all means in his power to imbue the minds of the youth intrusted to his care with hate and malignity towards the Union. He has just returned from the late confederacy, where he has resided during the war. At the time he left the city to join the army he left his property in the care of one Finley, who claims to be a British subject, but held the position of ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... mind," I replied. "We must not be taken, Bob. I feel convinced that our lives would not be worth an hour's purchase if we fell into the hands of that villain; but, even supposing he were to stop short of murder, his malignity would doubtless prompt him to destroy the little Lily; and by such an act all our past efforts would be nullified, and our future success rendered extremely doubtful. We must fight, Robert, my man, now that we can no longer run; so let's get ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... every buffet of misfortune, without attempting to resist it: which, fortunately, is impossible. Plato cut this knotty point better, by regarding evil as a thing senseless and unmalignant (indeed no philosopher regards anything as malignant, or malignant for malignity's sake); out of which, or notwithstanding it, good is worked, and to be worked, perhaps, finally to the abolition of evil. But whether this consummation be possible or not, and even if the dark horrors of evil be necessary towards the enjoyment of the light of good, still the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... and in all this time I have scarcely lain down one night without a feeling that the next day's success must depend upon a fresh appeal to continued effort. My pathway has certainly not lain over beds of gold, nor my pillow been composed of down. And yet my success has served to raise the envy and malignity of some minds. True, these have been small minds; while a just appreciation and approval have marked the course of the exalted and enlightened. A friend writes from Washington, this day, assuring me that I am not forgotten in high quarters. "The occupation," he says, "of ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Germany speak very differently. It is not desirable to be specific, but short of that we may say that whatever Monaco asks for it will be promised. England, we would then repeat, is the enemy. Has Monaco forgotten the sinister malignity of an article in an English paper disclosing "How to Break the Bank at Monte Carlo." It is unnecessary to labour the point, to which we will return in our next issue. Monaco, in short, like Turkey, Bolivia, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... indispositions of a day or two's continuance; the regular life I had led, as I have already taken notice, for so many years, not having permitted any superfluous or bad humours to breed in me; or if they did, to acquire such strength and malignity, a they generally acquire in the superannuated bodies of those, who live without rule. And as there was not any old malignity in my humours (which is the thing that kills people) but only that, which my new irregularity ...
— Discourses on a Sober and Temperate Life • Lewis Cornaro
... fear the latent revenge of this unreasonable hosier."—"I am to be tried to-night, but it is not the fear of death which makes me fly. It is worse than that. Those Hotel de Ville people are capable of anything, and I hear they are going to make a law on divorce. I know the malignity of the lady's husband—and I believe he is capable of getting a divorce, and ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... hard, ill-natured beings, goaded by distress or disease into active malignity, that yet entertain diametrically opposed sentiments with a like degree of vehemence. If Richelieu was a good hater, he was no less a good friend. Fraisier, in his gratitude, would have let himself be cut ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... of envy makes it so familiar that it escapes our notice; nor do we often reflect upon its turpitude or malignity, till we happen to feel its influence. When he that has given no provocation to malice, but by attempting to excel in some useful art, finds himself pursued by multitudes whom he never saw with ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... or when, as Lord Bacon says, "in pestilences, the malignity of the infecting vapour danceth the principal spirits." The Chorea S. Viti, or St. Vitus's Dance is another variation, said to have once prevailed extensively, and to have been cured by a prayer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... jolly little fellow, and leads a far easier life than the children you and I remember, who used to come in at dessert and have each a biscuit and a glass of water, in which last refreshment I was always convinced that they drank, with the gloomiest malignity, "Destruction to ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... had an expression on her face, awful from the intensity of its malignity. She had uttered a low ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... particulars, if they require any, must be found in the savage ferocity with which I was assailed, the brutal language applied to my character and conduct, and the constant threats made of personal violence. Malignity and hate, with threats of assassination, followed me like a shadow for months. I went always armed for protection against assault. I should have been less or more than man had I preserved at all times perfect calmness either in ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... common, is a quite possible feminine appellation, and though a "speaking" one, is only so to those who understand the learned languages, and so deserve to be spoken to. Moreover, the idea, though not startlingly original or a mark of genius, is good—that of an unlucky child who attracts the malignity of all fairies, and is ugly, stupid, ill-natured, and everything that is detestable. Her reformation by the genie Clair-Obscur would not be bad if it were cut ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it will be a pleasing, if arduous task, in due season, to analyze and define; matchless alike in delicacy and strength, in powers the most gigantic, in purpose the most daring—with the invention of Shakspeare—the playfulness of Rabelais—the malignity of Swift—need I add the ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of so governing others as to take true part in any system of national economy. Nor is there any other eternal distinction between the upper and lower classes than this form of liberty, Eleutheria, or benignity, in the one, and its opposite of slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the other; the separation of these two orders of men, and the firm government of the lower by the higher, being the first conditions of possible wealth and economy in any state,—the Gods giving it no greater gift than the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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
... Such conduct struck at the root of subordination in his great establishment. Again, there is perhaps nothing in the world so calculated to enrage a petty and vulgar mind to the highest pitch of malignity, as the cool persevering defiance of an inferior, whom it strives to despise, while it is only hating, feeling at the same time such to be the case. Tag-rag now and then, when he looked towards Titmouse, as he stood behind ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... mischief in Avonlea in a day than was made otherwise in a year, but people tolerated him by reason of his infirmity. To be sure, it was the tolerance they gave to inferior creatures, and August felt this. Perhaps it accounted for a good deal of his malignity. He hated most those who were kindest to him, and, of these, Thyra Carewe above all. He hated Chester, too, as he hated strong, shapely creatures. His time had come at last to wound them both, and his exultation shone through his crooked ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sensation in my naturally hardy nature was old, and to all appearance harmless from disability, if not from good-will. His form was bent over upon itself like a bow; and only from the glances he shot from his upturned eyes was the fact made evident that a redoubtable nature, full of force and malignity, had just brought its quota of evil into a room already overflowing ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... measure, enforcing its object, spirit, and provisions. He expressed his abhorrence of the maxim, that any nation was destined to be the natural and unalterable enemy of the other; it was a libel on the constitution of political societies, and supposed the existence of infernal malignity in human nature. In most of our wars, he said, France had been the aggressor; but her assurances and frankness in the present negociations were such as to entitle her to a return of confidence. Even from the recent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... be regretted that no competent person has as yet undertaken the task of compiling a full and authentic biography of Lord Viscount Dundee. His memory has consequently been left at the mercy of misrepresentation and malignity; and the pen of romance has been freely employed to portray, as a bloody assassin, one of the most accomplished men and gallant soldiers ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... she, "must your malignity then extend even to those whom I wish to benefit? I indeed recognise my enemy," said she to the woodcutter; "beware of him, and believe that it is with no good intention he destines your daughter for the bride of a king. Some mystery is ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... had finished 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 ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... encounter, especially if you make an effort to be a godly Christian, to defend the truth and to live uprightly in the sight of all. You will meet with all manner of malice aforethought and deceit, and with faithlessness and malignity on the part of those you have benefited; again, with unmasked violence and injustice on the part of those who should protect you and see to your interests. This will hurt and move you to wrath. Yea, in your own house and among your ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... two lads was not readily mended, and 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 ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... ourself. We have guarded this subject by the language, the essential attributes of mind. By this qualifier we wish it understood that mind, like body, has its accidental or acquired qualities. Vice, virtue, folly, wisdom, malignity and benevolence are not essential to mind, but like the accidents of matter known as roughness or smoothness, softness, hardness, blackness, etc., are merely qualities or attributes of its conduct. Vice is vicious action ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... from the banks of the Garonne. Among other authors whom Hamilton at first proposes to Grammont, as capable of writing his life (though, on reflection, he thinks them not suited to it), is Boileau, whose genius he professes to admire; but adds that his muse has somewhat of malignity; and that such a muse might caress with one hand and satirize him with the other. This letter was sent by Hamilton to Boileau, who answered him with great politeness; but, at the same time that he highly extolled the epistle to Grammont, he, very naturally, seemed anxious ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... yellow jonquils, pale violets from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Some one overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... informed his brother of his conclusion, and offered him a share in his planting operations. His brother—Jaspar—was sorely wounded in his pride by this reply. It generated in him a sentiment, if not of malignity, at least of hatred, and from that day he was his brother's enemy. Jaspar's business was gone, and he never allowed his spirit of revenge even to interfere with his interest; so he availed himself of his ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... retrospects evoked by the present outbreak of malignity against our nation. The slanders of the hour recall those let loose to cloak previous deportations in days of panic less ignoble. Then it was the Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett, who was dragged to ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... man, since he came out of the hands of his Creator, has contracted a taint, and that the venom of this subtle poison has been communicated throughout the race of Adam, every where exhibiting incontestible marks of its fatal malignity? Hence it has arisen, that the appetites deriving new strength, and the powers of reason and conscience being weakened, the latter have feebly and impotently pleaded against those forbidden indulgences which the former have solicited. Sensual gratifications and illicit ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Ellangowan possessed so little the spirit of a litigant that he was on two occasions charged to make payment of the expenses of a long lawsuit, although he had never before heard that he had such cases in court. Meanwhile his neighbours predicted his final ruin. Those of the higher rank, with some malignity, accounted him already a degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in his situation, marked his embarrassments with more compassion. He was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the division of a common, or the holding ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... well as the House of Representatives, and the maxim that the rights of one person or body are to be so exercised as not to impair those of others is applicable in its fullest extent to this question. Impertinence or malignity may seek to make the Executive Departments the means of incalculable and irremediable injury to innocent parties by throwing into them libels most foul and atrocious. Shall there be no discretionary authority ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... 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 and associate, Valady, as the real author of a particularly virulent ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... national character—on the part of the so-called Southern Confederacy. From the hour of firing upon Fort Sumter to the present moment, the war has not been waged by the rebels as if in defense of the great principles of truth and justice, but with the malignity, the cruelty and barbarity which would, in many instances, put to blush the savages upon our western borders. In our dealing with them, the honor, integrity, fidelity and dignity of the nation have never been forgotten; ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... bitterness and fury, inveighing against the "hellish arts" to which she had fallen a victim, and expressing, with more exasperation than piety, his wonder that Heaven should tolerate so monstrous an indulgence of the lusts and malignity of hell. ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... three years, cut off entirely from active life. Present-day medicine would have classed poor Fechner's malady quickly enough, as partly a habit-neurosis, but its severity was such that in his day it was treated as a visitation incomprehensible in its malignity; and when he suddenly began to get well, both Fechner and others treated the recovery as a sort of divine miracle. This illness, bringing Fechner face to face with inner desperation, made a great crisis in his life. 'Had I not then clung to the faith,' he writes, ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... foot unawares in the milky little basin no bigger than a kneading-bowl, that on the upward way would have been a very Kohinoor, and is now only glanced at with spiteful aversion. The ancients were right: there is a malignity of matter. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The contempt with which Mordecai regarded him roused all the ancient malignity of the Amalekite, and his hot blood called ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... destroy his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent carry a lifelong ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... pure thoughtlessness and buoyancy of spirit,—but to attacks which indicate a settled, deliberate, calculating rancor. Never be angry with the man who makes such an attack; you ought to be sorry for him. It is out of great misery that malignity for the most part proceeds. To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not dip a man in water, and he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... an infallible evidence of guilt. Incantations and charms are then resorted to by the bunda woman, to ascertain what the concealed crime is, and after a decent period employed in this buffoonery, the charges are brought in conformity with the imagination or malignity of this priestess of mystery ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... what it was, it was of course something to do with Augustus. The way Charles is hunting down that unfortunate king is shocking, it is downright malignity. Why, he has wasted fifteen months over it already, and it has cost him Ingria. He could have made any terms with Poland he liked, after his victory on the Dwina, and would then have been free to use all his forces against us. As ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... have seemed that he was as good as accepted. But to assume this would have been to mistake what perhaps the greatest creation of Balzac's great English contemporary and counterpart on the one side, as Thackeray was his contemporary and counterpart on the other, considered to be the malignity of widows. What the reasons were which made Madame Hanska delay so long in doing what she did at last, and might just as well, it would seem, have done years before, is not certainly known, and it would be quite unprofitable to discuss them. But it was ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... either, Turned unto him submissively, As waiting fate together; He made a silence, and arbiter He sat between the two. He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending, Mark of immense malignity, And of a pity unending, Of hatred inappeasable, Of deathless ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells |
