"Malign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old Assaracus—a few years back it would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage of the centenary of ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... prevailed. The young woman, for some reason untold, was deaf to his entreaties, and the rejection of this his best affection fell on him with a malign influence, just as he was setting his face to learn a trade which he hoped would enable him to ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the Chicago anarchists, not only failed utterly as propaganda, they even closed the ear and the heart of the world to everything and anything that was associated, or that could in any manner be connected, with anarchism. They served only one purpose—every malign influence and reactionary element took the acts of these misguided prodigies as a pretext to fasten upon the people still more firmly both social and political injustice. To no one were they so useful as to ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... Maybe they malign you. It cannot be sooth That you talk like an angry illogical girl. Yes, banish the Hebrews, as wholly as ruth. Be cold in your wrath as the Neva's chill swirl, Snub friendly remonstrance, blunt satire's keen ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... beneath your feet, Fling falsehoods as a sower scatters grain And, for security, invoke disdain. Sir, there are laws that men of sense observe, No matter whence they come nor whom they serve— The laws of courtesy; and these forbid You to malign, as recently you did, As servant of another State, a State Wherein your duties all are concentrate; Branding its Ministers as rogues—in short, Inviting cuffs as ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... of a soul shown naked; at the scandal of recollections made public; at the venality of sacred things; at the simony of the poet selling his own fibers to save the roof and the tree that overshadowed his cradle. I have read and heard in silence all their malign interpretations of an act, the true nature of which had been revealed to you long before it was to the public. I have answered nothing. What could I say? The appearances were against me. You alone knew that these notes had ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... before. His destiny was drawing him nearer and nearer to it, he thought, with slow and irresistible force. In a few years there would be Parliament, office, power, the awaking from stupor of an England hypnotized by malign influences. He saw himself at the table in the now familiar House of green benches, thundering out an Empire's salvation. If he thought more of the awakener than the awakening, it was because he was the same little Paul Kegworthy to whom the cornelian heart had brought the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... were, my salad days—I aspired to becoming what old Simon Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity." But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easier The National Drunkard through the medium of the everlasting mint-julep joke; but the phantom of the laurel crown would ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... point in all human history, at the one point supremely worthy of such Divine interposition, in order to finally and completely vindicate the cause of moral goodness. But up till then, sin was allowed to have its own way, to display fully its malign character, to reach its ultimate result in the Death of the ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... noble lords and cavaliers Before this war shall end, which, Italy Afflicting most, has drowned the world in tears, That, if I said the word, I err not, I, Saying he sure the cruellest appears And worst, of nature's impious and malign, Who did this hateful engine ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... possibly become tyrannical, and learn to distaste all free writing. Accustomed to control and punish wanton activity, it will anticipate its judicial duties, and, not content with inflicting death, will devote its malign energy to ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... bodies are divine, their hearts, apparently, are quite the reverse. Never did I witness such a malign lust for blood as these demons of the outer air evinced in their mad battle with ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had suffered persecution and punishment, harsh and undeserved, that made her recoil from contact with other more fortunate people. She felt herself outcast, ostracized, and was unable to defend herself from malign fortune. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... was already on the black list. From the beginning her stars had been malign. As the Breda, she had first lost her reputation, seduced into a filibustering escapade down the South American coast, where in the end a plain-clothes United States detective—that is to say, a revenue cutter—arrested her ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... apprehension. Of course she thought the idea utterly fantastic, but Jim and her mother appeared to believe it, and her own notions of the city's wickedness were so vivid that anything seemed possible. Certainly some malign influence seemed to be deliberately at work against her, and a thousand disagreeable incidents, once she took time to reflect upon them, bore out her suspicions. She was half minded to run away, but ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... society in general. It claims that for one to be born under the dominant influence, or spell, of one of the heavenly bodies is for him to be its slave ever afterwards. And thus the life of every human being is said to be largely controlled by certain planets and constellations, some of which are malign, and some benign in their ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... take them; but his manner was so threatening and imperious that she again concealed them on her person. As they came out together, Roger, with hat drawn over his eyes, gave them a glance which fixed the malign features of the man and the frightened, guilty visage of the girl on his memory. They regarded him suspiciously, but, as he went on without looking back, they evidently thought him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... already recognized in them the twin Tobys of his dreams. And what a contrast between the two! There was Toby the Good, otherwise called Pomp, dignified, erect, of noble features; while before him cringed and grimaced Toby the Malign, alias Cudjo, ugly, deformed, with immensely long arms, short bow legs resembling a parenthesis, a body like a frog's, and the countenance of ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... moment, a curious figure came shuffling across the splendid hall,—that of a little old man somewhat shabbily attired, upon whose wrinkled countenance there seemed to be a fixed, malign smile, like the smile of a mocking Greek mask. He had small, bright, beady black eyes placed very near the bridge of his large hooked nose,—his thin, wispy gray locks streamed scantily over his bent shoulders, and he carried a tall staff to support his awkward steps,—a staff ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... she was going to say, but, as on the day in the winter woods, she suppressed the word for another—"I never admired you so much. I'm going to make a confession. What you say you felt toward Claude is what I've often felt myself in—in glimpses. God knows I don't say that to malign him. I shouldn't say it at all if it were not to point out that you wouldn't have done him any more harm—not when it came to the act—than I ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... me I cares for,' says Billy,—which he waits on Doc Peets with his gun,—'but no gent's goin' to malign 'Doby Dawson none an' alloode to him as 'Jonathan' ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... best could. As much as looks could tell Elsie had told her. She had said in words, to be sure, that she could not love. Something warped and thwarted the emotion which would have been love in another, no doubt; but that such an emotion was striving with her against all malign influences which interfered with it the old woman had a perfect certainty in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... of incidents of the kind: incidents which are trifling beyond mention in the beginning, but which malign circumstance distorts and magnifies till they set nations daggers-drawn at each other's throats. Two students lured a "freshman" to their room and there invited him to drink a marvelous compound the beginnings of which were fat pork and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "Agitators and demagogues," "ruthless agitators," "sordid greed," "inflamed with tales of an ancient crime against their rights," "unfortunate and unreasonable," "restless and turbulent," "reckless creed," "boisterous and passionate campaign," "allied forces of calamity," "encouraged by malign conditions," ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... it, as a memorial, the image of the Duke. And on so vast a scale did he begin it and continue it, that it could never be completed. And there are those who have been of the opinion (so various and so often malign out of envy are the judgments of men) that he began it with no intention of finishing it, because, being of so great a size, an incredible difficulty was encountered in seeking to cast it in one piece; and it might also be believed ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... the cause of Christ hath brought down upon him the wrath of the worldly minded. He is a saint—a glorious saint, and because he denounced Cora Waters for being the child of a player, you would malign him." ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... fresh air. Robin Turgis knew them all, admired them all, feared them all, and yet he held head against them because his Beaune wine was so adorable, and because he could keep his own counsel. Slender Ren de Montigny, in a jerkin of rubbed and faded purple velvet, with his malign, Italianate face and his delicate Italianate grace; rotund Guy Tabarie, bluff, red and bald; Casin Cholet, tall and bird-like, with the figure of a stork and the features of a bird of prey; Jehan ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Probus, 'but little of either; yet I thank thee, and all of our name who are here present thank thee, for the free range which thou hast offered. I thank thee too, and so do we all, for the liberty of frank and undisturbed speech, which thou hast assured to me. Yet shall I not use it to malign either the Romans or their faith. It is not with anger and fierce denunciation, O Emperor, that it becomes the advocate, of what he believes to be a religion from Heaven, to assail the adherents of a religion like this of Rome, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... deck because he felt that he needed air. Malign fate would have it that, as he stood at the rail, brooding over this unsurmountable complication, Little Miss Grouch should appear, radiant, glorious of hue, and attended by the galaxy of swains. She gave him the lightest of passing nods as she went by. He ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the only government engaged in the sale of opium. But it is the only government, so far as I am aware, which virtually forces the drug on its people by insisting that it shall be purchasable in localities which might otherwise escape its malign influence. A planter who, actuated either by moral scruples or by a desire to maintain the efficiency of his laborers, opposes the opening of an opium farm on his estate, might as well sell out and leave Borneo, ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... from Minneola and bent on trouble. 'Keep still,' says I, calm and dignified like, bent on preserving the peace, as was my duty. 'I'll not,' says he. 'You will,' says I. 'Tis a free country,' says he, coming toward me with one shoulder wiggling. 'But not for cowards who malign the dead,' says I. 'Well, they were thieves,' says he, shaking his fist and getting more and more into contempt of court every minute. 'You're a liar,' says I, maintaining the dignity of my office. 'And you're ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... so rudely and so foolishly interrupted. As for the hunchback himself, he stood quietly by his chair, with his hands resting on the pommel of his rapier, and a disagreeable smile twisting new hints of malignity into features that were malign enough in repose. Now it may be that the sight of that frightful smile had its effect in cooling the hot blood of the Biscayan, for, indeed, the hunchback, as he stood there, so quietly alert, so demoniacally watchful, seemed the most terrible antagonist he had ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... conceited and awkward. Conceit was far from him—he was, in fact, amazed at so feeble a creature as himself!—but awkward he was, and very often greedy, selfish, impetuous, untruthful and even cruel: he was nearly always dirty, and attributed this to the evil wishes of some malign fairy who flung mud upon him, dropped him into puddles and covered him with ink simply for the fun ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... is sinful.... Do not be angry with me. You call me your friend: a friend may say anything. To tell the truth, I feel terrified.... Your face was so malign yesterday.... Do you remember, how you were complaining of her, not long ago?—and perhaps, already, at that very time, she was no longer alive. This is terrible. It is exactly as though it had been sent ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... mother, "which your sex shares with our own. When the lover, for instance, clasps the hand of his betrothed, and says, 'Wilt thou be true to me, in spite of absence and time, in spite of hazard and fortune, though my foes malign me, though thy friends may dissuade thee, and our lot in life may be rough and rude?' and when the betrothed answers, 'I will be true,' does not the lover trust to her courage as well as ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... your bed haven't done you any harm. Poor aunt Anna, how she dreads them! She always imagines that everything Egyptian has the most malign powers. She's sure some mummy will take its revenge ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... a Dream, which was not all a Dream. (By Somnus and old Nox I fear 'twas not!) Common-sense was extinguished, and Good Taste Did wonder darkling on the verge of doom. I saw a Monster, a malign, marine, Mysterious, many-whorled, mug-lumbering Bogey, Stretched (like Miltonian angels on the marl) In league-long loops upon the billowy brine. Beshrew thee, old familiar ocean Bogey, Thou spectral ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... action deeper than either of these, and the name of it was a degrading fear of consequences—of punishment. With a most hearty loathing for the lower depths of baseness uncovered by craven fear, one may be none the less a helpless victim of a certain ruthless and malign ferocity to which it is likely to give birth. Sitting with my back propped against the windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection. With ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... be governed by the same hard rules that govern real life. In the work of most novelists we know that whatever harsh fate may befall the leading characters the skies will be sunny before the story closes, and the worthy souls who have battled against malign destiny will receive their reward. Not so with Hardy. We know when we begin one of his tales that tragedy is in store for his people. The dark cloud of destiny soon obscures the heavens, and through the lowering storm the victims move on to the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... hoard of educational examiners, proceeding to Cheyenne, were taken prisoners, and obliged to answer questions they themselves had proposed, amidst horrible tortures. By degrees these atrocities were traced to the malign influence of a new chief of the tribe. As yet little was known of him but through his baleful appellations, "Young Man who Goes for His Teacher," and "He Lifts the Hair of the School-Marm." He was said to be small and exceedingly youthful in appearance. Indeed, his earlier ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... but my heart lives in thee. But yet as long as I remain in this great hospital, this sick, this diseaseful world, as long as I remain in this leprous house, this flesh of mine, this heart, though thus prepared for thee, prepared by thee, will still be subject to the invasion of malign and pestilent vapours. But I have my cordials in thy promise; when I shall know the plague of my heart, and pray unto thee in thy house,[167] thou wilt preserve that heart from all mortal force of that infection; and the peace of God, which passeth all understandings ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... own. Nothing can filch them, nothing canker them: they are our own—imperishable, inexhaustible; never wanting when called upon; balm to heal the blows of adversity, specific against all things malign. Cultivate the perception of beauty, the knowledge of truth; learn to distinguish between the realities of life and the dross of life; and you have a great shield of fortitude of which certainly man cannot rob you, and against which sickness, sorrow, or ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... What malign star sent Mrs. Maxwell into the bedroom, just as Joanna had entered it? She ought to have been only quitting the dining-room for the drawing-room, but Mrs. Maxwell was always to be found where she was least expected. She was a good-natured, social, blundering body, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... boy," said the rector, "and sterling coin, I'll warrant, however much you may malign yourself." He was too nervous to ask a direct question about his son's success. "We have been very dull without you. Lettice is counting on your help to break in her pony ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... me," he went on, "to regret the substance of my letter this morning. I failed to realise that this was the kind of work you devote your life to. I now see that you could not escape its malign influence—that no women could. I now think that the alternative that has been revealed to you, of remaining in Calcutta, is a chance of escape offered you by God Himself. Take it. I withdraw ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... feeling and intention be understood, I shall shrink from no labor in the execution of a task which may tend, however feebly, to the advancement of the cause of real art in England, and to the honor of those great living Masters whom we now neglect or malign, to pour our flattery into the ear of Death, and exalt, with vain acclamation, the names of those who neither demand our praise, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... from a malign spiritual influence, she was left untouched during two or three days, in the hope that she might revive; but no change took place, and now all hope was abandoned. In due course the corpse was taken to the cemetery ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... in the least, yet this celebrated piece of treasure-trove seems actually to have exerted a malign influence over everyone who had the misfortune to be connected with it. Indeed, in a small way, I who write these words suffered dismissal and disgrace, though I caught but one glimpse of this dazzling scintillation of jewels. The jeweller who made the necklace met financial ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... things excellent and things execrable, which is found everywhere throughout the world. Voluntarily or involuntarily, Sit and his partisans were the cause and origin of all that is harmful. Daily their eyes shed upon the world those juices by which plants are made poisonous, as well as malign influences, crime, and madness. Their saliva, the foam which fell from their mouths during their attacks of rage, their sweat, their blood itself, were all no less to be feared. When any drop of it touched the earth, straightway it germinated, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... mystic, and a cabalist,— Can your lurking thought surprise, And interpret your device.... Heralds high before him run; He has ushers many a one; He spreads his welcome where he goes, And touches all things with his rose. All things wait for and divine him,— How shall I dare to malign him? 448 EMERSON: Daem. and Celes., Love, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... on the frame where I was to be ornamented by her own pretty hands, she regarded me with a look of delight, nay, even of affection, that I shall never forget. As yet she felt none of the malign consequences of the self-denial she was about to exert. If not blooming, her cheeks still retained some of their native color, and her eye, thoughtful and even sad, was not yet anxious and sunken. She was pleased with her purchase, and she contemplated prodigies in the way of results. Adrienne ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... look of malign triumph. "Ah!" he said. "You suffer, too." He was silent for an instant. "But then you think that you may yet win her," he said. "Who knows?" and he watched his listener closely, "Women are strange," he added. "She'd be flattered by ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... eyes did not rest long on the judge, although he gave him a keen, searching glance. Even then he felt that the circumstances were far out of the ordinary. Only the previous evening this man's daughter had confessed her love to him. She had defied all conventions, defied the possibility of malign gossip, but of course Judge Bolitho did not know that. They met there as judge and accused, and such were the relations that they must maintain. A few weeks before, this man had written a letter to him—an insulting letter—forbidding him to approach his daughter; and now he, the judge, ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... he was, Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye, directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed runners of the autumn grape. The guests were dilatory, and while he greeted them and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... intemperate and ill-judged speech was instantly reported to Sully, who, rising indignantly from his seat, approached the Queen and audibly informed her that he considered it his duty to remark that, as in order to render her favourable to the demand of his son, M. de Villeroy had not scrupled to malign the Protestants, but had designated them as more dangerous enemies to herself and to the state than those who were labouring to further the interests of Spain, he only entreated her to afford to his denial the same weight as that which she attached to the assertion of the State ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... continued, "that prophecy alone is not sufficient proof of saintliness. You know there are such things (such cases have been met with) as prophetic visions which were the work of-well, perhaps not of malign spirits, we know too little of these matters to assert that—but of occult powers, of powers innate in human nature, or of powers superior to human nature, but which most certainly have nothing to do ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talk of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtues, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... between the native chiefs, and in the wars between those chiefs and the English, is something awful to contemplate, not to speak of the wholesale destruction of life by the famines which those wars entailed. On several occasions the Celtic race seemed very nearly extinct. The penal code, with all its malign influence, had one good effect. It subdued to a great extent the fighting propensities of the people, and fused the clans into one nation, purified by suffering. Since that time, in spite of occasional visitations ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... was still more aroused after the crisis to which his strange visitor had hurried him so treacherously, and he resolved to overcome, by the force of genius, the malign influence which weighed upon his work and himself. He first repaired to the various clocks of the town which were confided to his care. He made sure, by a scrupulous examination, that the wheels were in good condition, the pivots firm, the weights exactly balanced. ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... there must have been an asymmetry in her hull, or that her rigging lacked balance, such defects tending to render her uncontrollable under certain conditions. Maybe; but there she is, as she is, with the malign fates seeming to be working double tides to ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... some such impression of the malign influence of a collegiate atmosphere upon genius, that Milton, in speaking of Cambridge, gave vent to the exclamation, that it was "a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus," and that Lord Byron, versifying a thought of his own, in the letter to Mr. Dallas just ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... slimy sea-thing, whose hungry mouths shut sucking upon her and whose thousand tentacles encircled her form. She closed her eyes in horror at the reminiscence. And in that moment it became clear to her that she must take into her hands the salvation of Ernest Fielding from the clutches of the malign power that had ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... might oppose the fact of genius miraculously unfolding through her sacrifice. But she thought, "The world! What is that?" And thereupon, "All the same it shall not strike down this helpless creature." And the world became a monster, unfeeling, indeed immeasurably malign, lying far off with the teeming cells of its brain all plotting to rob her of her wretched victory, and with the claws of one outstretched paw already touching the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... that we should be told by the old Bashaws, that we strive who can produce most extravagant Absurdities never heard before, and that we brag to be the Inventors of them ourselves, are the malign Reflections of those who see us exalted. Let Envy burst. You see, that the general Esteem which we have acquired, gives it for us; and if a Musician is not of our Tribe, he will find no Patron or Admirer. But since we are now speaking in ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... have been endured by the South," trusting to time and reflection for a remedy. "The immediate peril," Mr. Buchanan informed the country, "arises from the fact that the long-continued agitation in the free States has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves, and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. The feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... in their constitution of body or mind, there is something in their circumstances, which adds incalculably to the exertion they must go through to attain their ends, and which holds them back from doing what they might otherwise have done. Very probably that malign something exerted its influence unperceived by those around them. They did not get credit for the struggle they were going through. No one knew what a brave fight they were making with a broken right arm; no one remarked that they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... him too heavily. It is interesting to speculate upon what he might have been in this final trial of his public career, had Hamilton died as he took the helm of State. If Hamilton's enemies very nearly ruined his own character, there is no denying that he exerted an almost malign influence upon them. To those he loved or who appealed to the highest in him he gave not only strength, but an abundance of sweetness and light, illuminating mind and spirit, and inspiring an affection that was both unselfish and uplifting. But his enemies hated ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... gambling-house in Europe. The principality is but large enough to contain the court of the sovereign which is held in the little town of Monaco, and the establishment of the last of legitimate gamblers which is maintained at Monte Carlo. If the report of the world does not malign the prince, he lives, as does the gambler, out of the spoil taken from the gamblers. He is to be seen in his royal carriage going forth with his royal consort,—and very royal he looks! His little teacup of a kingdom,—or rather a roll of French bread, for it ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the hearts of men are failing to confidently proclaim that God has not abdicated his throne, and that man is not the sport of malign and lawless forces. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... very good of him," said Westover, whom her words confirmed in a suspicion he had had all along. But what did it matter that Jeff had suggested their asking him, and then attributed the notion to them? It was not so malign for him to use that means of ingratiating himself with Westover, and of making him forget his behavior with Lynde, and it was not unnatural. It was very characteristic; at the worst it merely proved that Jeff was more ashamed of what he had done ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Pell commanding, on the 1st of October, 1832. Among the other passengers were the Honorable William C. Rives, of Virginia, our Minister to France, with his family; Mr. J.F. Fisher, of Philadelphia; Dr. Charles T. Jackson, of Boston, who was destined to play a malign role in the subsequent history of the telegraph, and others. The following letter was written to his friend Fenimore Cooper from Havre, on ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases it was amply merited. I have not come across the history ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft floating ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... came from the lungs, but even thus,— For, look you, I may make the belly smile As well as speak,—it tauntingly replied To the discontented members, the mutinous parts That envied his receipt; even so most fitly As you malign our senators for that They are not such ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the charm of perfect stillness. Ever and anon they passed under the lee of some island, and the heavy air grew full of idle night-sweetness; the waning moon with all its sad and alien power hung low,—dun, malign, and distant, a coppery blotch on the rich darkness of heaven. They floated slowly, still; now and then she dipped a hand into the cool current; now and then he drew in his oars, and, bending forward, dipped his hand ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... in painful reverie, noticed that the mutterings from the bed had ceased for some little time. She turned her chair, and was startled to find those weird eyes fixed with recognition on herself. There was a curious malign intensity, a curious triumph ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... depreciation of the foreigner. Von Bernhardi does not assume that France is played out or that England is effete. He is too well read in military history not to realize that to belittle the strength or malign the character of an enemy is one of the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... that he was "a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign his opponents and to glorify himself,"—one of the most exaggerated and ridiculous charges that was ever made against a public man of eminence, yet witty ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... has no notion of what is doing politically in his own ward, who does not sense the malign influences which may be working in his neighborhood, in his very street, perhaps in the next house, who has not his eye on the unscrupulous small politician who leads the ward by the nose, who knows nothing of the records of the local candidates, never goes ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to society. Character is ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... romance second only to that of Abelard and Heloise should invest the memory of him who had done more than all others together to strip life and human nature of their last instinctive decency of illusion. His life, or such accounts as we had of it, had been full of antitheses as startling as if some malign enchanter had embodied one of Macaulay's characters as a conundrum to bewilder the historian himself. A generous miser; a sceptical believer; a devout scoffer; a tender-hearted misanthrope; a churchman faithful to his order yet loathing ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of the tempter: "Aye! for the Emperor is false; he hath taken thine own sons for hostages and keepeth not his promise but in his camp entreateth them shamefully; and in the courts, which shall judge of this thy cause, doth seek to malign thee." ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... come to a point where Dorothy refused longer to remain mute. Incensed by Selina's bold attempt to malign her friends and herself, she now turned to ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... ingredient absorbed, which will infect the mass, so far as it goes, with its own colour. The more pleasure a universe can yield, other things being equal, the more beneficent and generous is its general nature; the more pains its constitution involves, the darker and more malign is its total temper. To deny this would seem impossible, yet it is done daily; for there is nothing people will not maintain when they are slaves to superstition; and candour and a sense of justice are, in such a ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... power of an appetite which cannot only enslave and curse the man over which it gains control, but send its malign influence down to the second and third and fourth generations, sometimes ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... inevitably thwarted by some influence—shall we call it malign? or rather shall we consider (as perhaps we should in all short-comings) that 'tis only a matter of time and the comparative degree? a piece of circuition needed for variety of development, and, of necessity, to eventuate in forms fresher, more prononces, nearer perfect than any ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for the sake of love, and how a woman, if only she be beautiful enough, may wield a power compared to which the sway of a Tsar, even a Tsar unhampered by Dumas, is impotence itself. Even at that early stage I had begun to be a captive to her. But I did not believe that her rule was malign. ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... or oppress, ruin, damage, upon, persecute, slander, defame, injure, pervert, victimize, defile, malign, prostitute, vilify, disparage, maltreat, rail at, violate, harm, misemploy, ravish, vituperate, ill-treat, misuse, reproach, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... rendered supersensitive by strain and excitement, the quivering filaments of her subconsciousness, like spiritual tentacles feeling ahead of her, had encountered and recoiled from a shape of evil, a specter of horror obscene and malign, crouching, ready to spring, there, in the shadow ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... of never reading the ship's books. You never—aw—know who has had them last!" drawled the stranger, sweeping a scathing glance over the well-filled shelves; "and, as a rule, they are in such shocking condition. People seem to take a malign satisfaction in tearing out the most important pages, so that, after wading through a whole volume, you are left in uncertainty ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... learnt young for any excellence to be attained in it. Of this Metternich was a striking example. If benevolent Nature ever intended a man for a whist-player one would have supposed that she had done so in his case, but had been baffled by some malign Destiny which had degraded him to that class by whom, in conjunction with Kings, it was fondly believed, previously to the recent general election, that 'the world was governed.' Until late in life he never took to whist, when he grew wildly fond of it, and played incessantly, ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... equally without effort and with the same felicity of success. All the sky glows downward at our feet; the rich clouds float through the unruffled bosom of the stream like heavenly thoughts through a peaceful heart. We will not, then, malign our river as gross and impure while it can glorify itself with so adequate a picture of the heaven that broods above it; or, if we remember its tawny hue and the muddiness of its bed, let it be a symbol that the earthiest human soul has an infinite spiritual capacity and may contain ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Englishman, with a malign look on his face, as he paused in the door, "if you've got that mick patched up any down in the kitchen, I'll give him another chance, if he wishes. Tell him to pick ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... Boncassen slowly. "I have seen them together and I think not. There might be somebody, though I think not her. But why do I say that? Why do I malign him, and make so little of myself? There is no one else, Lady Mary. Is ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... are innocent. You smashed in Peter McGinnis's face, but you did it without criminal intent. You put a face on him, by Jehoshaphat! that he won't lose for six months, but you did it without evil purpose or malign design. My boy, look up! Give me your hand! You leave this court without ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... has a hard prejudice against me, but I cannot believe it. I do not see how any man can have a prejudice against me. He may, indeed, consider me an intruder in the walks of literature, but I am only a saunterer, and malign nobody who chooses to let me pass.... I was going to say before, but forgot, and said quite another thing, that if Mr. Gifford would point out any light work for me to review for him, I'll bet a MS. poem with him that I'll write it better ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... gleaming street, regardless of the increasing rain that soaked him to the skin. From time to time he shot out his arm violently, as if he would push back some invisible foe, or would extricate himself from the meshes of a net that was closing in upon him. Again, he swore aloud, as one who curses a malign and unmerited fate. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... anticipated that the position of Jupiter in his orbit had anything to do with the health of this remote planet, or with the mildness of its seasons? In this we have a clue to the origin of that astrological jargon about planetary aspects being propitious or malign. Philosophers are even yet too prone to wrap themselves in their mantle of academic lore, and despise the knowledge of the ancients, while there is reason to believe that the world once possessed a true insight into the structure of the solar system. ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... to malign me!" returned Katherine, laughing. "Learned I certainly am not; but I am fond of indiscriminate reading, ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... had grown sadder day by day under the influence of some hidden trouble; among all the faces round the table, his was the most woe-begone. There was no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly libertine, whose eyes had only been preserved by the skill of the physician from the malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the state of his health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of his excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue his career. The poor old man's mental and physical condition afforded some grounds for ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... held on the Witwatersrand. Every precaution was taken to insure him a good welcome, or, at least, to avoid any of those signs which would indicate that Johannesburg likes President Kruger no more than he likes Johannesburg; and even those who were most conscious of the President's malign influence did all in their power to make the visit a success, believing themselves to be in duty bound to make any effort, even at the sacrifice of personal sympathies and opinions, to turn the current of feeling and to work for a peaceful settlement of the difficulties which ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... of the Church, which should be a source of genuine sorrow to every Christian, a subject of ridicule. He sought, however, to keep his opinion of Erasmus to himself, to avoid giving occasion to his jealous and unscrupulous enemies to malign him. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... when she bares them a man has little chance. But I understand your feeling, one has the sense of a besetting menace. I felt it often last winter when I was new to the country, and it is a very nasty feeling—as if malign gods were at work to destroy one, or as if fate were about ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Over-head, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... "preface," it is a book-critic. If anything could be more stupid than a book-critic, it would be a preface. But, thank heaven, there is not. In saying this, I refer to a particular critic; for I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign in such a wholesale manner those capital good fellows of the press—those verbal accoucheurs who are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new genius. Not ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... majority of the States. The love of liberty, because of its own great self, and not because of its application to men of a particular color, lost its sensitive character and active vitality. The moral sense of the people became dormant through the malign influence of that tolerated enemy to all social and governmental virtue, human slavery. The public conscience slumbered, its eyes closed with dollars and its ears stuffed with cotton. When these things succeeded the active justice, abounding mercy, and love of human rights of the earlier days, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... blunder of a horse, The crash upon the frozen clods, And Death? Ah! no such dignity, But Life, all twisted and at odds! [92] At odds in body and in soul, Degraded to some brutish state, A being loathsome and malign, Debased, obscene, degenerate. ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... work of it. Let there be no hesitation. It would be a cowardly deference to a defeated and treacherous President, if any account were made of the illegitimate, one-sided, sham governments hurried into existence for a malign purpose in the absence of Congress. These pretended governments, which were never submitted to the people, and from participation in which four millions of the loyal people were excluded by Presidential order, should now be treated ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... and civil governors appear in malign aspect, or in modern phrase, like a quarrel between the squire and the rector, which is seldom detrimental to the people. This was the case with Henry the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... sworn enemies of any sebaceous condition. And now that she was nineteen, almost at the further boundary of the marrying age, and slimmer than ever before, he rejoiced greatly, for he had accomplished his deep and malign purpose, and laid a heavy burden of sorrow upon ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy justice is decreasing. I am not prepared to believe that this indicates any decay in the moral fiber of the American ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... limitations. His scornful glance caught certain aspects of the human drama with camera-like precision. Other aspects of life, and nobler, he never seemed to perceive. The human comedy sometimes moved him to laughter, but his humor is impish and his wit malign. His imagination fled from the daylight; he dwelt in the twilight among the tombs. He closed his eyes to dream, and could not see the green sunlit earth, seed-time and harvest, man going forth to his toil and returning to his hearthstone, the America that laughs as it labors. He wore ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... elements of that little, but how heroic, nation that in a high day of old staked its very life to free itself from every entanglement that had darkened the fortunes of the older nations and set up a new standard here, that men of such origins and such free choices of allegiance would ever turn in malign reaction against the Government and people who had welcomed and nurtured them and seek to make this proud country once more a hotbed of European passion. A little while ago such a thing would have seemed incredible. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, being ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... dark place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh," said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now," said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign. I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were "under," in the Senior's ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... naughty, pleasantly-malign smile of a terribly experienced dowager. And she seemed positively anxious that James should have ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... people seem to have responded gladly to the calls for gifts and labor. The direction from which it is supposed all evils are likely to come is the northeast; this special point of the compass being in pan-Asian spiritual geography the focus of all malign influences. Accordingly, the Mikado Kwammu, in A.D. 788, built on the highest mountain called Hiyei a superb temple and monastery, giving it in charge of the Ten-dai sect, that there should ever be a bulwark against the evil that ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... you where I found you, the acknowledged queen of American actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand—some recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my metier. You are the one to grant pardon; I am the malefactor. I am taking myself out of your world. Forgive ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... general laugh He praises Brutus, praises Brutus' staff, Brutus, the healthful sun of Asia's sphere, His staff, the minor stars that bless the year, All, save poor King; a dog-star he, the sign To farmers inauspicious and malign: So roaring on he went, like wintry flood, Where axes seldom come ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... did enshrine. Yet thou repaidst me with constraint, rigour and perfidy, To which no lover might himself on any wise resign. How many a bidder unto love, a secret-craving wight, How many a swain, complaining, saith of destiny malign, "How many a cup with bitterness o'erflowing have I quaffed! I make my moan of woes, whereat it boots not to repine." Quoth thou, "The goodliest of things is patience and its use: Its practice still mankind doth guide to all that's fair and fine." ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... I was to escape at last unhelped, but I want you to understand particularly these phases through which I passed; it falls to many and it may fall to you to pass through such a period of darkness and malign obsession. Make the groove only a little deeper, a little more unclimbable, make the temperament a little less sanguine, and suicide stares you in the face. And things worse than suicide, that suicide of self-respect which turns men to drugs and inflammatory ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... when under the influence of strong emotion. He ceased to take part in the consul's efforts in his behalf; the whole abominable affair seemed as far beyond his forecast or endeavor as some result of malign enchantment, and there was no such thing as carrying off the tragedy with self-respect. Distressing as it was, there could be no question but it was entirely ridiculous; he hung his head with shame before the portiers at being a ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Our people are magnanimous—their hearts are great. But what shall be said of the unspeakable meanness, baseness, perfidy, of that man or that community which would betray the stranger at the gates, that would traduce and malign a high-minded, unsuspecting guest? What, your Honor, is the hospitality of that section or city in this vast Republic, the function of whose tribunals is to protect the rights of the individual; what is the hospitality of a neighborhood which permits a citizen to lie in ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... supernatural act a more startling and significant character. Hence the strict seclusion of girls almost universally practised among uncivilised peoples. The precautions taken indicate, as Hartland points out, that they are at this period not merely charged with a malign influence, but are peculiarly susceptible to the onset of powers other than human. And with a modification of language the same idea has persisted down to our time, even amongst those who would reject with indignation the ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... may imagine our hairy progenitors to have been. Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits, their cave-dwelling ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Sea or of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won by ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... treated with the broadest caricature. The Notes might have been forgiven; but the novel excited a great and just anger in America. His statements were not true; his pictures were not just; his prejudice led him to malign a people who had received him with a foolish hospitality. He had eaten and drunk at the hands of the men whom he abused, and his character suffered more than that of his intended victims. In taking a few foibles for his caricature, he had left our merits untold, and had been guilty ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... dared read the whole of the horoscope as it was divulged to me in the lone watches of last night; but I have decided to omit all those portions where there is a possibility that the malign spirits around you have misinterpreted your past and future. When you were younger, you passed your days in happiness; you were very handsome, and you could charm the hearts of men without difficulty. There has been with you frequently, during your ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer! For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... spurns the crowd's malign control, A firm contempt of wrong: Spirits above afflictions' power, And skill to soothe the lingering hour ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... approached her, and when the latter asked with loving reproach, "Why, Barine, how did you get through the howling mob?" she answered gaily: "That a learned member of the Museum may receive me with the query whether I am here, though from childhood a kind or—what do you think, grandfather?—a malign fate has preserved me from being overlooked, and some one else reprovingly asks how I passed through the shouting mob, as if it were a crime to wade into the water to hold out a helping hand to those we love ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that draweth back its sting, Drawing unto himself his tail malign, Drew out the floor, and went ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... it from me to vaunt of my penmanship, although there be those who do malign it, even in my own township and parish; yet they never have unperched me from my calling, and have had hard work to take an idle wench or two from ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... terror of the Egyptians when they were "shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, they lay there exiled from eternal providence." Everything seemed to them to have a malign purpose. "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... gratitude for their exploits—should suddenly have fallen into the blackest crimes. So it is no less difficult to understand how public opinion should turn against them as it did, and how all Europe should set itself to disgrace and despoil, to malign and execrate, those who had so long been its favorites and its champions. It is not easy to understand this, and it is painful to read the story in its sad ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... defenseless; for Clorinda was an Amazon, reduced by Tasso's gentle genius to womanhood from the proportions of Marfisa. Finally, with heart surcharged with love for her, he has to cross his sword in deadly duel with this lady. Malign stars rule the hour: he knows not who she is: misadventure makes her, instead of him, the victim of their encounter. With her last breath she demands baptism—the good Tasso, so it seems, could not send so fair a creature of his fancy as Clorinda to the shades without ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the Greely expedition, it seems almost as if a malign fate had determined to bring disaster upon him. His task was not so arduous as a determined search for the Pole, or the Northwest Passage. He was ordered by the United States Government to establish an observation station on Lady Franklin Bay, and remain there two years, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... "you are master of your actions and time in this house. Retire when you please; but you will naturally suppose us anxious to dispel this mystery. Whatever shall tend to obscure or malign your character will of course excite our solicitude. Wortley is not short-sighted or hasty to condemn. So great is my confidence in his integrity that I will not promise my esteem to one who has irrecoverably lost that of Wortley. I am not acquainted with your motives to concealment, or what ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... some respects the change of scene was for the worse; for he had no hold upon the Boston jailer, and had no friend there like Joseph Putnam, prepared to go to any length on his behalf. But, on the other hand, in Boston they seemed outside of the circle of Mistress Ann Putnam's powerful and malign influence. This of itself was no small gain; and, thinking over the whole matter, Master Raymond came to the conclusion that perhaps the chances of escape would be even greater ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... comparatively powerful and affluent to escape the envy and repinings of men, who, unable to draw the real distinctions that separate the gentleman from the low-minded and grovelling, impute their advantages to accidents and money. But, even the few who permitted this malign and corrupting tendency to influence their feelings, could not deny that their master was just and benevolent, though he did not always exhibit this justice and benevolence precisely in the way best calculated to soothe their own craving self-love, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... had all along malign'd the Prosperity of this Prince, took fire at the Offer, and here began another State Plot, which tho' it hookt in two or three sets of Men for different Ends, yet altogether join'd in affronting and ill treating their Prince, upon this Article ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... to keep him close at their side; and this, too, amused him. He was amused as a tyrant might be at the obvious efforts of those around him to keep him in good-humor, or as a man conscious of incipient madness might find malign delight in the anxiety of his friends to fall in with all his moods and not to cross him in anything he was pleased ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... moon as a personal deity, whether beneficent or malign, its influences are of course welcomed or dreaded as the manifestations of supreme power. In South America, for example, "the Botocudos are said to give the highest rank among the heavenly bodies to Taru, the moon, as causing thunder and ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... downward, his eyes had fallen upon his naked sword, as he held it, point to earth. Foreshortened to his view, it resembled somewhat, he thought, the short heavy blade of the ancient Roman. The fancy was full of suggestion, malign, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... need but have your eyes once opened to its influence, and thereafter you will never cease to see how the needs and imperatives of property taint the honour and dignity of human life. Just where life should flower most freely into splendour, this chill, malign obsession most nips and cripples. The law that makes getting and keeping an imperative necessity poisons and destroys the freedom of men and women in love, in art and in every concern in which spiritual or physical beauty should be ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... due to her presentiment from what he had said yesterday that he was going to talk of love? How much from her desire to show regret about his accident? Something of both. But the wisdom of ages has hinted that there is a side of the bed which has a malign influence if you happen to get out on it; and this accident befalls some charming persons rather frequently. Perhaps it had befallen Gwendolen this morning. The hastening of her toilet, the way in which Bugle used the brush, the quality of the shilling serial mistakenly written ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... daredevil gallantry and extravagance soon earn him the sobriquet of 'Le Diable,' and he puts the coping-stone to his folly by gambling away all his possessions at a single sitting, even to his horse and the armour on his back. Robert has an ame damnee in the shape of a knight named Bertram, to whose malign influence most of his crimes and follies are due. Bertram is in reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his society for all eternity. In strong contrast to ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... emotions of the human soul which, when once excited, seem to make men insane; but the crimes of a tyrant are not of this kind. They are the calm, deliberate, and sometimes carefully economized gratifications of a nature essentially malign. ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... successful in our strife against the Moths, those plagues of our furs and clothes. To keep away these wholesale ravagers, people generally use camphor, naphthalene, tobacco, bunches of lavender, and other strong-scented remedies. Without wishing to malign those preservatives, we are bound to admit that the means employed are none too effective. The smell does very little to prevent the havoc ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from cooeperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the South and from the actual teaching of the ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... the air is worse this year at Rome than ever, and that it would be madness to go thither during its malign influence. This was very bad news indeed to one heartily tired of Florence, at least of its society. Merciful powers! what a set harbour within its walls! * * * * * You may imagine I do not take vast or vehement ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... my dearest friend to so malign you, Countess," said the Ambassador, seating himself beside her. "I expected to ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... (here follows a characteristic illustration.) To those who call Saperdion the Empousa, he shows her in a Kimberic robe;[43] in other words, he exposes her charms more fully than she does it herself, the better to convict those who malign them." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... too, sometimes, because the love of energy and beauty, of distinction in passion, tended naturally to become a little bizarre, plunging into the [255] Middle Age, into the secrets of old Italian story. Are we in the Inferno?—we are tempted to ask, wondering at something malign in so much beauty. For over all a care for the refreshment of the human spirit by fine art manifests itself, a predominant sense of literary charm, so that, in their search for the secret of exquisite expression, the romantic school went back ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... to be revealed. In a thousand similar ways are the actions and the motives of the Irish understood by those who are careless of them; or worse, misrepresented by those whose interest, and too often business, it is to malign them. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... Druid circles of the olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced; The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs The vanquished punished with malign revenge: Never had British priest to Saxon preached; And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills Nor man nor woman smiled. They had not lacked The timely warning. From his Kentish shores Augustine stretched to ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... Je tiens Jean Jacques Rousseau, with extreme vehemence—which words, in spite of the horribly sardonic tone of the dreamer, he interpreted favourably at the time, but which later event proved to have been full of malign significance.[366] (8) Rousseau constantly found Hume eyeing him with a glance of sinister and diabolic import that filled him with an astonishing disquietude, though he did his best to combat it. On one of these occasions he was seized with remorse, fell ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... purpose for which their weighty opinion was sought in the construction of British law. Such ignorance is feigned and not real, and the pretense of its existence indicates either on the part of the author or the counsel a full appreciation of the deadly consequences of that malign interpretation of England's duty for which two illustrious members of the English Bar were willing to stand sponsors before the world. Conceding, as we fairly may concede, that the decision in the ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... there a little." And I would caution my readers not to expect too much all at once. But I am fully convinced that as faith, trust, and naturalness grow, worry will cease, will slough off, like the dead skin of the serpent, and leave those once bound by it free from its malign influence. Who cannot see and feel that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished, worth working and earnestly ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... there's reason enough, 'Cause one is as smooth as the other is rough. But much I'm amazed you should think my design Was to rhyme down your nose, or your harlequin grin, Which you yourself wonder the de'el should malign. And if 'tis so strange, that your monstership's crany Should be envied by him, much less by Delany; Though I own to you, when I consider it stricter, I envy the painter, although not the picture. And justly she's envied, since a fiend of Hell Was never drawn right but by her and Raphael. Next, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... embroideress of Tudor times. Over the old, crabbed yet delicately fine writing of the "Sieur" whose influence on Innocent's young mind had been so pronounced and absolute, and in Robin's opinion so malign, he pored studiously, slowly mastering the meaning of the verses, though written in a language he had never cared to study. He was conscious of a certain suave sweetness and melancholy in the swing of the lines, though they did not appeal to ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... black or malign disposition, an effeminate disposition; an hard inexorable disposition, a wild inhuman disposition, a sheepish disposition, a childish disposition; a blockish, a false, a scurril, a fraudulent, a tyrannical: what then? If he be a stranger in the world, that knows not the things ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius |
