"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and putting on the fictitious nose, while he drew his white nightcap over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the lips of our ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... tell her things, and keep the diabolical secret from poor Maude and from me," she returned, rather inconsistently. "I don't doubt you and your wife have exulted enough ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... il faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est eveque." "Man depicts himself in his gods," says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the conscience of the community, and with it of the individual items, began aspiring to its golden age,—Perfection. "Dieu est le superlatif, dont le positif est l'homme," says Carl Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea of a numen is ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... came away Shepton Mallet was shaken to its foundations by a tremendous and most diabolical sound, a prolonged lupine yell or yowl, as if a stupendous wolf, as big, say, as the Anglo-Bavarian brewery, had howled his loudest and longest. This infernal row, which makes Shepton seem like a town or ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... "There are diabolical effluvia in the storm, and in weather when the air stirs like the vapours from a furnace, rousing evil instincts and bringing about us the ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the matter is this," said he. "In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... who now felt certain some diabolical plot was on foot for the murder of the man who had accidentally wounded him, rode back at once to his ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... manner in which this disputation at Marburg was conducted with the previous character of the contest, in which the one party had denounced their opponents as diabolical fanatics, and the other as reactionary Papists and worshippers of 'a god made of bread,' it will be evident that some results of importance at least had been attained by the discussion itself and the mode in which it had been held. The tone here, from first to last, was more courteous, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... theme I have been wont to brag on; I've told how you, my now innocuous moke, Would chew the tail-board off a G.S. wagon By way of mere plaisanterie (or joke); Dubbed you most diabolical of ragers, A rampant hooligan, a fetid tough, A thing without respect for sergeant-majors— That is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... inhuman to the surviving son, if it be true, in proportion as the character of Lorenzo is diabolical, where are we to find the proof? Perhaps it is clear ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... contention and the bitterest acrimony. In one of these domestic brawls, M. de Lacroix resolved to murder his beautiful wife; and the plan he devised to accomplish his purpose was as novel as it was diabolical. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... seamen, by fixing a candle and lanthorn round the neck of a horse, one of whose fore feet is tied up; this at night has the appearance of a ship's light. Ships bearing towards it, run on shore, and being wrecked, are plundered by the inhabitants. This diabolical device is, it is said, practised by the inhabitants ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... Home in the Twilight he found no Wife, no Cat—only a Scribbled Note saying that he could no longer Deceive her; that she had seen through his Diabolical Plan to Lull her Suspicions, and that she was no longer ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... a book of brave and of some diabolical deeds, but as Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS sees to it that his murderers and wreckers get their due he leaves me with the hopeful feeling that what happened to super-criminals a hundred years or so ago will also be their fate in this year of grace. Faith is the type of heroine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... appeared; and we can only describe him by saying that his spectacles were sad and his eyes joyous; the glasses, however, obscured the glances so successfully that only a physiognomist would have seen the diabolical expression which they wore. He went up to Rabourdin and pressed the hand which the latter ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... collect was in use: "Lord God Omnipotent ... we invoke Thee, and, as suppliants, exhort Thy majesty, that in this judgment and test Thou wilt order to be of no avail all the wiles of diabolical fraud and ingenuity, the incantations either of men or of women; also the properties of herbs; so that to all those standing around, it may be apparent that Thou art just and lovest justice, and ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... inquire into and pronounce judgment on every circumstance connected with the late troubles. He named himself president of this council, and appointed a Spaniard, named Vargas, as vice-president—a wretch of the most diabolical cruelty. Several others of the judges were also Spaniards, in direct infraction of the fundamental laws of the country. This council, immortalized by its infamy, was named by the new governor (for so Alva was in fact, though ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the Presbyterian faith once went fishing in those waters, and having cast out a stout line, fastened to the mast, for shark, were amazed at finding themselves all at once careering through the waves at terrible speed, being dragged by one of the diabolical "monsters of the roaring deep" above mentioned. Whereupon a friend, who was in the boat, burst out laughing. And being asked, "Wherefore this unrestrained hilarity?" replied, "Is it not enough to make a man laugh to see the Devil running away ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... him, is a portrait of one Kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator, who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. He was farther remarkable for a diabolical ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... I knew of that terrible creature when I first met with her, and fancied that she had inherited her mother's character! It was weak indeed to compare the mean vices of Mrs. Gracedieu with the diabolical depravity of her daughter. Here the doctrine of hereditary transmission of moral qualities must own that it has overlooked the fertility (for growth of good and for growth of evil equally) which is inherent in human nature. There are ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... the limits of that portion of Africa, which the bill intended to set apart as sacred to peace and liberty. He showed that this was but one-third of the coast; and therefore that two-thirds were yet left for the diabolical speculations of the slave-merchants. He expressed his surprise that such witnesses as those against the bill should have been introduced at all. He affirmed that their oaths were falsified by their own log-books; and that ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... Service men have disappeared in South America. Another is found—a screaming homicidal maniac. It is rumored that they are victims of a diabolical poison which produces ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion, he didn't mind about Maggie, and would never ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... workman politics find their way only in the shape of rough-hewn, highly-colored imagery, such as is furnished by the Marseillaise, the Carmagnole, and the Ca ira. The requisite motto is adapted to his use; through this misshapen magnifying glass the most gracious figure appears under a diabolical aspect. Louis XVI. is represented here "as a monster using his power and treasure to oppose the regeneration of the French. A new Charles IX., he desires to bring on France death and desolation. Be gone, cruel man, your crimes must ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... a source of dissent is unbecoming to religious, who are gathered together in the unity of peace. Now study leads to dissent: wherefore different schools of thought arose among the philosophers. Hence Jerome (Super Epist. ad Tit. 1:5) says: "Before a diabolical instinct brought study into religion, and people said: I am of Paul, I of Apollo, I of Cephas," etc. Therefore it would seem that no religious order should be established for the purpose ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... may have money of their own. Had our authoress followed her trio down to the confectioner's, there she might have seen these white children cajoling the poor black, and making her treat them; in preparation for which they affected to put their arms around her; but, in the true diabolical spirit of slavery, it was only ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... assigned to him at first because of its being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls, with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments, foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... forty cubits broad on every side. On the south side they found a chalice of the material of the network and a paten of the material of the pillar. After passing again out of the network, they sailed for eight days towards the North, and here begins what may be called the diabolical portion ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... Bourne with a great meinie, full a hundred strong, and with him the sheriff and the king's writ, and arrested Hereward on a charge of speaking evil of the king, breaking his peace, compassing the death of his faithful lieges, and various other wicked, traitorous, and diabolical acts. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... but frequently perishing in superstition and ignorance. Every monk had visions of devils; miracles occurred continually; the torturing problem was as to whether they were worked by God or the devil. Nature was merely a collection of mystic symbols, divine—or perhaps diabolical—allegories, whose meaning could be discovered by a correct interpretation of the Bible. Everything which could possibly happen was recorded in the Scriptures; they contained the true explanation of all things. It was only a matter of selecting the right word and ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... be manipulated afresh, and, if possible, moulded into a shape that might give Democratic recusants an excuse for treason to the North and submission to the Power that demanded it. And the invention was worthy of the diabolical sagacity and ingenuity which have always marked the politics of Slavery. The maxim, that every man has his price, was assumed to apply as well to men when collected into bodies corporate as to individuals; and the hook, with which the souls of the men ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... at once, and the impetuous old squire started as if a new light had been let in upon his mind. We call him impetuous, because, if he had reflected only for a moment upon the diabolical persecution, both in person and property, which Reilly had sustained at the baronet's hands, he ought not to have blamed him had! he shot the scoundrel as if he had been one of the most rabid dogs that ever ran frothing across a country. ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... all, if not from the upper, at least from the educated ranks of life. But they lived under the daily shadow of death. Even when safe from the shells of the big guns, the murderous aircraft paid them daily visits, singling out hospitals with diabolical precision. They were in daily contact with young torn human bodies from which had gone forever the purpose for which one generation precedes another. Life was horror. Blood and death and shattered bodies were their daily portion. No matter how brave, they heard death scream in every shell. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... on the military side, my dear lord; and you will?—I have given my word you will bring Lady Ormont. You will?—and not let me be confounded! Yes, and we shall make a party. I see consent. Aminta will enjoy the switch of steel. I love to see fencing. It rouses all that is diabolical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sleepy eyes. She thought that she was walking about the field exploring, and came upon a great big kitchen, a wonderful kitchen like in castles, and there were a number of little dwarfs of the most diabolical shapes, sitting around a big table before a blazing fire; some of them were breaking eggs, others were beating them up until they were white and frothy; and some of these eggs were as large as melons and others were as small as a little pea, and the ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... not like him to speak or hear about you, you are in that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar,—when you begin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at what the Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins of the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves—on the way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,—how instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... brightest gleams of knowledge have at any time been sufficient to drive them out of the world. The time, in which this kind of credulity was at its height, seems to have been that of the holy war, in which the Christians imputed all their defeats to enchantment or diabolical opposition, as they ascribe their success to the assistance of their military saints; and the learned Dr. Warburton appears to believe (Supplement to the Introduction to Don Quixote) that the first accounts of enchantments were brought into this part of the world ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... am not misinformed, the manufacturing interest is equal, if not superior, to the landed interest, as to the value, for reasons which will soon appear. The abolition of slavery, so diabolical, will give a most rapid extension of manufactures, which is totally and diametrically opposite to what some ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... which obstinacy brought on several repetitions, and reduced me to a deplorable situation, yet I was immovable, and resolutely determined to suffer death rather than submit. Force, at length, was obliged to yield to the diabolical infatuation of a child, for no better name was bestowed on my constancy, and I came out of this dreadful trial, torn, it is true, but triumphant. Fifty years have expired since this adventure—the fear of punishment is no ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... two-thirds of our vast national domains, and there unquestioned, absolute and bloody in its sway—with the terrible strength and boundless resources of the whole country at its command—it cannot be otherwise than that the Slave Power will consummate its diabolical purposes to the uttermost. The Northwest Territory, Nebraska, Mexico, Cuba, Hayti, the Sandwich Islands, and colonial possessions in the tropics—to seize and subjugate these to its accursed reign, and ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison
... and ill temper with which these heroines have mutually maintained their positions. Innovation struck the ball at first too impetuously: but Establishment took it at the rebound, and returned it with triple violence. Brunswickian manifestoes, and exterminating wars, were not ill adapted to raise the diabolical spirit of revenge. An endeavour to starve a nation, which it was found difficult to exterminate by fire and sword, was not a very charitable act in Madam Establishment. Her swindling forgeries were little better; and that her turn should come, to be starved and swindled, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the celebrated odour of the skunk is mild and refreshing, compared to the unutterable loathsomeness of that of the kauri-bug. I can well believe it. How well I remember one of my first nights in the bush! It appears that one of these diabolical insects had got into my blankets. I rolled over and crushed it in my sleep. Inured as I had been by circumstances to bad smells, this conquered me. I awoke perspiring from a frightful nightmare. I rushed from my bed, from the room, from the ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... More, Feb. 9.-French horrors. Beheading Of Louis the Sixteenth. Assignats. Diabolical conduct of the Duke Of Orleans. heroism of Madame Elizabeth. Sublime sentence of Father Edgeworth. Speculations on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... them with the sudden comprehension of the unprecedented singularity of their situation. Millions of miles away from the earth, confronted on an asteroid by these diabolical monsters from a maleficient planet, who were on the point of destroying them with a strange torment of death—perhaps it was really more than human nature, deprived of the support of human surroundings, could have been ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... morning, at breakfast, he related the story of his success for the benefit of Father Goriot and the lodgers. Vautrin began to smile in a diabolical fashion. ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... kind to me, and declared he was fond of me. One evening (just after the publication of my stupid drama, "The Star of Seville"), he met me with a malignant grin, and the exclamation, "Ah, I've just been reading your play. So nice! young poetry!"—with a diabolical dig of emphasis on the "young." "Now, Mr. Rogers," said I, "what did I do to deserve that you should say that to me?" I do not know whether this appeal disarmed him, but his only answer was to take ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... you feel that you know him as if you had yourself seen and talked with him. His singular mixture of the small and the great, his huge sweep of imagination, his very limited knowledge, his intense egotism, his impatience of obstacles, his boorishness, his gross impertinence to women, his diabolical playing upon the weak side of every one with whom he came in contact—they make up among them one of the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... together, and we felt united in one and the same spirit. That was a great moment, for many of us the unique moment, when we experienced what is meant by the catholicity, by the noble catholicity, of the Christian Church, as Bishop Westcott called it. It was an elevated and sweet feeling. The diabolical spirit of the Council of Constance never could unite us, but the Christian Catholic spirit of Jan Huss united us. The memory of Pope John XXIII divides the world, whereas the memory of the great apostle of the Bohemian nation unites it. Yet the revolution of Jan Huss ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... Next morning I went out into the road, where I had noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty exploits in the way of scratching into forbidden enclosures, had been rewarded by its master with a portentous, four-pronged, wooden decoration, in the shape of a collar of the Order of the Garotte. ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... something on my mind," said Mr. Heard, with a diabolical glance at the mate—"something wot's been worrying me for a long time. I've been ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... the situation was different. Toddy was so nicknamed because of his diabolical cleverness in concocting toddies. So I brought whisky along—a couple of gallons. Alas! Many another gallon I bought, for Cloudesley and I got into the habit of drinking a certain hot toddy that actually tasted delicious going down and that carried ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... many signs to them to go away and leave him, but they not understanding him, still redoubled their lamentations, and finding them hard pressed, he gave orders that the infants should be taken aside and KILLED, which was done"!!!—What is the reason this diabolical barbarity was never before condemned in print? The reason is plain—they were the children of Frenchmen. This shocking deed was perpetrated by the officers of General Wolfe's army, and published by one of his captains, under the sanction ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... in support of their champion to demand that Professor van Huysman should withdraw his imputations of jugglery. He sat still, and shook his head. He was too disgusted and bewildered to do or say anything more until he had made a searching analysis of these diabolical formulae. ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... the lips are full, but not to be compared with those of the negroes of West Africa; neither is the jaw prognathous. The men are extremely independent in manner. They are armed with lances of various patterns; their favourite weapon is a horrible instrument barbed with a diabolical intention, as it can neither be withdrawn nor pushed completely through the body, but, if once in the flesh, there it must remain. This is called the chimbane; it is usually carried with two other lances with plain ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... these ducks, as well as other sorts, greatly abound; and the "duck-liver pates" are there almost as popular as the pate de foie gras of Strasburg. In order to bring the livers of the wretched duck to the fashionable and unnatural size, the same diabolical cruelty is resorted to as in the case of the Strasburg goose. The poor birds are nailed by the feet to a board placed close to a fire, and, in that position, plentifully supplied with food and water. In a few days, the carcase is reduced to a mere shadow, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... could have fearlessly challenged comparison with any ship afloat for cleanliness and neatness of appearance, the hands no longer felt that they were continually being "worked up" or "hazed" for the sole, diabolical satisfaction of keeping them "at it." Of course, the incidence of the work was divided, since so many of the crew were quite unable to do any sailorizing, as we term work in sails and rigging. Upon them, then, fell all the common labour, which can be done by any unskilled man ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... however long it may be since you were afraid of phantoms, you feel a confused reawakening dread. Such were the subjects of all his pictures—the tortures of the accursed, spectres, fiery chasms, dragons, uncanny birds, loathsome monsters, diabolical kitchens, sinister landscapes. One of these frightful pictures was found in the cell where Philip II. died; others are scattered throughout Spain and Italy. Who was this chimerical painter? How did he live? What strange mania tormented him? No one knows; he passed over the ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally divided. Radisson asked that the woman prisoner be ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... Jesus has begun to make with him, even with the spirit and soul and life of antichrist, both in confounding and blasting it by the Spirit of his mouth, as also by forcing it to dishonorable retreats, and by making it give up to him as the conqueror, not only some of his superstitious and diabolical rites and ceremonies to be destroyed, but many a goodly truth which this vile one had taken from his church, to be renewed to them. Nay, further, he has also already begun to take from him both kingdoms and countries, though as to some not so absolutely ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... him in silence, as, withdrawing along with the others, the distance dimmed his form, and drowned his maledictions; then, drawing a deep sigh, a dark, vindictive scowl gathered upon his visage, until its expression became diabolical, and these words rolled from his heaving chest in ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... apprehensions were confirmed. Captain Staghorn was resolved to carry out his diabolical intentions. What could be done? I felt that Charles Ceaton had never fired a pistol except in open warfare, and as to practising for the sake of being the better able to kill a fellow-creature, I knew that was ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... rediscovered religion and the need of something to hold its communities together. At Bun Hill this function was entrusted to an old Baptist minister. He taught a simple but adequate faith. In his teaching a good principle called the Word fought perpetually against a diabolical female influence called the Scarlet Woman and an evil being called Alcohol. This Alcohol had long since become a purely spiritualised conception deprived of any element of material application; it had no relation to the occasional ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... he any betting transactions together in which Palmer had lost, and finding himself unable to pay, destroyed his noble creditor with diabolical secrecy? ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... children round a Maypole. Their manners, however, were hardly childlike, for they jumped, and yelled, and sang with the ruddy firelight glowing on their countenances, till they looked like a lot of demons performing some diabolical incantation. All around was the dark night, and rocks, and trees, which gave a most weird aspect to the scene when ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... forward with one leg toward Alberto, and then drew himself back suddenly, as if in a state of harassing indecision. (Applause.) Then he cast a diabolical look (worthy of the elder Booth in Richard III) at the young lover, and shrieked, "Wretch! villain! I will—I will—" He hesitated to add what he would do, but shook his fists in a highly natural manner at the object of his ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... converted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, nor courage, nor principle, to aid me on such an occasion—better alone than have a false friend for ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... nothing is sweeter in life. Hector Strong was not the man to spare any one who had done him an injury. Yet I think his method of revenging himself upon Lady Dorothy savoured of the diabolical. He printed a photograph of her in The Daily Picture Gallery. It was headed "The Beautiful Lady ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... with the Bombay occurrence, Madras occurrences, and the Chouri Choura occurrences thinking over these things deeply, and sleeping over them night after night and examining my heart I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible for me to dissociate myself from the diabolical crimes of Chouri Choura or the mad outrages of Bombay. He is quite right when he says that as a man of responsibility, a man having received a fair share of education, having had a fair share of experience of ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... wrote an account of a terrible murder, supposed to have occurred at "Dutch Nick's," a station on the Carson River, where Empire City now stands. He made a man cut his wife's throat and those of his nine children, after which diabolical deed the murderer mounted his horse, cut his own throat from ear to ear, rode to Carson City (a distance of three and a half miles) and fell dead in front of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... Mr. Elias Lawless, and Mr. Peter Willeby, lawyers. Outlaw was acquitted, and Ledred forced to fly for safety to England, of which he was a native. It is pleasant to remember that, although Irish credulity sometimes took shapes absurd and grotesque enough, it never was perverted into diabolical channels, or directed to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... scoundrels unhung; and, if I may venture to say so to a lady, you are in every respect quite worthy of him. But connected with you two is a third party, a villain of the name of Quilp, the prime mover of the whole diabolical device, who I believe to be worse than either. For his sake, Miss Brass, do us the favour to reveal the whole history of this affair. Let me remind you that your doing so, at our instance, will place you in a safe and comfortable position—your present ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... irresolute. He could only guess what Conward's plan had been, but that it had been diabolical and cowardly, and that it concerned Irene, he had no doubt. His impulse was to immediately confront Conward, force a confession, and deal with him as the occasion might seem to require. But his eye fell on the boy, with his shock of brown hair and ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... a child six days old, and Tant Sannie would turn her out into the fields this night. That," said the German rising, "that is what I call cruelty—diabolical cruelty. My soul abhors that deed. The man that could do such a thing I could run him through with a knife!" said the German, his grey eyes flashing, and his bushy black beard adding to the murderous fury of his aspect. Then ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... to mischief. It was the subtlest diabolical piece of malice, heart of man has contrived. I have no more rheumatism than that poker. Never was freer from all pains and aches. Every joint sound, to the tip of the ear from the extremity of the lesser toe. The report of thy ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. At first Mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for a reward in the shape of souls captured for eternity, but as playing his part for the diabolical pleasure of so doing. In the course of time, however, Goethe invested him more and more with the costume and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... in the spring of 1867, Lord Houghton refers to Mr. Gladstone as being 'quite awed' for the moment by the 'diabolical cleverness of Dizzy.' He adds: 'Delane says the extreme party for Reform are now the grandees, and that the Dukes are quite ready to follow Beale into Hyde Park.'—The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Lord Houghton, by Sir Wemyss Reid, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... trouble him till I've rustled some grub and have something to offer. Well, Buntin', we are all here but the daughter of the Glen," he said, rescuing the grub sack, "and if she was a dream and you inveigled me here by your own diabolical powers, I've a hunch this is our graveyard; we'll never see the world ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... ever be found after one of his raids. They were plotted and followed out with diabolical accuracy and thoroughness. He struck, looted, and vanished. And wasn't seen ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... been there, you would have been much hindered with your hot irons; you would have wanted a lot of charcoal to heat them red, and sure you would have been killed like a calf for your cruelty. Many died of the diabolical storm of the echo of these engines of artillery, and the vehement agitation and severe shock of the air acting on their wounds; others because they got no rest for the shouting and crying that were made day and night, and for want of good food, and other things ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... further serious reason for alarm in the fact that Clarisse Mergy thought that she was shadowing and watching Daubrecq at a time when, on the contrary, Daubrecq was watching her, having her shadowed and dragging her, with diabolical cleverness, toward the places selected by himself, far from all help or hope ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... to say of the Empusa? The insect world, at all events in our parts, contains no more fantastic creature. The children here, who are remarkable for finding names which really depict the animal, call the larva "the Devilkin." It is indeed a spectre, a diabolical phantom worthy of the pencil of a Callot. (Jacques Callot (1592-1635), the French engraver and painter, famous for the grotesque nature of his subjects.—Translator's Note.) There is nothing to beat it in the extravagant medley of figures in his "Temptation of Saint ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... An expression of diabolical cruelty overspread the handsome countenance of Dolores; and when the laggart fish-woman had reached the nearer end of the bridge, near the customs office, the girl burst into an insolent, ridiculing laugh. She touched agueela Picores on ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... With a diabolical smile he sealed the envelope up, rang the bell, and ordered Second-Lieutenant Lord Smith to be ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,—the grin, and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people have conferred diabolical instincts ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... months, during which time the British Government spared neither the pains not expense to establish a full train of evidence against him. The affair had caused the greatest excitement here, as well as at Cadiz, owing to the development of the atrocities which marked the character of this man, and the diabolical gang of which he was the leader. Nothing else is talked of; and a thousand horrors are added to his guilt, which, although he was guilty enough, he has no right to bear. The following is all the authentic ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis, calls every Mussulman to his prayers. That tower springs from the Parthenon itself; and every time we paused and directed our eyes towards it, our guide set up a wail, that a temple which had once been won from the diabolical uses of the pagans to become the temple of another virgin than Pallas—the Virgin Mother of God—was now again perverted to the accursed ends of the Moslem. It was the sight of those walls of the Acropolis, which disclosed themselves in the distance as we leaned over the side of our ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... shall perish by the sword." The moment we come into a realization of the subtle powers of the thought forces, we can quickly see that the moment we entertain any thoughts of hatred toward another, he gets the effects of these diabolical forces that go out from us, and has the same thoughts of hatred aroused in him, which in turn return to the sender. Then when we understand the effects of the passion, hatred or anger, even upon the physical body, we can see how detrimental, how expensive this is. The same is true in regard ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... below, but a soft violet radiance. It shone full upon him—past him—to light up and give detail to those faces that had been featureless before. Chet had just one moment of fascinated staring into the diabolical, pasty faces where narrow, red eyes stared back into his. Then the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... the equatorial belt, and even the remotest provinces, were seething with war talk. The teletabloids at the street corners always had intent audiences. Sira watched one of them. Disease germs had been found in a shipment of fruit juices from the Earth. The teletabloids showed, in detail, diabolical looking terrestrials in laboratory aprons infecting the juices. Then came shocking clinical views of the diseases produced. Men, on turning away, growled deep in their throats and women chattered shrilly. The parks ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... road of that hour's great work. For the end was justified beforehand between him and Hall. It was not a matter of vengeance, but of justice. This man had once attempted to take away his life by the most diabolical cruelty that human depravity ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... cynical, and hating Neapolitan, pushed about by the police for a likeness much too like, would shrug his shoulders, and say, possibly, the likeness was loaded. But when we look at the character of the loading, there may be anything there, from diabolical and malignant spite up to the simplest fun, to say nothing of the almost impossibility of drawing the real truth, and the almost necessary tendency to exaggerate one thing and diminish another. But if the Italian mind, with a head to be chopped off by a despot for a joke, discovered ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... you've killed my father," I shouted. My senses left me. Two days later, when my father was placed in his coffin, his features were mild and gentle again as they had been when he was alive. I found great consolation in the thought that his association with the diabolical Coppelius could not have ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... receive a pitiful five hundred a year; whilst his cousins—struggling men of the world, unaccustomed to luxury and splendour—were each to have an income of five thousand. And this woman—this base, unknown, friendless creature, who had nothing but her diabolical beauty to recommend her—was ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... scene now changes to the infernal regions, where Satan deems it time to frustrate the Christians' aims, because it would ill-suit diabolical ends to have them recover possession of Jerusalem. Not only does Satan stimulate his hosts by reminding them of their forfeited bliss, but he encourages them to thwart the Christians by reminding them of the great deeds ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... was no moment to speculate about that. So far it merely tended to prove the almost diabolical cleverness of the people with whom the police had to deal. The Rajah himself could be seen standing moodily in the doorway chewing a cigar between his strong, yellow teeth. Berrington observed him ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... the first victim of that diabolical scheme to awaken the wrath of the northland? In the madness which possessed him now Philip shoved out his canoe while there was still danger of discovery. Fortunately none of the pursued glanced back, and a turn in the channel soon hid them ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... of the Germans as diabolical. They were human; they had a case. It was a stupid case, but our case, too, was a stupid case. How stupid were all our cases! What was it we missed? Something, he felt, very close to us, and very elusive. Something that would resolve a ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... in further mentioning the diabolical cruelties practised by these savages of which Piomingo told us. Far removed from the benign influences of Christianity, these red men only acted according to the impulses of their barbarous nature. ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... steel with which the needle-maker draws his every breath! The sea's work makes a man, and leaves him with his duty nobly done, a man at the last. Courage, loyal obedience, patient endurance, the abnegation of selfishness,—these are the lessons the sea teaches. Why must the shore make such diabolical haste and try such fiendish ingenuity to undo them? The sea is pure and free, the land is firm and stable,—but where they meet, the tide rises and falls, leaving a little belt of sodden mud, of slippery, slimy weeds, where the dead refuse of the sea is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... a sight! He was black from head to foot with the sepia fluid, his clothes were torn where he had fallen on the rocks, and he was smothered in the nauseous embrace of the uncanny and diabolical eight-armed creature clinging to his shoulder. Once, on the way to the boat, the cuttlefish seemed ready to drop off, but, at Vincente's warning, Colin made believe to force apart the other tentacles, and the octopus renewed its hold. As soon as they reached the boat ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... felt obliged, therefore, to inflict upon Porthos the pain of mounting on horseback again. They rode on till seven o'clock in the evening, and had only one post more between them and Blois. But here a diabolical accident alarmed Aramis greatly. There were no horses at the post. The prelate asked himself by what infernal machination his enemies had succeeded in depriving him of the means of going further,—he ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... deaths of the just and of the sinners—made by Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries. Nor were there lacking the Chinese prints on red paper representing a man seated, of venerable aspect, with a calm, smiling face, behind whom stood a servant, ugly, horrible, diabolical, threatening, armed with a lance having a wide, keen blade. Among the Indians some call this figure Mohammed, others Santiago, [34] we do not know why, nor do the Chinese themselves give a very clear explanation of this ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... other places) I distinguished myself like a brick; that I was put in the office of a solicitor, a friend of my father's, and didn't much like it; and after a couple of years (as well as I can remember) applied myself with a celestial or diabolical energy to the study of such things as would qualify me to be a first-rate parliamentary reporter—at that time a calling pursued by many clever men who were young at the Bar; that I made my debut in the gallery (at about eighteen, I suppose), ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... list of the dead reports only those who had died "since April last" (1622), consequently does not include the victims of the Indian massacre, which occurred on the 22d of March of that year. The number which fell by that diabolical conspiracy, as reported by Smith, amounted to 347, and in his Generall Historie, at page 149, he has a list of the numbers murdered at different places. Neill copies from the Records of the Virginia Company (now in the Congressional ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... George! I can't tell you everything over the public air. But I've seen him: He's diabolical. I know ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... discover, that your aim is to torture me, for relinquishing a beloved object, whom you are, at this moment, attaching to yourself;—to know, that a diabolical disposition, for which I cannot account, prompts you to come here, without the probability of benefiting any party, to injure me, and throw a whole family into confusion, on the eve of a marriage. But, in ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... any unforseen accident should leave them parishioners in a place where they knew they must perish miserably; so that great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... relieved when the talk turned to the tent. It was young Hiram who brought about this boon. He was interested in the tent, and he wanted to know. Two things seemed to bother the boy: First, he was anxious to learn what diabolical cause had been at work to induce two apparently sane men to give up the comforts of home and live in this exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities came of their own accord into the uninteresting ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... For a breathing space Behar Singh stood there, drawn to his full height; then he reeled and rolled with a heavy thud to the lowest step, where he lay motionless, his grinning face frozen into a look of diabolical joy. A slow oozing stream of blood crept over the white marble to Nicholson's feet. The voices died into silence. Nicholson and Nehal Singh faced each other over the ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... princes of Italy, the one of the longest duration was to Caesar Borgia, whom he narrowly observed at the very important period when this illustrious villain was elevating himself by his crimes, and whose diabolical policy he had thus an opportunity of studying. He had a considerable share in directing the counsels of the republic, and the influence to which he owed his elevation was that of the free party, which censured the power of the Medici, and at that time held them in exile. When the latter ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... them any holiness, any devotion, any good works; but, on the contrary, luxurious living, avarice, greed, fraud, envy, pride, and even worse, if there is worse; all the machine seemed to be set in motion by an impulse less divine than diabolical. After what I saw, it is my firm conviction that your pope, and of course the others as well, are using all their talents, art, endeavours, to banish the Christian religion from the face of the earth, though ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... missed you," she pursued with diabolical plaintiveness. "Our child—our adopted child," she corrected, the pink running up under her skin, "has been crying ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... get rid of him was by gibes and mockery. One night his bed shook with the violent agitation caused by the rattling of some hazel nuts against each other after they had felt the inspiration of the Evil One! On another occasion a diabolical moth buzzed round him, preventing close attention to his labours. He hurled an inkstand at the intruder, staining the wall of the chamber with a mark that ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... laughed both the sooty wretches; and the diabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt expression of the fiendish character which Legree ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... that comes from over-mastering impulse. She had rushed into the adventure of seeking her unknown kindred, the gypsies; and now she was in this strange lane, she hardly dared look on one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical blacksmith in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It was not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight of a small pair of bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by the side of a hillock; they seemed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Migul were luring the other cage into stopping. Tugh wanted five hundred feet of unoccupied space between the cages when they stopped. His diabolical purpose in that was soon to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... believe that they are what the Scotchman calls uncanny. If you once find him thinking that steam, or the gun which kills a man a couple of hundred yards away, is the result of fetish or the bunyip, or a diabolical spirit, he's the greatest coward under the sun. Give them another brush over ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... loadstone, blessed by Arrigone, and intended to operate like a love-charm. The girl, in fact, began to feel the influence of her seducer. In the final confession which she made, she relates how she fought against temptation. 'Some diabolical force compelled me to go to the window overlooking his garden; and one day when Sister Ottavia told me that Osio was standing there, I fainted from the effort to restrain myself. This happened several times. At one moment I flew into a rage, and prayed to God to help me; at another I felt lifted ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton and its threats, that we had almost lost the God-given independence of American freemen, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... arranged that it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes madly from his place, kicks to pieces the first double-bass ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... modest of the four. He has not Shakespeare's absolute universality, and in fact not merely the poet's tongue, but the poet's thought seems to have been denied him. His sphere is not the ideal like Milton's. His irony, splendid as it is, falls a little short of that diabolical magnificence which exalts Swift to the point whence, in his own way, he surveys all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory or vainglory of them. All Fielding's critics have noted the manner, in ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... the object of terror to the people. The violent animosity which had been excited against the Catholics in general, made the public swallow the grossest absurdities, when they accompanied an accusation of those religionists: and the more diabolical any contrivance appeared, the better it suited the tremendous idea entertained of a Jesuit. Danby, likewise, who stood in opposition to the French and Catholic interest at court, was willing to encourage every story which might serve to discredit that party. By his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... That sounded well and metaphysical; but what did it mean if acted upon? What was the centre of London for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudinarian, literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) diabolical? Apparently that we should stay at our inn; for in that way we seemed best to distribute our presence equally amongst all, viz., by going to ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... inhabiting the island of Quelquo, in a remote corner of the lagoon; the innocent people of which island were sadly fretted and put out by their diabolical proceedings. Not to be wondered at; since, dwelling as they did in the air, and completely inaccessible, these spirits were peculiarly ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... lived another hundred years!" he cried involuntarily. Some diabolical influence had drawn him to his father, and again he gazed at that luminous spark. The eyelid closed and opened again abruptly; it was like a woman's sign of assent. It was an intelligent movement. If a voice ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... instance, we seize a man and deliberately do him a malicious injury: say, imprison him for years. One would not suppose that it needed any exceptional clearness of wit to recognize in this an act of diabolical cruelty. But in England such a recognition provokes a stare of surprise, followed by an explanation that the outrage is punishment or justice or something else that is all right, or perhaps by a heated attempt to argue that ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... am doing all I can, but things are in a diabolical tangle. Some of our supplies are here; others are laid out on the road; some seem to be utterly lost. We have had to make substitutions of machinery, our bills are overdue, and—but what's the use! We need money. That's the crux of the whole ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... ever affected it. He had been in England, she knew, comparatively a short time; yet in that time, his name had run like fire from mouth to mouth. To the minds of Protestants there was something almost diabolical about the man; he was here, he was there, he was everywhere, and yet, when the search was up, he was nowhere. Tales were told of his eloquence that increased the impression that he made a thousand-fold; it was said that he could wile birds off their branches and the beasts from their ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... were living on a small farm in the vicinity of Rochelle. As he walked one afternoon in the main street of that city, he was very rudely accosted by a couple of officers of the holy inquisition, whose looks and dress were as dark and diabolical as their employment. ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... the Archbishop of Mentz declared him a heretic; and the Abbot Trithemius, who was fond of improving steganography or the art of secret writing, having published several curious works on this subject, they were condemned, as works full of diabolical mysteries; and Frederic II., Elector Palatine, ordered Trithemius's original work, which was in his library, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... should consume the accursed world and thus hasten the coming of the kingdom which should bring such incalculable rewards to their own organization and plunge the rest of mankind in everlasting torment. To any respectable Pagan such action was an insane crime made worse by a diabolical motive. The destruction of the world, therefore, seems to have become a subject of profound irritation, if not actually of terror. At any rate the doctrine lay at the very heart of the perniciosa superstitio, and Sallustius uses his ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... and diabolical laughter died away, and there was no sound but the lapping of the waves against the felucca's side. They had done their work thoroughly; not a moan arose from the heaps of butchered men, not a limb moved, but all were rigid, some lying in grotesque postures ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only deprived of the favor of God, but also of His image; of all virtue, righteousness, and true holiness, and sunk partly into the image of the devil, in pride, malice, and all other diabolical tempers; partly into the image of the brute, being fallen under the dominion of brutal passions and groveling appetites. Hence also death entered into the world, with all his forerunners and attendants; pain, sickness, and a whole train of uneasy as well as ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... ow! came from a couple of hundred yards away—a hollow, diabolical kind of mocking laugh which sent a ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... slaves before the year 1808, said: "It [the importation of slaves] was one of the great causes of our separation from Great Britain. Its exclusion has been a principal object of this State, and most of the States of the Union. The augmentation of slaves weakens the States; and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and disgraceful to mankind: yet, by this Constitution, it is continued for twenty years. As much as I value a union of all the States, I would not admit the Southern States into the Union, unless they agree to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it brings weakness, ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... hat. His eyes rested on Hugh, with a look of diabolical malice: "The time is not far off, Mr. Mountjoy, when you may be sorry you refused me." He said those words deliberately—and ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... with no fewer than five rivals, who set upon him at once, and drove him up stairs to the dining room door, with hideous noise: there our aunt and her woman, taking arms in his defence, joined the concert; which became truly diabolical. This fray being with difficulty suppressed, by the intervention of our own footman and the cook-maid of the house, the squire had just opened his mouth, to expostulate with Tabby, when the town-waits, in the passage below, struck up their music (if music it may be called) with such a sudden burst ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... I've never seen anything like it in my life, though I know a good bit about women, too. I have known regular devils in my time, but I never met anything like this. It is, as you say, by insolence and cynicism she gets over you. What is so attractive in her is the diabolical suddenness, the quick transitions, the swift shifting hues. . . . Brrr! And the IOU— phew! Write it off for lost. We are both great sinners, we'll go halves in our sin. I shall put down to you not two thousand three hundred, but half of it. ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language. I shall not tell you of the hours I devoted to plans of torture on him, nor of the diabolical means and devices of torture that I invented for him. Just one example. I was enamoured of the ancient trick whereby an iron basin, containing a rat, is fastened to a man's body. The only way out for the rat ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... father and mother, what shall we say of this truly diabolical master! O, how shall I find words to paint my griefs, and his deceit! I have as good as confessed I love him; but, indeed, it was on supposing him good.—This, however, has given him too much advantage. But now I will break this wicked forward heart of mine, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Castle. When brought before Warwick there, the Earl muttered, "Now you shall feel the Hound's teeth," and after a mock trial by torchlight he was led out of the castle and beheaded on the hill. Every one of the barons concerned in this rather diabolical action died by violence ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of the signs foreboding the end of the world. He has not spoken in delicate terms of the Popes. His most virulent utterances are directed against the "Vicar of Christ" at Rome. He traces the papacy to diabolical origin. When he lays bare the shocking perversions of revealed truths of which Rome has been guilty, and talks about the foul practises of the Popes and their courtesans, Luther's language becomes appalling. In a series of twenty-six ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... and interpret, and stimulating bad feeling between nations by abusive writing which is as empty of real conviction as the rage of a pantomime king, and would be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear diabolical—though we were to find among these a man who was benignancy itself in his own circle, a healer of private differences, a soother in private calamities, let us pronounce him nevertheless flagrantly ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... was quite impossible. If this man was guilty, his crime had been deliberately planned, and executed with such a diabolical cunning, that he had been able so far to escape detection. In his own house, surrounded by prying servants, he would never dare to assail this girl by so much as a ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... These cold blooded butcheries would have done credit to the most cruel and blood thirsty of the primeval savages of the forest. These deeds were heralded all over the North as "acts of God, done by the hands of men." The leader of this diabolical plan and his compeers were sainted by their followers and admirers, and praises sung over him all over the North, as if over the death of saints. By a stupendous blunder the people of the South, and the friends of the Union generally, allowed this party to elect ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... if thou dost imagine that I would permit undue familiarity of speech, beware!" And then I began to think of and dread the coming breakfast; to wonder why the ham was always cut half an inch thick, and why the fried egg always resembled a glass eye that visibly winked at you with diabolical dyspeptic suggestions; to wonder if the buckwheat cakes, the eating of which requires a certain degree of artistic preparation and deliberation, would be brought in as usual one minute before the train started. And then I had a vivid ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... around and caught the diabolical glance of Barbesieur's eyes. "I—I do not believe ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach |
