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More "Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books



... stammered, "I'll never forgive myself for leading you and me into a trap, a confounded, diabolical, deep-laid trap, sir, a gin, a snare, a woman's wile. Let us get off anywhere, at Aurora, Newmarket, Holland Landing, Scanlans, anywhere to escape ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... out from the sides and top of the head, and an erect spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,—the grin, and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people have conferred diabolical instincts on so ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... would have a very good reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the Red Indian: that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what more diabolical things he could do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton

... the Lands or the Houses of a quiet, inoffensive and peaceable people; to carry away or destroy their property, without any provocation on their part, only because they are not able to resist, are acts in themselves highly wicked and diabolical. ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams

... two men's action now stood revealed. They expected to frighten the two boys into giving up the skin map and into keeping secret their knowledge of the Cave of Gold. But, what a fiendish plot! And with what diabolical cunning it had all been worked out ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... Robert Guiscard is applicable generally to the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to be a heartless demon."—History Vol. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... than plump, so that climbing ladders is not my favorite form of exercise. But I went up that one with the agility and grace of sixteen. Melissa followed me, and we found ourselves on the roof—fortunately it was a flat one—panting and gasping, but safe, unless that diabolical dog ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton and its threats, that we had almost lost the God-given independence of American freemen, and seemed—thank God! events have proved only ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... superintending through the ever-efficient Cazi Moto the details of the camp. His shoulders were sagging forward wearily, and his face in repose fell into lines of infinite sadness. Her heart melted within her; and in a sudden revulsion she flamed against Winkleman and all his diabolical efficiency. After all, this little corner of an unknown land could not mean so much to the general result, and it would be so glorious a consolation to a brave man's blindness! Then she became ashamed of herself as a traitor. Her tent was now ready; so she entered it, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... It was Penn himself, his hat and clothes in his hand, smeared with black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... more diabolical scheme could have been more cleverly planned to ruin the character of a fellow-being. But it is ever thus, and shall be until the arch fiend, who first plotted in the Amaranthine bowers of Eden, shall be cast out forever beyond the reach ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... last he gave her on earth. Not another was allowed him. He was hurried off by the stony-hearted familiars, with his brother martyrs and their companions in affliction. The first part of the exhibition had been a cruel, a blasphemous mockery—that which was to follow was to be a diabolical reality. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... 'ce n'est pas un teche' (it is no sin); meaning, I suppose, that diabolical cruelty to animals did not come under the head ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... patent and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with tremendous eclat, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings towards ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville

... brutish; savage, savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine[obs3], ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c. (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded[obs3]. fiendish, fiendlike[obs3]; demoniacal; diabolic, diabolical; devilish, infernal, hellish, Satanic; Tartaran. Adv. malevolently &c. adj.; with bad intent &c. n. Phr. cruel as death; " hard unkindness' alter'd eye " [Gray]; homo homini lupus [Lat][Plautus]; mala mens[Lat], malus animus [Lat][Terence].; "rich gifts wax poor when ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... only Creator. Would that God, if He were almighty, have permitted the existence of such an enemy (or indeed an enemy at all) as the Devil? And if He were merciful, would He, for the one disobedient act of one human being, have condemned to the most ghastly and diabolical sufferings, millions of human beings, and not only human beings, but animals? Ah! that's where the rub comes in, for though there may be some sense, if not justice, in causing men and women, who have sinned—to suffer, there is surely neither reason nor justice in making animals, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries. Nor were there lacking the Chinese prints on red paper representing a man seated, of venerable aspect, with a calm, smiling face, behind whom stood a servant, ugly, horrible, diabolical, threatening, armed with a lance having a wide, keen blade. Among the Indians some call this figure Mohammed, others Santiago, [34] we do not know why, nor do the Chinese themselves give a very clear explanation ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... wife, of whom I had no mistrust, the slave and her son, and prayed her to take care of them during my absence, which was for a whole year. She made use of that time to satisfy her hatred: she applied herself to magic, and when she knew enough of that diabolical art to execute her horrible contrivance, the wretch carried my son to a desolate place, where, by her enchantments, she changed my son into a calf, and gave him to my farmer to fatten, pretending she had bought him. Her fury did not stop at this abominable action, but she likewise changed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous

... with these beggars, all vociferating at once, while other religious characters were singing with all the power of their lungs, and a native band, stationed in the verandah of the tomb, were at the same time making the most hideous discord by the help of all kinds of diabolical instruments. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts

... rival daemons—her marriage foretold with a great daemon—a monk saw the prince of the daemons, instead of Justinian, on the throne—the servants who watched beheld a face without features, a body walking without a head, &c., &c. Procopius declares his own and his friends' belief in these diabolical stories, (c. 12.)] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... life as fireworks. He took the sum-total of the moral experience of the human race, and turned it upside down and jumbled it about, and used it as bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. And the hearers would gasp, and whisper, "Diabolical!" ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Etoile is their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle, with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways, she loathes her fashions and her company, and—outbids her for them! It is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... management, and that a slight exercise of the favourite Whig plan of concilliation, might avail. Nothing of the kind. She was proof against all such arts; and what was still worse, there was no subject, no possible circumstance, no matter, past, present, or to come, that she could not wind by her diabolical ingenuity, into some cause of offence; and then came the quick transition to instant punishment. Thus, my apparently harmless inquiry as to the society of the neighbourhood, suggested to her—a wish on my part to make ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... with Spain. Portugal had not fulfilled the terms of her treaty, especially that clause which secured the English from the supervision of the diabolical Inquisition, and other nations were only waiting an opportunity to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... considerable favour. At any rate, it set its face against anything German, even in the post-war days when the enemy sent its Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and we weakheartedly reopened trade with the diabolical Huns and allowed them to dump in their cheap and nasty goods just as though no ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... shock for my faith in human nature when General Speed—with whom I had maintained relations of cordial friendship for some fifty years—suddenly allowed himself to become a compliant coadjutor of Andrew Johnson in his diabolical plot to destroy me. The role of suppressing the truth, which he voluntarily assumed for himself and in which—without explanation or defense—he persisted down to his grave, amounted fully to this and to nothing ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes madly from his place, kicks to pieces the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... sure, it was possible to identify a given pagan god with a certain demon, and this was often done; but it was impossible to identify the Pagans' conceptions of their gods with the Christians' conceptions of demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their gods not only demoniac (diabolical) but also divine qualities, which the Christians absolutely denied them. Consequently they had to recognise that pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion, on a misconception of the essential character of the gods which were worshipped. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann

... she got. "I can see it all as plain as day," she muttered. "There isn't anything he wouldn't do! He did cut that pack sack, and he ran the sheep man out of the hills because he knew it would be dangerous for him to have a neighbor that might talk. And the Samuelson horse raid! Of all the diabolical plotting! With his outlaw friends holding trusted positions on the ranch, and old Mr. Samuelson sick in bed! Oh, it was cleverly planned! And that Pierce was right in with them. No wonder he wanted to lock ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only deprived of the favor of God, but also of His image; of all virtue, righteousness, and true holiness, and sunk partly into the image of the devil, in pride, malice, and all other diabolical tempers; partly into the image of the brute, being fallen under the dominion of brutal passions and groveling appetites. Hence also death entered into the world, with all his forerunners and attendants; pain, sickness, and a whole train ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... thickly tufted; it glows like burnished bronze in the sunshine, like enamelled scales of green and gold. These eucalypti are unique in Italy. Gazing upon them, my heart softened and I almost forgave the gums their manifold iniquities, their diabolical thirst, their demoralizing aspect of precocious senility and vice, their peeling bark suggestive of unmentionable skin diseases, and that system of radication which is nothing short of a scandal on this side of the globe. . ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... or hear about you, you are in that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar,—when you begin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at what the Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins of the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves—on the way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,—how instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you speak about the absent ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... perceive that the foregoing list of the dead reports only those who had died "since April last" (1622), consequently does not include the victims of the Indian massacre, which occurred on the 22d of March of that year. The number which fell by that diabolical conspiracy, as reported by Smith, amounted to 347, and in his Generall Historie, at page 149, he has a list of the numbers murdered at different places. Neill copies from the Records of the Virginia Company (now in the Congressional Library at Washington) a list of their names—see his "History ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various

... bedstead—the convulsions of the murdered woman. It was a dreadful sound, like the shaking of a tree and rustling of leaves. Then once more he steps to the side of the bed, and I heard another of those horrid blows—and silence—and another—and more silence—and the diabolical surgery was ended. For a few seconds, I think, I was on the point of fainting; but a gentle stir outside the door, close to my ear, startled me, and proved that there had been a watcher posted outside. There was a little tapping ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... incendiarism. He was one of those terrible men who do evil for evil's sake, and prefer the crooked path even when the straight one would lead them more quickly and surely to the goal. He had that lowering, wicked, diabolical look in his eyes which no one can endure, and which in a childlike age may have begotten belief in witches and sorcerers, because enjoyment of evil finds expression in it, indeed it seems of necessity to be forced to increase evil. A tavern ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... turned to the tent. It was young Hiram who brought about this boon. He was interested in the tent, and he wanted to know. Two things seemed to bother the boy: First, he was anxious to learn what diabolical cause had been at work to induce two apparently sane men to give up the comforts of home and live in this exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities came of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... universal custom, on any alteration of charters, is to hear the parties at the bar of the House. Now, the question is, Are the Americans to be heard, or not, before the charter is broken for our convenience?... The Boston bill is a diabolical bill.'" ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... but of others I can safely say, that I believe they delighted in it. Their conduct certainly exhibited a most blood-thirsty spirit. But, above all others present, and above all human fiends I ever saw, I think Sainte Hypolite was the most diabolical. She engaged in the horrid task with all alacrity, and assumed from choice the most revolting parts to be performed. She seized a gag, forced it into the mouth of the poor nun, and when it was fixed between her extended jaws, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... necessary for election,—but it was not long before he had made his influence felt and had been chosen as a member of the committee. Leon Gozlan, who served with him, acknowledged his influence. "Balzac," he wrote, "brought to the Society a profound, almost diabolical knowledge of the chronic wretchedness of the profession; a rare and unequalled ability to deal with the aristocrats of the publishing world; an unconquerable desire to limit their depredations, which he had brooded over on the Mount Sinai of a long personal experience; and, above all else, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet

... call it a sinful thought?" said the priest, with a diabolical smile. "All weapons are blessed and made holy by God, when employed against heretics. The poison of the hemlock and the opium-plant is part of God's holy creation. He made them as weapons for the just against the unjust, and, when used for pious purposes, they are sanctified means of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... cut down were nicely placed at each end of the path in an upright position, so as to conceal it from the eyes of the passer. For a long time the mulatto reflected upon the conversation he had heard, and considered the means of defeating the diabolical plot. Against a band of ruffians, such as Vernon would enlist for the service, he could not contend single-handed. To remove his mistress from the island, while Henry Carroll lay helpless there, would not be an acceptable proposition to her. Resolving ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... sorely plagued by his critics. Those who peruse his Autobiography to the close, and every part of it is worth reading, will find him in violent ill humour with the theatrical public, whom he describes as taking a malicious and diabolical pleasure in damning plays. To hiss down a piece, he declares, is one of the chief amusements that fill the house. "Five minutes is the usual time, and the whistles resound, and the lovely women smile and felicitate themselves like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... have been attained by their own courage or prowess. The disappointment of Pizarro and his congenial associates, when they found that the principal wealth of the city had been carried off by the Peruvians, vented itself in acts of diabolical cruelty. They seized on the aged and sick persons who had been unable to escape, and put many of them to the torture to make them confess where the treasures of Cuzco were concealed. Either these unfortunate ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... the instinct of knowing that he was starting for a perilous voyage? Was it a presentiment of dangers to come? The sailors decided that it was for the latter reason, and more than one pretended to joke who believed seriously that the dog was of a diabolical kind. Pen, who was a brutal man, was going to strike him once, when he fell, unfortunately, against the angle of the capstan, and made a frightful wound in his head. Of course this accident was placed to the ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... portion of the Scriptures every day, saying that the perusal preserved one "from all sorts of evils and diabolical temptations" (Histoire de Foix, Bearn, et Navarre, by P. Olhagaray, Paris, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... true to his character of the world's worst loser and winner, leaves behind him all manner of booby-traps, some puerile, many diabolical, which give our sappers plenty of work, cause a good many casualties, and only confirm the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch

... odious uncle, the fair Constantia—what a meek saint!—and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a house on fire." Tears came to the eyes ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... cliffs together. "Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we DO know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places. I take it, in the first place, that neither of us is prepared to admit diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men. Let us begin by ruling that entirely out of our minds. Very good. There remain three persons who have been grievously stricken by some conscious or unconscious human agency. ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Transmitted each vile diabolical story; And gave the least whisper of slips and falls, As that Gallery does in the Dome of St. Paul's, Which, as all the world knows, by practice or print, Is famous for making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... Pugh's precious puzzle exploded in my hand. I shook it doubtfully; nothing rattled. I held it to my ear. There was not a sound. What had taken place? Had the clockwork run down, and was the machine arranged with such a diabolical ingenuity that a certain, interval was required, after the clockwork had run down, before an explosion could occur? Or had rust caused the mechanism to again ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... good girl to go wrong; she talks to her of men and pleasures; this is a good idea, I think, for I feel sure it is women far more than men who lead women astray. Then the first woman whom he has loved for her beauty merely, comes along and continues the diabolical work of the first, by suggesting—I don't know, anything—that the young girl should go in for dress; the young man finds out the scheme, and to save the girl he murders her, he is thrown into prison, he is tried, and in the crowded Court he makes a great speech—he tells how he murdered ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... sharp oyster-shells had cut his hands to the very bone. A good glass of grog and some hot tea—the bushman's infallible remedy—soon brought him round, but the scars on his hands and knees will accompany him to his grave. He afterwards described the glances that the shark threw at him as perfectly diabolical, and confessed that he it not been for the cheery hails of the pilot, he should most certainly have relinquished his hold, and met with a death too ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... jail could not silence me, a diabolical attempt was made to bury me alive in an institution for the insane, but when it was found impossible to discover the slightest trace of insanity, or drive me insane during a sojourn of a month among ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel

... and the rider, after coming out into the open, dismounts and walks away twenty yards from his animal, and literally smells himself all over, and with a feeling of profound relief pronounces himself Not the minutest drop of the diabolical spray has touched his dancing shoes! Springing into the saddle he proceeds to his journey's end, is warmly welcomed by his host, and speedily forgetting his slight misadventure, mingles with a happy crowd of friends. In a little while people ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... and daring the greatest that all the chances of war can show. Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire and animate brave hearts, there should come some ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... as bad and cruel. Will was more than justified in any suspicions he might form against him. As Dent now walked through the streets his low type of face looked very bad indeed; the expression of cunning—that most unpleasant, that most diabolical of all expressions—was most apparent. It was past midnight now, and he cast sinister glances behind and around him. It would have been very unpleasant for him had certain people—Will Scarlett, for instance—the least idea he was still in Liverpool. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... then was very bad, and thence by way of Nizza to Genoa, where they found a Brig bound for Messina, which they thought would serve their turn. And, in truth, the poor souls found it but too well served; for the Brig was captured off Bastia in Corsica by one of these diabolical Barbary Rovers, all on board made Slaves, and carried, not into Algiers, but into Sallee. There, after much suffering, poor Donna Satisfacion de Mismar died of a Distemper of the country, and poor Lilias was left without any other Protector than her own Virtue ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... fully prepared for, prepared for with all the diabolical perversions of science, will reduce Europe and America ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various

... placed in casks. In daylight the men thus employed looked grim enough, but at night, as they worked away, stripped to their waists, the fire casting a glare over their smoke-begrimed figures, they seemed more like a group of demons engaged in some diabolical work, than human beings. The midshipmen could scarcely recognise those with whom they had been talking familiarly ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... and had she not, in addition, whipped her dear little Casimir, which unseemly act had only lately come to her knowledge? and had she not also made every man in the castle that approached her mad for love of her, all by her diabolical conduct? No—away with the wretch: she merits her chastisement a thousand and a thousand-fold!" And old Ulrich exclaimed likewise, "Away with the wretch and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... absolutely excruciating. Except for that damnable tune, there was nothing in his mind at all. Everything else was synthesized into a dull ache, a hollow, gnawing, physical ache. But he'd endure that, he thought, if he could get rid of the diabolical malice of that tune. Perhaps if he stopped walking and just sat still it ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... demonology was alone thought enough to dispose of his divinity. The one sentence of the article, which I cherish in my memory through all the changing years, ran thus: "If he was God, he knew there was no such thing as diabolical possession." It did not seem to strike the Hibbert critic that this line of criticism raises the question, not of whether Christ is God, but of whether the critic in the Hibbert Journal is God. About that ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... Chichirrenes, Campas, and Simirinches, were united. On an old manuscript in the monastery of Ocopa I found a marginal note, in which it was said, "As to the monster, the apostate Juan Santos Atahuallpa, after his diabolical destruction of our missions, the wrath of God was directed against him in the most fearful manner. He died the death of Herod, for his living body ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... vain. I watched the countenance of the captain, and the peculiar expression, which I could not decipher at my first interview, I now read most plainly: it was malignant cruelty, and delight in torturing his own species; he seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in the hateful operation which we were compelled to witness. The second boatswain's mate commenced, with a fresh cat, and gave a lash across the back of the prisoner, that made ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... efforts for children. Holding, as they did, in great dread all fetish, or obeah, practices; usually someone amongst them, more cunning than the rest, professed an acquaintance with the supposed diabolical ritual; and gained influence with, and extorted money from, his more timid comrades. Officers now in the 1st West India Regiment can remember the time when, there being many Africans in the regiment, the feathers of parrots or scraps of rags might be found in the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... difficulty in retaining its authority in many circles, in consequence of the widened horizon and the deepening of religious feeling, finally, the wild syncretism, whose aim, however, was a universal religion, all contributed to gain adherents for Simon.[334] His enterprise appeared to the Christians as a diabolical caricature of their own religion, and the impression made by the success which Simonianism gained by a vigorous propaganda even beyond Palestine into the West, supported this idea.[335] We can therefore understand how, afterwards, all heresies were traced ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... chalice of the material of the network and a paten of the material of the pillar. After passing again out of the network, they sailed for eight days towards the North, and here begins what may be called the diabolical ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute

... killed in a factory, and his body was so mangled by the fatal wheels that even his father was not allowed to see it. Late at night the father, by means of a diabolical talisman—the Monkey's Paw—succeeds in recalling his son to life, and the audience hears a knocking at the door. What is knocking? The mother is making frantic efforts to pull back the bolts. Her son is there, returned from the grave. The father, aware that the talisman, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... perilous ocean of finance. I remind him that fifteen pounds of the money in the belt is his (he would be as likely as not to forget it). As for the accounts, they are so clear that a three-year-old child could understand them. I notice with a diabolical satisfaction which persists through the all-pervading peace by no means as incongruously as you might imagine—I notice particularly that the Commandant doesn't like this part of it a bit. There is not anybody in the Corps who wants to be responsible for its funds or enjoys ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... no sooner understood, by the rules of his diabolical art, that Aladdin had arrived to this height of good fortune, than his face became inflamed with anger, and he cried out in a rage: "This sorry tailor's son has discovered the secret and virtue of the lamp! I believed his death to be certain; but find that he enjoys the fruit of my labour ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... course, was a plot as deep laid as diabolical, hatched by the rebels for the purpose of getting rid of General Brown, who they feared was about to reinforce Gordon. But for the timely arrival of those pressing despatches it would have succeeded, and he and the I.G. would have been trapped ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... they were being rapidly blinded and asphyxiated by the loathsome fumes, and deafened by the hideous roaring and snapping of the dragons' jaws. Realizing that they could not much longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and a rush of imprisoned steam that drowned even the dragons' roar, and they were separated from them by a long fissure ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... to a horrible device to extinguish the embers of the rebellion. It was carrying out to a diabolical extent the policy of setting one Irishman against another. If the terror-stricken wretches hoped for pardon, they must deserve it, by murdering their relations. Accordingly sacks full of the heads of reputed rebels were brought in daily. Yet concerning him Mr. Froude makes this singular remark: ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I know!" she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... deities,'—for which reason, we presume, those who were seated 'below the salt' at the banquets of the Middle Ages were always 'poor devils.' Attic salt is always held to be more pungent when there is a touch of the diabolical and caustic in it,—and therefore caustic itself is known as lapis infernalis. 'Poor Mr. N——,' said a country dame, of a recently deceased neighbor who was over-thrifty, 'he always saved his salt and lost his pork.' 'Yes,' replied a friend, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... and half-a-dozen loose sheets of music, the elusive quality of the latter seems to be something almost supernatural, not to say diabolical, and the pursuit would probably have been a lengthy one but for the fact that a tall man, who was rapidly advancing from the opposite direction, seeing the girl's predicament, came to her help and headed off the truant sheets. Within a few moments the combined efforts of the girl, the man, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... insane, but the others continued until worn out with exhaustion. The Father learned that during these orgies not unfrequently whole villages were consumed, and the total extirpation of some families had resulted. No wonder that he saw in them the diabolical workings of the prince of evil, but the physician is rather inclined to class them with those cases of epidemic hysteria, the common products of violent and ill-directed ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... officers accused Mahony of treachery to the Spanish general, and the national jealousy of foreigners made their tale easily believed; but Peterborough had taken another step to secure the success of his diabolical plan against the honor of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... "By the most diabolical arts he obtained an interview with the Dauphine, in which he regained her confidence. He made her believe that he had been commissioned by her mother, as she had shown so little interest for the house ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the war-dance. They dance about the victims with a fierce glee like hundreds of fiends; they beat them, they slash them with knives, they thrust lighted brands upon the fresh young flesh till it blisters and throws out nauseous odors. Their acts are acts of diabolical torture, inconceivably savage. But the worst agony is endured in desperate silence by each victim. That is, by ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... among Christians, is educated among Pharisees; the great enemies of Christ—instructed by their greatest teacher—inspired with a double portion of their zeal and rancor against the cause of the Redeemer, and sent forth to destroy. But lo! This mighty Abaddan of diabolical and Jewish malice, is arrested in his course—changed into another man, and all his zeal and learning from that hour directed to buildup the cause of God! The energy instructed and furnished, but heaven ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... forebears, and declined when it went that far. They then did other things to him which were not pleasant. Most of these pranks seemed to have been instigated by a laughing, curly-haired young man named Fay. Fay had clear blue eyes, which seemed always to mock you. He could think up more diabolical schemes in ten minutes than the rest of the men in as many hours. Bennington came shortly to hate this man Fay. His attentions had so much of the gratuitous! For a number of days, even after the enjoyment of novelty had worn off, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... once, as we have hinted, found means to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained power over female innocence and honest reputation: similarly he now devised a deep-laid plot, nothing short of diabolical. His plot was this: and I choose to hurry over such foul treason. Let a touch or two hint its outlines: those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves. Simon looked at Sir John—young, gay, wealthy; he coveted his purse, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... is the channel of Divine inspiration; all his wisdom is ignorance, but he has written one book of which every line is absolutely perfect: and meanwhile that which one man singles out as the Divine element is to another the diabolical, so strangely dim is our vision, and so imperceptible is the difference between ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... commission in the Blue Ribbon Army. GEORGE remembered this too late. The offer of a seat in the University Trial Eights must have suggested the blue ribbon which the University Crew wear on their straw hats. Thus the diabolical forces of heredity were roused to fever-heat, and the great-great uncle, with his blue ribbon, whose photograph hung in GEORGE's home over the parlour mantelpiece, became a living force in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various

... Stygian lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus, and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies, the whole place of punishment becomes ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... connection between her brother-in-law and a pretty and intelligent mulatto girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, who was still retained in the family in the capacity of housemaid. Having once struck this jarring chord, she continued to play upon it with diabolical skill. To those who watched the course of her unholy labors, the energy and ingenuity with which this wretched woman wrought at her task, and the completeness of her success, would have seemed a subject of admiration, if the result had not been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... is!" he said to himself with a diabolical sneer. "Did the half-pay Captain teach her that, I wonder? or does church-going, and psalm-singing, and Bible-reading come natural to all women? I know my mother was good at it, and my wife too. She used to fly to her Bible as a man flies to dram-drinking, or his pipe, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... my lower limbs with some kind of grease which smelt of resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little fires dropped some of the stuff on it, and it crackled merrily. He grinned at me—a slow, diabolical grin. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... which the report was concerned. The clergy attended in force and panoply led by His Serenity in person—monks, nuns, deacons and deaconesses—in a word, the Church was present. The cistern had been profaned. A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... means of sounds. His descriptive powers were wonderful. Anybody with the least touch of imagination could bring before "his mind's eye" the infernal revel that the artist was depicting. The enchantments of the witches were visible. You could hear their diabolical songs, you could fancy their mad and wild dances; while, when the cock crew (imitated by the way in a most astonishing manner), you would feel that there was a rushing of bodies through the air, which were scattering in all directions. Then the lovely melody succeeding—descriptive of ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an irresistible ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac

... so strange, so contrary to human nature that the little man, though diabolical as he appeared to be in his disposition, should never hint at, or complain of, Philip's attempts upon his life. Had he complained—had he accused Philip of murder—had he vowed vengeance and demanded justice ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... wilfully invaded the territory of Hades Ranch, of which diabolical domain I, Algernon Tobey, am by grace of his Satanic majesty the master, I invite you to become my guests and participate in a grand ball which I shall give this evening ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... in a foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic medicine—the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity killed. A skeleton found in the house of a physician is paraded on the street as proof of diabolical acts—instantly an angry mob wrecks the building and murders every foreigner within its reach. One of these instances was seen in the Tientsin massacre of 1869, the other in the Lienchow massacre of 1905. Nor are these isolated cases. Two American ladies doing ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... to rescue the girl. Without taking any notice of the violence they threatened, as they were well armed, she spoke so forcibly of the judgments of God, that would inevitably fall on them if they persisted in their diabolical purpose, that they retired in confusion, leaving the trembling girl at liberty, and overpowered with gratitude for her benefactress. She afterwards became one of Margaret's life-long companions, and accompanied her to Canada, where she was known as Sister Crolo. But the ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.

... squabble, the other apex of the triangle being a circus grafter who "shibbolethed" at some of the "brace games," which at that time had police protection, so far as that could be given. He had interfered between the couple, and was, I am sorry to say, quite successful as an interferer; but he was a diabolical failure when he attempted to duplicate White's work as lecturer, and the act, after playing a date or two, sank out of sight and I have heard nothing more of her professionally. Lately I have learned that she died in London in 1900 and is buried ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... didn't you give me your confidence? If I had had the least notion of the dreadful things that were going on I should certainly have telephoned to Eastbourne before starting. But don't you see the diabolical cleverness of the scheme? The telegram arrived just in time to allow me to catch the 1:25 p. m. train, and rendering it idle to think of making a trunk call if I would obey an urgent message from my mother. Then again, when I reached Eastbourne, why should I suspect a foreign-looking gentleman ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... in all other countries, discontented characters I well know; as also that these characters are actuated by very different views:—Some good, from an opinion that the measures of the general government are impure;—some bad, and (if I might be allowed to use so harsh an expression) diabolical, inasmuch as they are not only meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially to destroy the confidence which it is necessary the people should place (until they have unequivocal proof of demerit) in their public servants:—for ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... Mr. Davis was privy to the diabolical plot, but think it the emanation of a set of young men of the South, who are very devils. I want to throw upon the South the care of this class of men, who will soon be as obnoxious to their industrial classes as ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... swallowing up of the Moon and the Sun by Rahu, the falling of stars from their fixed positions and the diversions of constellations from their orbits, knowing the sad separation of all united objects and the diabolical behaviour of creatures in devouring one another, seeing the absence of all intelligence in the infancy of human beings and the deterioration and destruction of the body, marking the little attachment creatures have to the quality ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Chilicothe, to go on the expedition, in order to destroy us, and entirely depopulate the country. Their savage minds were inflamed to mischief by two abandoned men, Captains McKee and Girty. These led them to execute every diabolical scheme, and on the 15th day of August, commanded a party of Indians and Canadians, of about five hundred in number, against Bryant's station, five miles from Lexington. Without demanding a surrender, they furiously assaulted the garrison, which was happily prepared to oppose them; and, after they ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... especial care of tobacco, we cannot be surprised at his finding the means, if he had the desire, of introducing it into America. We have before alluded to what the Abbot Nyssens says, and if in addition we call to mind what others have uttered about its diabolical nature, and that the American Indians were wont to propitiate the powers of darkness by making offerings to them of tobacco, we cannot help thinking that King James was nearer truth and propriety than he imagined, when he declared that if he were to invite the Devil to dine with him, he would be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... ten days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would dare to repeat his attempt and produce ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... revolver in their strong box, and lackadaisically wave me adieu. Upon returning to the mehana, I find a corpulent pasha and a number of particularly influential Turks awaiting my reappearance, with the same diabolical object of asking me to "bin! bin!" Soon afterward come the two Mohammedan priests, with the same request; and certainly not less than half a dozen times during the afternoon do I bring out the bicycle and ride, in deference to the insatiable curiosity of the sure enough "unspeakable" ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... of this diabolical plot accidentally came to the ears of an officer in the army, who chanced to be in Taos at the time. This gentleman was one of the first to hear of it, and at once sought Kit Carson; but instead of directly telling him what he had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... has diabolical skill. And then he won't fight fair. He killed young Atwater on a foul, you know. Slipped on the wet grass, and Chartersea had him pinned before he caught his guard. But there is Lady ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... have been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. But with the black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical delusion it seemed. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... not for that diabolical netting," thought I, "there would be some chance for us still." And as we ranged laboriously up alongside, my eye travelled up the face of the obstruction to its upper edge, and I saw that it was suspended at four points only, two on ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... diabolical in its passion. He leaned against the jamb of the open door and folded his arms mockingly, as if inviting an ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... officer, the choice of all your kindred, is eager to give you his name and loving protection. He will take you far away from war's rude alarms, with its attendant and horrible perils. We have no common foe to deal with, but monsters animated by unquenchable hatred and a diabolical spirit. I should betray my trust and be recreant to my duty did I not avail myself of the one avenue of safety still open to you. See, your cousin's brave men are mounted, armed, and ready to act as your escort. Dr. Williams is ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... the apartment, the bishop rose, and deprecated the action that had been taken, and characterized it as childish and absurd. He declared that no man was safe one moment whilst "that diabolical wretch" still lived; that the only security for us all was in his immediate extirpation from the face of the earth, and that no amount of money could seal his lips, or close his hands. It would be no crime, he said, to deprive him of the means of assassinating the whole human family, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... now in the lead, turned sharply to his right and the next instant had the wind behind him. Almost involuntarily each member of the party looked back. Outside the breach of the broken wall, standing clear to view with the wind from the hills sweeping townward from them, were diabolical figures, naked and black, feeding ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... gained a victory over its enemies, took part in the feast. A blazing fire threw its bright glare on a dozen figures seated around huge banana-leaves, on which were spread the smoking viands of the diabolical repast. A disgusting odor was wafted toward the spot where our Frenchman and his companions lay perdu, enchained by a horrible fascination which produced the sensation of nightmare. Directly in front of them was an old chief with long white beard and wrinkled skin, who gnawed a head still covered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... lawless terror? As well might we seek the pure light of heaven in the bottomless pit. It is, indeed, a most horrible desecration of the sacred name of liberty, to apply it either to the butcheries and brutalities of the French Revolution, or to the more diabolical massacres of St. Domingo. If such were freedom, it would, in sober truth, be more fitly symbolized by ten thousand hissing serpents than by a single poisonous snake; and by all on earth, as in heaven, it should be abhorred. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... (such was learning's misfortune, at that great devastation of our English libraries, that) where a red letter or a mathematical diagram appeared, they were sufficient to entitle the book to be popish or diabolical." Theatrum Chemicum; prolegom. A. 2. rev. "The avarice of the late intruders was so mean, and their ignorance so undistinguishing, that, when the books happened to have COSTLY COVERS, they tore them off, and threw away the works, or turned them to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Even in Italy, the land of every German poet's dreams, Platen never felt himself at home, and the pictures of him from his Italian life are of a tragic, lonesome figure. The discord between body and soul, that homelessness in one's own physical body which characterized Hoffmann and made him seem diabolical to so many, is also to be noted in Platen. Carried over to the moral world, it accounts for his ardent cultivation of friendship rather than love, and frees him from the bitter accusations of Heine, whose attack in The Baths of Lucca is one of the most ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... Satan, the child wills! A drop of your diabolical blood has passed into her veins. I am yours for life. But first try reasonable means. Make my parents' acquaintance, cover up your horns and tail, try and win me like a bourgeois. If that fails, there is always Egypt. But quick, quick: I cannot bear scenes and delays and comments. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... stage-scoundrel who from time to time seeks to take some mean advantage of a heroine in distress, on which occasions said heroine (of Adelphi Drama) will request him to "unhand her," or to "stand aside and let her pass;" whereupon the dastardly ruffian retaliates with a diabolical sneer of fiendish malice, his eyes ablaze with passion, as, making his melodramatic exit at the O.P. wing, he growls, "Aha! a day will come!" or "She must and shall be mine!" or, if not making his exit, but remaining in centre of stage to assist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various

... her since that night which was about two years past. He knew that she had not been found, because he had not seen her amongst the other captives. If they had found her they would have been sure to carry her off, because—here Chimbolo's visage again grew diabolical—she was young, he said, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... best is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks out ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friendship—I have but one enemy in the world—it is he. It must, then, be acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by degrees, is undermining ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... to Shame or Misery, is also highly suitable to his Character; as the Comfort he draws from their disturbing the Peace of Heaven, that if it be not Victory it is Revenge, is a Sentiment truly Diabolical, and becoming the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... brought up at early dawn under a high cliff of smoky quartz. Here, in the great crevices, the drove of diabolical vampires ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... Santo and Argantino at the dreadful enchanted grotto of the great magician Malagigi. I was glad to see Argantino; it was nearly as good as seeing Malagigi in his habit as he lived because, although the son only had one diabolical book, yet in his personal appearance he strikingly resembled the father, being indeed the same marionette and distinguished chiefly by his wings, which he inherited from his mother Sabina who was a witch. Argantino always wore his wings ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... stroke they drove all the Moors and Jews from Hespana, and that deed they considered as their glory. Your Majesty must not think that these people are only in or about Manila, for they are through the whole country and scattered all about; and they are spreading this diabolical crime and other vices throughout the whole land, and even their evil doctrines. In spite of this even the religious, as well as the others, tolerate them for the temporal advantages in building and other affairs, which they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... stags and does which broke into them in herds at sunset, tried to keep them out by means of clappers and bad odours. I have seen and smelled the so-called "Frenchman's oil" with which the posts were smeared, that its really diabolical odour—I don't know from what horrors it was compounded—might preserve the crops. The ornament of the forests had become the object of the keenest hate, and as soon as—shortly before we entered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... tramp of feet was heard outside the house. Mr. R. called out, "It's a serenade, H. Get up and bring out all the wine you have." Annie and I peeped through the parlor window, and lo! it was the company of volunteers and a diabolical band composed of bones and broken-winded brass instruments. They piped and clattered and whined for some time, and then swarmed in, while we ladies retreated and listened ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various

... that he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... "the thing that interests me most about this case is not the evidence of the bombs. Bombs are common enough weapons, after all. It is the evidence of almost diabolical cunning that has been shown in the effort to get rid of the father of the revolution, as you ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... first published in 1839, which gave or was supposed to give indiscreet revelations as to some of his clients. Besides legal pamphlets, he proved his sound Evangelicalism by a novel called 'The Jesuit at Cambridge' (1847), intended to unveil the diabolical machinations of the Catholic Church. An unfortunate catastrophe ruined his prospects. He had founded a society for the purchase of reversions and acted as its solicitor. It flourished for some years, till misunderstandings arose, and Sir George ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... no discoveries that will help us much, I have learned just enough to understand that there is a diabolical plot on foot." ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... revolver, but it was not the deliberately deadened sound of that slight weapon which had startled the guests in the dining-room on the night of the murder. The report they had heard was made by the heavier pistol in front of him. It was a ruse of terrifying simplicity but diabolical ingenuity. The wick of the tinder-lighter was an admirable slow match, obtainable in any tobacconist's shop for a few pence, which, by means of this trick, had established a false alibi for the actual murderer by causing the report which had reached the dining-room, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... the dozens, hundreds—thousands—blazed with a violent suddenness, a suddenness that Peter could compare only with that of a tropical sun leaping out of the ocean; and Peter blinked upon green. It was a hideous green, a green of diabolical intensity. He shivered. It seemed to creep, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... we concede that Satan has had the especial care of tobacco, we cannot be surprised at his finding the means, if he had the desire, of introducing it into America. We have before alluded to what the Abbot Nyssens says, and if in addition we call to mind what others have uttered about its diabolical nature, and that the American Indians were wont to propitiate the powers of darkness by making offerings to them of tobacco, we cannot help thinking that King James was nearer truth and propriety than he imagined, when he declared that if he were to invite the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... bombarded the officer with questions, but he wouldn't answer many of them; only he said that nothing but a direct hit with a six-inch shell would penetrate its hide; and it could go through any hole or walk right over a house. It was some diabolical device all right, and we went back chuckling over the surprise that the Germans would get next day. That night we went in, marching in single file. It was pitch-dark and the Germans were shelling furiously, though before we left all our massed artillery had carried ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien

... view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not. But as to Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him. There was something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that. And what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will never think well ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... the Church of Rome, is suppressed in Cuba, but the political inquisition, as exercised by the government on the island, is even more diabolical than that of the former Jesuitical organization, because it is more secret in its murderous deeds, not one half of the horrors of which will ever be publicly known. Moro Castle is full of political prisoners, who are thinned out by executions, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... held a hurried conversation. I learned then that Fuero and his associates had many years before organized a society for the development of the light-ray in its various forms. They had soon realized in their experiments its diabolical power of destruction, and had taken oath then that they would not use it, or allow it to be used, except under the most critical circumstances of the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... and with shawms," will you be assailed in the most diabolical doggerel. I wish my name not to transpire till the day is decided. I shall not be in town, so it won't much matter; but let us have a good deliverer. I think Elliston [2] should be the man, or Pope [3]; not Raymond [4], I implore you, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... 9-8-5—nine rupees eight annas and five pie— for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... of Netherlandish illumination above every other quality establishes its identity. Look at the expression of the onlookers in a Crucifixion, or a Christ before Pilate, or a Stoning of St. Stephen—the diabolical ferocity, the fiendish earnestness, the downright intentional ugliness put on some of the characters are in direct contrast to the sweet indifference, the calm complaisance, and blank unconcern of a crowd as shown in ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... health. Malarial fever, contracted in the gloomy, rain-soaked forests of New Ireland and New Britain, had poisoned my blood, soured my temper, and all but made me an old man at seven-and-twenty years of age. Violent attacks of ague, recurring with persistent and diabolical regularity every week for many months, had so weakened me, that although I was able to attend to my business and do justice to my employers, I felt that I should never live to see the end of my two years' engagement unless I either shook off the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted for a yard or two by the blaze of our fires, everything seemed to turn into life. Every creature, every reed, every leaf had a voice of its own; a howl, a rustle, a sigh that filled the night air with diabolical sounds. It was a fearful pandemonium; a mighty strife twixt victim and victor; an insatiable lust for blood; a ferocious ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... is German. How gladly would Pauli, that honest, noble German soul, stay, if he had but an occupation. The subjection of the mind by the government here becomes more vexatious, more apparent, more diabolical. One form of tyranny is that of Augustus, the more thorough, because so sly. They will not succeed in the end, but meanwhile it is horrible to witness. More firmly than ever I settle myself down here in Heidelberg, and will take the whole house, and say, "You must leave me my cottage ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... gave her on earth. Not another was allowed him. He was hurried off by the stony-hearted familiars, with his brother martyrs and their companions in affliction. The first part of the exhibition had been a cruel, a blasphemous mockery—that which was to follow was to be a diabolical reality. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... to his own diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England might become participes criminis, by acting on this diabolical information. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... The friar began, subsequently, to imagine he observed a certain coldness or indifference on the part of his companion in guilt, and, attributing that change to a feeling of the woman's self-disgust and reproach, he had recourse to the most diabolical means of searing her conscience, and making her still more the associate of his depravity: indeed, it is not possible even to read without horror of the abominable artifices to which this monster of iniquity had recourse, although these were all minutely ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... Enemies, to the publick Peace; when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes, But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders, that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them never so much as ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... pictures of him from his Italian life are of a tragic, lonesome figure. The discord between body and soul, that homelessness in one's own physical body which characterized Hoffmann and made him seem diabolical to so many, is also to be noted in Platen. Carried over to the moral world, it accounts for his ardent cultivation of friendship rather than love, and frees him from the bitter accusations of Heine, whose attack in The Baths of Lucca is one of the most scurrilous and venomous ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine^, ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded^. fiendish, fiendlike^; demoniacal; diabolic, diabolical; devilish, infernal, hellish, Satanic; Tartaran. Adv. malevolently &c adj.; with bad intent &c n.. Phr. cruel as death; hard unkindness' alter'd eye [Gray]; homo homini lupus [Lat.] [Plautus]; mala mens [Lat.], malus animus [Lat.] [Terence]; rich gifts wax poor when givers ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... ceremonies which the king was so intent to establish. Such institutions, for a time, are esteemed either too divine to have proceeded from any other being than the Supreme Creator of the universe, or too diabolical to have been derived from any but an infernal demon. But no sooner is the mode of the controversy past, than they are universally discovered to be of so little importance, as scarcely to be mentioned with decency amidst the ordinary course of human transactions. It suffices here ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... more than hinted. There the unholy skill and power came in: they suggested so abominably, leaving most to the imagination. To find such significance in a bourgeois villa garden, and to interpret it with such delicate yet legible certainty, was a kind of symbolism that was sinister, even diabolical. The delicacy was her own, but the ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood

... being so, the reader will be prepared for the statement that she never really supposed the peculiar relations of Cary with Pauline could affect her. Jealousy she had not, because she was incapable of it, but even if she had not been above this most diabolical of female vices, she could not have felt it, because she did not realize that there was any occasion for it. Hence when Cary spoke to her with deepest concern of Pauline's illness, of his fears of the result, and of his desire to do all in his power to avert the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... to say few can bring themselves to face without some manifestation of discomposure. Although my cheeks and lips may have blanched for a moment, I permitted no further and greater sign of fear to escape me. I returned their glances of fiendish ferocity with an unquailing eye, and listened to their diabolical jests in apparently unruffled silence, as I was conducted through their ranks by my captors toward a small hillock, overshadowed by a gigantic bois immortelle, upon which sat a negro in solitary state, appeasing his hunger by ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... the days of the Inquisition—or still later, since the terrible punishments visited upon the insurgents of 1848 by the Austrian aristocrats—has been so diabolical as the stocks and chain-gangs, as used by Wirz. At one time seven men, sitting in the stocks near the Star Fort—in plain view of the camp—became objects of interest to everybody inside. They were never relieved from their painful position, but were kept there until all of them died. I think ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... and spirit store at Bramley, and corrupted the whole country round with his wares, doing far more for the devil and sin than the preachers could do for God and holiness. Yet no one seemed to think there was anything dishonorable or diabolical ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... shoots a monkey in South Africa, and wounds it, allowing it to escape, there usually come droves of its kinspeople, screaming and chattering the most diabolical language, seeking to revenge the wrong done their tribe. Nothing demonstrates plainer that they have a common language; otherwise, how could they understand that one of their number had been wounded? It is because of the communication of ideas by a common ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... in its evident truth) of superstition which has survived religion; of a heart which has abandoned the love of kindred and friends, only to lose itself in a wilderness of petty spite, terminating in an abyss of diabolical hatred. The ordinary providential helps to goodness have been rejected; the ill-provided adventurer has sought to scale the high snow-peaks of saintliness,—he has missed his footing,— and the black chasm which yawns beneath, has ingulfed him." —E. J. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... a longing for amusement, I should like to invite everybody to the house, to give a dinner, a ball, a supper, a reception, to have some sort of diabolical carnival—I should like to have everybody, everybody. I am not ill-natured at heart, I am ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff

... no moment to speculate about that. So far it merely tended to prove the almost diabolical cleverness of the people with whom the police had to deal. The Rajah himself could be seen standing moodily in the doorway chewing a cigar between his strong, yellow teeth. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... under water; he liked to stay under long enough to scare the spectators, and then appear at a distance, thrashing about in the water as if he were rescuing himself from drowning, sputtering out at the same time the most diabolical noises —curses, no doubt, for he had been heard to swear. But as he skated alone he swam alone, appearing and disappearing at the swimming-place silently, with never a salutation to any one. And he was as skillful ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... thousands, but millions, of Roman Catholic girls and women whose keen sense of modesty and womanly dignity are above all the sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They never can be persuaded to answer "Yes" to certain questions of their confessors. They would prefer to be thrown into the flames, and burnt to ashes with the Brahmin widows, ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... Fabarum; which custom continued till the Reformation of Religion, and then that producing Puritanism, and Puritanism Presbytery, the profession of it looked upon such laudable and ingenious customs as Popish, diabolical and anti-Christian."[46] Queen's College, Oxford (whose members have from time immemorial been daily summoned to dine in hall by sound of trumpet, instead of by bell as elsewhere), is noted for its ancient ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... proceeds: "The sentiment is diabolical; and the question argued at the London dinner-table (Mr. Sotheby's) was 'Could the writer have been other than a devil?'... Several of the great guns among the literary body were present—in particular Sir Walter Scott, and he, we believe, with his usual good nature, took the apologetic side ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!" ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... of Europe, three centuries ago, were alchymists. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr. Dee, and the Rosicrucians, all laid as much stress upon their knowledge of the days to come, as upon their pretended possession of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. In their time, ideas of the wonderful, the diabolical, and the supernatural, were rifer than ever they were before. The devil or the stars were universally believed to meddle constantly in the affairs of men; and both were to be consulted with proper ceremonies. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... confusion that have been produced in this part of the country by this infamous statute. It has turned Southeastern Pennsylvania into another Guinea Coast, and caused a large portion of the inhabitants to feel as insecure from the brutal violence and diabolical acts of the kidnapper, as are the unhappy creatures who people the shores of Africa. Ruffians from the other side of the Slave-line, aided by professional kidnappers on our own soil, a class of men whose 'occupation' until lately, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer's afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome

... maiden, within herself, "are but half converted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, nor courage, nor principle, to aid me on such an occasion—better alone ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... how weak he is!" I said, as I stood on my guard, and writhing now with bodily as well as mental pain, he came at me looking almost diabolical. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... and the crone could perceive by his manner that the nature of the communication she was about to make had been already known to him, though not, she was confident, in so dark and diabolical a shape as that in which ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... quavered the hag; and the gleam in her eyes, as she laid her hand upon the chiefs shoulder, was most diabolical to see. "My poor simple son is down to the village with the pony for some provisions for my little cabin. Ma belle I shall be able to use handsomely, when she comes." Fetching then a black bottle, around which were many tangles of cob-web, she set it before; her visitors. The ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... Christians to sail on the said ships for the purpose of robbery. He is a pirate and thief, and a pagan who, in accordance with the teachings of his idolatry, has two hundred men killed, in order to bathe in their bile; and those by whom he has himself washed must be virgins. There is also a diabolical custom that, when a chief dies, they burn his body; his wife and his women are also burnt in the same fire. Because of this and other abuses and pernicious idolatries, and, above all, by the general injuries which he inflicts upon all travelers, on a route so general ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair

... "Man depicts himself in his gods," says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the conscience of the community, and with it of the individual items, began aspiring to its golden age,—Perfection. "Dieu est le superlatif, dont le positif est l'homme," says Carl Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton

... had been cut down were nicely placed at each end of the path in an upright position, so as to conceal it from the eyes of the passer. For a long time the mulatto reflected upon the conversation he had heard, and considered the means of defeating the diabolical plot. Against a band of ruffians, such as Vernon would enlist for the service, he could not contend single-handed. To remove his mistress from the island, while Henry Carroll lay helpless there, would not be an acceptable ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton

... her relations with Deronda?" said Grandcourt, with the coldest possible sneer in his low voice which in poor Gwendolen's ear was diabolical. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... hell!' He adds, that 'this barbarity is not their national character, for no people sympathize so much at the execution of a criminal; but it is the damnable nature of their religion, and the most diabolical spirit of their priests; their celibacy deprives them of the affections of men, and their creed gives them the ferocity of devils.' Geddes saw one man gagged, because, immediately he came out of the Inquisition gates, he looked up at the sun, whose light for many years had ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... Weasel in a falsetto voice before a fractious baby, a small but intensely critical child, a stolidly contemptuous nurse, an agitated mother and a gaping photographer, with the knowledge that success or failure hangs upon your lips, and that all the time a diabolical machine in the street below is scoring threepence against you every minute or so? Of course you haven't; but possibly you may be able to enter into my feelings in this hour of trial. With a prickly heat suffusing my whole body and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various

... his mouth, when a horrible apparition presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and putting on the fictitious nose, while he drew his white nightcap over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the lips of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... Apology is being sent to you—though it is rather a Confession. Mittitur tibi apologia nostra, quamquam verius confessio est. I included [in the Confession] almost all articles of faith, because Eck published most diabolical lies against us, quia Eckius edidit diabolikontatas diabolas contra nos. Against these it was my purpose to provide an antidote." (C. R. 2, 45; Luther, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... that the little black bag about her sister's neck, which she had innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of sacrilegious amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when she bathed and dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... how Curly would blacken anything he touched, even a tree. But you didn't burn him. Such a diabolical thing is not in ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... century a change took place, prison songs and thieves' ritournelles assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial mien. The plaintive malure was replaced by the larifla. We find in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety. We hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and which seems to have been flung into the forest by a will-o'-the-wisp playing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... in the corner of the box he had sent them, she began to remember little traits of boyish malice and cruelty. Had they worked out of his nature, as such strains sometimes will, or was this stage adventurer, cold-blooded, unscrupulous, with a vein of diabolical humour in his malevolence, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole diabolical evening. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... declare that he is the channel of Divine inspiration; all his wisdom is ignorance, but he has written one book of which every line is absolutely perfect: and meanwhile that which one man singles out as the Divine element is to another the diabolical, so strangely dim is our vision, and so imperceptible is the difference between ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... two ten-dollar greenbacks compressed into a little wad in one corner of my watch fob; and that corner escaped inspection. Dick Turpin never was the richer for that money. They examined suspiciously a pocket edition of the New Testament in the original Greek; but I assured them it was not some diabolical Yankee cipher, and they allowed me to keep it. I made the most of my freemasonry, and they permitted me to retain my overcoat. One of our prisoners, it was whispered, had secretly stuffed $1300 in greenbacks into his canteen, but all canteens were taken from us as contraband of war, and ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... never have it. 'Tis an infernal disease," says my lord, "and its twinges are diabolical. Ah!" and he made a dreadful wry face, as if he just ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of the muezzin, who, from the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis, calls every Mussulman to his prayers. That tower springs from the Parthenon itself; and every time we paused and directed our eyes towards it, our guide set up a wail, that a temple which had once been won from the diabolical uses of the pagans to become the temple of another virgin than Pallas—the Virgin Mother of God—was now again perverted to the accursed ends of the Moslem. It was the sight of those walls of the Acropolis, which disclosed themselves in the distance ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... constantly recurring evil thoughts, or evil words keep popping into it till they apparently spring from within. Or perhaps the suggestion to commit some sinful act keeps persistently coming to mind. Maybe feelings one considers foreign to the sanctified experience possess one. Possibly some diabolical temptation keeps whirling one about. All of these are sent with the avowed object of overthrowing ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... had returned in radiant health. He even predicted how the miracle would come about; it would be like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the entire being, whilst the evil, that horrid, diabolical weight which stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though emerging by her mouth. But at the same time he flatly declined to give a certificate. He had failed to agree with his two confreres, who treated him coldly, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Asmodeus—that diabolical personage, who would have been created by every fertile imagination if Le Sage had not acquired the priority in his great masterpiece—would have enjoyed a singular spectacle, if he had lifted up the roof of the little house in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Pres, while Debray was casting up his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes, when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a scraper, pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... quarter stretch: Sir Archy is bounding, like some diabolical monster, far before his companions, spite of his owner's cries; the Arabian has come up and locks the mare; they run neck and neck. Sir Archy whirls past the stand, and wins by a hundred yards. The immense crowd utters a shout that shakes the surrounding ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... hands together in a sort of ecstasy, while tears streamed from his eyes. The old woman glared upon me from a far corner, and muttered over her beads, as if they were a spell to secure her against some diabolical art. When I could no longer see to read, Michael took my hand, and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... inclined to attach much value to Imperator's prayers. They will take them for one of the diabolical inventions of which secondary personalities are capable. Evidently, if we take them apart from the rest, this is the most plausible explanation; but the character and ideas of Imperator must be considered as a whole. I can assure my readers that ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage

... associated with their military history, now all smoking ruins, can scarcely contain their rage, and not unnaturally vent it with ferocity on an enemy which deliberately planned the destruction of Paris as the price of victory to the conquerors, and who are even yet endeavouring to carry out their diabolical design of destroying the houses still uninjured by secretly introducing petroleum balls and fusees into the cellars. I saw a soldier suddenly seize a man as he was apparently harmlessly walking along the street; his pockets were ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... father and mother, what shall we say of this truly diabolical master! O, how shall I find words to paint my griefs, and his deceit! I have as good as confessed I love him; but, indeed, it was on supposing him good.—This, however, has given him too much advantage. But now I will break this wicked ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... was stricken midway into a gasp. Marie Louise told her the story of the diabolical prayer. Lady Webling took the blow without reeling. She expressed shock, but again ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... life, if still isolated, was a shade more expanded than of old,—yet she had no desire for greater change, and she had no keener vision for the world outside herself than before. She saw nothing of that diabolical thing which her father and madame had been so long plotting as the outcome of their friendship, the parable of which her education had been the text. If her intelligence was warping out from the narrow limits in which her mother had confined it, it was still below the average—as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... self-reliant girl might have been aware of certain resources of her father's; or might not some old friend greatly indebted to the father have come forward in the hour of need? That was not so incredible. Only, only, and this question recurred to him with an insistence diabolical and mocking. Why should a woman, young, beautiful, luxurious to the point of extravagance, preserve these mysteries? Aye, there ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... he declared his conviction that the chief effect of the Brethren's religion was to fill the mind with absurd ideas about the Side-Wound of Christ, and rivers and seas of blood; and, therefore, he earnestly besought all Methodists who had joined the Church of the Brethren to quit their diabolical delusions, to flee from the borders of Sodom, and to leave these Brethren, loved the darkness ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... against us, and assembled their choicest warriors at Old Chilicothe, to go on the expedition, in order to destroy us, and entirely depopulate the country. Their savage minds were inflamed to mischief by two abandoned men, Captains McKee and Girty. These led them to execute every diabolical scheme, and on the 15th day of August, commanded a party of Indians and Canadians, of about five hundred in number, against Bryant's station, five miles from Lexington. Without demanding a surrender, they furiously assaulted the garrison, which was happily prepared to oppose them; and, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley

... room was traditionally called 'Tom's Corner.' It had been assigned to him at first because of its being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls, with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments, foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate nose, and especially of his sister; who always being ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... as near the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... farm in the vicinity of Rochelle. As he walked one afternoon in the main street of that city, he was very rudely accosted by a couple of officers of the holy inquisition, whose looks and dress were as dark and diabolical as ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... lay hands upon her Hannah Darling offered to go with him of her own free will, but immediately after leaving the house cleverly eluded the Indian, slipped in again at the door and fastened it. The despicable savage advanced to the window with diabolical threats, whetted his knife before their eyes and finally seized a club to make forcible entry only to find himself confronted at the doorway by the plucky girl with a loaded musket in her hands. Her spirit was now thoroughly aroused; ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... Edgar, and in the Professional Fantasque of the Fool, all operating to contrast and heighten each other. There is yet another feat in this kind, which Shakespeare has performed;—he has personified malice in his Caliban; a character kneaded up of three distinct natures, the diabolical, the human, and the brute. The rest of his preternatural beings are images of effects only, and cannot subsist but in a surrounding atmosphere of those passions from which they are derived. Caliban is ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... measured two metres in length and was as thick as a man's arm. They don't wait till you can hit them, he said, but rush straight at you, swift as an arrow, upraised on their massive posterior coils, hissing like a steam-engine, and swelling out their throat with diabolical rage. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... beautiful evening, and with the Genoese ladies and Captain Tarlton to take care of me I sat out in the stern gallery till 10 P.M., when Tarlton told me he had a bed made for me in a spare cabin below. In this I got a good night's rest in spite of the diabolical witlow; the witlow is so unromantic a wound that I shall leave it out of the narrative for the future. The next morning I was with General La Marmora at daylight and from him I went to the municipality. I found them in a sad ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... about twelve years, saturated his clothes and hair with camphene, and then procuring a rope, fastened one end to a lamp- post, the other around his neck, and were about to set him on fire, and hang him; they were interfered with by some citizens and by the police of the First Ward, and their diabolical attempt at murder frustrated. While Mrs. Derrickson was attempting to save the life of her son she was horribly bruised and beaten, with a cart-rung. The victim, after lingering three or four weeks, died from the effects of ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... after it had been disposed of, Mr. Pickwick, to the intense horror and indignation of his followers, related the adventure he had undergone, and the success which had attended the base artifices of the diabolical Jingle. 'And the attack of rheumatism which I caught in that garden,' said Mr. Pickwick, in conclusion, 'renders me lame ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... no mistaking his sex, or identity either," gasped Mr. Joe, backing himself away from this diabolical figure until he was stopped by the wall, from which he cried out, "Here, Jerry, show the—Enemy—into ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... Colony are the native inhabitants treated with greater injustice than in South Africa.* Yet in spite of all I had seen and heard, I must say that, until this Report reached me, I never would have believed my white fellow-countrymen capable of conceiving the all but diabolical schemes propounded between the covers of Volume I of the Report of the South African Lands Commission, 1916, and clothing them in such plausible form as to mislead even sincere and well-informed friends of the Natives. There are pages ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... prove his power and his knowledge, but whether malignant or benign, would remain doubtful, until by purely moral evidence, which no miracles could give, the doubt should be solved.[7] This is the old difficulty about diabolical wonders. The moderns cut the knot, by denying that any but God can possibly work real miracles. But to establish their principle, they make their definition and verification of a miracle so strict, as would have amazed ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... have given my word you will bring Lady Ormont. You will?—and not let me be confounded! Yes, and we shall make a party. I see consent. Aminta will enjoy the switch of steel. I love to see fencing. It rouses all that is diabolical in me.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... her shutters with a bang. By breakfast-time my revered relation becomes a respectable and no longer a riotous member of society, but during the early morning hours her inventions for disturbing her neighbors are ingenious and diabolical. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... opponents into violence and into acts of desperation!!! I know that he will complain, and that he has just cause of complaint, and I dread the consequence, because I know full well their arts, and the power which they have to carry their diabolical plans into execution. If he be troublesome, they will stick at nothing, and I should not be the least surprised if they were ultimately to have some of their spies to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... the castle, with instructions to kill the king in some way or other, but, if possible, in such a manner as to make it appear that he died a natural death. These men tried various plans without success. They administered poisons, and resorted to various other diabolical contrivances. At last, one night, dreadful outcries and groans were heard coming from the king's apartment. They were accompanied from time to time with shrieks of terrible agony. These sounds were continued for some time, and they were heard in all parts of the castle, and in many of ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... suspicions now rushed into her mind. Why should her uncle be thus exposing himself to the public gaze with Maria Port? Why did it give the woman such diabolical pleasure to be seen there with him? With a mind already prepared for such sickening revelations, Olive was convinced that it could mean nothing but that her uncle intended to marry Maria Port. What else could it mean? But no matter what it meant, she could not stop. She ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... himself, his hat and clothes in his hand, smeared with black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had mistaken ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... are, if I choose," said Helen, defiantly. But for all that she did not do it. She said piteously, "What offense had I ever given you? What crime had I ever committed, that you must make me the victim of this diabolical deceit? Oh, sir, what powers of mind you have wasted to achieve this victory over a poor unoffending girl! What was your motive? What good could come of it to you? He won't speak to me. He is not even penitent. Sullen and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Indian theory bears on its face the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to be stamping bridle-paths into quagmires; dragging unwieldy lumbering carts, and thereby frightening horses into fits; tugging and frequently running away with, all manner of primitive ploughs and sledges; ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... feeding to the full his lust of gold. The bailiff had more than once, as we have hinted, found means to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained power over female innocence and honest reputation: similarly he now devised a deep-laid plot, nothing short of diabolical. His plot was this: and I choose to hurry over such foul treason. Let a touch or two hint its outlines: those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves. Simon looked at Sir John—young, gay, wealthy; he coveted his purse, and fancied that the surest bait to catch ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... Gentlemen, what is't you design? is it a general Massacre, pray? or am I the only Person aim'd at as a Sacrifice for the Nation? I know, and all the World knows, how many Plots have been laid against my self, both by Men, Women, and Children, the diabolical Emissaries of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, and murmuring with his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... of Mrs. Shchapoff really belong to a peculiar species of haunted houses. Our ancestors, like the modern Chinese, attributed them to diabolical possession, not to an ordinary ghost of a dead person. Examples are very numerous, and have all the same "symptoms," as Coleridge would have said, he attributing them to a contagious nervous malady of observation in the spectators. Among the most notorious is the ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... know," he went on. "An old traveler like me to be taken in thus! Evidently there is under all this one of those diabolical combinations which time even fails to unravel. We ought to ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... (Vampyrus spectrum; Artibeus jamaicensis; or Phyllostomus hastatus panamensis). Several remarkably diabolical representations of bats (Maya, so[c], usually written zotz) occur among the Maya remains. These all show the prominent nose leaf distinguishing the family Phyllostomatidae and, as the Mayas ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen

... were afraid to engage themselves by the year, lest any unforseen accident should leave them parishioners in a place where they knew they must perish miserably; so that great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... stood in state, festooned with tumblers, a gaudy pitcher, which would have thrown Tearsoul and Lelie into ecstasies of delight. It was almost as wonderful a specimen of art as my chintz hanging. The groundwork is pure white, upon which, in bas-relief, are executed two diabolical-looking bandits, appallingly bewhiskered and mustached, dressed in red coats, yellow pantaloons, green boots, orange-colored caps with brown feathers in them, and sky-blue bows and arrows. Each of the fascinating vagabonds is attended by a bird-of-paradise-colored ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... a diabolical thing?" Jasper mused, as if to himself. "Let us examine the ground very carefully to see if the man who did this deed left any trace. He might ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... only astonishment at the flight of his niece. How was it that he had never suspected the cause that disturbed her thoughts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more excuse therefore for an uncle!" So he resumed his musing on elevated art, quieting his displeasure—for his ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... ye are called to times of trial, and your brother Man is the agent whom Providence uses to correct you. Remember that he is only the agent. In the abode of condemned spirits the Almighty permits an uncontrolled mis-rule of diabolical passions, and total misery is the result. In the celestial regions, the will of the Creator is understood and obeyed; and there dwells eternal peace. In this mixed state the best err, from frailty and ignorance; but the wrath of the wicked is over-ruled by Divine ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet to reveal myself was to confess ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... heard the word, I think," she said, as though she thought there might be something diabolical in it. "And do you heal the sick in this way ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... poor are death-doomed from their cradles. Look for one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill, amidst the smell of oil, the smoke of lamps, the rattling of wheels, the dizzy and complicated motions of diabolical mechanism: contemplate the little human machines that keep play with the revolutions of the iron work, robbed at that hour of their natural rest, as of air and exercise by day: observe their pale and ghastly features, more ghastly in that baleful and ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... "practical politics." Francis Bacon learned of Machiavelli, who "wrote what men do and not what they ought to do." This is the philosophy of fact. He dealt with men as he found them. He was a sublime, almost a diabolical opportunist I have often thought Benjamin Franklin, with his "honesty is the best policy," is another Machiavelli, only touched a little with the pharisaism of the Puritan. With the Italian anything that would win is the best policy, and this is his honest estimate of men. The best policy ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... So long, however, as the deadly liquor is sold in almost every store and cabin, the cause of disturbances will remain, and men's active brains, continually fired with poison as they are, will concoct schemes diabolical enough ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... to report all well, except that I have wretched nights. The weather is diabolical here, and times are very bad. I cut "Copperfield" with a bold dexterity that amazed myself and utterly confounded George at the wing; knocking off that and "Bob" by ten minutes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... were many facetious things more suitable to exhilarate the supper-table than the interpretation of Holy Writ, and begged that they might be no longer bored with Scripture. Thoroughly satisfied by their singular way of thinking that his guests were diabolical, paterfamilias cries out in Latin worthy of Father Tom, "Apagite, vos scelerati nebulones!" This said, the tartarean impostor and his companions at once vanished with a great tumult, leaving behind them a most unpleasant foetor and the bodies of three men who had been hanged. Perhaps ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... And he thought of his supper, and turned away. Walking fast, he Had scarcely passed the First steps of his way, when he saw something nasty; 'Twas tall and big, And he saw from its rig 'Twas the Devil in full diabolical fig. There were wanting no proofs, For the horns and the hoofs And the tail were a fully convincing sight; But the heart of the Saint Ne'er once turned faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... scoundrel for his insolence—to drive him from the neighbourhood—and I know not what other menaces of formidable import. The devil, in the old stories of diablerie, was always sure to start up at the elbow of any one who nursed diabolical purposes, and only wanted a little backing from the foul fiend to carry his imaginations into action. The noble Captain MacTurk had so far this property of his infernal majesty, that the least hint of an approaching quarrel drew him always to the vicinity ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... his work. Even with the promise of a speedy third volume before me, I feel by no means sure of living to see Mary Powell back in her husband's house; for it is just at this crisis that Mr. Masson, with the diabolical art of a practised serial writer, leaves us while he goes into an exhaustive account of the Westminster Assembly and the political and religious notions of the Massachusetts Puritans. One could not help thinking, after having got Milton fairly through college, that he was never more mistaken in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... turned away for a moment and stooped down. The trick has been done often enough upon the stage, often in less time, but seldom with more effect. The wonderful wig disappeared, the spectacles, the lines in the face, the make-up of diabolical cleverness. With his back to the wall and his fingers playing with something in his pocket, Peter, Baron de Grost, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... her death-bed, he did it to create a favorable impression in the minds of the doctor and the nurse! Again, when his grief under his bereavement completely overwhelmed him, he was triumphing in secret, and acting a part! If you looked into his heart, you would see there a diabolical hatred for his wife and an infatuated passion for Mrs. Beauly! In everything he had said he had lied; in everything he had done he had acted like a crafty and heartless wretch! So the chief counsel for ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... was at work upon that diabolical task of mine, there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves, since their nasty red caps ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... mind. He knew how Corona would suffer if she were not allowed either to see little Orsino or to know what became of him while she was living her solitary life of confinement in the mountains. The diabolical cruelty of the idea fascinated him for a moment, and he looked coldly into her eyes as though he did not mean to answer her. In spite of his new jealousy, however, he was not capable of inflicting this last blow. As ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... that of the weather-gage in a naval action. In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our channel all its ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... whom I described above as the real author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the Art of Sight Recognition, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott

... with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... informed you of a set of diabolical incendiaries having set fire to Savannah, Charleston, Baltimore, and New York. The villainy of these infernals is likely to be productive of some good. The inhabitants of Charleston have agreed to prohibit the erection of wooden buildings in that city. The ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... life-Guard, who were to have assassinated him: knowing that no person could be admitted into the magazines or among the cannon but those who were of the Artillery they have found several in our Regiment vile enough to be concerned in their diabolical Designs—these were to have blown up the Magazines and spiked the cannon. (Tell Homans, one Rotch, a fellow he bled for me in Morton's company at No 1 is taken up with his brother for being concerned.) Their Design was deep, long concerted, and wicked to a ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston

... keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain to oust him therefrom. I ceased to qualify my statement that Protection would make food dearer for the agricultural labourer. I began to speak of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at once insane and diabolical, as a man inspired by a passionate desire to substitute manacled but still criminal Chinese for honest British labourers throughout the world. And when it came to the mention of our own kindly leader, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... words responded tremulous and weak, And mustering his dissipated strength, A sitting posture he assumed at length,— "Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom, Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb, Thou vampire, diabolical and fell, Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress. Why hast thou burst my chamber's bolted door Where guest unbidden never ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... their plans the more carefully for his warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally divided. Radisson asked that the woman prisoner ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... granted. He ascended into the tower and took the rope in his hands; the mighty bell swung forth, but ah! what a sound was that! The people pressed their hands over their ears and shuddered; those in the streets hurried to their homes; all were filled with deadly fear as the diabolical bell flung its awful tones over the startled city. This, then, was the result of Wolf's ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... were detailed to wait upon us. Uncle Parker, who brought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. His face was ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretched over taut sinews, like a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled with every muscle of his head. His nuts must be counted every day, or he would deceive us in the tale; they must ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... even to prove, and on charges which were withdrawn without the accused having ever been confronted with their accusers. Base and daring fabricators of falsehood! Francois Corbeille, an innocent man, the victim only of unjust suspicions, on the one hand, and of diabolical selfishness, on the other, died in consequence of the injury his health received in that prison where tyranny had placed him. But he could issue no proclamation. His voice was not loud enough in the tomb to reach the Court of St. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... not so very remarkable, when we give the matter thought, that the African mother should be so affectionate and devoted in her relations to her children. The diabolical system of polygamy has but this one feeble apology to offer in Africa. The wives of one man may quarrel, but the children always find loving maternal arms ready to shelter their heads against the wrath of an ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... explained the limits of that portion of Africa, which the bill intended to set apart as sacred to peace and liberty. He showed that this was but one-third of the coast; and therefore that two-thirds were yet left for the diabolical speculations of the slave-merchants. He expressed his surprise that such witnesses as those against the bill should have been introduced at all. He affirmed that their oaths were falsified by their own log-books; and that ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... the distance. A night for romance and love—for a maiden at a stile and a lover who hung rapt and humble upon her whispers! But that red eye before him held no romance. It leered as the luxurious sedan swayed from side to side, a diabolical thing with speed. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey

... They expressed therein their deep sorrow for any conduct open to misconstruction, tendered their unqualified apology for any indiscreet acts they might have committed, and testified their "great abhorrence and absolute detestation" of anarchists and seditionists and their diabolical methods. His Highness thereupon ordered the prosecution to be abandoned, but at the same time banished the defendants from his State and declared their posts to be forfeited by such as had been in his service, and only in a few cases were these ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... with Jews, who had settled unmolested under the Moslem rule, and there were also many Moriscoes, or people of mixed Spanish and Moorish origin; and these unfortunates were now to be submitted to the tortures of that diabolical institution known as the Inquisition, because they were not enthusiastic in their support of the Catholic religion. Isabella tried to oppose the introduction of these barbarous practices into Castile, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... enough to take the law into his own hands, to thrash him publicly, to make Monte Carlo impossible for him. And then, suddenly, he remembered his duty. They were trusting him in Downing Street. Chance had put into his hands so many threads of this diabolical plot. It was for him to checkmate it. He was the only person who could checkmate it. This was no time for him to think of personal revenge, no time for him to brood over his own broken life. There was work still to be ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Richard Darke. As he retreats from the scene of his diabolical deed, his only thought is to put space between himself and the spot where he has shed innocent blood; to get beyond earshot of those canine cries, that seem commingled with the shouts of men—the voices ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... minority in Congress, whose expositions of the secret reasons of the war, and the falsehood of those alleged by the President and his friends, is unanswerable, and must hand down the promoters of this diabolical measure to the execration of posterity.' 'Your representatives finished their labours with placing in the hands of His Honour the President (Sir Isaac Brock), all the public money they could collect, in order to contribute ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... be compared with those of the negroes of West Africa; neither is the jaw prognathous. The men are extremely independent in manner. They are armed with lances of various patterns; their favourite weapon is a horrible instrument barbed with a diabolical intention, as it can neither be withdrawn nor pushed completely through the body, but, if once in the flesh, there it must remain. This is called the chimbane; it is usually carried with two other lances with plain heads. The Tokrooris despise shields; ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... mind that this is a war of extermination. 'No quarter' is too frequently the cry on either side. I do not say that the Russians mean it to be so, but when Bashi-Bazouks torture their prisoners in cold blood, and show fiendish delight in the most diabolical acts of cruelty, even going the length of roasting people alive, is it strange that a brutalising effect is produced on the Russians, and that they retaliate in a somewhat similar spirit at times? The truth is, mother, that one of the direct and most powerful effects of war ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne









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