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Spiteful   /spˈaɪtfəl/   Listen
Spiteful

adjective
1.
Showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite.  Synonyms: despiteful, vindictive.  "A truly spiteful child" , "A vindictive man will look for occasions for resentment"



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"Spiteful" Quotes from Famous Books



... this time dreamed again, her dream being the same as before, except that this time there were two white bears, and a hog which was small but spiteful, its bristles pointing forward and its mouth snarling as if ready to bite anything that came before it. And the bears did not look as gentle as before, but ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... his end he predicted, that, bury him where they would, the enemy would lift his body. Forty days after his burial, the spiteful foe raised his body, and buried it among the graves of criminals. Thus they attempted to disgrace this servant of Jesus Christ. But in later years his memory was so dearly cherished, that many good people requested to be ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... here—he went away last week—owing me one pound six," was the spiteful answer. "I wish I had my hands on him. It's Kate Clever would teach him ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... that! Remember she's not a child; her experiences have been too terrible. I have an idea that she hates me and only meditates on the mischief she can do me. You can't imagine how spiteful she can be; it's as though the exhalations from down there had turned to poison in her. If any one comes here that she notices I like, she reviles them as soon as they're gone, says some poisonous thing about them in order to wound me. You're the only one she ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... real squeak—an angry, spiteful squeak, and afterward a long moan, as if something had broke its heart, and a movement of ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... his mother and brother in prison. The letters he exchanged with Bonnoeil, as soon as it was permitted, show a strong sense of the situation on the part of both, irreproachable honesty and profound friendship. This family, whom it suited Licquet to represent as consisting of spiteful, dissolute or misguided people, appears in a very different light in this correspondence. The two brothers were full of respect for their mother, and tenderly attached to their sister: unfortunate and guilty as she was, they never reproached her, nor made any allusion ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... forgery, most cleverly done," said Dora. "There is such a thing, Hester, as being wickedly clever. This spiteful, cruel attempt to injure another can have but proceeded from one very low order of mind. Hester, there has been plenty of favoritism in this school, but do you suppose I shall allow such a thing as this to pass over unsearched into? If necessary, I ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... Street, over a very late breakfast, with his two friends, Captain Fooks and Lieutenant Cox, when a little annoyance of a similar kind fell upon him;—a worse annoyance, indeed, than that which had come from Mr. Horsball, for Mr. Horsball had not been spiteful enough to call upon him. There came a knock at his door, and young Mr. Moggs was ushered into the room. Now Mr. Moggs was the son of Booby and Moggs, the well-known bootmakers of Old Bond Street; and the boots they had made for Ralph Newton had been infinite in number, as ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... for the benefit of the town too, and it is to be hoped that it may result in the lowering of our poor-rate by a considerable amount. But as I have been your adviser in the matter and have taken charge of the business side of it, I should be afraid that it would be I that spiteful persons would ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen

... arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure of promenading their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and contradiction: they question him (see Troubles within Troubles), like a magistrate examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful enjoyment of crushing his denials by positive proof at a decisive moment. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... was not a malicious woman, unless thwarted in her own plans; then she could be absolutely pitiless, and cared for neither truth nor justice in carrying out her spiteful revenges. Ridicule was something she could not endure, and to feel herself slighted made a fury of her. Yet her outward self-control was perfect. Now, with a dreamy look in her large blue-gray orbs, she gazed out to seaward, and remarked as if in a ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... Protestanism. In his "Gestandnisse" Heine publishes a denial of this rumor; less, he says, for the sake of depriving the Catholics of the solace they may derive from their belief in a new convert, than in order to cut off from another party the more spiteful satisfaction ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... showed how it should be regulated, assigning numerous reasons therefor. But there is always misunderstanding and discontent, and if anything is said before the Director of these matters more than pleases him, very wicked and spiteful words are returned. Those moreover whose office requires them to speak to him of such things are, if he is in no good fit, very freely berated as clowns, bear-skinners, ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various

... may degenerate into greedy and selfish excess, does seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality, or even of fanaticism. The feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it. There is a noble and generous kind of rivalry, as well as a spiteful and greedy kind; and the noble and generous form is particularly common in childhood. All games owe the zest which they bring with them to the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet they are the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity. Can the teacher ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... shapely hands could develop cat-like claws, and the soothing voices take on an acid and scathing intonation, and the eyes, so ready to moisten with pity and sympathy at the sight of suffering, could shoot spiteful little fires at the objects of such divine displeasure, and poor Stuyvesant's petulant words, wrung from him in a moment of exasperation and never intended to reach the fair band of sisters of the Cross, were piled high with additions, impolitic, ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... market for the second time that season; but the cock, from his bright, unfaded plumage, looked like a new arrival. The hen resented every advance of the male. In vain he strutted around her and displayed his fine feathers; every now and then she would make at him in a most spiteful manner. He followed her to the ground, poured into her ear a fine, half-suppressed warble, offered her a worm, flew back to the tree again with a great spread of plumage, hopped around her on the branches, chirruped, chattered, flew gallantly at an intruder, and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... fact, that the boy had heedlessly spread his blanket over the entrance to the home of a colony of large black ants, and the little fellows, angry at his presumption, had attacked him, in the most spiteful manner, through the rents in his trousers. Patsey, awakened out of a sound sleep by their stings, and remembering Ned's adventure in the Organos mountains, had fancied himself the unfortunate victim of a like attack. We finally succeeded ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens

... woodwork, and hurtling across the room buried itself in the opposite wall. Then there were several shots fired at the door. One man found a little hole in the chinking, between two of the logs, and putting his revolver through, fired again and again, sending spits of hot flame and sharp spiteful reverberations through the darkness ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... woman was a wonderful old woman, as active as she was spiteful, and she caught Si by the streaming hair within thirty yards of Eudena. All the tribe now was running down the knoll and shouting and laughing ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... them before they had done spinning. The next moment they had kissed the two pieces already in his possession, and he had transferred all four to his pocket. I held out my hand for the paper, and he gave it to me grudgingly, with a spiteful slowness of movement. He would have stayed beside me as I read it, but I sternly bade him keep his distance; then kneeling before the fire to get the light, I opened the paper. It was written upon in a delicate, woman's hand, and ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... absence of enthusiasm as he pushed up through the throng toward the committee tent. No single voice hailed him victor; no friendly hand smote its congratulations. Broad backs were turned; contemptuous glances levelled; spiteful remarks shot. Only the foreign element looked curiously at the little bent figure with the glowing face, and shrank back at the size and savage aspect of the great ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... old age, does he think that it is absolutely necessary that the firm friend of Austrian despotism should be the malignant assailant of the Government and people of the United States? The man is consistent in nothing but his spiteful vindictiveness and love of mischief. He is now the general object of deserved ridicule and contempt for his flunkyistic attendance at the Tuileries. At the time of Louis Napoleon's visit to London, Roebuck raved and ranted about his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... mortified lineaments [315] Should exercise the motions of my heart, Pierc'd with the joy of any dignity! O father, if the unrelenting ears Of Death and Hell be shut against my prayers, And that the spiteful influence of Heaven Deny my soul fruition of her joy, How should I step, or stir my hateful feet Against the inward powers of my heart, Leading a life that only strives to die, And ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... matrimonial agent lacking in no Jewish community, is painted true to life. Spiteful, cunning, witty, even learned, he excels in the art of bringing together the eligibles of the two sexes and ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... sumptuous establishment where he usually takes his bath; nor does he pause at the Chinese Baths. He is too well known hereabout. All Paris would know what had happened the same evening. There would be a lot of ill-bred gossip in clubs and salons, much spiteful comment on his death; and the old fop, the man of breeding, wishes to spare himself that shame, to plunge and be swallowed up in the uncertainty and anonymity of suicide, like the soldiers who, on the day after a great battle, are reported neither as living, wounded or dead, but simply as ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... squadron, making eighteen companies, or troops, of Horse, with their pack mules, all out at the front, while the wagon train and ambulances were thoroughly guarded by a big battalion of sturdy infantry, nearly all of them good marksmen, against whose spiteful Springfields the warriors made only one essay in force, and that was more than enough. The blue coats emptied many an Indian saddle and strewed the prairie with ponies, and sent Whistling Elk and his people to the right about in sore dismay, and then it dawned ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... but she's really not so bad, dear, all the same; there are many worse. She's rather spiteful, but warmhearted—awfully kind if you break your leg," ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... ever-increasing splendor, the glorious river seeming to array itself more and more grandly, as for the admiration of kings, and proudly spreading its waters wide, as a courtier spreads his robes. Its lake-like expanses, without a spiteful rock or shoal, are alive with ships, barks, brigs, junks, proas, sampans, canoes; and the stranger is beset by a flotilla of river pedlers, expertly sculling under the stern of the steamer, and shrilly screaming the praises of their wares; while here and there, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... lot of servants, all of whom were glib and specious, so that how could she ever find an opportunity of thrusting herself forward? But contrary to her anticipations, there turned up, eventually on this day, some faint glimmer of hope, but as she again came in for a spell of spiteful abuse from Ch'iu Wen and her companion, her expectations were soon considerably frustrated, and she was just plunged in a melancholy mood, when suddenly she heard the old nurse begin the conversation about Chia Yn, which unconsciously so affected her heart ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... maid and the housemaid, had, it appeared, neither of them believed in Rosanna's illness of the previous day. These two devils—I ask your pardon; but how else CAN you describe a couple of spiteful women?—had stolen up-stairs, at intervals during the Thursday afternoon; had tried Rosanna's door, and found it locked; had knocked, and not been answered; had listened, and not heard a sound inside. When the girl had come down to tea, and had been sent up, still out of sorts, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... something pitiful in this strong black giant. He knew Lamb well enough to feel sure that Josiah would now have in him an enemy who was sure in some way to get what he called "even" with the barber, and was a man known and spoken of in Westways as "real spiteful." ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... eloquent of a revengeful nature; and it was this gloomy, pitiless look, springing from jealousy and transforming her face, which drove Helene so frantic. During the preceding thirty-six hours she had not failed to notice how the old spiteful expression had grown more and more intense upon her daughter's face, how more and more sullen she looked the nearer she approached the grave. Oh, what a comfort it would have been if Jeanne could only have smiled on her ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... for a spiteful croaker, who was trying out of jealousy to mar her happiness, she turned confidingly to the manly form beside her, and from the noble expression beaming from his eyes imbibed a fire which defied the whole spirit-world, so deep and so strong ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... hands she tugs away, While scolding at me kind o' spiteful; You'll not believe me when I say I find ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field

... and frightened from their propriety, went in a body to a certain cure, named Mignon, one of the most spiteful and envious of Grandier's rivals, and related to him the fact of their convent being disturbed by ghostly visitants, who left them no peace or rest. The thought instantly occurred to Mignon, that he ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... most spiteful creature I've ever known,' she laughed. 'You're just the sort of man ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham

... hollaes Sachs, and Beckmesser, after preluding, sings, while Sachs punctuates the lines with smart taps on the last. These at first discompose the singer, and he stops at each tap to inquire angrily what it is that is not right; he shortly resolves, however, to pay no heed to the spiteful enemy, but cover over the interruptions with his voice. Louder and louder and ever more breathlessly he sings, a lyric that is more prosy than prose, a piece of common statement of facts, tortured ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... brought himself to treat me so." But when one has done us cool and deliberate wrong, then we are angry, because the slight is most considerable. There is an appearance of our claims to considerations having been weighed, and found wanting. We call it, "a cool piece of impertinence," "spiteful malevolence," and the like. Any other motive to which the wrong is traceable on the part of the wrong-doer, lessens our anger against him: but the motive of contempt, and that alone, if we seem to discover it in him, invariably increases it. To this ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... organizing a conspiracy against him;[92] he spoke bluntly of Medina's 'hatred', 'rage', 'trickery', and 'lying';[93] he was not mealy-mouthed in describing Castro's 'malice', 'deceit', 'calumnies', and 'perjury'.[94] Luis de Leon dealt no less faithfully with some members of his own order who were spiteful or cowardly—or both. As early as the beginning of August 1572 Fray Gabriel Montoya, Prior of the Augustinian Monastery at Toledo, stated to the Inquisitors at Valladolid that, in his opinion, certain ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... drawn together by their common pity for animal suffering, by love indeed of the most disinterested sort, had so forgotten their initial spirit as to erect a monument with an inscription at once recklessly untruthful, spiteful in spirit and particularly vexatious to one great medical school of London. They have provoked riots and placarded London with taunts and irritating misrepresentation of the spirit of medical research, and they have infected a whole fresh generation of London students ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... fortune.' I dared not defend myself. I am not clever enough to think of the right things to say. He meant Mr. Ffolliott to understand that I had married him because I thought he was grand and rich, and that I was a disappointed little spiteful shrew. I tried to act as if he was not hurting me, but my hands trembled, and a lump kept rising in my throat. When we returned to the drawing-room, and at last he left us together, I was praying and praying that I might be able to keep from ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... cat and dog, so is the hostility which divides the residents of these two towns. So the conversation became at once spirited, and eventually spiteful. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... be the same tigers we encountered yesterday," said Clara, in an anxious tone of voice, "and I am almost sure they are, by the mewing of their whelps, think for a moment, Costal, how desperately spiteful they will be ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... as we have had to do so much violence to ourselves, to extend our control over others, and hold ourselves in a degree compensated in what we outwardly gain for what we inwardly have been obliged to sacrifice. To this feeling there is often joined a kind of secret, spiteful pleasure in the blind, unconscious ignorance with which the victim walks on into the snare. It is not the immediately doing as we please which we enjoy, but the thought of the surprise and exposure which is to follow. And thus was the Baroness malicious ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... sour-tempered sort of fellow was Measles, who listed because his sweetheart laughed at him; not that he cared for her, but he didn't like to be laughed at, so he listed out of spite, as he said, and that made him spiteful. He was always grumbling about not getting his promotion, and sneering at everything and everybody, and quarrelling with Harry Lant, him, you know, as carried the elephant's trunk; while Harry was never happy without he ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn

... that stared from the eyes of the Indian and puzzled her deeply. Rosa adored her young mistress and exulted even when Concha's voice rose in wrath; for was not she noticed by the loveliest senorita in all the Californias, while others, envious and spiteful to a poor girl no worse than ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... me, and now you have spoiled everything. I don't know how it is, but I always have a good time everywhere else, but there is something in this house that often sets one's teeth on edge," and the door banged appropriately with a spiteful emphasis as the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... said Gwyn, excitedly. "Someone who wanted to get the mine must have sent them up first of all, and, as they couldn't get it, I'm afraid they've turned spiteful, and may try to do us harm. What would they do, ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... examined into, but that the wicked Tenets and vile Assertions there justly exposed, are either such Notions and Sentiments, as first, my Enemies, to render me odious, and afterwards Common Fame had already father'd upon me, tho' not to be met with in any Part of my Book; or else, that they are spiteful Inferences, and invidious Comments, which others before you, without Justness or Necessity, had drawn from and made upon what I had innocently said. I find no Fault with you, Sir; for whilst a Person believes these Accusations against me to be true, ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... never suffered any one else to find fault with him in any way whatever. But he had not chosen that it should be so, and Lydia had reclaimed her heart and her pocket edition of the Language of Flowers, and now watched Percival and Miss Lisle with spiteful curiosity. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... the most revengeful and ill-minded little scoundrel on the face of the earth; if ever there was a devil in a human bein', there's one in that misshapen but sugary little vagabone. His father was bad enough when he was alive, and worse than he ought to be, may God forgive him now, but this spiteful skinflint, that's a curse to the poor of the country, as he is their hatred, what could tempt you to ax him to stand for ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton

... upon, He rested well content that all was well. Thence after tarrying for a space they rode, And fifty knights rode with them to the shores Of Severn, and they past to their own land. And there he kept the justice of the King So vigorously yet mildly, that all hearts Applauded, and the spiteful whisper died: And being ever foremost in the chase, And victor at the tilt and tournament, They called him the great Prince and man of men. But Enid, whom her ladies loved to call Enid the Fair, a grateful ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... "How would it look if I went and you didn't? Everybody knows papa's almost well, and they'd think it silly for us to give up the first real dance since last spring on that account; yet they're just spiteful enough, if I went and you stayed home, to call me a 'girl of no heart.' Besides," she added sweetly, "we ought to go to show Mrs. Villard we aren't hurt because Egerton takes so little notice of ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... I am discreet, and I always defend him against Anne, who is spiteful as a cat. She says monsieur is a Prussian spy and a fortune-hunter, and is simply preying upon madame. And she calls monsieur something still worse, which I would not like to repeat. It is a shame, for monsieur ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... quite harmless. But very soon I saw the reason of it and joined them heartily, for the monkeys, annoyed and wishing to pay us back in our own coin, began to tear the nuts from the trees and cast them at us with angry and spiteful gestures, so that after very little labor our sacks were filled with the fruit which we could not ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... it the more quietly, which have taken upon us to profess the Gospel of Christ, if we for the same cause be handled after the same sort; and if we, as our forefathers were long ago, be likewise at this day tormented, and baited with railings, with spiteful dealings, and with lies; and that for no desert of our own, but only because we teach and acknowledge ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... has been coming on some time. She's dragged her feet and she had a quick, almost spiteful way of walking, if one may call it that. She protested against people slouching round without animation enough to lift their feet. And some days she wouldn't come down to any meal. Well, she's a pretty old lady; we've always let her have ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas

... times. I'm not going to let you give me horses, or take you out of your way to-night. I'll go home by myself. Only I want you to promise me something. You won't think any more about that extra threepence, will you? Remember, you've been paid; and I won't allow you to be spiteful and do bad work for a little thing like that. You can be so big ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... that memorable night of his wife and heir's coming home. The young man stood listening in sullen anger, the red blood mounting to his very temples. His Cousin Inez had managed during the past two weeks to make his existence as thoroughly uncomfortable as a thoroughly jealous and spiteful woman can. He had flown at last to his aunt for comfort, and this ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming

... These scoundrels will make me one, whether I like or not; so forth I go. There will be few leavetakings. This brute of a dog is the only friend I have on earth; and I love her, because she has the true old, dogged, spiteful, cunning, obstinate Maccabee spirit in her—of which if we had a spark left in us just now, there would be no little Exodus; ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... to the Castle; and I think he was so dazed and scared like by the fire that it all went out of his memory. He doesn't suspect what I suspect, at any rate, or he'd have spoken of it to anybody or everybody; but he's dreadful spiteful against my lady, for he says if she'd have let him have a place at Brentwood or Chelmsford, this wouldn't have happened. So what I wanted to beg of you, sir, is not to let ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... to command the Belt to transform the magician into a Dove of Peace, but in her excitement she forgot to say more than "dove," and now Ugu was not a Dove of Peace by any means, but rather a spiteful Dove of War. His size made his sharp beak and claws very dangerous, but Dorothy was not afraid when he came darting toward her with his talons outstretched and ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own. She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her. Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony. Other eyes besides mine watched ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... state, but in the deep foundations of individual conviction. To be sure, here and there, there is a little assumption; but it is dramatic rather than substantial, and does not amount to much. Here and there breaks out an unjust prejudice or a spiteful calumny, but it shames the source more than the object, and soon dies away in the atmosphere of tolerance and investigation. It looks doubtful sometimes, but I verily believe that the real spirit, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... side of the altar are the drums, hollow trunks, whose upper end is carved to represent a human face with wide, grinning mouth, and deep, round and hollow eyes. Rammed in aslant, leaning in all directions, they stand like clumsy, malicious demons, spiteful and brutal, as if holding their bellies with rude, immoderate laughter at their own hugeness and the puniness of mankind, at his miserable humanity, compared to the solemn repose of the great tree. In front of these are figures cut roughly out of logs, short-legged, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... and that it was very good, as things turned out, to be free of him and his fate. No one can really be happy with such poison in the veins, and there can't possibly be deep-down, soul-satisfying enjoyment from revelling in another's misfortunes. Underneath my fury, when Milly said little veiled, spiteful things about Captain March, was pity for her, the kind of pity you have for an irritable invalid ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the pettiness of spiteful grudge-bearing against a fellow-mortal, let me say a word of the unholy restiveness with which we meet the disappointments which are the Father's discipline of His own. "All these things are against me!" is a cry that has struck upon His loving heart until Godlike patience is needed ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... I'll just have my chat out with you, and then I'll go. Come, tell us how you're getting on; wife and children quite well?" And with a spiteful gleam in his eyes, he added, showing his teeth in a mocking grin: "I've been meaning to pay you a call for ever so long, but I've not had the time, I'm always ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... its way to the front and the camp would be warm and light. The party would turn in and deep sleep would fall on a lot of tired hunters—for two or three hours. By which time some fellow near the middle was sure to throw his blanket off with a spiteful jerk and dash out of camp with, "Holly Moses! I can't stand ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... you, holy Jerome; I can stand a good deal, but I cannot stand thy Latin. Nay; give me the New Testament! 'Tis not the Greek of Xenophon; but 'tis Greek. And there be heathen sayings in it too. For St. Paul was not so spiteful against them as thou. When the heathen said a good thing that suited his matter, by Jupiter he just took it, and mixed it to all ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... sir, and if he bullies me afterwards for speaking I must tell all. Slegge's been jealous of both the new boys ever since they came. He's been as disagreeable and spiteful as could be, and forced us all to ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... gentleman, early misfortunes and an imprudent marriage had driven him to the mastership of the little country grammar school; and here the perpetual annoyance caused to his refined mind by the coarseness of clumsy or spiteful boys, had gradually unhinged his intellect. Often did he tell the boys "that it was an easier life by far to break stones by the roadside than to teach them;" and at last his eccentricities became too obvious to ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... than suffer myself to be scourged by the hands of ruffians, and my blood drawn like a slave. The captain and others, more cautious, advised me to make haste and conceal myself; for they said Mr. Read was a very spiteful man, and he would soon come on board with constables and take me. At first I refused this counsel, being determined to stand my ground; but at length, by the prevailing entreaties of the captain and Mr. Dixon, with whom he lodged, I went to Mr. Dixon's house, which was ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano

... and in that time we gained some knowledge of Dandy's character. (We named him after the black trooper.) He was fawningly, sneakingly, offensively affectionate—when he was hungry, which was nearly always; as ferocious and as spiteful as a tiger cat when his stomach was full; then, with a snarling yelp, he would put his tail beneath his legs and trot for'ard, turning his head and showing his teeth. Crawling under the barrel of the windlass he would lie there and go to sleep, only opening ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... a hand to spiteful chatter or to slander, and had not flirted with the best looking young man in the neighborhood, any more than she had with the officers who stayed at the chateau during the maneuver, or the neighbors, who came to see her parents. And some of them even old men, whom years of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... got to? It's still and black as a tomb. I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the trail was here— Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with quiet and gloom; Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and gobby and gray; Night that looks spiteful ugly—seems that I've lost ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... become estimable, most estimable." The smile with which Donna Tullia accompanied the statement was intended to be fine, but was only spiteful. Maria Consuelo, who saw everything with her sleepy glance, ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... that was a trying season! In less than three minutes the sidewalk was swarming with dirty-faced children. I might as well have been in a wasps' nest. The spiteful imps buzzed around me so—little girls, with lank hair falling over their eyes; lazy boys, swaggering like drunken men, and swearing like troopers; and a woman—the boy who smoked called her mother—who ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... They would not undo the queer things they had done to the house. They were spiteful and mean, and not to be trusted. The house remained without trees and vines, a scowling, ugly thing. The garden had no shrubs; the seeded grass was matted down and yellow, like hay, and there were bald places where the gray ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott

... like to see you make a friend of Mrs Vane's Cupid!" exclaimed Rhoda, laughing. "He is the most spiteful little brute I ever set eyes on. He thinks his teeth were made to bite everybody, and his tail ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... up the zinc bar, and the vigorous and spiteful way in which she did this betrayed the fact that she was in bad temper. She was reserving an extra force of pent-up wrath against the moment when that "lazy little beast Fouchette" should put in ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... neighborhood, and then, as soon as she had sown her customers into that linen cloth from which they would emerge no more, she went and took up her iron to smooth the linen of the living. Wrinkled like a last year's apple, spiteful, envious, avaricious with a phenomenal avarice, bent double, as if she had been broken in half across the loins, by the constant movement of the iron over the linen, one might have said that she had a kind of monstrous and cynical affection for a death struggle. She never spoke of anything ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... swimming; but I staggered to the washing-stand, and obtained some water. It was half-an-hour before I could recall my astonished senses, and then everything appeared as clear to me as if it had been revealed. Monsieur de G—'s double attentions; his spiteful look at my refusal; his occupying himself wholly with Madame d'Albret after I refused him; her wishing to get rid of me, by sending me to England with Madame Bathurst, and her subsequent false and evasive conduct. Monsieur de G—had had his revenge, and gained his point at the ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... sight of cats almost makes me believe in witchcraft, in spite of myself. I can believe anything about a cat. She is heartless and mercenary. Her name has become the synonym of everything that is mean, spiteful, and vicious. "An old cat" is the unkindest thing you can ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... he can't vote, though he ain't goin' for my man," she remarked. "But don't it seem like a judgment on him for bein' so narked about the women bein' set free? That's always the way in life. If you are spiteful about anythink it always comes back ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... the police, and that though she knew herself to be absolutely innocent of any wrong-doing. She felt sure that the fact that she was German would cause suspicion. The worst would be believed of her. She remembered with dismay the letter some wicked, spiteful person had written to her mistress—and then, with infinite comfort, she suddenly remembered that this same dear mistress was only a little over two miles off. She, Anna, would not wish to disturb her on her wedding day, but if very hard ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... on my painful perch—now looking down at the spiteful creatures beneath—now bending my eyes across the great corn-field, in hopes of seeing some one. At times the idea crossed my mind, that even upon the morrow I ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... shaking his head, 'but these old people—there's no trusting them, Fred. There's an aunt of mind down in Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was eight years old, and hasn't kept her word yet. They're so aggravating, so unprincipled, so spiteful—unless there's apoplexy in the family, Fred, you can't calculate upon 'em, and even then they deceive you ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... deal of difficulty in finding him. It seems that a great strife had arisen between Nanahboozhoo and some of the underground Muche Munedoos—bad spirits, sometimes called the Ana-mak-quin—who had determined to kill Nokomis, the grandmother of Nanahboozhoo, because of their spiteful hatred of Nanahboozhoo, whom they knew they could not kill because he had ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... unequally matched: Elias was angry, Cornelis and Sybrandt spiteful; but Gerard, having a larger and more cultivated mind, saw both sides where they saw but one, and had fits of irresolution, and was not wroth, but unhappy. He was lonely, too, in this struggle. He could open his heart to no one. Margaret was a high-spirited ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... spiteful little toad!" thought Malcolm, who cared nothing for fluffy hair and curling eyelashes if a shrewish ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole! But it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless. Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colors,—or rather, how colorless and vapid the whole fry,—when he putteth forth his long-promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... village showed signs of the passage and finally there was proof ahead that Pilar had stopped to give battle. He had reached his vantage ground. Connell and his men drew back and waited. Nightfall came and with it the spiteful crack of the Mauser rifle. A brawny trooper toppled over with a great hole in his head. Pilar's pickets could see like cats in the night. The native scout reported that the big village of Concepcion was not far ahead; Pilar's men ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... fire, and to reinforce that of the flag-officer. The upper batteries, like all the others, were silent while the ships lay in front of them; but as soon as the Hartford and Iroquois moved up they returned to their guns, and followed the rear of the fleet with a spiteful fire till out ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... grade. The little mountain school which she had attended in Arizona, had not been of the best. Her friendship for her chums made up to her for the fact that she was taller than any other girl in the class and for that reason had to bear many taunts from spiteful and thoughtless schoolmates. Kit became a favorite with most of the class, her quaint sayings amused them. But Edith Whalen took a violent dislike to her, as she was apt to do when she saw another ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm

... fond of that vase, with all those pretty china figures round it. It was stupid of that tall one to break its head in the fall. It is simply because it doesn't feel anything. If it could feel as I do, it would have taken more care—- spiteful thing!' ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... she whispered confidingly, and stroked the knight's cheeks with her little soft hands. He turned away from the frightful thoughts that still lurked in the recesses of his soul, and were persuading him that he had been married to a fairy, or some spiteful and mischievous being of the spirit-world. Only the single question, and that almost unawares, ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... that there are many who will contend that I have some selfish or spiteful motive in writing thus strongly in condemnation of the waltz. Many will doubtless claim that the waltz is very moral and healthful, is indulged in by the best people of every land, seemingly tolerated ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner

... reputation for hospitality. At his door was seen the mayor with his wide chestnut-coloured droshky and pair—an exceptionally bulky man, who seemed as though cut out of material that had been laid by for a long time. The other officials, too, used to drive to his receptions: the attorney, a yellowish, spiteful creature; the land surveyor, a wit—of German extraction, with a Tartar face; the inspector of means of communication—a soft soul, who sang songs, but a scandalmonger; a former marshal of the district—a gentleman with dyed hair, crumpled shirt front, and tight trousers, and that ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Gee! What would you expect?" Again his mouth began to twitch a little. "And I thought it was her fault—'most all of the first year," he confessed delightedly. "And then, all of a sudden," he continued eagerly, "all of a sudden, one day, more mischievous-spiteful than anything else, I says to her, 'We don't seem to be getting on so very well, do we?' And she shakes her head kind of slow. 'No, we don't!' she says.—'Maybe you think I don't treat you quite right?' I quizzed, just ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... say)—the rather that Clotilde's mother is said to have been "thrown into the Rhone with a stone round her neck." The author of the introduction to 'Bourgogne' in the 'Histoire des Villes' is so eager to get his little spiteful snarl at anything like religion anywhere, that he entirely forgets the existence of the first queen of France,—never names her, nor, as such, the place of her birth,—but contributes only to the knowledge of the young student this beneficial quota, that Gondeband, "plus ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... through an atmosphere and scenery of steadily gathering menace; the "starved ignoble" Nature, "peevish and dejected" among her scrub of thistle and dock, grows malignant; to the barren waste succeed the spiteful little river with its drenched despairing willows, the blood-trampled mire and wrecked torture-engine, the poisonous herbage and palsied oak, and finally the mountains, ignoble as the plain—"mere ugly heights and heaps," ranged round the deadly den of the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... is supperless! evidently Kearney is enjoying himself. Ah, youth, youth! I wish I could remember some of the spiteful things that are said of you—not but on the whole, I take it, you have the right end of the stick. Is it possible there is nothing to eat in this inhospitable mansion?' He arose and opened a sort of cupboard ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... and an autumn had rolled on Since the catastrophe that orphaned Linda. Midwinter with its whirling snow had come, And, shivering through the snow-encumbered streets Of the great city, men and women went, Stooping their heads to thwart the spiteful wind. The sleigh-bells rang, boys hooted, and policemen Told each importunate beggar to move on. In a side street where Fashion late had dwelt, But which the up-town movement now had left A street for journeymen and small mechanics, Dress-makers, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... his hair, because it never grows, is a wig. Tom Tufto, with whose father he quarrelled ever so many years ago, declares that Mademoiselle de Jaisey, of the French theatre, pulled his grandpapa's hair off in the green-room; but Tom is notoriously spiteful and jealous; and the General's wig has nothing to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Are void of all deceit; They never know how spiteful It is to kneel and wait On favorite, presumptuous, Whose ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... conciliate the wicked old creature. Of course, neither my father nor mother paid her the least attention, or made her presents; and no one spoke a word to her, at which she flew into a great rage, and went away shaking her wand, and mumbling in a spiteful manner, 'Well, good people, you are all mighty silent now, but before long you shall have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... grain field rose in little spurts as the bullets struck, and the rattle of the spiteful machine-gun made a chorus with the snapping and popping of the American rifles. For Jimmy and the others fired from the hip as ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... cape, and dress of walking length, I was completely demoralized in appearance five minutes later on reaching the mess-house. With a twisting motion which was so sudden as to totally surprise me, my dress was wound around my feet, my cape was flung as if by spiteful hands entirely over my head, causing me to step in my confusion from the plank walk; while my hat was perched sidewise anywhere above or on my shoulder. One unfortunate woman wearing an overskirt covering a striped cambric sham, was seen ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... security as though they were invisible. It is not so much that they are not afraid as that they grow into a feeling that the dreadful din, the rattle and bang and dirt and blood, the anguish of men and horses, the distorted and ghastly deaths, will pass them by. The whine of bullets, and the spiteful snarl of exploding shells seems as much an incident as the tin rainfall and the wooden thunder on ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... had been kind to him (such as his publisher, Mr. John Murray for instance) to show that no one could be more loyal or more grateful than he who has been depicted as the incarnation of all that is spiteful, fussy, and mean. There is no need for the world to be told here that the author of "Lavengro" is a delightful writer, and one who is more sure than most authors of his time to win that little span of life which writing ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... drizzling rain, each packing a five-gallon can of gasoline and some provisions, we set out for the Ferry; and it was a sorry, bedraggled trio that limped up to camp eight hours later. We did little more than creep the last five miles. And all for a spiteful little engine that might ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... men shall witness—for thy word is naught; And for thy spiteful answer to thy friends, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... to Dawes Road to find the letter, but the letter was undiscoverable; with the spiteful waywardness which often characterizes such letters, it had disappeared. So Henry thought it would be as well to leave the incident alone. Their cheery politeness to each other when they chanced to meet was affecting ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... pang of uneasiness as she went back to her seat. Absalom's father was very influential and, as all the township knew, very spiteful. He could send Miss Margaret away, and he would do it, if she offended his only child, Absalom. Tillie thought she could not bear it at all if Miss Margaret were sent away. Poor Miss Margaret did not seem to realize her own danger. Tillie felt tempted ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... Eveena, "and I watched your face while Enva spoke. How did you like her doctrine? Of course you may do as you please—if you can please. You may silence discontent, you may suppress spiteful innuendos and even sulky looks, you may put down mutiny, by sheer terror. Can you? You may command me to go with you whenever you go out; you may take the same means to make me complain of unkindness as to make them conceal it; you may act like one of our own people, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... lived, managed one day to get wedged in a drain, and there it would eventually have died unseen if a passing labourer had not seen its plight and set it at liberty. Down to the day of its death the bird, though nowise relinquishing its spiteful attitude towards others, followed its rustic benefactor about the place like ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... his life in looking at his face in the glass, and in plotting all sorts of spiteful things against women with the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... beggar," thought Henri; while Jules, now released, save that one of the German officers still gripped him by the sleeve, stood close to his comrade. "Nasty little beggar! Spiteful little rat! And somehow we seem to have met before, for the voice rings in a familiar way. But, pooh! it's not possible, or, rather, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... Bessie went her way Unmindful of the spiteful cronies, And drove her buggy every day Behind a dashing pair of ponies. Her flower-like face so bright she bore I hoped that time might never wilt her. The way she tripped across the floor Was ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... a portal worthy of description. There is the dome of Saint Anne's Chapel with a huge statue of the Patron, and the lantern of the central dome ending in a pointed roof; but each addition to the exterior seems only an ignorant or a spiteful accentuation of ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... Elizabeth's former complaints of his behaviour, proceeded to treat the Gardiner party with the greatest civility, and even cordiality. He introduced his sister to them, asked them to dinner, invited Mr. Gardiner to fish at Pemberley as often as he chose, and, in answer to a spiteful remark of Miss Bingley's to the effect that he had thought Elizabeth pretty at one time, made the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... [1] Where art thou, Grizzle? where are now thy glories? Where are the drums that waken thee to honour? Greatness is a laced coat from Monmouth-street, Which fortune lends us for a day to wear, To-morrow puts it on another's back. The spiteful sun but yesterday survey'd His rival high as Saint Paul's cupola; Now may he see me ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... next farm so miserable that they were obliged to sell out, and leave the place. The farm passed through many hands, and at last became vacant, for no one could stay on it more than a few months; they were so worried and annoyed by this spiteful old man, who, upon the slightest occasion, threw down their fences and injured their cattle. In short, the poor people began to suspect that he was the devil himself, sent among them as a punishment ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... precipice; in the interior, the liberal and seditious desires which the senseless reforms of the Emperor Joseph have stirred up, are still prevalent, and the people only submit with reluctance and with spiteful feelings to the reforms which your excellency has inaugurated with a view to the best interests of Austria. Abroad, on the other hand, the blood-stained French Republic incites the malecontents to imitate its own infamies; they would like ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... you will. I 'll fetch this friend, and give him to your mercy; Nay, he shall die, if you will take him from me; For your repose, I'll quit my heart's best jewel; But would not have him torn away by villains, And spiteful villainy. ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... vessel was Captain Danvers, who had been ordered to report for service in St. Louis, and was on his way thither. Arlington observed the fine-looking young officer with the petulant dislike of foiled envy. So spiteful was his mood that he wished a pretext for saying or doing something offensive to his handsome rival. Such a pretext was afforded. A veteran major who had accompanied Danvers to the boat, to bid ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... old stuff!" comes back Mabel spiteful. "How do you know so much what's good for us? You and your nutty dreams about cows and flower gardens and hens! I'd rather go back to Second avenue and frisk another quick-lunch job. Hand us a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford



Words linked to "Spiteful" :   malicious



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