"Malignity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that inner-man mirror which we call ourself. We have guarded this subject by the language, the essential attributes of mind. By this qualifier we wish it understood that mind, like body, has its accidental or acquired qualities. Vice, virtue, folly, wisdom, malignity and benevolence are not essential to mind, but like the accidents of matter known as roughness or smoothness, softness, hardness, blackness, etc., are merely qualities or attributes of its conduct. Vice is vicious action ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... is almost too terrible to bear. We can just bear it when it comes by accident or for our good—as it generally does in modern life—except at school. But when it is caused by the malignity of a man, full grown, fashioned like ourselves, all our control disappears. Philip's one thought was to get away from that room at whatever sacrifice of ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... World.[57] A greater name was that of Isaac Barrow, master of Trinity, teacher of Isaac Newton, and one of the best preachers of his time. He declared that to suppose all witch stories fictions was to "charge the world with both extreme Vanity and Malignity."[58] We can cite only one divine on the other side. This was Samuel Parker, who in his time played many parts, but who is chiefly remembered as the Bishop of Oxford during the troubles of James II with the university. Parker was one ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... and had taken part in some of his most gallant adventures. He was with him on board the Pallas when her boats had gallantly cut out the Tapageuse brig, and afterwards in her action with the Minerva, a ship nearly double her size; but his gallant commander having been, by the malignity of his foes, compelled to leave the navy, he himself had very little prospect of ever getting ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... "instinct" is the most intelligent of all kinds of intelligence which have hitherto been discovered. In short, you psychologists, study the philosophy of the "rule" in its struggle with the "exception": there you have a spectacle fit for Gods and godlike malignity! Or, in plainer words, practise vivisection on "good people," on the ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend. The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself. It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battle ensued upon the receipt and discussion of this intelligence: Barnes was more than usually bitter and sarcastic: Ethel haughtily recriminated, losing her temper, and then her firmness, until, fairly bursting into tears, she taxed Barnes with meanness and malignity in for ever uttering stories to his cousin's disadvantage, and pursuing with constant slander and cruelty one of the very best of men. She rose and left the table in great tribulation—she went to her room and wrote a letter to her uncle, blistered ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... upon Burr; power of the press in corrupt hands; Mr. Jefferson's malignity towards Burr; his hypocrisy; false entries in his Ana of conversations said to have been held with Burr; letter to Theodosia; ditto; ditto; to Joseph Alston; Theodosia to Joseph Alston; to Theodosia; ditto; to Joseph Alston; to Theodosia; to Thomas Morris; from P. Butler; to Joseph Alston; ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... at present at least, to bear me any ill-will; but if he is capable of such weakness and malignity as to have taken an aversion to me merely because I can make use of pen and ink, he deserves not to hear of my having suppressed my play, or of anything else that can gratify ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... was not calculated to turn away wrath. He called attention to the fact that these gross insults were not uttered in the heat of indignation, but "conned over, written with cool, deliberate malignity, repeated from night to night in order to catch the appropriate grace." He ridiculed the excessive self-esteem of Sumner in words that moved the Senate to laughter; and then completed his vindictive assault by charging Sumner with perfidy. Had he not sworn to obey the Constitution, and ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... exhibit the consistent depravity and systematic wickedness which characterize some of the Roman Emperors of maturer years; and even the giddy ferocities of the youthful Nero can be contemplated with less horror than the Satanic depth of malignity which morosely brooded over shadowy plans of gigantic crime in the dark spirit of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... held the cold, cruel malignity of a snake. His brows were cold, straight, unruffled. His smile held the polished brutality of the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... hesitated again, glancing over his shoulder to discover his retreat cut off by our porters, and eying Fred with malignity that reminded one of a cornered beast of prey. He could control his ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... ominous flash from the dark eyes, as, with a gesture of proud disdain, he folded his arms and again faced his interlocutor, while, with eyes gleaming with revenge from under their heavily drooping lids and lips that curled from time to time in a smile of bitter malignity, she watched him, listening eagerly for his testimony, losing no ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... but their blessing, and the virtuous habits of integrity and obedience, in which they had trained him from his earliest youth. On their death-bed they entreated that the excellent clergyman, who, in spite of the malignity of the disease, continued to comfort and pray by them in their last moments, would take compassion on their poor little orphan, and find him employment among the neighbouring farmers, either as a herd-boy to some of the numerous flocks of sheep which are common in Eskdale, or as ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... and terrible rapidity. It was evident that he understood the nature of these proceedings. A glance, like that of mockery and derision, he cast towards the crowd; and when Mother Cicely was returning, he threw back upon them a look of scorn and malignity which made the beholders shrink ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... his unauthorized intrusion; and though he had sunk beneath it at the moment, the recollection rankled in his heart as an affront to be avenged. As he drank his wine, courage, the want of which was, in his more sober moments, a check upon his bad temper, began to inflame his malignity, and he ventured upon several occasions to show his spleen, by contradicting Tyrrel more flatly than good manners permitted upon so short an acquaintance, and without any provocation. Tyrrel saw his ill humour and despised it, as that of an overgrown schoolboy, whom it was ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Griswold, the commander and half the garrison were butchered. After this fort had been taken, a British officer entering asked, "Who commands here?" "I did," said Colonel Ledyard, as he advanced to surrender his sword, "but you do now." With fiendish malignity, the officer seized the weapon and thrust it into the bosom of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... being middle-aged; then aid, a patron, servant, etc. Also a tribe of the Jinn usually made synonymous with "Marid," evil controuls, hostile to men: modern spiritualists would regard them as polluted souls not yet purged of their malignity. The text insinuates that they were at home amongst Christians and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... it has limited Him to that god of bloody sacrifice conceived by a barbaric Jew, He has permitted us to grow so that now any man who did not surpass him morally, as the scriptures portray him, would be a man of inconceivable malignity. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... firmness, and experience in war, with the indolence and pusillanimity of the others. It is certain that the ears of Domitian himself were assailed by such discourses, while the best of his freedmen pressed him to the choice through motives of fidelity and affection, and the worst through envy and malignity, emotions to which he was of himself sufficiently prone. Thus Agricola, as well by his own virtues as the vices of others, was urged ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... by feature that atrocious face was simply a reproduction of Colliver's. As I stared in amazement, it seemed more and more marvellous that I had not noticed the resemblance before. True, each feature was distorted and exaggerated to produce the utter malignity of its expression. But the face was the face of Colliver. Nobody could have called him a handsome man, but before this I had found Colliver not unpleasant to look upon. Now the hate of the statue's face seemed to have reflected itself upon him. I leant against a tree for support and passed ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... might choose to say on such a question as the Origin of Species would be listened to with profound attention, and discussed with respect. And there was certainly no man whose personal character should have afforded a better safeguard against attacks, instinct with malignity and spiced with shameless impertinences. Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and truest men that it was ever my good fortune to know; and years had to pass away before misrepresentation, ridicule, and denunciation ceased to be the most notable constituents ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... to the sleeper to be that of a panther, wearing the shape of man, yet fierce and cruel as any ever found in the wilds of the river of the Abnakis. With this fierce and cruel disposition was coupled a cunning beyond that of the fox, and a malignity greater than the rattlesnake's. Their fierceness and cruelty, and the malignity and savage ferocity of their natures, were hidden, however, under a show of peace. They laughed, and grinned, and did the other things, which mortals do when ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... that her anger of yesterday was as nothing to the storming rage which shook her now. Every line of her face revealed malignity. The eyebrows were drawn higher on her forehead, nearer to the wave of white hair that showed under her black hat. The nostrils dilated and contracted with indescribable rapidity. The lips, thickened and rolling back at intervals from her teeth, revealed ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... him, "isn't exactly my idea of loving. Whoever fights you fights me as well. I am your mate. My brother has revealed his monstrous malignity of nature today and to sleep one night more under his roof would shrivel my soul. I'd rather walk the streets. I accepted you without terms. Now I impose one condition. You must marry me tonight. Take me away—make me ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Nile, whence provisions were transported; and that the inhabitants were satisfied with slight matts instead of roofs to their houses because not troubled with rain, and the matts were a sufficient protection from the sun: but made their walls of stone to defend themselves against the malignity and rapaciousness of the Badwis, a perverse people, void of all goodness, who often suddenly assaulted the place in hope of plunder, and frequently pillaged the caravans coming across from the Nile with provisions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... manuscripts, enlisted the aid of our tyrants, and came to seize, by force, a box that contained the precious papers. Lambert and I defended it with incredible courage. The trunk was locked, our aggressors could not open it, but they tried to smash it in the struggle, a stroke of malignity at which we shrieked with rage. Some of the boys, with a sense of justice, or struck perhaps by our heroic defence, advised the attacking party to leave us in peace, crushing us with insulting contempt. But suddenly, brought to the spot ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... the ladies had been a little afraid of him, as they were by no means given to free opinions. But he made his way. They were decidedly high; the bishop was notoriously low; and thus, in a mild manner, without malignity on either side, Manor Cross and the Palace fell out. Their own excellent young clergyman was snubbed in reference to his church postures, and Lady Sarah was offended. But the Dean's manners were perfect. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... grand party, I believe, and not exactly stupid—it was not, that; but I was disgusted with all I saw and all I heard. It seemed to me a mass of affectation, falsehood, and malignity." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... helpless state into which Babylon had sunk since the close of the dynasty of Uruazagga. Elam was pressing upon her eastern, and Assyria on her northern frontier, and their kings not only harassed her with persistent malignity, but, by virtue of their alliances by marriage with her sovereigns, took advantage of every occasion to interfere both in domestic and state affairs; they would espouse the cause of some pretender during a revolt, they would assume the guardianship of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... ourselves, I have had to learn how hard in one who lives where forms of expression and habits of thought have been born, not for the pleasure of begetting but for the public good, is that purification from insincerity, vanity, malignity, arrogance, which is the discovery of style. But it became possible to live when I had learnt all I had not learnt in shaping words, in defending Synge against his enemies, and knew that rich energies, fine, ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... ago, when I heard men of more than middle age and less than middling ability speak with contemptuous depreciation of the productions and doings of men considerably their juniors, and vastly their superiors,—describing them as boys, and as clever lads, with looks of dark malignity. There are few more disgusting sights than the envy and jealousy of their juniors, which may be seen in various malicious, commonplace old men; as there is hardly a more beautiful and pleasing sight than the old man hailing and counselling and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... be back till next day. In her master's absence, a little girl who served as maid-of-all-work ran out to keep company with her sweetheart. These accidents destiny turned to account with diabolical malignity. At about midnight, Madame d'Imbleval was seized with the first pains. The nurse, Mlle. Boussignol, had had some training as a midwife and did not lose her head. But, an hour later, Madame Vaurois' turn came; and the tragedy, or I might rather say the tragi-comedy, was enacted amid the screams ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... says my lord, getting up from the sophy, and looking at him with sich a jolly malignity, as I never see, "I declare, before heaven, that I will not ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... tags of a black woollen carpet. His age might have been anything between twenty-five and sixty; it was impossible to form any opinion on the point. Just now, however, his yellow monkey face was convulsed with an expression of intense malignity, and he was standing there in the sunshine cursing rapidly beneath his breath in Dutch, and shaking his fist after the form of the retreating Boer—a very epitome of ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... clearly the last gasp. Yet Mrs. Edwards shook in dread every time she entered the room. The look seemed conscious still, intensified malignity and despair creeping in. She was afraid and guilty and unstrung. Perhaps, with some sudden revival of his forces, he would kill her. He was lying there, too still for defeat. His life had been an expression of hates; the last ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... going to the lovers' trysting place. The little cry that Diana had uttered upon perceiving the Duke had put him upon his guard. Bruno had found him out; but, as he knew him, merely fawned upon him. He was delighted at the fury of the Duke, whom he hated with cold and steady malignity; but the courage of Diana filled him with admiration. Her sublime audacity won his warmest praises, and he longed for her as an ally to aid him in his scheme of revenge. He knew that the girl would find herself in a terribly embarrassing position, ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... you are about to enter? You exact too much of my friendship for you. You ought to be aware of the fact, that when a woman has lost the freshness of her first youth, and takes a special interest in a young man, everybody says she desires to "make a worldling of him." You know the malignity of this expression. I do not care to expose myself to its application. All the service I am willing to render you, is to become your confidante. You will tell me your troubles, and I will tell you what is in my mind, ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... shouted Pulfennius, "I can tell you. It is because this whole comedy has been rehearsed between you just to make me ridiculous. I know your way, your malignity, your tenacity of a grudge, your pretence of reconciliation, your ingenuity, your well-laid traps. I'll be ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was assailed in Congress and in the newspapers, and the attacks were concentrated on Mr. Adams. The calumnies by which his father's administration had been prostrated five-and-twenty years before were revived, and poured out with renewed malignity. Duane, in his Aurora, published in Philadelphia, and his coaedjutors in other parts of the Union, represented him as "a royalist," "an enemy to the rights of man;" as a "friend of oligarchy;" as a "misanthrope, educated in contempt of his fellow-men;" as "unfit to be the minister of a free ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to be supposed that he oftimes and for divers reasons had repulsed the Muses; first, because he could not be idle as a priest of the Muses should be, for idleness cannot exist there, where the ministers and servants of envy, ignorance, and malignity are to be combated. Moreover, he could not force himself to the study of philosophies, which though they be not the most mature, yet ought, as kindred of the Muses, to precede them. Besides which, being drawn on one side by the tragic Melpomene, ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... frankly and kindly informed his brother of his conclusion, and offered him a share in his planting operations. His brother—Jaspar—was sorely wounded in his pride by this reply. It generated in him a sentiment, if not of malignity, at least of hatred, and from that day he was his brother's enemy. Jaspar's business was gone, and he never allowed his spirit of revenge even to interfere with his interest; so he availed ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Carolina; 'Protection of slaves'; Mischievous effects of 'public opinion' concerning slavery; Laws of different states; Heart of slaveholders; Reasons for enacting the laws concerning cruelties to slaves; 'Moderate correction'; Hypocrisy and malignity of slave laws; Testimony of slaves excluded; Capital crimes for slaves; 'Slaveholding brutality,' worse than that of Caligula; Public opinion destroys fundamental rights; Character of slaveholders' advertisements; Public opinion is diabolical; ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a look of vindictive malignity so intense that it made Mr. Manley quite uncomfortable, turned, and ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... filled with malignity, reaching him in the midst of so many congratulations, struck upon Godfrey like a blast of icy wind at the zenith of a summer day. To tell the truth also, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... to Lord Kilmarnock with the premises that his Lordship would allow him to deal freely with him; that he did not expect to be flattered, nor to have the malignity of his crimes disguised or softened;—Mr. Foster told him, "that in his opinion, the wound of his mind, occasioned by his private and public vices, must be probed and searched to the bottom, before it could be capable of receiving a remedy." "If he disapproved of this ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Eunice, she had blundered, strangely enough, on something like the truth. But when she spoke of herself, the headlong malignity of her suspicions—making every allowance for the anger that had hurried her into them—seemed to call for some little protest against a false assertion. I told her that ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... quarrelled in former times—according to Leicester—with Hohenlo and even with the "good and brave" La None, of the iron arm; "for his pride," said the Earl, "was the spirit of the devil." The governor complained every day of his malignity, and vowed that he "neither regarded the cause of God, nor of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... inherit an instinct of fear of those who hate them from a long line of ancestors who have suffered at the hands of cruel men. They can tell by a look, by a motion, by the tone of a voice, whether to expect from anyone kindness or malignity. The cat had purred complacently on the first day of my arrival, and had hunched up her white, furry back towards my hand, and had smiled with her calm, light-blue eyes. Now, when I approached her, she seemed to gather herself together and ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... to innuendoes against his private benevolence and loyalty. An insult to the force of his understanding was indifferent to him, but an affront to one's belle ame is beyond pardon. It was hard that a man who had prodigally thrown away the forces of his life for others should be charged with malignity of heart and an incapacity for friendship. This was the harder, because it was the moral fashion of that day to place friendliness, amiability, the desire to please and to serve, at the very head of all the virtues. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... insultingly to depreciate, he yet failed, in its ultimate end and purpose, adequately to comprehend! Standing in the presence of unsolved mystery, under the chill and withering shadow of that secret of the Lord which was not with him, how thoroughly must he not have seen, and with what bitter malignity felt, that the grasp of the Almighty was still upon him, and that in the ever varying problem of creation, which, with all his powers, he failed to unlock, and which, as age succeeded age, remained an unsolved ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... to the great astonishment of Janet, she sat down to divert her mind from trouble by Patience. As if to reward her for her stubborn fortitude, the malignity of the cards relented, and she brought out an intricate matter three times running. The clock on her mantelpiece chiming a quarter to eight, surprised her with the lateness of the hour, and recalled to her with ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... girl, unmoved. She looked upon the sorrows of her parent in sullen silence. She was so hardened in sin, that she seemed perfectly insensible to pity or affection. And yet she was miserable. Her countenance showed that passion and malignity filled her heart, and that the fear of the prison, to which she knew she must go, filled her ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... into his wounds, but, then (as Coleridge expresses it in a 'neat' sarcasm), oil of vitriol. Nature must have meant the man for a Spanish Inquisitor, sent into the world before St. Dominic had provided a trade for him, or any vent for his malice—so rancorous in his malignity, so horrid and unrelenting the torture to which he subjects his sovereign and the beautiful Theodora. In this case, from the withering scowl which accompanies the libels, we may be assured that they are such in the most aggravated form—not malicious only, but false. It is commonly ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was gall and wormwood to Brown, who pursued Macdonald with a malignity which has no parallel in our happier times. Nor, it must be confessed, did Macdonald fail to retort. Though not a resentful person, nor one who could not control his feelings, he never disguised his personal antipathy {47} towards the man who had persistently and for many years misrepresented ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... of opinion, he was ever ready to help and oblige them all by medical and other aid to the utmost extent of his power." So that in leaving Muston he was not, as was evident, leaving many to lament his departure. Indeed, malignity was so active in one quarter that the bells of the parish church were rung to welcome Crabbe's successor before Crabbe and his ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... apparent sensation of absolute terror. Gradually, however, his usual indomitable hardness of manner returned to him; he still kept his gaze fixed upon her, as if to make certain that there could be no mistake, after which his countenance assumed an expression of rage and malignity that no language could describe; his teeth became absolutely locked, as if he could have ground her between them, and his eyes literally blazed with fury, that resembled that of a rabid beast of prey. The shock was evidently more than the woman could bear, who, still ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... she, "must your malignity then extend even to those whom I wish to benefit? I indeed recognise my enemy," said she to the woodcutter; "beware of him, and believe that it is with no good intention he destines your daughter for the bride of a king. ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... result of a double share of innate truthfulness, but very largely an accident, due to lack of invention and an absence of that powerful literary style which in the case of a Leigh Hunt or a Stevenson distorts everything that passes through it. In Pepys the malignity of the literary fairy is more than compensated by the worthy secretary's insatiable appetite for life; in Borrow by the wanderlust or extraordinary passion and faculty for adventure, which makes his best books such an ambrosial hash ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... utmost enjoyment in what was going on. There was no ill-humour, no malignity in the spirit displayed, in what was otherwise a heartless proceeding, but they set about it in a way that showed a thorough relish for it, as an agreeable pastime. Their caution was as remarkable as their sagacity; there ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... entered the Board-room of the Poor-Law Commission, and, with a troubled countenance, informed the secretary that a terrible fever had broken out round a stagnant pool in Whitechapel; that the people were dying by scores; and that the extreme malignity of the cases gave reason to apprehend that the disease was allied to Asiatic cholera. On hearing this, the Board, at Mr. Chadwick's instance, immediately appointed Drs. Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith to investigate the causes of this alarming mortality, and to report generally upon the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... my Friend,—I am distrest for you, believe me I am; not so much for your painful, troublesome complaint, which, I trust, is only for a time, as for those anxieties which brought it on, and perhaps even now may be nursing its malignity. Tell me, dearest of my friends, is your mind at peace, or has anything, yet unknown to me, happened to give you fresh disquiet, and steal from you all the pleasant dreams of future rest? Are you still (I fear you are) far ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of Bacon were not of a high order. We do not say that he was a bad man. He was not inhuman or tyrannical. He bore with meekness his high civil honors, and the far higher honors gained by his intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into treating any person with malignity and insolence. No man more readily held up the left cheek to those who had smitten the right. No man was more expert at the soft answer which turneth away wrath. His faults were—we write it with pain—coldness of heart and meanness of spirit. He seems to ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... and disappointed are always bitter upon the world. But you, Sheikh Ali, I know are above spite and malignity: you would not stoop even to hate the miserable follies of ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... poisoned at point and edge. I did not think that cold weather could have made me so very miserable. Having caught a feverish influenza, I was really glad of being muffled up comfortably in the fever heat. The atmosphere certainly has a peculiar quality of malignity. After a day or two we settled ourselves in a suite of ten rooms, comprehending one flat, or what is called the second piano of this house. The rooms, thus far, have been very uncomfortable, it being impossible to warm them by means of the deep, old-fashioned, inartificial fireplaces, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this—long before, I hope—I shall have solved the great mystery—if, indeed, we solve it. If the water runs down to-morrow, and there is every prospect that it will do so, I must have the opportunity of making such an end as even malignity cannot suspect of being voluntary. There are plenty of fish in the water; if I hook one in 'The Trows,' I shall let myself go whither the current takes me. Life has for weeks been odious to me; for what is life without honour, without love, and coupled ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... street-humour. Fire Famine and Slaughter, on the other hand, is literary in every sense of the word, requiring indeed, and very urgently, to insist on its character as literature, in order to justify itself against the charge of inhuman malignity. Despite the fact that "letters four do form his name," it is of course an idealised statesman, and not the real flesh and blood Mr. Pitt, whom the sister furies, Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, extol as their patron in these terrible ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... concluded, there was no occasion for any one to contend with him in debate, to such a decree were almost all the senators devoted to Hannibal; and they accused Hanno of having spoken with more malignity than Flaccus Valerius, the Roman ambassador. It was then said in answer to the Roman ambassadors, "that the war had been commenced by the Saguntines, not by Hannibal; and that the Roman people acted unjustly if ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... Abraham Lincoln did not escape from what seems now incredible abuse, and that they were, nevertheless, the noblest of men and peerless patriots; and then he went on to argue that President Woodrow Wilson has been the target of similar malignity, and to leave you to conclude that consequently Wilson is in the same class with Washington and Lincoln. If he had put his thesis in a different form, the publicist might have seen himself, as his hearers did, the absurdity of it. Suppose he had said, for instance: "In spite of the fact that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the man, putting himself before the young virago, who was about to rush upon me, "my turn is first." Then, advancing to me in a menacing attitude, he said with a look of deep malignity, "'Afraid' was ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... more clearly perhaps than that of any other individual, the malignity and extent of the corruption which had eaten into the heart of the public morality. An English gentleman of good family attaches himself to a Prince who has seduced his sister, and accepts rank and wealth as the price of her shame and his own. He then repays by ingratitude the benefits ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... should always be closed against poetry, there is no music in verse which has not in it sufficient fulness and ripeness of meaning, sufficient adequacy of emotion or of thought, to abide the analysis of any other than the purblind scrutiny of prepossession or the squint-eyed inspection of malignity.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Mr. Vane turned instantly round upon him, and, looking him haughtily in the face, said: "Sir Charles Pomander, the settled malignity with which you pursue that lady is unmanly and offensive to me, who love her. Let our acquaintance cease here, if you please, or let her be sacred from your ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... retrospective narrations, or even by the insertion of such "padding" as the collection business in Le Cousin Pons. The whole stuff and substance of La Cousine Bette is honestly woven novel-stuff, of one piece and one tenor and texture, with for constant subject the subterranean malignity of the heroine, the erotomania of Hulot and Crevel, the sufferings of Adeline, and the pieuvre operations of Marneffe and his wife,—all of which fit in and work together with each other as exactly as the cogs and gear of a harmonious piece of machinery do. Even ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... other inmates, who were for the most part boys belonging to the lower orders, and by so doing earned their ill-will, and brought upon himself their persecution. Indeed, so uncomfortable did his new home prove through the malignity of his fellow-pensioners, that the health of the poor waif gave way, and it was found necessary to remove him to the Hotel Dieu of Paris. Here he was noticed by the Abbe de l'Epee, who was attracted by his quiet and aristocratic manners and gentle demeanour, and who at the same ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... youth we do not appreciate the restraints which act upon malignity, or know how effectually fear protects us where conscience is wanting. Quite alone, in this solitary spot, detected and overtaken with an awful instinct by my enemy, what might not be about to happen to me ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... infallible recipe for catching sunbeams in cucumber-frames and turning them into potatoes, or whatever might be the fashionable food at the moment; every grumbler who imagined that every rise in prices must be entirely due to the malignity of men and not to the scarcity of the article; every politician with a grudge to satisfy or an axe to grind—all these pounced upon Lord DEVONPORT as a victim made ready to their hands, and gave him ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... must never be forgotten, that for all we know of him, we are indebted to his implacable enemies. No Carthaginian record of that astounding career has come down to us. The Romans did all that unscrupulous malignity can, to blacken the fame and belittle the deeds of the most terrible of their foes. Yet, though calumny has done its bitterest against him, Hannibal not only dazzles the imagination, but takes captive the heart. He stands out as the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the woman let her go on with her story?" thought the judge. What did he care how that impish little creature, whom he had always regarded as old Abram's granddaughter, and who glared at him with such savage malignity from her piercing black eye (no figure of speech, for she had but one) when with his foot and cane he gently rolled her off the door-mat, where he found her coiled up asleep on his entrance to the house,—what did he care how that mixture of chimpanzee ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... their whole system of doctrine into disrepute, and from the restoration the poets and the players were left at quiet; for to have molested them would have had the appearance of tendency to puritanical malignity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... robbery deserved the name, that which caused the downfall of Tammany surely did. Drunk with the power and plunder of four long unchallenged years, during which the honest name of democracy was pilloried in the sight of all men as the active partner of blackmail and the brothel, the monstrous malignity reached a point at last where it was no longer to be borne. Then came the crash. The pillory lied. Tammany is no more a political organization than it is the benevolent concern it is innocently supposed to be by some people who ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... restrain a scornful laugh at the audacity of the dwarf, but he noticed that though the others regarded him askance they did not ridicule him, but seemed to have a certain fear of his malignity, and his cunning craft. Jim saw that he was clean shaven now and that he moved his head back and forth in front of his hump, like an ugly hooded bird, and his shadow was distorted on the high vaulted ceiling into something horrible and of ill omen. To complete the picture, it is necessary ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... to say it would be cheap at half a million. We have the authority of a near relative of that gentleman for asserting, that the satisfactory testimonials which he possesses of the correctness of his narrative, are sufficient to satisfy the most incredulous, and to silence malignity itself." ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Salle left sixty men behind him, and on the 20th of March, 1686, after a buffalo-hunt, he was murdered by Duhaut and L'Archeveque, two adventurers, who had embarked their capital in the enterprise. They had long shown a spirit of mutiny, and the malignity of disappointed avarice so maddened them that ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... not reach saw the graceful action; and from every side of the plain one universal acclamation burst forth, which seemed to bear out Marie Antoinette's favorite assertion that the people were good at heart, and that it was not without great perseverance in artifice and malignity that they could be excited to ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... ancestors. The descendant of Agag, the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The contempt with which Mordecai regarded him roused all the ancient malignity of the Amalekite, and his hot blood called ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... to take care of the building of the temple; who, upon receiving that epistle from Cyrus, came, and immediately laid its foundations; "and although it hath been in building from that time to this, it hath not yet been finished, by reason of the malignity of our enemies. If therefore you have a mind, and think it proper, write this account to Darius, that when he hath consulted the records of the kings, he may find that we have told you nothing that is ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... and Flemings participated in the mutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. The unscrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their grasping and venal ambition, enraged and disgusted the haughty Spaniards. This international malignity furnishes one of the keys to a proper understanding of the great ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fact of her having stood a siege from Captain Gambier. But she loved a creature of earth too well to put up a hand for saintly honours. The passion of her life centred in devotion to her half-brother. Those who had studied her said, perhaps with a touch of malignity, that her religious instinct had its source in a desire to gain some place of intercession for him. Merthyr had leaned upon it too often to doubt the strength of it, whatever its purity might be. She, when barely more than a child (a girl of sixteen), had followed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that he was always desperately in debt, and in this country no politician under the rank of a baronet can ever safely be in debt. Burke's finances are, and always have been, marvels and mysteries; but one thing must be said of them—that the malignity of his enemies, both Tory enemies and Radical enemies, has never succeeded in formulating any charge of dishonesty against him that has not been at once completely pulverized, and shown on the facts to be impossible. ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... next move, certainly in a few minutes, succumb to the enemies around me. I could not conciliate those whose malignity I could not comprehend. I had done them no injury, and they could hardly be maddened by fear, since my size and strength did not seem to overawe them save at close quarters, and of my weapons they were certainly ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... light of the moral hurts which man has inflicted on himself, of the sickness with which he is sick; who would persuade themselves and others that moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet enormously exaggerated, these. But are statements of the depth of his fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these statements libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful corroborations of the truth of these ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... individuals and by legislative bodies at the south, have been offered to any persons who shall abduct or destroy me. 'Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.' This malignity of opposition and proximity of danger, however, are like oil to the fire of my zeal. I am not deliriously enthusiastic—I do not covet to be a martyr; but I had rather die a thousand deaths, than witness the horrible oppression under which more than two millions of my countrymen ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... effects, for which they could not account to the agency of demons, who were believed to preside over herbs, trees, rivers, mountains, and animals. Every member of the human body was under their power, and all corporeal diseases were produced by their malignity. For instance, if any happened to be affected with a fever, little anxiety was manifested to discover its cause, or to adopt rational measures for its cure; it must no doubt have been occasioned by ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... for forty-six weeks, the Scholars, and probably the Commoners, for forty-eight weeks in each year. All undergraduates had to attend lectures or disputations for twenty-four hours in every week. These tasks were arranged with careful malignity to begin at 6 A.M., and resumed at 2 P.M. and 6 P.M. Nor were examinations wanting. The Bible was to be read during dinner in Hall by a Bible Clerk or Scholar, and heard attentively and reverently. Latin was to be spoken in Hall, and English only when the presence of an unlearned person ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... as time passed my evil grew worse, my moments of malignity and irony became more somber and intractable. A real physical fever attended my outbursts of passion; I awakened trembling in every limb and covered with cold sweat. Brigitte, too, although she did not complain of it, began ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... as quick as lightning; for in answering Caroline, who sat on the side of the carriage next to the military spectacle, I had leaned a little inward; and there, with his effeminate features actually livid with rage, and writhing with impotent malignity, stood Monsieur G—, the infamous divorced husband of Madame d'Albret, and the first cause ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for the creation of air-currents. The pile "struck terror," says M. Michelet, "by its height;" and, as usual, the English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malignity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. It is probable that the purpose was merciful. On the circumstances of the execution I shall not linger. Yet, to mark the almost fatal felicity of M. Michelet in finding out whatever may injure the English name, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... freedom of his language and manner, to possess the unlimited confidence of that chief. On what plea he could found his claim to such a distinction, would have been no easy matter to determine; his countenance being remarkable only for a larger share of calm resolution, deep malignity, and ill-boding ferocity, than those of his companions. A broad and strongly built frame, dark and lowering features, black shaggy beard, and the savage glitter of an eye that scowled gloomily under its heavy brow, gave to his ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... applied, but causing its insertion for the purpose of preventing its erection from being attributed to the influence of Mr. Adams. To such disreputable subterfuges party spirit can condescend, to gratify malignity, or to obscure merit from the knowledge of the world, to the power of which it is itself compelled ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... last proof was the highest, the most convincing, 43:12 the most profitable to his students. The malignity of brutal persecutors, the treason and suicide of his betrayer, were overruled by divine Love to 43:15 the glorification of the man and of the true idea of God, which Jesus' persecutors had mocked and tried to slay. The final demonstration of the truth ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... with the customary malignity of one rudely wakened from sleep, began to feel a grim satisfaction in seeing my messmate robbed of his repose ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... and gives rise to a beautiful speech. We are here inclined to sympathize with her; but soon after follows the murder of the Duke of York; and the base revengeful spirit and atrocious cruelty with which she insults over him, unarmed and a prisoner,—the bitterness of her mockery, and the unwomanly malignity with which she presents him with the napkin stained with the blood of his youngest son, and "bids the father wipe his eyes withal," turn all our sympathy into aversion and horror. York replies in ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... have quoted begins with an indignant retort upon a member who had applied to him Burke's phrase about a perfect-bred metaphysician exceeding the devil in malignity and contempt for mankind. Huskisson frequently protested even against the milder epithet of theorist. He asserted most emphatically that he appealed to 'experience' and not to 'theory,' a slippery distinction which finds a good ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... the prodigal Christian: The poet here means to heighten the malignity of Shylock's character, by making him depart from his settled resolve, of "neither to eat, drink nor pray with Christians," for the prosecution of ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... not to be found in Dr. Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr. Trollope, nor even—making all allowance for the sanative influence of counter-irritation—in the weekly malignity of that ex-Moral Minstrel whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out what petty enigmas may not be readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly, English way of accepting the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... spiritual, if not bodily harm. The witch and the sorcerer were not possessed by him against their will, but went out of their way to solicit his alliance, and to offer to forward his views for their own advantage, or to gratify their malignity. The cruel punishments for a crime so monstrous were mild, compared with the practice of our own penal code fifty or sixty years ago against second-class offences. And for the startling bigotry of the judges, which appears the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... "He was only hearkening to the music," but she caught such a look of malignity cast upon the verger as perfectly appalled her, and in another moment the boy had dashed, head over heels, ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from hanging by the grace of God. With her I differs, and says it is from want of courage. This Whitefeather, with one particle of Jack's courage, and with one tithe of his good qualities, would have been hanged long ago, for he has ten times Jack's malignity. Jack was hanged because, along with his bad qualities, he had courage and generosity; this fellow is not, because with all Jack's bad qualities, and many more, amongst which is cunning, he has neither courage nor generosity. Think of a fellow like that putting ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... do it? But she dissembles, veiling her malignity under the most affected gentleness. In appearance she is all kindness to me. And my poor father becomes a willing instrument in her hands,—my poor father, formerly so kind, and ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... and attachment will be so much the more agreeable, as it is more rare in our republic, and perhaps even it is without example; and as it is more proper to efface all the odious impressions that the calumny and malignity of the English ministry, not long ago so servilely adored by many, but whose downfal is at present consummated, had endeavoured to spread, particularly a little before and at the beginning of this war, insinuations, which ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... tenets of a selfish philosophy, to see the happy influence of opposite ideas; to observe (what Physicians have frequent opportunities of observing), that as a selfish turn of mind often attracts and encreases the malignity of sickness, so an unselfish, a compassionate spirit has a natural tendency to escape or subdue it. What can be more pleasing to those, who assert and esteem the dignity of human-nature, than to see, that the having lost all thoughts ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... difficulties; forced to quit his country, home, and child; friendless—we have seen it too clearly since his death—pursued even on the Continent by a thousand absurd and infamous falsehoods, and by the cold malignity of a world that twisted even his sorrows into a crime; he yet, in the midst of inevitable reaction, preserved his love for his sister and his Ada; his compassion for misfortune; his fidelity to the affections of his childhood and youth, from ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... immediate effects cease to be felt, are little productive of such a result. Not that I value military virtues the less by being of this opinion; on the contrary, I am the more convinced of their excellence. Burke has unguardedly said, 'that vice loses half its malignity by losing its grossness'; but public virtue ceases to be useful when it sickens at the calamities of necessary war. The moment that nations become confident of security, they give way to corruption. The evils and dangers of war seem as requisite ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... as he reached, and before his fingers had closed on the missile, she sprang back into safety; and he knew that she was used to having things thrown at her. She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder. He glanced at the hand that held the brand, noticing the cunning delicacy of the fingers that gripped it, how they adjusted themselves to all the inequalities of the surface, curling over and under and about ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... kill her—as she would infallibly see that he would if she listened to him. It was because he knew that her voice had magic in it, and from the moment he caught its first note he had determined to destroy it. It was not tenderness that moved him—it was devilish malignity; tenderness would be incapable of requiring the horrible sacrifice that he was not ashamed to ask, of requiring her to commit perjury and blasphemy, to desert a work, an interest, with which her very heart-strings were interlaced, to give the lie to ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... for his treatise on human nature. Therefore (it is true Hazlittian logic) no woman cares for sentiment. The sex which despised him must be despicable. Equally characteristic is his profound belief that his failure in another line is owing to the malignity of the world at large. In one of his most characteristic Essays he asks whether genius is conscious of its powers. He writes what he declares to be a digression about his own experience, and we may ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the word, and envied the burglar with his six months. What spirit of malignity had hindered Mr Sniff from letting him lose himself in a felon's cell rather than turn him out "free" into a world every creature of which ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Donohoe, a character thug whom he had imported from California for just such emergencies. Donohoe's first service for Mr. Rogers was a vicious onslaught on Heinze, of Montana, in the New York Commercial. This was an attack of such unusual vulgarity and malignity that it won Donohoe his spurs, for soon afterward, when by a characteristic trick Mr. Rogers obtained possession of the New York Commercial, he made Donohoe its editor. I may mention that Heinze sued the Commercial for $300,000 damages, and apropos of the suit an interesting complication ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... had his own reasons for complying with his father's request. He hated the Colemans and George with as much active malignity as was possible to his heavy unctuous nature. Why he should hate the Colemans is intelligible, and his hatred to George can also be explained, partly through sympathy between father and son, and partly because the hatred ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... once too liberal for some, and too exacting for others? Would He not, as in Judea of old, encounter not merely the active envy of the vain and the ambitious, which would follow one who spoke as never man spoke; not merely the active malignity of those who wish their fellow- creatures to be bad and not good; not merely the bigotry of every sect and party; but that mere restless love of new excitements, and that dull fear and suspicion of new truths, and even of old truths ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... is accounted for in different ways by the historians of the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and egotism of the wealthy nobles, who to suit their own interests favored now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati—as he calls them, by a title borrowed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... different light elsewhere. Some have, no doubt, been distorted by the interested channels through which they have reached the public; some by the ignorance of the reporters; and most by the party spirit which has viewed either with enthusiasm or malignity the acquisition of freedom in any quarter ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... malignity that governed all things on that troublous day, neither of us had a pencil, and Mrs. Coolahan had to be appealed to. That she had by this time properly grasped the position was apparent in the hoarse whisper in which she said, carefully closing ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... its exhausting labours, than there occurred those deplorable and alarming outrages in the principal manufacturing districts, which so ill requited the benevolent exertions of the Legislature in their behalf. They exhibited some features of peculiar malignity—many glaring indications of the existence of a base and selfish hidden conspiracy against the cause of law, of order, and of good government. Who were the real originators and contrivers of that wicked ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fiery nature breaking suddenly through the artificial constraints with which he held it in check. His short dark hair seemed to bristle upwards, his eyes glowed with the intensity of his passion, and his face expressed a malignity of hatred which neither the death of his enemy nor the lapse of years could mitigate. The demure servant was gone, and there stood in his place a deep and dangerous man, one who might be an ardent lover or ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... began; and Emma was so completely absorbed, that she did not perceive that most of the audience were intent upon her. Those who act any part may be ridiculous in the playing it, but those are safe from the utmost malignity of criticism who are perfectly unconscious that they have any part to perform. Emma had been abashed at her first appearance in an assembly of strangers, and concerned by the idea that she had kept them ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... honesty of purpose—viz. the Wesleyan Methodists—have since expressed (about the middle of September) sentiments very like compunction and deep sorrow for the course they felt it right to pursue. They are fully aware of the malignity towards the Church of England, which governed all other parties to the opposition excepting themselves; and in the sorrowful result of that opposition, which has terminated in denying all extension of education to the labouring youth of the nation, they have learned (like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... uttered this word set his face to the unaccustomed exercise of expressing malignity. His round blue eyes sought to blaze, small cherubic muscles exerted themselves to pucker his brows. His colour became a violent pink. "Lunatic!" he said. "Dangerous Lunatic! He didn't do anything—anything bad in ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... not, however, our intention to vie with the miserable cunning of your enemies—enemies of the faith—of that very faith which they profess to venerate. But placed, as it is our fortune, by your side, and seeing the malignity of those who attack you, and the disloyal character of their attacks, we feel bound to gather ourselves at the foot of your twofold throne, with vows for the integrity of your independent sovereignty; ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... be made, and the blockheads and knaves in the House will always have the means of influencing the opinions of those without, by opposing with success your English character to your French one; and that which is only a mark of gratitude for past services will be construed by malignity into a bribe of some sort for services yet to be rendered. You may be certain that, in offering the reasons for my conduct, I blush that I think it necessary to stoop to such prejudices. Of this, however, you will be the best judge, and I should esteem it a favor if you would inform ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... which Cassio's ruin may be compassed. Then follows the quarrel, which is interrupted by the appearance of Othello, who deprives Cassio of his office. A love-scene ensues between Desdemona and the Moor; but in the next act the malignity of Iago has already begun to take effect, and the seeds of jealousy are sown in Othello's breast. His suspicions are freshly aroused when Desdemona intercedes in Cassio's behalf, and are changed to conviction by the handkerchief episode and Iago's artful insinuation that Cassio ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... opened at the top, Marshall held court for more than a third of a century and elaborated his great principles of constitutional law. This room, untouched by British vandalism in the invasion of 1814, was christened by the witty malignity of John Randolph, "the ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... if their effects had died with the passing away of that immediate danger. But as we think so we incline to act. Our sentiments are our governors; and of all imperious tyrants, false sentiments are the most ruthless. The beautiful, the true, the good they trample out of the heart with a fiery malignity that knows no touch of pity; for the false is the bitter enemy of the true and makes with ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... on the peopled loneliness of the bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman." ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because "Virtue is its own reward." And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his natural rest, because Franklin, said once, in one of his inspired flights of malignity: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a sudden Pierre turned equally furious. All the accumulation of impotent rage, of suppressed malignity, of rebellion choked down for so long past, all his unspoken despair mounted to his brain, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... passionate relief. He turned from her—they were bringing in the prisoner. It was no surprise to him when Eubank, with a howl of consternation, stepped back almost into the fire. "You fools!" the apothecary cried, all his malignity appearing in his face, "that is not the ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... sent this disease as a judgment upon us. And let the atheistic part of mankind call my saying what they please, it is no enthusiasm: it was acknowledged at that time by all mankind. The disease was enervated, and its malignity spent; and let it proceed from whencesoever it will, let the philosophers search for reasons in nature to account for it by, and labor as much as they will to lessen the debt they owe to their Maker, those physicians who had the least share of ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... made by a party of eight Indians, at the head of which was the Cayuga chief Logan.[18] This very celebrated [118] Indian is represented as having hitherto, observed towards the whites, a course of conduct by no means in accordance with the malignity and steadfast implacability which influenced his red brethren generally; but was, on the contrary, distinguished by a sense of humanity, and a just abhorrence of those cruelties so frequently inflicted on the innocent and unoffending, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... subjected to the scrutiny of a parish meeting on Tuesday, when, though the minute accuracy of a professional accountant is not to be expected of one whose province is not to serve tables, it will be evident that only malignity to the Church could have devised the attack to which your paper has ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that paper never flinched before the storm of malignity which was gathering about his head. He pursued the even tenor of his way, laboring at the case more than fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, upon the paper, renewing, week after week, his assaults upon the citadel of the great iniquity, giving no quarter to slave-holding ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... caught at Vinicius's hand as a frightened child would, and disconnected, quick impressions pressed into her head: Was not that he, the terrible, the all-powerful? She had not seen him hitherto, and she thought that he looked differently. She had imagined some kind of ghastly face, with malignity petrified in its features; now she saw a great head, fixed on a thick neck, terrible, it is true, but almost ridiculous, for from a distance it resembled the head of a child. A tunic of amethyst color, forbidden ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the Encyclopaedia appeared in the autumn of 1753. D'Alembert prefixed an introduction, vindicating himself and his colleague with a manliness, a sincerity, a gravity, a fire, that are admirable and touching. "What," he concluded, "can malignity henceforth devise against two men of letters, trained long since by their meditations to fear neither injustice nor poverty; who having learnt by a long and mournful experience, not to despise, but to mistrust and dread men, have the courage to love them, and the prudence to flee them?... ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the deepest and by far the most personal experience of every spiritually minded man is his experience of his own inward sinfulness. The sinfulness of his sin; the malignity of his sin; the ungodliness and the inhumanity of his sin; the dominion that his sin still has over him; the simply indescribable evil of his sin in every way: all that is a matter, not of any man's ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... not he, Furnival, if the matter were pushed before a jury, make them think that the two documents stood balanced against each other? and that Lady Mason's respectability, her long possession, together with the vile malignity of her antagonists, gave the greater probability of honesty to the disputed codicil? Mr. Furnival did think that he might induce a jury to acquit her; but he terribly feared that he might not be able to induce the world to acquit her also. As he thought of all the case, he seemed to put himself ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... that space of time. How great and agreeable, then, must our surprise be, after perusing the histories of long navigations in former days, when so many perished by marine diseases, to find the air of the sea acquitted of all malignity; and, in fine, that a voyage round the world may be undertaken with less danger, perhaps, to health, than a common tour in Europe." He concludes: "For if Rome decreed the civic crown to him who saved the life of a single citizen, what wreaths are due to that ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... dear Constance, why will you deliberate thus? If we delay a moment, all is lost for ever. Pluck up a little resolution, and we shall soon be out of the reach of her malignity. ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith
... know but of one well attested instance of a bite being received from a snake. A soldier was bitten so as to draw blood, and the wound healed as a simple incision usually does without shewing any symptom of malignity. A dog was reported to be bitten by a snake, and the animal swelled and died in great agony. But I will by no means affirm that the cause of his death was fairly ascertained. It is, however, certain that the natives show, ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but, instead of that, I shall only take notice, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... their servants, their clothes, and their family connections; much as Merovingian kings, we were taught in our "Cours de Dictees," were dominated by the mayors of the palace. Instead of which, bar accidents (and the malignity of bottle-glass and shoe-nails), I am free, and am helped to ever greater ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... enormities and hideous excesses of the Roman Imperator. The hot blood which excites, and the adventurous courage which accompanies, the excesses of sanguinary warfare, presuppose a condition of the moral nature not to be compared for malignity and baleful tendency to the cool and cowardly spirit of amateurship, in which the Roman (perhaps an effeminate Asiatic) sat looking down upon the bravest of men, (Thracians, or other Europeans,) mangling each other for his recreation. When, lastly, from such a population, and ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... witticisms attributed to great judges are so tinged with personality—even tending to malignity—that no one possessing respect for human nature can read them without being tempted to regard them as mere biographical fabrications. But such a construction cannot be put upon the stories told of Lord ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... O cursed piece of enginery, Cast in Tartarean bottom, by the hand Of Beelzebub, whose foul malignity The ruin of this world through thee has planned! To hell, from whence thou came, I render thee." So said, he cast away the weapon: fanned Meanwhile, with flowing sheet, his frigate goes, By wind, which for ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... because (though apparently in this they confound him with a later Herod) he affected divine honours. To mention such slanders, as the sceptical Bayle has said with special reference to the case of Knox, is all that is needed to refute them. They are the product of malignity so evident that it defeats itself. I know but one parallel to them in our literature, and it has the excuse that it has come down to us from the dark ages.[251] Some would persuade us that the time has come when we might afford to ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... the victory of Wattignies, which obliged the united forces of Austria, Prussia, and Germany to raise the siege of Maubeuge. The jealous Republican Government, in reward, deposed him and appointed Pichegru his successor, which was the origin of that enmity and malignity with which Jourdan pursued this unfortunate general, even to his grave. He never forgave Pichegru the acceptance of a command which he could not decline without risking his life; and when he should have ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... his motive. But in contemplating this desperate step Valentine had to consider the reputation as well as the safety of his future wife. He was determined that there should be no opportunity for scandal in the circumstances of his stolen marriage, no scope for future mischief from the malignity of that baffled villain to whose schemes their marriage would give the death-blow. He, who from his cradle had been familiar with the darker side of life, knew how often the innocent carry a lifelong ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... be unreasonable were I to speak of women with such malignity—I who have loved nothing else in the world—I who have always been ready to sacrifice for their sake ease, ambition, life itself... But, you see, I am not endeavouring, in a fit of vexation and injured vanity, ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... an easy day, that first one.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} It seems, sometimes, as if there were little imps of malignity that hovered over one at the beginning of an undertaking—little brownies, using all their charms to try to turn one back, discouraged. If there be such, they had a good time with us that long afternoon. First they had said that we shouldn't load ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... one of those instances of injustice and malignity which so frequently occur in the Dunciad, and which reflect more dishonour on the author than on the parties traduced. De Foe lay friendless and distressed in Newgate, his family ruined, and himself without hopes of deliverance, till Sir Robert Harley, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe |
