"Villainous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sunshine of pleasant companionship, as for the books themselves. They seem to have run through many editions, and to have received no little encouragement. Morality and sensation alternate in her pages. Monsters abound there. They hire young men to act base parts, to hold villainous conversations which the husbands are intended to overhear. They plot and scheme to ruin the fair fame and domestic happiness of the charming heroines, but they are justly punished, and their plots are defeated. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... days Ali received these forced benevolences from all parts. He sat, covered with rags, on a shabby palm-leaf mat placed at the outer gate of his ruined palace, holding in his left hand a villainous pipe of the kind used by the lowest people, and in his right an old red cap, which he extended for the donations of the passers-by. Behind stood a Jew from Janina, charged with the office of testing each piece of gold and valuing jewels which were offered instead ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... where dead Gripeall, the miser, reposes, What a villainous odor invades all our noses! It can't be his BODY alone—in the hole They have certainly ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... not be answered, that they share in them only in so far as they please themselves, and conceive themselves to be good? for certainly, they are not either really, or even apparently, found in any one of those who are very depraved and villainous; we may almost say not even in those who are bad men at all: for they are at variance with themselves and lust after different things from those which in cool reason they wish for, just as men who ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... dear," began the Irish girl, when they found themselves five minutes later being rolled away in one of the villainous Zurich cabs, "begin away back in the early days of our sad separation and tell me everything that has happened ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... superior in character as in years, and that he was fiercely embittered against myself and his mother through no fault of mine: that he abandoned his study of the liberal arts and cast off all restraint, and—thanks to the education afforded him by this villainous accusation—is more likely to resemble his uncle Aemilianus than ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... middle of the Empire. There are rivers and jungles and tigers and snakes—quite a lot of snakes; a decent little capital and a hill-station, healthy enough though not very high. The natives are exactly like monkeys. I learnt to speak their lingo one winter from a villainous bearer I had when some of us were stationed there. There is a small native garrison in cantonments at the capital. There is also a fort and a race-course. I won the Great Mogul's Cup there—a memorable occasion. My mount was a wall-eyed ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... great labor in their behalf. For they themselves are given much to lying, theft, and drunkenness, vain babbling, and profane dancing and singing; and are still, as S. Gildas reports of them, 'more careful to shroud their villainous faces in bushy hair, than decently to cover their bodies; while their land (by reason of the tyranny of their chieftains, and the continual wars and plunderings among their tribes, which leave them weak ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... Huntingdon," 1646, 24mo.) which gives us all the casuistry applicable to witchcraft. We can almost forgive Gaule's fundamental errors on the general question, for the courage and spirit with which he battled with the villainous witchfinder, Hopkins, who wanted sorely to make an example of him, to the terror of all gainsayers of the sovereign power of this examiner-general of witches. Gaule proved himself to be an overmatch for the itinerating inquisitor, and so effectually attacked, battled ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... remembered that if nocturnal meditations in the Colosseum are recommended by the poets, they are deprecated by the doctors. The historic atmosphere was there, certainly; but the historic atmosphere, scientifically considered, was no better than a villainous miasma. Winterbourne walked to the middle of the arena, to take a more general glance, intending thereafter to make a hasty retreat. The great cross in the center was covered with shadow; it was only as he drew near ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... Franklin. "Let him stay and see the will. It may interest him to know that all his villainous ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... him), and was put upon his trial for the offence. Subsequently he drifted on to the streets, where he spent eight years. During all this time his object was to be rid of life, the methods he adopted being to make himself drunk with methylated spirits, or any other villainous and fiery liquor, and when that failed, to sleep at night in wet grass or ditches. Once he was picked up suffering from inflammation of the lungs and carried to an infirmary, where he lay senseless for three days. The end of it was that a Salvation ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... admirable points are unappreciated. For one thing, it goes down, down, down a very steep incline; which is a spirited thing for a street to do, I think. And it is very narrow, at the beginning, with sidewalks that hug the walls, and is always in shadow, so that it has a fine, wild, villainous look. Horses climbing it always come with a plunge and a grinding of sparks. And the roar from the cobble stones is deafening, very stimulating to the imagination. The atmosphere is one of typefounders, leather, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... woman returned just after they had gone away, and seeing the sad disaster, she began to act as if she were beside herself, crying, "Ay, let him stretch out his arm and go about boasting how he has broken this pot! The villainous rascal who has sown my beans out of season. If he had no compassion for my misery, he should have had some regard for his own interest; for I pray Heaven, on my bare knees and from the bottom of my soul, that he may fall in love with the daughter of some ogress, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... gentler means. We can dispense with fulminating grains While we have eyes with which to flash our rage! We can dispense with villainous saltpetre While we have tongues with which to blow them up! We can dispense, in short, with all the arts That brutalize the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... heart failed him now. English sailors would do what could be done by man, but they could not fight with famine. 'Awake, Madam,' he wrote to the Queen, 'awake, for the love of Christ, and see the villainous treasons round about you.' He goaded her into ordering supplies for one more month, but this was to be positively the last. The victuallers inquired if they should make further preparations. She answered peremptorily, 'No'; and again the weeks ran on. The ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... have arrived in Bagdad—and it is best that you travel over land and sea—if you be serious in your zest, you will not be satisfied, but will journey a thousand miles more at the very least, in whatever direction is steepest. And you will turn the flanks of seven mountains, with seven villainous peaks thereon. For the very number of them will put a spell on you. And you will cross running water, that you leave no scent for the world behind. Such journey would be the soul of truantry and you should set out upon the road every spring when the ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... that Chinese ideas, culture and learning had long been domesticated in Japan. The "Nihongi" gives dates of events supposed to have happened fifteen hundred years before, with an accuracy which may be called villainous; while the "Kojiki" states that Wani, a Korean teacher, brought the "Thousand Character Classic" to Japan in A.D. 285, though that famous Chinese book was not composed until the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... men, a yet warm group Of murder'd women, who had found their way To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop And shudder;—while, as beautiful as May, A female child of ten years tried to stoop And hide her little palpitating breast Amidst the bodies lull'd in bloody rest. Two villainous Cossacques pursued the child With flashing eyes, and weapons. * * * Don Juan raised his little captive from The heap, a moment more had ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... villainous sandal between your shoulders, as did I, you would know how little I have a ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... duly attended to bid, and Tom became the owner of two lots of Diggs's things:—Lot 1, price one-and-threepence, consisting (as the auctioneer remarked) of a "valuable assortment of old metals," in the shape of a mouse-trap, a cheese-toaster without a handle, and a saucepan: Lot 2, of a villainous dirty table-cloth and green-baize curtain; while East, for one-and-sixpence, purchased a leather paper-case, with a lock but no key, once handsome, but now much the worse for wear. But they had still the point to settle of how to get Diggs to take the things without hurting his ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... to sit in the garden on a summer evening at Barnes, and slip down the lawn to the boat-house, that we might launch the dear old pater's wherry, and have a moonlight trip, with soft singing of part songs, to which I know I growled a villainous bass. Dear pater, had he lived I might have stayed in the old country, and tried to keep up the old place; but I fear I should have disappointed him, and so—well, all may ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... here, however, that Jack Belllounds, rough and villainous as he is, is the kind of cow-puncher who says to his father: "I still love you, dad, despite the cruel thing you did to me." No cow-puncher who says "despite" can be entirely bad. Neither can he be ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... poor Calthorp had proffered his cab for her to drive to Jericho, and welcome, she drags me into all sorts of streets of villainous savours, that he might not catch ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... back to reality, and his face hardened. Even then she was on the wild coast of Malaita, and at Poonga-Poonga, of all villainous and dangerous portions the worst, peopled with a teeming population of head- hunters, robbers, and murderers. For the instant he entertained the rash thought of calling his boat's-crew and starting immediately in a whale- ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... once, all but Dr. Livesey's; he went on as before, speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous, low oath: "Silence, there, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the light of day and the movement of the street, I saw the figure of a man, stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slight girlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom of villainous slums, of misery, of wretchedness, of a starved and degraded existence. It was a relief that I could see only their shabby hopeless backs. He was an awful ghost. But indeed to call him a ghost was only a refinement of polite speech, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... to Alvarado as villainous and terrible-looking a body of men as he had ever seen. The first glance convinced him that they were not Spanish brigands or robbers. He was too young to have had dealings with the buccaneers of the past generation, but he realized that if any such ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... think, (members of the) Boule, that it was possible, if one wished, to keep quiet, and not to be troubled with lawsuits and vexatious business; but I have now fallen in with such unlooked-for charges and such villainous accusers that, were it possible, it seems to me even unborn generations must fear for what is before them. For through this sort of men those who have done no wrong are in as great danger as those who have committed the greatest crimes. 2. The trial is the more perplexing to me, as I was first charged ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... name for the cheapest and most villainous of Cape brandies, has come to signify alcoholic drinks in general to men of many nations dwelling under the subtropical South African sun. Thus, apple-brandy, and peach liqueur, "Old Squareface," in the squat, four-sided bottles beloved no ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a man," says the old gent, "you may hand over that villainous stuff! Bah!" and he takes ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... carried no light, nor did they speak to each other, except in hoarse whispers. In single file they made their way, the prisoner between them, weary, footsore and now desperate in the full realisation of his position. Being gagged, he could make no appeal to the one man who might befriend him—his villainous countryman. It occurred to him—grim thought—that the astute Marlanx had considered that very probability, and had made it impossible for him to resort to the cupidity ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... that whisky when it left Wisconsin was only half whisky; for there are men in the whisky-making States who make it a business to take whisky direct from the distillery, add to it an equal quantity of water, and then bring it up to a bead and the power of intoxication, by mixing in a variety of the villainous drugs and deadly poisons enumerated in this chapter. The annual loss of strength, health, and life caused by the adulteration of liquor is truly appalling. Those who have not examined the subject can form ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... but one door heavily grated with wooden bars, they present both within and without the grimmest aspect. As public edifices they conspicuously stand upon the hot and dusty Plaza, offering to view, through the gratings, their villainous and hopeless inmates, burrowing in all sorts of tragic squalor. And here, for a long time, Oberlus was seen; the central figure of a mongrel and assassin band; a creature whom it is religion to detest, since it is philanthropy ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... I was not more confounded at my first seeing him at Meudon than he was at seeing Amy. He started and turned pale as death. Amy believed if he had seen her at first, in any convenient place for so villainous a purpose, he would ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... appearance, and indeed I needed it, for I was caked with mud up to my knees and soaking wet up to my waist. For the first time in my life I was grieved to the bone at the inadequacy of my wardrobe, and even when I had donned my Sunday best my appearance was undoubtedly villainous from the London point of view. I feathered myself as finely as my resources permitted, but it was a homely, uncouth yeoman that raced downstairs and awaited her coming. I drew the curtains, lit the candles, kicked the fire into a blaze, and built it ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to her more villainous than his desertion. His ignorance of her true self, the insolence and contempt that prompted such a proposal, the view of her—these thoughts lashed her into fury. She longed for some one to help her against him and treat him ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Armada,' and is therefore fair game. So, too, with the four butts of sack of one Artson, and the sugar and mace said to be taken out of a Hamburg vessel, their capture by Raleigh's factors is comfortably excused on the ground that these acts were only reprisals against the villainous Spaniard. It was well that these more or less commercial undertakings should be successful, for it became more and more plain to Raleigh that the most grandiose of all his enterprises, his determined effort to colonise Virginia, could but be a drain upon his fortune. After Captain ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Portrait du Juif ambulant, might all be bought at his stall, adorned with blue and red wood-cuts. Poor Damon cut but a sorry figure in this goodly company; for though adorned with a crook secundum artem, he looked more rawboned and ugly than Holofernes, and more villainous than the wandering Jew: fully justifying the scorn with which the stiff-skirted Henriette seemed to treat him. It is almost misplaced however to enumerate such follies in a place, which on a fine day presents ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... I predict—" I began, when my villainous pun was arrested in mid-utterance by the voice of Captain Tolliver, suddenly becoming the culminating ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... replied I; "she might think it an insult." "An insult, eh? Oh, if she's so proud as all that comes to I'd better stay away altogether; I shall be safe to put my foot into it there, a good deal faster than I have into these villainous boots—that's it, Sampson, another pull such as that and the deed's done," added Lawless, patting the human Boots ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... spectators seemed to be of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously "passed in," was not blind to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother "Baboushka;" and their dress was not much better. More than one dandy of the gutter nursed the head of a club called significantly the "lawbreaker's canes of crime," with a distant air ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... was brought to Madame Binat's and filled his nostrils with the well-remembered smell of the East, that runs without a change from the Canal head to Hong-Kong, and his mouth with the villainous Lingua Franca of the Levant. The heat smote him between the shoulder-blades with the buffet of an old friend, his feet slipped on the sand, and his coat-sleeve was warm as new-baked bread when he ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... were cast out hence, cast off, discrowned, Abject, ungirt of all that guards me round, Naked. What villainous madness, knave and king, Is this that puts upon thy babbling ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... upon the polished table, after draining it to the bottom. "I would like to go through that mob again! and I would pull an oar in the galleys of Marseilles rather than be questioned with that air of authority by a botanizing quack like La Galissoniere! Such villainous questions as he asked me about the state of the royal magazines! La Galissoniere had more the air of a judge cross-examining a culprit than of a Governor asking ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Orlygsson fling away the strenuous work of ten years and a promising career as a great violinist to return to a pastoral life on his father's Iceland estates, the step seems neither strange nor unnatural. So with the perfectly villainous Sera Ketill, who at the culmination of unparalleled infamies suddenly repents and becomes the far-wandering and well-beloved Guest, we do not feel anything strained in the author's assumption that in Iceland, at any rate, such things easily happen. Guest the One-Eyed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... asked his attention to the evidence that he arrayed to prove that such a fatal blow was being struck, and to the facts which he brought forward in support of that charge,—being identical with the one which he thinks so villainous in me. He pointed it, not at a newspaper editor merely, but at the President and his Cabinet and the members of Congress advocating the Lecompton Constitution and those framing that instrument. I must again be permitted to remind him that although ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... with fictitious possibilities, he does not seem (to me) to know how to deal with it. There is one—of the extremest melodramatic character and opportunities—where, in a hut perched on the side of a Pyrenean gorge or canon, Richelieu's villainous tool, the magistrate Laubardemont; his mad niece, the former Ursuline Abbess, who has helped to ruin Urbain Grandier; his outcast son Jacques, who has turned Spanish officer and general bravo; and a smuggler ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... I think, the hardest thing I had to bear that day. She was a patient, gentle heifer, and I could not bear to think of seeing her butchered by a lot of villainous savages with less intelligence than she had herself. If I had had a gun or any fit weapon, I verily believe that I should have rushed out and defended her. But just before they began, one of their number came out of Fitzsimmons's store and called to them, and they all trotted over. The ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... not go to see her, and then she'll take the other man." He was also very hungry. That worm Mrs. Elliot would be through her lunch by now. Trying his braces round him, and tearing up those old wet documents, he stepped forth to make money. A villainous young brute he looked: his clothes were dirty, and he had lost the spring of the morning. Touching the walls, frowning, talking to himself at times, he slouched disconsolately northwards; no wonder that some tawdry girls screamed at him, or that matrons averted their eyes as they hurried ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... we heard that the Devil appeared in the shape of a Minister, in the copper mines of Sweden, and attempted the same villainous apery.'[588] The Scotch witches, like the Swedish, performed the rite after the manner of ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... you come from? And where are you are going? And how did you come to be out of grub?" asked Connie, when 'Merican Joe had lighted a villainous looking ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... this suggestion. Was it possible that Jackson could have done him this bad turn after his having aided him to make his escape! It would be a villainous trick; but then he had always thought him capable of villainous tricks, and it was only the fact that they were thrown together in prison that had induced him to make up his quarrel with him; but though Jackson had accepted ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... the House of Lords alone. He found a number of men gathered before a paper pasted on a pillar of the veranda. Hearing his own name, he came nearer. A ranch man was reading aloud an article from a newspaper printed two hundred miles away. The article was headed, "A Villainous Plunderer." It had been written by someone at Guidon Hill. All that was discreditable in Pierre's life it set forth with rude clearness; he was credited with nothing pardonable. In the crowd there were mutterings unmistakable to Pierre. He suddenly came among them, caught ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we have overrated the pleasures of the highwayman's existence, they shall hear what "the right villainous" Jack Hall, a celebrated tobyman of his day, has got to say on the subject. "His life—the highwayman's—has, generally, the most mirth and the least care in it of any man's breathing, and all he deals for is ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... twenty-four hours, ordering him to select the best materials of his command, to start at once, ford the Little Tennessee, and push into Knoxville at whatever cost of life and horse-flesh. Major Audenried was ordered to go along. The distance to be traveled was about forty miles, and the roads villainous. Before day they were off, and at daylight the Fifteenth Corps was turned from Philadelphia for the Little Tennessee at Morgantown, where my maps represented the river as being very shallow; but it was found too deep for fording, and the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... what Sir Edmund said, but believe me, Lady Rose, you have neither of you anything to go upon. You think it impossible, but you don't either of you see the immense force of the temptation. Some crimes may need a villainous nature. This, if you could see it truly, only needs one that is human under temptation, ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... said in alarm. "They're such a villainous-looking lot—so dirty—and they've got so little clothing on. I wouldn't sleep a wink near them. Look at that awful old squaw with only one eye. They'd steal everything we've got left, Kate. Remember the ham—oh, pray remember the fate ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... incestuous murderer whom the Frolliere chronicler, enthusiastic like Matarazzo, admires, for "his most beautiful person, his benign and amiable manner and lordly bearing," it is certainly not the elaborately villainous Francesco Cenci of Shelley, boasting like another Satan of his enormous wickedness, exhausting in his picture of himself the rhetoric of horror, committing his final enormity merely to complete the crown of atrocities in ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... pity! It was a villainous wrong," said Mr. Eldredge. "And so, it may be, some ancient line, in the old country, is defrauded of its rights for want of what might have been obtained from this Yankee, whose democracy has demoralized them ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me half-a-dozen sour and shrivelled oranges, utterly worthless, for which he asks the outrageous sum of three kerans; a second villainous-looking specimen worries me continuously to leave the caravanserai and go with him somewhere. I ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... her mite to the fund which purchased spring flowers—hothouse-grown, for this April was a villainous prolongation of winter—with which to strew the approach to the station and fill the reserve ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... present position, would compel a shiver of apprehension. A chief such as he, at the head of forces matched to his ferocious desires, would have changed the history of the Upper Missouri. As it was, he spent most of his villainous instincts for his own private amusement,—occasionally slaughtering one of his warriors who had given him displeasure, or butchering a couple of his wives whose society had grown irksome; and between times he leered with his solitary evil eye upon the traders, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... tried to hold services in the little old deserted schoolhouse, and found it, much to our surprise, packed with the inhabitants of Sodom; a more villainous looking crowd I never saw not even in darkest New York. Beetle-browed, mop-haired men, whose faces, if tapped, would apparently give forth as much fire-water ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... best, or cheerfulest, in such forgotten works as the Book of Ballads and The Rose and the Ring. The latter is a kind of fairy story, with a poor little good princess, a rich little bad princess, a witch of a godmother, and such villainous characters as Hedzoff and Gruffanuff. It was written for some children whom Thackeray loved, and is almost the only book of his which leaves the impression that the author found any real pleasure ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the end of the brigands' adventure! The Planetara's last voyage! How small and futile are human struggles! Miko's daring enterprise—so villainous, inhuman—brought all in a few moments to this silent tragedy. The Planetara had fallen thirty thousand miles. But why? What had happened to Hahn? And where was Coniston, down ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... corporations allied with the ring, and whose proprietor is promised a commissionership by the governor who is backing the ring, will notify its readers that the selfish office-seekers, who had contested in the primaries, have received a stinging rebuke at the hands of the voters, and their villainous attempts to destroy the party, which had so unselfishly devoted itself to the interests of the community, have fallen ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... are an old fool; you knew perfectly well that I never permit these villainous black scoundrels to come near my premises; and yet you encourage this fellow to the place, and allow him to purloin my property through your want of attention. I would not care a snuff, were it not that I have taken considerable pains to keep them aloof: and I know very well that if they ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... villainous writer, the honourable gentleman said, was struck at him. He was a member of the Committee on Military Affairs, and he must reply ere the foul stain was permitted to tarnish his name. He came from a sunny land where all the women were beautiful and all the men brave, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... a herd of kongoni standing quite near, watching me with curious interest, but without fear. Perhaps I was intent upon something else and hardly noticed them. Suddenly a villainous thought might enter my head, such as "That big kongoni has enormous horns," and instantly the herd would prick up their ears, run a few steps, and then turn to verify their suspicions. Then, if the villainous thought still lurked in my brain, they would sneeze ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... British Labour Party and the daily messages of fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction—that when the "Black and Tans" were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, I venture to say, horrify every honest man in the Empire. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... son of the one was to marry the older daughter of the other, and the younger son the younger daughter. When Leah grew to maidenhood, and inquired about her future husband, all her tidings spoke of his villainous character, and she wept over her fate until her eyelashes dropped from their lids. But Rachel grew more and more beautiful day by day, for all who spoke of Jacob praised and extolled him, and "good tidings make ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... building of the new establishment, he none the less sneered and jeered at it, exasperated as he was at having been in the wrong. He had, in fact, been beaten for the second time. Not only did the prodigious crops of Chantebled disprove his theory of the bankruptcy of the earth, that villainous earth in which, like an obstinate peasant weary of toil and eager for speedy fortune, he asserted nothing more would grow; but now that mill of his, which he had so disdained, was born as it were afresh, growing to a gigantic size, and becoming in his son-in-law's hands an instrument ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... what villainous countries are these of the North!" said a woman's voice, trembling. "Ah, the duchy of Mantua! would I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hung directly opposite the door, favoring me, as I entered, with a disconcerting smirk; it needed no great stretch of fancy to credit him with cherishing some secret and villainous joke. Beneath it sat my grandfather, with his pipe, in the same place and attitude as I remembered him for upward of twenty years, but so spectral a likeness of himself that the sight of him shocked me like a blow. He had wasted to a mere parchment envelop of bones, and the eyes ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... withdraw at once. He must come in to see me often and keep me well informed; but he must not expect me to tell him about my plans, any further than I should see fit. I should try to show Pattmore's villainous character to Annie, and if I could gather sufficient evidence that he had poisoned his wife, I should bring him to justice. I then told the Captain that he ought to have a quarrel with Annie, at the end of which he should burn his will in her presence, ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... &c. (killing) 361; destructive &c. (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c. 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; dire; rank, peccant, foul, fulsome; rotten, rotten at the core. vile, base, villainous; mean &c. (paltry) 643; injured &c. deteriorated &c. 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par &c. (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c. (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... get into our regimental lines, and in some mysterious way are so disposed of that their masters never hear of them again. It is possible the two saw-bones, who officiate at the hospital, dissect, or desiccate, or boil them in the interest of science, or in the manufacture of the villainous compounds with which they dose us when ill. At any rate, we know that many of these sable creatures, who joined us at Bowling Green and on the road to Nashville, can not now be found. Their masters, following the regiment, made complaint to General Buell, and, as we ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... done to a thing like you?" Weston continued. "Your record is well known, not only here but all along the coast. No innocent woman or girl is safe when you are around, and you are a menace to any community. You leave the marks of your filthy trail wherever you go. And you are not alone in your villainous deeds, for there are others just like you, who defy the laws of God and man. So far you have escaped, but now you shall pay for your vile and cowardly acts. It would be a sin to allow a creature like you to remain at large. It is far better to ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... sweat pouring from neck, shoulders, and flanks, she still lifted her mud-brown barrel to her mighty stride, with all the vim and lightness of the start. He felt that, jade that she was, she ran because she loved it; ran with a delight that acted as a safety-valve for her villainous temper. She would run herself into amiability and then stop, but not before. And he knew her temper so well that he saw many miles lying ahead ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Rushton, "we'll see about that! The authorities of Winchester are performing their duty after a pretty fashion, truly—to permit these villainous plots to be hatched tinder their very noses. ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... influence, or, better still, of money, invariably escaped the punishment his crime deserved. The very police themselves were, in many cases, in league with the thieves and shared in the "swag" of the successful burglar, expert counterfeiter, adroit pickpocket, villainous sneak and panel thief, or daring and accomplished forger; hence crime, from being in a measure "protected," increased, criminals multiplied and ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... (having especial reference to the subject in hand), "An able assistant wanted: annual salary, L5! A master of arts would be preferred!" Immediately after this, in the Reading, came the description of Mr. Squeers, several of the particulars in regard to whose villainous appearance always told wonderfully: as, where it was said "he had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two;" or, again, where in reference to his attire—it having been mentioned that his coat-sleeves were a great deal too-long and his trousers a ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... you ought to know what it costs me, to humiliate myself thus; it is intolerable to me, and my heart is breaking—for the architect, the architect has trampled upon me as if I were his servant; he wished—I heard him with these ears—he shrieked after me a villainous hope that I might be smothered in my own fat—and the physician has told me I may die of apoplexy! Leave me, leave me. I know those Romans are capable of anything. Well—here I am; fetch me my saffron-colored pallium, that I wear in the council, fetch me my ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Professor Struthers' and back here for a small dinner-party. I am standing it all well, for the weather is villainous and there is no getting any exercise. I shall leave here by the twelve ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... to a clearer understanding of the circumstances which led to this most villainous of Canadian State prosecutions, it will be well to glance at some details of ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... no reply to this and made none, waiting in some trepidation for him to proceed. He was a villainous looking creature, but comported himself with an air of some dignity. In a moment he spoke again ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... words as these, that at times could scarcely be heard because of the sobbing of the people, and of my wives who wept loudly, except Otomie alone, this villainous priest made a sign and once more the music sounded. Then he and his band placed themselves about me, my wives the goddesses going before and after, and led me down the hall and on to the gateways of the palace, which were thrown wide for us to pass. Looking round me with ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... huff, for he says that there is not room for two Spanish ambassadors at Court, so I had to fall back upon de Ayala after all. Indeed, twice have I seen that exalted priest upon the subject of the well-deserved death of his villainous servant, and, after much difficulty, for having lost several men in such brawls, he thought his honour touched, he took the fifty gold angels—to be transmitted to the fellow's family, of course, or so he said—and gave a receipt. Here it is," and he handed a paper ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... cries of "Hombro—landro;" and sure enough, by the light of the dying fire, I saw a fellow stealing away with my dress, in the pocket of which was my purse. I was about to rush forward, when the fire gleamed on a villainous-looking knife in his hand; so I stood still, and screamed loudly, hoping to arouse my brother over the way. For a moment the thief seemed inclined to silence me, and had taken a few steps forward, when I took up an old rusty horse-pistol which my brother had given me ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... I, noble Prefect," replied the shepherd, boldly. "They were led on by three as villainous rascals as go unhung, and these had with them a ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... back—ha! ha! ha! that is characteristic, that is his way. Ah, gentlemen, secret malice never brings good, as the proverb in this almanac says, and if Heaven permits me to recover again, you shall see how I will take my revenge—first on the rogue, the incendiary, the villainous fellow, to whom all my misery is due, and then on my dear son who treats his father so badly. I shall disinherit him, hunt him away from the farm. Shall I be right, gentlemen, ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... And Jac, I will tell you why they kept it secret. The Central State was encouraging emigration to the Earth. The Venus Cold Country is a poor place to live in—and on a whole its inhabitants are miserable people. Villainous, too, I should say. The Central State did not want them within its borders; and so it kept secret its troubles with them—and encouraged ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... much in appearance—with a boyish growth of beard over my chin, and my hair as long as a poet's—that a villainous-looking man who came in and asked for whiskey failed to recognize me; but I knew him at once as being the man who had escaped ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... suddenly, one afternoon when sitting at his table preparing some villainous compound for the Queen, "go down to the laboratory, boy, and fetch me some gunpowder, sulphur, saltpetre, ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... procure himself to be elected a burgess, but likewise being one of the instruments in promoting and presenting the scandalous, insolent, and seditious petition, commonly called the Kentish petition, to the last house of commons, was guilty of promoting a scandalous, villainous, and groundless reflection upon that house, by aspersing the members with receiving French money, or being in the interest of France; for which offence he was ordered to be committed to Newgate, and to be prosecuted by his majesty's attorney-general. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... he was sure I was almost in the act of death, it seemed yet worse; for how could I, a dying man, hurt any one? If for any cause he feared me, here was an end of it. It seemed to me both stupid and villainous. He had warned me that I had everything to dread from his enmity if I persisted in writing to Darthea. Assuredly he had been as good as his word. He was unwilling to risk any worldly advantages by giving me ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... which she looked, sharing every pang and even embroidering the context, she weakened, in some sort, to the level of the actual sufferer, helpless almost as he through the drench of overwhelming sympathy. She had been taken, poor child, at so villainous a disadvantage. Without preparation or warning—save of the most casual and inadequate—her humour wayward, she a trifle piqued, fancying her pretty clothes, her pretty looks, excited, both by the brilliant prospect presented ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... stretching beyond them, there was now no road, no hedge, no field; but there was a great broad river sweeping across their path; a mighty tumble of yellowy-brown waters, very swift, very savage; churning and billowing and jockeying among rough boulders and islands of stone. It was a water of villainous depth and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound. At a little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled across ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... would, your majesty. If yet the wish Of Heaven has power over you; and Christ Be your most high example, you will prove A careful guardian to your trusting people, And crush this villainous and robber race Now preying on the true and innocent, Swelling each ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... its laws: But there may be exceptions, and the present case is without doubt one.—Suppose there was no law of society to restrain you from murdering your own father, what think you? If either of you should please to take it into your head to perpetrate such a villainous act, so abhorrent to the will of the society, would you not be restrained? And is the Liberty of your Country of less importance than the life of your father! But what is most astonishing is, that some two or three persons of very little ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... world like your husband. Young brides always do. But you'll find out presently. Men are all selfish where their own pleasures are concerned. And Burke Ranger is no exception to the rule. He has a villainous temper, too. Everyone ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... virtuous task of insulting every person in the room, thereby proving how much superior a cow-boy from New Hampshire is to the wretched resident of the city, whom fate has made a base and villainous gentleman. The PLAUSIBLE VILLAIN goes through with a complicated fit of St. Vitus's Dance, by way of preserving a cool exterior, and thus allaying the suspicions of PETER. Various TEDIOUS PEOPLE ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... poor and villainous," he says to himself, "than possess all the wealth of the Indies with a clear conscience. I will be a villain," he cries. "I will, at great expense and inconvenience to myself, murder the good old man, get the hero accused of the crime, and make love to his wife while ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... a fourth (and that was Jean's own father) died presiding at a Hell-Fire Club, of which he was the founder. There were many heads shaken in Crossmichael at that judgment; the more so as the man had a villainous reputation among high and low, and both with the godly and the worldly. At that very hour of his demise, he had ten going pleas before the Session, eight of them oppressive. And the same doom extended even to his agents; his grieve, that had been his right hand in many a left-hand business, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Mr. Johnson in an audible aside. "The Good Intent's a villainous interloper; how came you ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... I saw that villainous creature and thought how you had really caught him, and when I saw the men had your rope, I was just stricken with remorse for the way we girls fooled you. I said, 'I'm just going to run after them and take their rope so their hike won't ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he had walked up the avenue, he had, for two reasons, dreaded his visit more than usual. In the first place, he knew that his lordship had for several days been suffering with the gout, and had been in so villainous a humor that rumors of it had even reached the village—carried there by one of the young women servants, to her sister, who kept a little shop and retailed darning-needles and cotton and peppermints and gossip, as a means ...
— Little Lord Fauntleroy • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... trouble himself to make this journey because he desired to serve the Ydallcao, for another would have done it as well, but he did it with a villainous motive and from the ill-will he bore to Salebatacao whom the King held in prison at Bisnaga; and the reason that he had this wicked motive was because Salebatacao knew that Acadacao was the man that had caused the Ydallcao to flee, and ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Destruction, I obtained full view of the hideous monster of a giantess whose feet I had previously observed. "Words fail me to describe her ways and means; but of herself I can tell thee, that she was a three-faced ogress: one villainous face turned towards Heaven, yelping and snarling and belching forth cursed abomination against the heavenly King; another face (and this was fair to look upon) towards earth, to allure men beneath her baneful shadow; and the other direful face towards the infernal ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... of the relation made it an amazing thing to hear, even more amazing than it would have been made by a more imaginative handling. Her obvious inability to cope with the unusual and villainous, combined with her entire willingness to obliterate herself in any manner in her whole-souled tenderness for the one present object of her existence, were things a man could not be unmoved by, even though experience ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... traversed yesterday ceased at a creek half-a-mile from the camp, on crossing which the party had to cut their way as usual, after which the course skirting the coast lay over a villainous country, boggy swamps, brushwood and scrub. After travelling 7 or 8 miles their progress was arrested by a large stream three-quarters-of-a-mile in width, running rapidly from the W.N.W. Its banks were low and muddy, covered with ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... determine its origin; but our private opinion is that the word is a corruption of Punch-brook. Perhaps, at some remote period in the history of the town, before the Sons of Temperance obtained a foothold in the place, a villainous mixture, known to topers under the general appellation of "punch," may have been largely consumed by the Pinchbrookers. Though not a very aged person ourself, we have heard allusions to festive occasions where, metaphorically, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... How deserving our admiration and love! Ah cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn Hector over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of Heaven, recorded by the pen of ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... her to see the rarer and choicer articles which he kept in an upper room. As they tailed, a half-dozen natives, swarthy and villainous of face, drifted into the shop to be promptly ordered out by the proprietor, who used for that purpose a vocabulary of scope and vividness. The ruffians retreated after a brief conversation in guttural Arabic, but not by the street door through ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... persevering mosquito, whose ceaseless hum dwells for ever on the ear, never went to sleep. Day and night the painful, tender little pimples on our necks and behind our ears were being constantly retouched by these villainous flies, it was useless killing thousands of them— millions supplied their place. The only thing, in fact, that can protect one during the night (nothing can during the day) is a net of gauze hung over the bed; but as this was looked upon by the young men as somewhat effeminate, it was seldom ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the proper time to—that is, I don't wish to intrude a moral at an inopportune moment, but, my dear, dear fellow, I think the time is ripe to point out to you that your obstinacy, your selfishness, your villainous temper, and your various other faults can make it just as unpleasant for your ownself, my dear boy, as they frequently do for other people. You can see what you brought us to, and I most sincerely hope, my dear, dear fellow, that I shall soon see those signs in you which shall lead me to believe ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... hour from the officers' arrival the battalion was mustered on Main street, and only nine absentees were reported at roll-call; but many a fez was drawn far down over a bleeding forehead, and many a villainous countenance was lighted by one eye, while the other was closed ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... proved to be white egrets. Now at home I am strongly against the killing of these creatures, and have so expressed myself on many occasions. But, looking from the beautiful white plumage of these villainous mauraders, to the wrinkled countenance of the grateful weary old savage, I could not fan a spark of regret. And from the straight line of their retreating flight I like to think that the rest of the flock ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... be left In the midnight's dusky robe, As the light amid the darkness, As 'mid clouds the solar globe: But although the shades and shadows, Through the vapours of Heaven's dome. Strive with villainous presumption Light and splendour to enfold, Though they may conceal the lustre, Still they cannot stain it, no. And it is a consolation This to know, that even the gold, How so many be its carats, How so rich may be the ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... guttural and Serge receded to the horizon with great rapidity. "You understand, mon ami," explained Boris; "he is really a Bulgar, but the villainous Serb propagandists have taught him the Serbian language and that he is Serb. It is his duty really to fight or work for Bulgaria, just as it was ours to liberate him and his other Bulgar brothers in Serbia from the yoke of the Serbs. It is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... journal, "on Main and other streets, which have numbers painted in large gilt figures over the door, and illuminated at night, are faro banks. The fact is not known to the public. The very large numbers of flashily dressed young men, with villainous faces, who hang about the street corners in the daytime, are not gamblers, garroters, and plugs, but young men studying for the ministry, and therefore exempt from military duty. This fact is not known to General Winder." The quiet and orderly city had, in ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... merry-makers, who had spent the feast-day outside the walls, were now thronging in; a party of horsemen were entering beneath the arch; a travelling carriage had been drawn up just within the verge, and was passing through the villainous ordeal of the papal custom-house. In the broad piazza, too, there was ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his foes; Chanticleer the cock; Bruin the Bear; Isengrim the Wolf; and many others. But they are animals in name only. We see them worship like Christians, go to Mass, ride on horseback, debate in councils, and amuse themselves with hawking and hunting. Satire often creeps in, as when the villainous Fox confesses his sins to the Badger or vows that he will go to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage. The special interest of this work lies in the fact that it expressed the feelings of the common people, groaning under the oppression ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... and splashed the whiskey in every direction. I was literally baptized with the noxious stuff. The intention was to set it on fire, and we had brought matches for that purpose, but it would not burn! It was a villainous compound of some sort, but we had set out to have a fire, and were determined by some means or other to make it burn, so we sent for some coal oil and poured it on and we soon had a blaze. The man who could sell such liquors would not be likely to keep ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... the gleam of sand among the darker weed: there are deep caves too. In one of these lives a tribe of gipsies. The men are always drunk, simply and truthfully always. From morning to evening the great villainous-looking fellows are either sleeping off the last debauch, or hulking about the cove "in the horrors." The cave is deep, high, and airy, and might be made comfortable enough. But they just live among heaped boulders, damp with continual droppings from above, with no more furniture than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... know what you mean. You've always said I go crazy when I'm—angry. Well, that's true. But it's nothing more than a villainous temper. ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... of all assurances, he showed himself desirous only to see the last of my gun and me. I dare say "villainous saltpetre," as the great playwright calls it, was never so cheap before nor since. For my shilling Master Pooke afforded me two great packages over-large to go into my pockets, as well as a mighty chunk of lead, which ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... one and only Reginald was lying on his face with the unpleasant knowledge in his brain that if he moved an inch his left arm would snap at the elbow; and that kneeling above him Shorty held, in the neighbourhood of his ear, a villainous weapon of his own invention, which resembled a cross between a ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... more like," said Keefe, a black-browed, villainous fellow countryman of Blaney's and, strange to say, ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... continued Old Joe, "that villainous bird, he hid his treasure, and when I let him out yesterday, just to fly around the room, he found it out again, and he hent and broke ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... rarely met a sensible man who would not allow that there was something in Phrenology. A broad, high forehead, it is commonly agreed, promises intellect; one that is "villainous low," and has a huge hind-head back of it, is wont to mark an animal nature. I have as rarely met an unbiased and sensible man who really believed in the bumps. It is observed, however, that persons with what the phrenologists call ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... obtain the pardon of millions, or repair the injuries he hath done to millions? How shall those, who, by a most destructive fraud, got the whole wealth of our neighbouring kingdom into their hands, be ever able to make a recompence? How will the authors and promoters of that villainous project, for the ruin of this poor country, be able to account with us for the injuries they have already done, although they should no farther succeed? The deplorable case of such wretches, must ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... this, and so remained silent. The girl chattered on in her own outspoken manner, which, now that I was growing accustomed to it, I did not find as unpleasant as at first. One thing was evident to me. She had no idea of the villainous nature of Brande's Society. She could not have spoken so carelessly if she shared my knowledge of it. While she talked to me, I wondered if it was fair to her—a likeable girl, in spite of her undesirable affectations of advanced opinion, emancipation ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... with fuses glowing under his hat, hailed him, and, standing on the taffrail, defied him and drank to his bloody end in a goblet of rum.... Teach, surrounded by his sullen and villainous gang, shrieked out the chorus of a sea song as the sloop drew near and, when she had drifted close enough, he pelted her ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the North-wolf resounding, Scenting the blood of the warm-hearted South; Quick! or his villainous feet will be bounding Where the gore of our maidens may drip ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... cargo of slaves and villainous prisoners, found themselves in a very trying position, requiring the full exercise of all their wits and energies. Probably, had Adair had time to consider, he would not have left them with so small a force on board; but his eagerness to overtake the other ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... pounds per annum spent On making brain and body meeter For all the murderous intent Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!" And after—ask the Yusufzaies What comes of all ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... certain unregistered packages under the wagon, which had preyed at intervals upon the minds of Alf, Croesus, and Bartholomew, were now drawn forth. Life is a series of surprises; surprise No. 1, a brace of long, tapering javelins having villainous-looking heads, i.e., two marine rockets, with which to rend the heavens, and notify the vassals at the bungalow of our approach. One of these rockets we planted with such care that having touched it off, it could not free itself, but stood stock still and with ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... lady among us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same reasons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is villainous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting where bonnets preponderated, that 'the ladies were last at the cross and first at the tomb'! But similar sins were committed before our day and in the mother country. In the 'Harleian Miscellany' (vol. v. p. 455) I find ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... much about tramps since the adventure of the villainous sailor-man and the Tower of Mystery, but we had the dogs on the wall with us (Lady was awfully difficult to get up, on account of her long deer-hound legs), and the position was a strong one, and easy to defend. Besides the tramp did not look like that bad sailor, nor talk like it. And we considerably ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... It was all villainous spite on Monckton's part. He did not for a moment suppose that his lie could long outlive Walter Clifford's return; but he was getting desperate, and longing to stab them all. Unfortunately fate befriended the villain's malice, and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... half of Spain; The other half shall be Roland's share (Right haughty partner, he yields you there); And should you slight the terms I bear, He will come and gird Saragossa round, You shall be taken by force and bound, Led unto Aix, to his royal seat, There to perish by judgment meet, Dying a villainous death of shame." Over King Marsil a horror came; He grasped his javelin, plumed with gold, In act to smite, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... wave with the gales lodged behind them every second. A pair of "silver cupids, nicely poised on their brands," support a wood fire, which it is an occupation to keep from extinguishing; and all the illusion of a gay orange-grove pourtrayed on the tapestry at my feet, is dissipated by a villainous chasm of about half an inch between the floor and the skirting-boards. Then we have so many corresponding windows, supernumerary doors, "and passages that lead to nothing," that all our English ingenuity in comfortable arrangement is baffled.—When the cold first became so insupportable, we attempted ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... because he was following Josephine, that all the passengers in the train were cut-throats and accomplices of Loupart's mistress? Yet, five minutes after these sage reflections, Fandor started again; he had distinctly seen, passing along the corridor, two fellows with villainous faces and suspicious demeanour. One of them cast into Fandor's compartment such a murderous glance that it ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... unlovely enough already, and I cannot inflict that last horror on those who will read this. Thus much will I say—if ever you know a man tied to a creature whose cheeks are livid purple in the morning and flushed at night, a creature who speaks thick at night and is ready with a villainous word for the most courteous and gentle of all whom she may meet, pray ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... rooms were fairly thronged with devotees of the ancient art of puncturing. The master of the place was a tall Italian, lank and lean, all bone and muscle, with a Don Quixote visage, barring a certain villainous expression of the eyes, irreconcilable with the chivalrous knight-errant of distressed Dulcineas. But every man with a bad eye is not necessarily a rascallion, and Spedella, perhaps, was better than he looked. With a most melancholy glance he ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... significance than appeared to the general eye, and that Ruth Oliver, in her desperate interruption of these treacherous nuptials, had not only made good her prior claim to Randolph Stone as her husband, but had pointed him out to all the world as the villainous author of that crime which for so long a time had occupied my own and the ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... myself!" repeated Paul indignantly. "Is it likely I should? It's some trickery, I tell you, some villainous plot. The worst of it is," he added plaintively, "I don't understand who I'm supposed to be now. Dick, who ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... years of age it is to him a discovery that a man may smile and be a villain! Then think of the shock of such discoveries as are here forced upon him! Villainy is no longer a mere idea, but a fact! and of all villainous deeds those of his own mother and uncle are the worst! But note also his honesty, his justice to humanity, his philosophic temperament, in the qualification he sets to the memorandum, '—at least ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... minutes after ten, with McKnight not yet in sight, Blobs knocked at the door, the double rap we had agreed upon, and on being admitted slipped in and quietly closed the door behind him. His eyes were glistening with excitement, and a purple dab of typewriter ink gave him a peculiarly villainous and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... she had changed her coiffure which had displeased me, and told me how she had passed the day arranging her hair to suit my taste; how she had taken down a villainous black picture frame that had offended my eye; how she had renewed the flowers; she recounted all she had done since she had known me, how she had seen me suffer and how she had suffered herself; how she had thought of leaving the country, of fleeing from her love; how she had ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... particular pains to inform any listener that he was a MacLean, and that the Clan MacLean was beyond doubt the foremost, the oldest, and the best family that favored this wretched, hopeless world with residence. He hinted darkly at a villainous conspiracy that had deprived him of his estates and lairdships in dear old Stornoway, Bonnie Scotland. He was a pessimist of parts, and he furnished the needed shade that made brighter ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... put his empty glass between his knees and proceeded to fill a cherrywood pipe of villainous aspect from a Korean ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... partly from the commonness of the case, partly from some remains of that generous old Mexican tradition which made all men welcome to their tables, a person may be notoriously both unwilling and unable to pay, and still find credit for the necessaries of life in the stores of Monterey. Now this villainous habit of living upon "tick" has grown into Californian nature. I do not mean that the American and European storekeepers of Monterey are as lax as Mexicans; I mean that American farmers in many parts of the State expect unlimited ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cause to complain of the company here (it was the house midway betwixt Maidenhead and Henley, as you come to Bisham), for I had the place to myself. Nor did I wonder at that when I saw the pig-sty of an inn which it was. The landlord, a villainous-looking rogue, demanded to finger my money before he would admit me; and as for my horse, I had to see to him myself, for there was no one about the place to do it for me. However, a night's lodging was all I wanted, and, having brought ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... was right from the first; I said it was impossible my lady should have such a shocking complaint as she thought she had. There's no such thing at all in the case, my lord! I said so always, till I was persuaded out of my senses by that villainous quack, who contradicted me for this own 'molument. And Doctor X—— says, if my lady will leave off the terrible quantities of laudanum she takes, he'll engage ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... while his villainous companion related the well known tale of the terrible compact between the two men in which both of them had agreed in writing to share the guilt of the crime, carefully omitting to state the compulsion as used upon McGuire. Hawk Kennedy lied. If Peter had ever needed any further ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... who lived near the Vaer[1] at winter time, long after the fishing season was over, was a woman and a slip of a girl. Their business was to guard the scaffolding poles for drying fish against the birds of prey, who had such a villainous trick of hacking ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... to bring them down upon him, he fell on his knees, and essayed, with unaccustomed lips, to murmur a prayer. But he was interrupted; for amid the deep silence succeeding the awful crash, a mocking laugh was heard, and the villainous countenance of Blackadder, rendered doubly hideous by the white lightning, was seen at the casement. The sight restored Sir Thomas at once. Drawing his sword he flew to the window, but before he could reach it Blackadder was gone. The next flash showed what had befallen ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... but they saw him quite well when he crossed the street, (which had only one side to it, a wall occupying the other), and they saw him still better in the course of a few seconds when a bright light suddenly streamed towards him, and illumined his villainous countenance, and they heard as well as saw him, the next instant, when he shouted ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... departure from France in 1561. Brantome was one of her suite, and describes her grief when the shores of France faded away, and her arrival in Scotland, where on the first night she was serenaded by Psalm-tunes with a most villainous accompaniment of Scotch music. "He! quelle musique!" he exclaims, "et quel repos pour ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... rumors of violence were bringing much uneasiness to persons who were under responsibilities. Baltimore was the place where, and its villainous "Plug Uglies" were the persons by whom, the plot, if there was one, was to be executed. Mr. Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, engaged Allan Pinkerton to explore the matter, and the report of this skillful detective indicated a probability ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... a fine sight!" cried Julian. "I would not have missed it for worlds. That villainous hunchback! So he was a damnable heretic after all! I grieve we ever stood his friend. May he perish like the vile creature he is! I will ask Brother Emmanuel to set me a penance for having touched him that day when we thought ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green |
