"Malign" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter of fact, both "A Strange Story" and "Zanoni" are carefully veiled exposes of the two oldest and most powerful centers of Spiritual knowledge extant, and are revelations of the loftiest pursuits and the most malign practices ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... not enough, the lady was not scrupulous, apparently without principle as without shame, nothing was too much! And then think of the same woman protecting the virtuous philosopher Arnauld, when he was denounced and condemned; and from motives which her worst enemies could not malign, secreting him in her house, unknown even to her own servants—preparing his food herself, watching for his safety, and at length saving him. Her tenderness, her patience, her discretion, her disinterested benevolence, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... its malign influence on every interest connected with monikin life. Temples were raised to God on speculation; the government was perverted to a money-investment, in which profit, and not justice and security, was the object; ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of Antony and Cleopatra must have struck many students of the records of their age as one of the most inexplicable of tragic tales. What malign influence and secret hates were at work, continually sapping their prosperity and blinding their judgment? Why did Cleopatra fly at Actium, and why did Antony follow her, leaving his fleet and army to destruction? An attempt is made ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... and cavaliers Before this war shall end, which, Italy Afflicting most, has drowned the world in tears, That, if I said the word, I err not, I, Saying he sure the cruellest appears And worst, of nature's impious and malign, Who did this ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... learned, not of wanton men, nor of licentious times, but of the Word and doctrine of God, that is, according to godliness; and thou shalt walk with Christ in white. Now, God Almighty gave his people grace, not to hate or malign sinners, nor yet to choose any of their ways, but to keep themselves pure from the blood of all men, by speaking and doing according to that name and those rules that they profess to know and love; for Jesus ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... dearest friend to so malign you, Countess," said the Ambassador, seating himself beside her. "I expected to find Captain Ellerey ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... would have been the part of Moipu to play the hero and the host, and his young men would have accompanied and adorned the various celebrations as the acknowledged leaders of society. And now, by a malign vicissitude of fortune, Moipu must sit in his house quite unobserved; and his young men could but look in at the door while their rivals feasted. Perhaps M. Grevy felt a touch of bitterness towards his successor when he beheld him figure on the broad stage of the centenary of eighty-nine; the visit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thee a denizen Of His own celestial city. He shall to the world proclaim His omnipotence and glory, By the wondrous Purgatory Which shall bear thy sainted name. Lest thou think the promise vain Of this miracle divine, I will take this shape malign, Which came hither to profane Thy devotion, and within This dark cavern's dark abyss Fling it,— there to howl and hiss In the everlasting ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... believe it true might disturb our equilibrium and our self-possession. We ought not to deal in stuff of that kind. We ought not to permit things of that sort to use up the electrical energy of the wires, because its energy is malign, its energy is not of the truth, its ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... still more aroused after the crisis to which his strange visitor had hurried him so treacherously, and he resolved to overcome, by the force of genius, the malign influence which weighed upon his work and himself. He first repaired to the various clocks of the town which were confided to his care. He made sure, by a scrupulous examination, that the wheels were in good condition, the pivots ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... soul, so it's you, 'Joannes Frollo de Molendino!'" cried one of them, to a sort of little, light-haired imp, with a well-favored and malign countenance, clinging to the acanthus leaves of a capital; "you are well named John of the Mill, for your two arms and your two legs have the air of four wings fluttering on the breeze. How long have you ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the world to allow of our increasing them by imaginary misfortunes, which brings real ones in their train: and yet this is the precise effect of the superstition, which thus proves itself at once stupid and malign. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in death's sick delay Or seizure of malign vicissitude Can rob this body of honour, or denude This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day? For lo! even now my lady's lips did play With these my lips such consonant interlude As laurelled Orpheus longed ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... this happened, before I ever saw you. I am no worse now, but I am still that; and I would not have your name pinned to mine on Paris lips. Therefore, good-bye. God forbid I should say more to you, or let you stay where foul tongues would soon malign you.' ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... went out on deck because he felt that he needed air. Malign fate would have it that, as he stood at the rail, brooding over this unsurmountable complication, Little Miss Grouch should appear, radiant, glorious of hue, and attended by the galaxy of swains. She gave him the lightest of passing nods as she went by. He raised ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... trying to disengage them the English reached us, and surrounded us so as to cut off all retreat. Then I surrendered with 3 or 4 officers and about 40 soldiers who were with me, and the guns. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of January, 1761, a moment whose malign influence it was as it were impossible to resist, since it was that of the surrender of Pondicherry,[117] a place ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... of him," said Westover, whom her words confirmed in a suspicion he had had all along. But what did it matter that Jeff had suggested their asking him, and then attributed the notion to them? It was not so malign for him to use that means of ingratiating himself with Westover, and of making him forget his behavior with Lynde, and it was not unnatural. It was very characteristic; at the worst it merely proved that Jeff was more ashamed of what ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... rightly, there's reason enough, 'Cause one is as smooth as the other is rough. But much I'm amazed you should think my design Was to rhyme down your nose, or your harlequin grin, Which you yourself wonder the de'el should malign. And if 'tis so strange, that your monstership's crany Should be envied by him, much less by Delany; Though I own to you, when I consider it stricter, I envy the painter, although not the picture. And justly she's envied, since a fiend ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... but while he was away, as Walter sate sadly over a book, his terrors came upon him with fresh force; the thing drew near him and stood at his shoulder, and he could not dislodge it; it seemed to Walter that it was more malign than ever, and was set upon driving him to some desperate deed; so he rose and paced in the court; but it seemed to move behind him, till he thought he would have gone distraught; but finding the church doors ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... they conspired against each other, and on occasions broke out into open warfare. Instead of forming a coalition against the evil genii who threatened their rule, and as a consequence tended to bring everything into jeopardy, they sometimes made alliances with these malign powers and mutually betrayed each other. Their history, if we could recover it in its entirety, would be marked by as violent deeds as those which distinguished the princes and kings who worshipped them. Attempts ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... stroke of the imagination given by the second mate when, at parting, he said he believed he would go down and sleep on board the vessel. In view of this, the State's Prison theory almost appeared a malign ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... Her drama is a still life drama, intensely and profoundly inward. Character is the stuff that she works in, and she deals with it more subtly than Thackeray. With him the tragedy is produced by the pressure of society and its false standards upon the individual; with her, by the malign influence of individuals upon one another. She watches "the stealthy convergence of human fates," the intersection at various angles of the planes of character, the power {279} that the lower nature has to ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of that, his last, adventure all of Hudson's malign stars seem to have been in the ascendant. His evil genius, Juet, again sailed with him as mate; and out of sheer good-will, apparently, he took along with him in the "Discovery" another villainous personage, one Henry Greene—who showed his gratitude for benefits conferred by joining eagerly ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... of Langres, spring can hardly be said to appear before the end of May. Until that time the cold weather holds its own; the white frosts, and the sharp, sleety April showers, as well as the sudden windstorms due to the malign influence of the ice-gods, arrest vegetation, and only a few of the more hardy plants venture to put forth their trembling shoots until later. But, as June approaches and the earth becomes warmed through by the sun, a sudden metamorphosis is effected. Sometimes a single night is sufficient ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... imagine our hairy progenitors to have been. Hence their dirt and vermin, their horror of learning, their unkempt hair, their ferocious independence, their distrust of sunshine and ordered social life, their foul dieting, their dread of malign spirits, their ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... make a horse in bronze, of a marvellous greatness, in order to place upon it, as a memorial, the image of the Duke. And on so vast a scale did he begin it and continue it, that it could never be completed. And there are those who have been of the opinion (so various and so often malign out of envy are the judgments of men) that he began it with no intention of finishing it, because, being of so great a size, an incredible difficulty was encountered in seeking to cast it in one piece; and it might also be believed that, from ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... place?" "Yes," said a young gentleman, "and the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty." "Oh," said I, "how prejudiced you all are!" Whereupon they all laughed. "Now," said I, "you think, no doubt, that the author of such a piece is malign. I know nothing of its origin, but I venture to say it was written by one whose heart overflows with love to everybody, but who is 'laboring under a delusion.'" I did not tell them of the "delusion" which you were "under," in the Senior's room, but I said, "I have a nephew ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... Smoke grew almost to fear sleep, so fearful and bitter were the visions of that mad, twilight land. Always were they of food, and always was the food, at his lips, snatched away by the malign deviser of dreams. He gave dinners to his comrades of the old San Francisco days, himself, with whetting appetite and jealous eye, directing the arrangements, decorating the table with crimson-leafed runners of the autumn grape. The guests were dilatory, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... figure came shuffling across the splendid hall,—that of a little old man somewhat shabbily attired, upon whose wrinkled countenance there seemed to be a fixed, malign smile, like the smile of a mocking Greek mask. He had small, bright, beady black eyes placed very near the bridge of his large hooked nose,—his thin, wispy gray locks streamed scantily over his bent shoulders, and he carried a tall staff to support his awkward ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the whole of the horoscope as it was divulged to me in the lone watches of last night; but I have decided to omit all those portions where there is a possibility that the malign spirits around you have misinterpreted your past and future. When you were younger, you passed your days in happiness; you were very handsome, and you could charm the hearts of men without difficulty. There has been with you frequently, during your past years, a man some years older than ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... Egyptians when they were "shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, they lay there exiled from eternal providence." Everything seemed to them to have a malign purpose. "Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently, or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and civil governors appear in malign aspect, or in modern phrase, like a quarrel between the squire and the rector, which is seldom detrimental to the people. This was the case with Henry the Eighth and ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... overreached himself and his lie is found out. Let us rejoice that the Prince your son is innocent of all blame, is loving and loyal. Let us publicly, promptly stamp Saxe for the liar he has proved himself to be, lest he malign the King himself. Sire, if I may speak freely, it is now the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury; that to hate another, is to malign himself, and that the truest way to love another ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... cupboards by daylight would have found that they contained innocuous cricket-bats and stumps, croquet-mallets and balls, and sets of bowls. But as soon as the shades of night fell, these harmless sporting accessories were changed by some mysterious and malign agency into grizzly bears, and grizzly bears are notoriously the fiercest of their species. It was advisable to walk very quickly, but quietly, past the lair of the grizzlies, for they would have gobbled up a little boy in one second. Immediately after the bears' ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... mineral waters, which are the sworn enemies of any sebaceous condition. And now that she was nineteen, almost at the further boundary of the marrying age, and slimmer than ever before, he rejoiced greatly, for he had accomplished his deep and malign purpose, and laid a heavy burden of sorrow ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... my boy," said the rector, "and sterling coin, I'll warrant, however much you may malign yourself." He was too nervous to ask a direct question about his son's success. "We have been very dull without you. Lettice is counting on your help to break in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... queen of American actresses, I would do it. But I am helpless. I shall not speak or write to you again till I can come with some gift in my hand—some recompense for your losses through me. I have been a malign influence in your life. I am in mad despair when I think of you playing to cold and empty houses. I am going back to the West to do sash factories and wheat elevators; these are my metier. You are the one to grant pardon; ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... fact in this money-getting era that a poor author, or a seedy artist, or a college president with frayed coat-sleeves, has more standing in society and has more paragraphs written about him in the papers than many a millionaire. This is due, perhaps, to the malign influence of money-getting and to the benign effect of purely intellectual pursuits. As a rule every great success in the money world means the failure and misery of hundreds of antagonists. Every success in the world of intellect and character is an aid and profit to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... town in the beginning of the year A.D. 1665; yea, and it likewise invaded my school, insomuch that therewithal certain of the chief scholars sickened and died." "Among others who yielded to the malign influence was Master John Eliot, the eldest son and the worshipful heir of Edward Eliot, Esquire of Trebursey, a stripling of sixteen years of age, but of uncommon parts and hopeful ingenuity. At his own especial motion and earnest desire I did consent to preach his funeral ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... and more responsive to psychic stimulus whether that stimulus proceed from a good or evil influence; and therefore the recognition of our Redemption in Christ surrounds us with a protecting barrier, through which no evil spirit or malign influence can pass; so that, resting upon this Truth, we need never be in fear of any such invasion, but shall at all times be clothed with the whole armour of ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... and poured forth such bitterness upon England as cannot be described by those who hate ingratitude towards a country that has given us a chance to prepare. Wherever that man goes he carries hate with him towards Great Britain. His atmosphere is malign; his presence breathes treason towards England. That is another man who should have been arrested at dark, tried at midnight, and shot at daybreak. No man can serve God and Mammon. No man can be faithful to the United States who hates England and loves Germany. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... forgave, just as by some miracle her mind had dwelt apart from everything that was base in her own marriage. Her ideas of evil were vague and bodiless. She may have conceived Nevill to have been the victim of some malign intellectual influence, the thrall, perhaps, of some Miss Batchelor sans merci. There may have been mysteries, gulfs before which she shuddered, dim regions which she could only just divine. He did ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... that armour of courage and confidence which we put on in self-defence. One man conquers fear of danger only to fall a prey to fear of public opinion; another succumbs to superstitious fear, while a third, steadfast against all these, comes under the thraldom of the most insidious and malign of all forms of ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... turpitudines etiam in nostra repub. non prorsus inusitat sunt: tamen cum omnibus constet in alijs quoque nationibus long etiam frequentiores esse, cum ibi quoque populi frequentia maior: immerit et malign hoc nomine magis Islandos, qum populos et gentes reliquas, quarum, vt dixi, nomen etiam plus nostratibus hoc ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... Phrygian cap. It was due to his influence that in 1793 the death of Louis XVI. was celebrated throughout the American continent with grotesque symbolism and farcical solemnity. A single instance is enough to prove the malign effect of Jefferson's teaching. At Philadelphia the head of a pig was severed from its body, and saluted as an emblem ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... The People's Banner, setting at defiance with an admirable audacity all the facts as given in the Commissioners' report, declared that there was not one tittle of evidence against Mr. Browborough, and hinted that the trial had been got up by the malign influence of that doer of all evil, Phineas Finn. But men who knew better what was going on in the world than did Mr. Quintus Slide, were well aware that such assertions as these were both unavailing and unnecessary. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first set foot in Sicily—so he thought now—had ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... greed," "inflamed with tales of an ancient crime against their rights," "unfortunate and unreasonable," "restless and turbulent," "reckless creed," "boisterous and passionate campaign," "allied forces of calamity," "encouraged by malign conditions," and so on ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... with Gatacre and Brabant, who were soon seriously involved. Lord Roberts' view of the situation, which although mistaken was not unwarranted, was that the majority of the Boers were inclined to submit, and would do so but for the malign influence of a small belligerent party; and in order to encourage the waverers to assert themselves, and to give protection to them when they took the oath of neutrality and returned to their homes, he sent out flying columns in various directions to register names, take ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... light of it. But there it was. And Mr. Innes was very anxious about him now; he was really uneasy, my dear; he was positively wrecking his own prospects because he dared not leave him alone. How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully with any malign purpose! And if a man but talks of himself in the right spirit, refers to his virtuous actions by the way, and never applies to them the name of virtue, how easily his evidence is accepted in the court of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... court of the sovereign which is held in the little town of Monaco, and the establishment of the last of legitimate gamblers which is maintained at Monte Carlo. If the report of the world does not malign the prince, he lives, as does the gambler, out of the spoil taken from the gamblers. He is to be seen in his royal carriage going forth with his royal consort,—and very royal he looks! His little teacup ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... phlegm malign gnaw campaign gnash arraign paradigm feign foreign gnu benign diaphragm reign design seignior resign ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... her chagrin, he took his hand away; it was as though Timmy's malign influence had fallen between them. His very tone changed; it was no longer tender, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... did begin to see; And I was nearer than I should have been To laughing at his malign inclusiveness, When I considered that, with all our speed, We are not laughing yet at funerals. I see him now as I could see him then, And I see now that it was good for me, As it was good for him, that I was quiet; For Time's eye ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... and her husband leave the house in order that the little one may have good luck, and also that they themselves may be removed from the malign influence of the malevolent spirits that are inevitably present on ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... up no malign elements; its spirit prompteth it to cover in mercy all things that ought not to be exposed, to believe all of good that can be believed, to hope all things that a good God makes possible, and to endure all things that the hope may ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... Neal make upon the misfortune of having none to wish him ill; and what rendered this hardship doubly oppressive, was the unlucky fact that no exertions of his, however offensive, could procure him a single foe. In vain did lie insult, abuse, and malign all his acquaintances. In vain did he father upon them all the rascality and villany he could think of; he lied against them with a force and originality that would have made many a modern novelist blush for want of invention—but all to no purpose. The world for once ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... Reformed Church of Holland, and resided during the greater part of his life at Amsterdam, where he produced his earlier work Recherches sur les Comtes (1683), in which he combated the popular belief in the malign influence of comets. This work was followed a few years later by his more famous book De Betoverde Weereld, or The Enchanted World, [Footnote: Le Monde enchant, ou Examen des sentimens touchant ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... in thy flight malign, A reed once more beside our trysting-lake. Proud of my music, let me often make A song of goddesses and see their rape Profanely done on many a painted shape. So when the grape's transparent juice I drain, I quell regret for pleasures past and feign A new real grape. For holding towards ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... uncle, sternly, "the boy whom you malign, the boy you have so deeply wronged, has found a permanent ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... at him in frank amazement. By what process of infernal telepathy had he found out? Or was there some deep reason why Arthur would be the best possible man for his purpose, if his purpose was indeed malign? Was Arthur his tool? Or was Arthur subtly making tools of ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... as honest as any woman in England, and as pure for me," cried out Henry, "and, as kind, and as good. For shame on you to malign her!" ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... supplication for surcease of sorrow, and the advance of civilization seems in vain; in these times when the Negro is compared to the brute, and his mentality limited to the ordinary; in these times when the holy robes of the Church are used to decry, villify and malign the race; in these times when the subsidized press of the country loudly proclaims the Negro's incapacity for government; in these times I turn with pardonable pride to the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... "You malign us, Miss Harding," I declared, looking first in her eyes and then in her mirrored image in the water. "From where I stand that brook is the most lovely thing in the ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... saurian dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the "rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... a plan so diabolical that none but Satan himself could have inspired it! This was to take advantage of his acquaintance and casual meetings with Capitola so to malign her character as to make it unlikely that any honest man would risk his honor by taking her to wife; that thus the way might be left clear for himself; and he resolved, if possible, to effect this in such a manner—namely, by jests, ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... slow Decline, Put in their claims, on counts malign; And Plague preferred his rapid power To weed a nation in ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... I practise on you? How you wrong me! I am sure of being every way malign'd. And if you should betray me to ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... olden times was somewhat overdrawn. In 1861, an esteemed antiquarian friend in Connecticut wrote me as follows: "Some of your friends feel that, in your History of Windsor, you showed too much inclination to malign, or at least ridicule, Connecticut institutions, though I think none of them accuse you of malice in the matter, and they fear that this subject of bundling cannot be ventilated without endangering the ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... excellently and most impartially done. The older histories are not well written: they are apt to be sensational and chauvinistic in tone, and to encourage a somewhat cheap and blusterous order of patriotism; but that they commonly malign character or misrepresent events I cannot discover. They are perhaps a little too much inclined to make "insolent" the inseparable epithet of the British soldier; but there is no reason to doubt that in many cases it was amply merited. I have not come across the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... not care; more, God's lightnings sear the eyeballs of virtue, tall and fair as angelhood,—this is our agonized estimate betimes, and we are troubled lest, unwittingly and unwillingly, we malign God. To an explanation of this fiery tangle of adversity the drama of Job sets ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... for the abolition of the squattocracy had not yet been fostered under the malign ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... towards the Alhambra. As they passed the copse in which Muza, two nights before, had met with Almamen, the Moor, lifting his head suddenly, beheld fixed upon him the dark eyes of the magician, as he emerged from the trees. Muza thought there was in those eyes a malign and hostile exultation; but Almamen, gravely saluting him, passed on through the grove: the prince did not deign to look back, or he might once more ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book I. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... him,—anonymous missives, tender and daring, odorous with the atmosphere of luxurious boudoirs, and coarse scrawls, scented with orange-peel and lamp-smoke, and seeming to hiss with the sibilant whisper of green-room spite; and the young actor, valuing alike the sentiments, kindly or malign, which ministered to his egoism, intoxicated with the first foamy draught of fame, grew careless, freakish, and arrogant, as all suddenly adopted pets of the public are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... am told Gifford has a hard prejudice against me, but I cannot believe it. I do not see how any man can have a prejudice against me. He may, indeed, consider me an intruder in the walks of literature, but I am only a saunterer, and malign nobody who chooses to let me pass.... I was going to say before, but forgot, and said quite another thing, that if Mr. Gifford would point out any light work for me to review for him, I'll bet a MS. poem with him that I'll write it better ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... name was changed to Wang. Among the Klemantans it is usual under these circumstances to name the child after some offensive object, E.G. TAI (dung), in order to render it inconspicuous, and thus withdraw it from the attention of malign powers. After the naming of a couple's first child, the parents are always addressed as father and mother of the child; E.G. if the child's name is OBONG, her father becomes known as TAMA OBONG, her mother as INAI OBONG, and their original names are disused and almost forgotten,[43] ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... air is worse this year at Rome than ever, and that it would be madness to go thither during its malign influence. This was very bad news indeed to one heartily tired of Florence, at least of its society. Merciful powers! what a set harbour within its walls! * * * * * You may imagine I do not take vast or vehement delight in this company, though very ingenious, praiseworthy, ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer! For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... disapproving head. "You're no knight-errant," I told my impassive image. "You're too correct, too indifferent-looking altogether. Better not get beyond your depth!" I decided for luncheon, followed by a leisurely knotting of the threads of my Parisian acquaintance. Then, as if some malign hypnotist had projected it before me, I saw again a vision of that flashing, lean, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... strung it were, I did enshrine. Yet thou repaidst me with constraint, rigour and perfidy, To which no lover might himself on any wise resign. How many a bidder unto love, a secret-craving wight, How many a swain, complaining, saith of destiny malign, "How many a cup with bitterness o'erflowing have I quaffed! I make my moan of woes, whereat it boots not to repine." Quoth thou, "The goodliest of things is patience and its use: Its practice still mankind doth ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... 1787 there rose to public prominence in the western country a man whose influence upon it was destined to be malign in intention rather than in actual fact. James Wilkinson, by birth a Marylander, came to Kentucky in 1784. He had done his duty respectably as a soldier in the Revolutionary War, for he possessed sufficient courage and capacity to render average service in subordinate positions, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... to the pulpit with failure staring him in the face, and whereas on the Sunday when Malling first heard him he had obviously fought against the malign influence which eventually had prevailed over him, this time he had not had the vigor to make a struggle. Certainly he had not broken down. It might be said of him, as it was once said of a nation, that he had "muddled through." He had preached a very poor sermon in a ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... to desert me. It was unthinkable that Deeping, with whom I had been speaking less than an hour ago, should now be no more; that some malign agency should thus murderously have thrust him into ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... a letter just received, Mr. GREELEY designates the above report as "a lie—a lie—false and malicious, and uttered with intent to malign and defame." I publish Mr. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... associate Emile Boutmy. In his "Political Psychology of the English" he declares that the haughty, taciturn, solitary, unassimilative temperament of England, so admirable from the point of view of self-development, shows its worst side and comes to a malign florescence in the history of ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... of the servile and creeping Ferbolg; but Costello cared only for the love sorrows, and no matter whither the stories wandered, whether to the Isle of the Red Lough, where the blessed are, or to the malign country of the Hag of the East, Oona alone endured their shadowy hardships; for it was she and no king's daughter of old who was hidden in the steel tower under the water with the folds of the Worm of Nine Eyes round and about her prison; and it was she who won by seven years of service ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... hidden and wait but the wand of divination to be revealed. In a thousand similar ways are the actions and the motives of the Irish understood by those who are careless of them; or worse, misrepresented by those whose interest, and too often business, it is to malign them. ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... made an effort to follow the process by which a weak woman and a weaker man, ignorant of the forces struggling within them and susceptible to malign influences from without, through terrible mistakes and bitter failure, at length reach the ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... this matter of the ring, Cicily had no remorse. She regretted the course of action thrust on her by malign fate, but her conscience was clear of reproach. Perhaps, in some subtle, unconfessed recess of her heart, she nourished a hope that ultimately joy would return to her life. But her openly expressed conviction to herself was that she was done with the life of love. Yet, a curious personal ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... from demons and malign spirits being the friends and abettors of the alchymist, they are the continual foes with which he has to contend. It is their constant endeavour to shut up the avenues to those truths which would enable him to rise above the abject state into which he has fallen, and return to that excellence ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... streams is sacred, endowed with strange properties of evocation and of purification. Such spots go to the making of history and ruling of individual lives; but whether their influence is not more often malign than beneficent may be, perhaps, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... combination of nations against the German people who are its instruments; and would result in abandoning the newborn Russia to the intrigue, the manifold subtle interference, and the certain counter-revolution which would be attempted by all the malign influences to which the German Government has of late accustomed the world. Can peace be based upon a restitution of its power or upon any word of honor it could pledge in a treaty ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... money has got to be so completely the end of life, that few think of it as a means. The history of the world, probably, cannot furnish a parallel instance, of an extensive country that is so absolutely under this malign influence, as is the fact with our own at this present instant. All principles are swallowed up in the absorbing desire for gain; national honour, permanent security, the ordinary rules of society, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... life—as it were, my salad days—I aspired to becoming what old Simon Cameron called "one of those damned literary fellows" and Thomas Carlyle less profanely described as "a leeterary celeebrity." But some malign fate always sat upon my ambitions in this regard. It was easy to become The National Gambler in Nast's cartoons, and yet easier The National Drunkard through the medium of the everlasting mint-julep joke; but the phantom of the laurel crown would ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... surprise, And interpret your device.... Heralds high before him run; He has ushers many a one; He spreads his welcome where he goes, And touches all things with his rose. All things wait for and divine him,— How shall I dare to malign him? 448 EMERSON: Daem. and Celes., Love, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... day by day under the influence of some hidden trouble; among all the faces round the table, his was the most woe-begone. There was no longer any doubt. Goriot was an elderly libertine, whose eyes had only been preserved by the skill of the physician from the malign influence of the remedies necessitated by the state of his health. The disgusting color of his hair was a result of his excesses and of the drugs which he had taken that he might continue his career. The poor old man's mental and physical condition afforded some grounds for the absurd rubbish talked ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... man's social sense, which extended from man to the animals around him. This may possibly be the case, but it is not improbable that man also thought to discover in certain animals much-needed allies against some of the visible and invisible enemies that beset him. In his conflict with the malign powers around him, he might well have regarded certain animals as being in some respects stronger combatants against those powers than himself; and where they were not physically stronger, some of them, like the snake, had a cunning and a subtlety that seemed far to surpass ...
— Celtic Religion - in Pre-Christian Times • Edward Anwyl
... principles of finance, supplies striking examples of the benefits a finance minister of the first order renders to his country, and the dangers of false theories. The marvelous restoration of its prosperity by the genius of Colbert, the ruin caused by the malign sciolism of Law, are familiar to all students of political economy. Nor has the United States been less favored. The names of Morris, Hamilton, Gallatin, and ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel slaughter was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... place of the malicious wink with which he proclaimed himself a victor in a game of draughts, his glass eyes, with their whites in sharp contrast to his swarthy wax skin, were both wide open and set in a glare of such ferocity and malign hatred that they seemed to flash the fire of life and lighten the gloom of the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... malign of itself, and so hard to be removed, the reliques are to be cleansed, by alteratives, cordials, and such means: the temper is to be altered and amended, with such things as fortify and strengthen the heart and brain, [4295]"which are commonly both affected in this ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... one rouses himself from a haunted sleep, the question, "What disaster is this that has befallen?"—answered, alas! but too easily, too terribly! Amidst all this was perpetually rising before my fancy the obscure, dilated figure of our lodger, as he had confronted me in his malign power that night. I dismissed the image with a shudder as often as it recurred; and even now, at this distance of time, I have felt more than I could well describe in the mere effort to fix my recollection upon its hated ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies. So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps: Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace: And some advance by system and deep art O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact. But thou within thyself, dear manifold heart, Dost bind all epochs in one dainty Fact. Oh, sweet, my pretty sum of history, I leapt the breadth of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... trouble of mind was an entire failure, except as illustrating the national apathy of countenance when under the influence of strong emotion. He ceased to take part in the consul's efforts in his behalf; the whole abominable affair seemed as far beyond his forecast or endeavor as some result of malign enchantment, and there was no such thing as carrying off the tragedy with self-respect. Distressing as it was, there could be no question but it was entirely ridiculous; he hung his head with shame before the portiers at being a party to it; he no longer felt like resenting ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... interpretation of culture which will later examine education and literature as these two have examined the church and journalism and which collectively will bear the title The Dead Hand. Against the malign domination of the present by the past Mr. Sinclair directs his principal assault. In the arts he sees the dead hand holding the classics on their thrones and thrusting back new masterpieces as they appear; in religion ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... talked about. Pretty low down of him, as I believe he's married." She was pulled up short in the golden stream of her love. She saw for the first time the face of opinion—that hostile, stupid, interfering face. Claire had never thought that by any malign possibility they could be supposed to be doing wrong. She could not connect wrong with either her love or Winn's. If there was one quality more than another which had distinguished it, it had been its simple sense of rightness. She had seen Winn soften and change under it as the hard earth changes ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... was languid, dreary, mockingly sedate and indolent. Again there were days, and these were the saddest of all, when the inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be tranquil, high-minded, and strong; when that outer self was malign, turbulent, and headstrong, and when all the resolution and vigour he possessed, appeared to be wasted, not in following the higher aims and imaginings with a patient purpose, but in curbing and reining the rough and coltish ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the East. Remained the memory of the greatness lost; The Druid circles of the olden age; The ash-strewn cities radiant late with arts Extinct this day; bath, circus, theatre Mosaic-paved; the Roman halls defaced; The Christian altars crushed. That last of wrongs The vanquished punished with malign revenge: Never had British priest to Saxon preached; And when that cry was heard, 'The Saxon King Edwin hath bowed to Christ,' on Cambrian hills Nor man nor woman smiled. They had not lacked The timely warning. From his Kentish shores Augustine stretched to them paternal hands: Later, he ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the celestial bodies at one or other of these moments, it professed to deduce the whole life and fortunes of the individual. According to Diodorus, it was believed that a particular star or constellation presided over the birth of each person, and thenceforward exercised over his life a special malign or benignant influence. But his lot depended, not on this star alone, but on the entire aspect of the heavens at a certain moment. To cast the horoscope was to reproduce this aspect, and then to read by means ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome; prejudicial; disserviceable^, disadvantageous; wide-wasting. unlucky, sinister; obnoxious; untoward, disastrous. oppressive, burdensome, onerous; malign &c (malevolent) 907. corrupting &c (corrupt) &c 659; virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive; poisonous &c (morbific) 657 [Obs.]; deadly &c (killing) 361; destructive &c (destroying) 162; inauspicious &c 859. bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful; horrid, horrible; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a Dream, which was not all a Dream. (By Somnus and old Nox I fear 'twas not!) Common-sense was extinguished, and Good Taste Did wonder darkling on the verge of doom. I saw a Monster, a malign, marine, Mysterious, many-whorled, mug-lumbering Bogey, Stretched (like Miltonian angels on the marl) In league-long loops upon the billowy brine. Beshrew thee, old familiar ocean Bogey, Thou spectral spook of many Silly Seasons, Beshrew thee, and avaunt! Which being put In post-Shakspearian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various |
