"Nefarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sun, or tattered and decayed by age. Desolate, however, as it was, this was the apartment of the castle which had been judged most fitting for the accommodation of the Saxon heiress; and here she was left to meditate upon her fate, until the actors in this nefarious drama had arranged the several parts which each of them was to perform. This had been settled in a council held by Front-de-Boeuf, De Bracy, and the Templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his peculiar ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... safely delivered of a numerous offspring. The village saw itself overrun with a race and a perpetuity of Corporal's cats! Perhaps, too, their teacher growing more expert by practice, the descendants might attain to even greater accomplishment than their nefarious progenitor. No longer did the faint hope of being delivered from their tormentor by an untimely or even natural death, occur to the harassed Grassdalians. Death was an incident natural to one cat, however vivacious, but here was a ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... countess in Mayfair would be reading him, not knowing, the idiot, whether she ought to smile or shed tears, and sending him cards with 'at home' upon them as large as life. Oh! it is disgusting! absolutely disgusting. It is a nefarious world, sir. You will find it out some day. I am as much robbed by that fellow Gushy as men are on the highway. He is appropriating my income, and the income of thousands of honest fellows. And then he pretends he is writing for the people! The people! What does he know about the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... used in their nefarious art, the hair growing on the end of a wolf's tail, the brain of a cat, the head of a lizard, the bone of a green frog from which the flesh had been eaten by ants. One bone of a frog engendered love, while ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... his fleet of small, swift vessels to ply their trade on the neighboring coast. As for Tacon's rewards, they were long as ineffective as his revenue cutters and gunboats, and the government officials fell at length into a state of despair as to how they should deal with the nefarious and defiant band. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... the old Game of mischievous Men to strike at the Characters of the good and the great, in order to lessen the Weight of their Example & Influence. Such Patriots as Lord Russell & Algernon Sydney of the last Age, have of late been falsly & audaciously chargd by a Scotch Tool of the most nefarious Court, with having receivd Bribes from the National Enemy; and it is not strange that a Gentleman whom the leading Whigs of America have always placd so high in their List of Patriots, who has renderd the most laborious & important Services to our Country in England France & other Parts of Europe, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... stoops to his work; the cart-horses have moved on; and all are again in motion. The influence of a scene like this, was not lost upon the well-regulated mind of Mr. Pickwick. Intent upon the resolution he had formed, of exposing the real character of the nefarious Jingle, in any quarter in which he might be pursuing his fraudulent designs, he sat at first taciturn and contemplative, brooding over the means by which his purpose could be best attained. By degrees his attention ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. His property was all confiscated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated; tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in the Florence ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... you that whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and venders of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, ballad-singers, &c. &c. &c. &c., male and female—We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof We have here enclosed; Our Will therefore is, that Ye pitch upon and appoint the most execrable individual of that most execrable species, known by the appellation, phrase, and nick-name ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... increasing population has visibly increased the number of anglers, and also of parties making use of most destructive wholesale methods of taking fish, to which any amount of angling is indeed comparatively harmless. Angling clubs conducted with energy and liberality have in some places repressed nefarious practices, and some rivers are coming round again, that previous to the protective system were ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... of food necessary for my sustenance. I regretted too late that I had not exercised more restraint; but the hungry man does not and cannot consider consequences, else a certain hairy gentleman who figures in ancient history had never lent himself to that nefarious compact, which gave so great an advantage to a younger but sleek and well-nourished brother. In spite of all this, I felt a secret satisfaction in the thought of the clothes, and it was also good to know that the nature of the work I had ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... in conversation with him not only there, but at the cafe the police had been warned of their nefarious doings and so forth. ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... trial then commenced of the men who had been sent by the Bourbons for this nefarious purpose. Among the accused were General Pichegru, the abettor of Georges, and General Moreau, ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... seemed that this man, Kenyon, had secured the mine at something like ten thousand pounds, and was trying to palm it off on the unfortunate British public at the enormous increase of two hundred thousand pounds; but this nefarious attempt would doubtless be frustrated so long as there were papers of the integrity of the Financial Field, to take the risk and expense of making such an exposure as was ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... all are, therefore, carried away. There are already in prison one bishop, one vicar-general, some religious, very many priests, and an immense number of the laity of every class and condition. In one city alone five of the aldermen were thrown into prison successively, for refusing to take the nefarious oath of allegiance, on their being nominated to the mayoralty; in another city, no less than thirty were likewise thrust into prison at Easter last, for having approached the holy ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... by the vilest treachery; and they would have been successful but for my intervention. For it is certain that the facts could never have been brought to light, had I not compelled Sekosini to speak the truth. That being the case, how could their nefarious scheme have been defeated by our side playing the game, if by 'playing the game' you mean that we were not to compel, or even permit them to incriminate themselves? To me it seems to resolve itself into this—that if one side insists on playing the game while the other side refuses to do so, the ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... raise the question of the genuineness of this strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it, or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was designed—whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the friars. On its surface the infernal engine carries ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... early days of 1887 a person who considered himself defrauded in a nefarious bargain he was trying to make with an adventuress, denounced to the police of Paris a Madame Limouzin, to whom he had paid money on her promise to secure for him the decoration of the Legion of Honor. He wanted it to promote the sale of ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... had found in the park even been given a chance at the piano up-stairs? Well, he had looked to Paula like an artist when she had let him in the door. You could tell, with people like that, if you had an eye for such matters. And then his recognition of Bernstein's nefarious handiwork had clenched her conviction. Certainly she had been right about it; he had absolutely bewitched that piano of hers. She didn't believe there was another such tuner in the United States. If they would come up-stairs after dinner, she'd ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... to that devil's brew of rascals, jailbirds, murderers and cutthroats who libel all honest working men by calling themselves the Industrial Workers of the World; but in the light of their nefarious plots, I call them the Industrious WRECKERS ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... stretched along the sea-shore: the tenants whom he found living near the coast were an idle, profligate, desperate set of people; who, during the time of the late middle landlord, had been in the habit of making their rents by nefarious practices. The best of the set were merely idle fishermen, whose habits of trusting to their luck incapacitated them from industry: the others were illicit distillers— smugglers—and miscreants who lived by waifs and strays; in fact, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... his companion a helping hand. It may not have been through generosity that Nick acted thus; perhaps he dimly suspected that the cowardly Leon might wish to draw back, and allow him to carry out the nefarious business alone and unaided; and Nick was bent on making his crony share in the act, so that he could not turn on him and ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... and secretaries. The Department of Justice was installed in the Guards' Hall, the Oeil-de-Boeuf and the rooms of Marie Antoinette. The Secretary of Public Works directed his affairs within walls that had sheltered the nefarious Dubarry. The official Journal was printed in the palace kitchens. For several years the Opera House, the north wing, and the intimate apartments of Louis XV were given over ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... they commenced to harass and exasperate us in the hope of provoking some action which would bring us before the Commanding Officer to receive a sentence to the stake. Then, being completely foiled in this nefarious practice they did not hesitate to have us arraigned upon the most flimsy charges. As the prisoner was denied all opportunity to rebut any charge preferred against him, and as his word was never accepted before the studiously prepared complaint ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... to Rome, where he remained three weeks, exerting all his efforts to further the plan. After this, he and his men at arms followed the French Marshal Aubigny, who had set out from near Rome for Naples, to engage in a nefarious war of conquest, whose horrors, in the briefest of time, overwhelmed the house ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... a lack of delicacy of speech, and shortly afterward we went to bed. Owing to the root under the tent, and puddles here and there, we could not go to sleep for a time, and we discussed the "nefarious deed," as Tish aptly termed it, that ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still its sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and late on the night before Sylvia's birthday, the Old Lady crept, under cover of the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store where the post-office was kept. She slipped the thin parcel through the slit in the door, and then stole home again, feeling a strange sense of loss and loneliness. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to the telegram we have just quoted, an enormous circular message of several thousand words was sent in code from Peking to all the Military and Civil Governors in the provinces instructing them precisely how to act in order to throw a cloak over the nefarious deed. After explaining the so-called "Law on the General Convention of the Citizens' Representatives" (i. e. national referendum) the following illuminating sentences occur which require no comment showing as they ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Times proceeds to describe these nefarious if nebulous designs and appeals to Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL in particular, "if he has no such intentions, to disclaim them publicly and in a way which will leave no breeding-ground for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... misfortune to differ in matters of foreign policy, the Moscow Gazette had denounced me publicly by name as a person who was in the habit of visiting daily the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—doubtless with the nefarious purpose of obtaining by illegal means secret political information—and the police had concluded that I was a fit and proper person to be closely watched. In reality, my relations with the Russian Foreign Office, though inconvenient ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... at a critical moment at high speed on the submarine, which escaped the steamer by a few meters only by immediately diving. He confessed that in so doing he had acted in accordance with the instructions of the Admiralty. One of the many nefarious franc-tireur proceedings of the British merchant marine against our war vessels has thus found ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... two incidents that may be taken as characteristic of a good deal that had to be contended with, coming in the shape of nefarious attack. "In the early days of my electric light," he says, "curiosity and interest brought a great many people to Menlo Park to see it. Some of them did not come with the best of intentions. I remember the visit of one expert, a well-known electrician, a graduate of Johns Hopkins ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... responsibility. Before the Revolutionary War, Great Britain had been censured for forcing cheap slaves from Africa upon her unwilling colonies. After the Revolution, New England was blamed for the activity of her citizens in this nefarious trade both before and after it was made illegal. All of this tended to increase the sense of responsibility in every section of the country. Congress had made the foreign slave-trade illegal; and citizens in all sections gradually became aware of the possibility that Congress might likewise restrict ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... to him of a fortune than was this sad-faced old maid. She became smiling and animated. She no longer kept at home, but walked abroad. Her step was quick and strong; she looked on at the tree-choppers, the builders, and the painters, at their nefarious work, no more in helpless grief and indignation, but with ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long would he be welcome at the "Trusty Man," but if once he were to be clapped into jail the door of his favourite "public" would be closed to him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who "went ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... seemed beyond belief, an impossibility, and even romantic. Most people were skeptical of the existence of a well defined and organized traffic in girls, and they seemed to think that those advocating the abolition of this nefarious trade were either visionists or fanatics. The struggle against this trade in women was a hard one at first. The ministry, although dazed, were finally aroused to an appreciation ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Holstein and the mouths of the Elbe and Weser. Charles XII was to retain only his kingdom in the Scandinavian peninsula and the grand duchy of Finland. At the last moment Brandenburg balked, but Saxony, Denmark, and Russia signed the nefarious alliance in 1699. The allies expected quick and decisive victory. All western and southern Europe was on the verge of a great struggle for the Spanish inheritance and would clearly be unable to prevent them ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... cities of every land abandoned women are so numerous, despite all these centuries of law-making and moralizing, that they find it impossible to earn a livelihood by their nefarious trade—are driven by sheer necessity to seek more respectable employment. The supply of public prostitutes is apparently limited only by the demand, while the number of "kept women" is constantly increasing, and society becoming day ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... For the glowing description of, and the sneaking apology for, cat-worrying which the "Sporting Jacket" contains, nothing can be said. Wilson deliberately overlooks the fact that the whole fun of that nefarious amusement consists in the pitting of a plucky but weak animal against something much more strongly built and armed than itself. One may regret the P.R., and indulge in a not wholly sneaking affection for cock-fighting, dog-fighting, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government. He left that position to go into business, one phase of which was the most nefarious stock-company that ever fell into the hands of the correctional police. Cerizet proudly accepted the severe sentence he received; declaring it to be a revengeful plot on the part of the republicans, who, he said, would never forgive him for the hard blows he ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... adulteration of articles of human food is a practice of the most nefarious description, and cannot be too strongly deprecated, although it has been carried to an alarming extent. There is scarcely an article of ordinary consumption but has been unlawfully adulterated, and in many cases ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... at one time enjoyed the privilege of a debtors' sanctuary, and had, till abolished in 1697, become a haunt of all kinds of nefarious characters. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... You'll bear in mind that on the right hand side of that cove the plantation comes right down to the edge of the bit of cliff—well, a man lurking amongst the shrubs and undergrowth 'ud have nothing to do but reach his arm to the bank, draw my coatie to his nefarious self, and abstract my property. And by the time I was on dry land again, and wanting my garments, he'd be a quarter ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... advantage. He was a pungent and racy writer, and for a number of years contributed many able articles to the "Quincy Whig." He never spared slavery. In the pulpit, in the public prints, and in private, he fought manfully against the nefarious ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... other means) as much wealth as thou seekest to earn by gambling. What dost thou gain by winning from the Pandavas their vast wealth? Win the Pandavas themselves, who will be to thee more than all the wealth they have. We all know the skill of Suvala in play. This hill-king knoweth many nefarious methods in gambling. Let Sakuni return whence he came. War not, O Bharata, with the sons ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... the midst of her enjoyment of the picturesque features of her enterprise, she ceased not to suffer severely at the sight of the wretched condition of the poor negroes who fell victims to the necessities of a nefarious traffic. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... doubt existed in the weather-worn structure. He had little doubt that this was the place dreamt of, or seen clairvoyantly, by Myra, that this was the place to which Ferrara had retreated in order to conduct his nefarious operations. ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... know, was never heard of again. The reason was this. In some way the Arab slave-traders—who were thick in this district then and plied their nefarious trade almost openly—gained the belief that my expedition was a pretense for a plan of espionage on them and they attacked my camp one night and slaughtered every man in it but myself. Why they did not kill me I do not know, unless it was because ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... father he would provide a racing stable that would bring profit in place of disaster. Crane smiled somewhat grimly as he thought that under those changed circumstances even Allis's mother might be brought to condone her husband's continuance in the nefarious profession. If for no other reason than the great success he had made in the Brooklyn Handicap with Diablo, his spirits were that evening impossible of the reception of even a foreshadowing of failure. A suppressed exhilaration rose-tinted every projected scheme. He would win Allis, and ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... whooping-cough. If Smollett anticipated a violent death from exhaustion and chagrin in consequence of these tortures he was completely disappointed. His health was never better,—so much so that he felt constrained in fairness to drink to the health of the Roman banker who had recommended this nefarious route. [See the Doctor's remarks at the end of Letter XXXV.] By Florence and Lerici he retraced his steps to Nice early in 1765, and then after a brief jaunt to Turin (where he met Sterne) and back by the Col di Tende, he turned his face definitely ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... smuggling carried on between the port of Cherbourg and our own coast,—premising that my readers have my entire approbation to skip over a page or two, if they are not anxious to know anything about these nefarious transactions. ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his head sadly. "No, this low fellow is a white man and a scoundrel. He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name and dragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes. He has made Tui Tulifau drunk. He has made him very drunk. He has kept him very drunk all the time. In return, he has been made Chancellor of the Exchequer and other things. He has issued this false paper and compelled the people to receive it. He has ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... of it. The old friendship between my father and Squire Denistoun had never been broken; and now that death had taken away the last excuse for a rivalry which had been felt but to be renounced, Constantia and I— unconscious brats—shared holidays, as it chanced at my home or hers, in nefarious poaching beside Avon or in gallops between her northern ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... lure on, through labyrinths of law, predestined chancellors, or wreck upon the rocks of glory the inebriate souls of youthful ensigns; dreams from which Rood Hall emerged crowned with the towers of Belvoir or Raby, and looking over subject lands and manors wrested from the nefarious usurpation of Thornhills and Hazeldeans; dreams in which Audley Egerton's gold and power, rooms in Downing Street, and saloons in Grosvenor Square, had passed away to the smiling dreamer, as the empire of Chaldaea passed to Darius the Median. Why visions so ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... blessin' from London town, (The beggar that kep' the cordite down,) But what do we care if 'e smile or frown, The beggar that kep' the cordite down? The mildly nefarious Wildly barbarious Beggar that kept the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... me," Laverick asked, "why I should answer questions from a person whom I discover apparently engaged in a nefarious attempt at burglary?" ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... formerly in the same condition with himself, wallowing in licentiousness, and possessed of wealth, amassed generally by dishonest means, which they continue, in many instances, still to augment, by keeping grog-shops and gambling-houses, by receiving stolen goods, and by other nefarious practices. This is the general conduct of the class of emancipated convicts who acquire property, as well as of some unprincipled adventurers in the class of free emigrants. There are, however, among the emancipated convicts of property exceptions from this ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... crisis as this, when everything dear and valuable to us is assailed; when this party hangs upon the wheels of government as a dead weight, opposing every measure that is calculated for defence and self-preservation, abetting the nefarious views of another nation upon our rights; ... when measures are systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must eventually dissolve the Union, or produce coercion; I say, when these things have become so obvious, ought characters ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... every thing. You have aided and abetted the escape of an outlaw. You have assisted him in his nefarious occupation of Dalton Hall. You have aided and abetted him in the imprisonment of Dalton's brat. You have aided and abetted him in the murder of my boy ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... is always good to dream that you have successfully resisted any temptation. To yield, is bad. If a man chooses low ideals, vampirish influences will swarm around him ready to help him in his nefarious designs. Such dreams may only be the result of depraved elementary influences. If a man chooses high ideals, he will be illuminated by the deific principle within him, and will be exempt from lascivious dreams. The man who denies the ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... universal an annoyance. I think they simply exist to test our character, to see whether we have courage to go on, bugs or no bugs. We do the best we can to become familiar with the habits of these nefarious creatures and let you know what we know. So I might call attention to one or two other departments—but you know how much is being accomplished. You get regular reports. You have a committee to visit and investigate our fruit-breeding farms. If I may judge from ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... a long, vociferous pounding on the door. He started up in bed to find himself alone—the victim of his wrathful irony having evidently risen and fled away while his pitiless tormentor slept—"Doubtless to at once accomplish that nefarious intent as set forth by his unblushing confession of last night," mused the miserable John. And he ground his fingers in the corners of his swollen eyes, and leered grimly in the glass at the feverish orbs, ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... it appeared, had sailed along the coast, the natives being decoyed on board wherever met with, and then she had gone off to other islands to pursue the same nefarious system. Captain Bertram went on shore to make further inquiries. He found that all the inhabitants had professed Christianity, and that, though not so advanced as the natives of Raratonga, who have been so much longer tinder instruction, they were making fair progress in Christian, ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... scene of my narrative in the year 1857. Many a slave-ship has sailed from British ports in this very year, and with all our boasted efforts to check the slave-trade it will be found that as large a proportion of British subjects are at present engaged in this nefarious traffic as of ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... well worth a journey to some spongy, sphagnum bog to gather clumps of pitcher-plants which will furnish an interesting study to an entire household throughout the summer while they pursue their nefarious business in a shallow bowl on the veranda. A modification of the petiole forms a deep, hollow pitcher having for its spout a modification of the blade of the leaf. Usually the pitchers are half filled with water and tiny drowned victims when we gather them. Some of this fluid must be rain, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... assistance of a young detective saves the boys from the clutches of Chinese smugglers, of whose nefarious trade they know too much. How the Professor's invention relieves a critical situation is also an exciting incident ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... and only the morning admonished me again to take courage. It seemed to me probable that the man who had induced me to commit this nefarious deed, as it now appeared to me, might not denounce me. I immediately resolved to set to work in my vaulted room, and if possible to assume an indifferent look. But alas! an additional circumstance, ...
— The Severed Hand - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Wilhelm Hauff
... Goethe's hint that Byron had too much empeiria (an excess of mondanite—a this-worldliness), found it hard to read Beppo after Macbeth. "I felt," he says, "the predominance of a nefarious, empirical world, with which the mind which introduced it to us has in a certain measure associated itself" (Conversations of Goethe, etc., 1874, p. 175). But Beppo must be taken at its own valuation. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... ways in which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Captain Francklin, writing in 1803, and apparently expressing the opinion of George Thomas, declares that 'the Seiks are false, sanguinary, and faithless; they are addicted to plunder and the acquirement of wealth by any means, however nefarious'. (Military Memoirs of Mr. George Thomas, London reprint, p. 112.) The Sikh states of the Panjab are ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... This nefarious plot Hubert discovered, happening to overhear a brief conversation on the subject between the bishop's chamberlain and the Jew who supplied the poison, and whom Hubert secured, forcing him to supply the antidote which in all ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... saves losing one's way, but suggests that one is apt to lose it, is a stranger in the house; and it tells of other strangers, past and future, each with his name slipped in. Similarly the guest-book, imitated from nefarious foreign inns, so fearfully suggestive of human instability, with its close-packed signatures, and dates of arrival and departure. And then the cruelty of housekeepers, and the ruthlessness of housemaids! Take heed, O Thestylis, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... might be saved the ruinous cost of having to buy from his covetous commander, who was not satisfied with a mere hundred per cent., but regulated his prices according to the severity of the weather and the demand that might be made for his goods. These human vultures carried on a nefarious trade on lines that would have put a Maltese Hebrew to shame. When the days were radiant with sunshine, and the sea made glassy with continuous calms, the shrewd sailors who wanted supplies would apply for ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the greatest heiresses in America,—clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least attractive about her,—and, above all, with the Woods millions at her disposal. Why, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... parleying, was finally admitted into the nefarious brotherhood. He was to retain his rank as the Baron de Mireilles, and play the part of the pecuniarily inconvenienced nobleman forced to sell some of his rare collection. Mr. Smith had heard of the Corot through their dear old common ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... Bourassa's shafts. Something more than a difference of view was reflected in Bourassa's harangues; there was in them a distillation of venom, indicating deep personal feeling. "Laurier," he once declared in a public meeting, "is the most nefarious man in the whole of Canada." Bourassa hated Laurier. Laurier had too magnanimous a mind to cherish hate; but he feared Bourassa with a fear which in the end became an obsession. He feared him because, if he ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... not know all this. At first he had declared in my favour, but after the old woman had sent for him two or three times he suddenly changed his conduct. It was not, however, on this that the King afterwards took a dislike to him, but for a nefarious scheme in which he was engaged with the Pere La Chaise. Monsieur was as much vexed as I. The King and the old woman threatened to dismiss all his favourites, which made him consent to everything; he repented afterwards, but it was ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... the least to the greatest, eat and drink to the point of losing their senses. In the villages nearest the sea some do not eat pork, the reason for their not eating it, which I have already given, being that, in trading with the Moros of Burney, the latter have preached to them some part of the nefarious doctrine of Mahoma, charging them not to eat pork. In this they act most childishly, and when, by chance any of them are asked why they do not eat it, they say that they do not know why; and if one asks them who Mahoma was and what his law commands, they say that they do not know the commandment ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... themselves to their homes. As to the parties of insurgent guerillas which he was informed were beginning to show themselves at various points of the vicinity, he considered them as mere bandits, availing themselves of the stir and excitement in the country to exercise their nefarious profession; and, should any such parties attempt to molest him, he was fully determined to resist their attacks. In this resolution he now persevered, although he rightly conjectured that the horsemen approaching his house were either the rearguard or a detachment of the disorderly-looking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... but claim that we have failed to go through with the building. In this way these perverse fanatics parade their cursed doctrine as the Word of God, and, flying the flag of God's name, they deceive many. The devil knows better than to appear ugly and black. He prefers to carry on his nefarious activities in the name of God. Hence the German proverb: "All mischief begins in the name ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... Union six of its noblest States, and from their citizens at least she should never hear the cry that taunts her with slavery. Rather let that cry go forth from puritan and abolition Massachusetts, as her sons read over her ancient Quaker laws, or count up the nefarious gains their slave-trading fathers made, while enjoying the twenty years lease of the African slave trade, granted by the Federal Constitution. Ridicule as we may the family pride or State pride of Virginia, or ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... imaginary British intrigues was the one most relied upon by Mr. Tyler's successive secretaries of state. John C. Calhoun, in his dispatch of the 12th of August, 1844, instructed our minister in Paris to impress upon the Government of France the nefarious character of the English diplomacy, which was seeking, by defeating the annexation of Texas, to accomplish the abolition of slavery first in that region, and afterwards throughout the United States, "a blow calamitous to this continent beyond ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Ponsonby's death, Tom had demurred giving up all the valuable property at the mines under his charge, until he should have direct orders from Mr. Dynevor or Miss Ponsonby. A hot dispute ensued, and Robson became aware that Tom was informed of his nefarious practices, and had threatened him violently; but a few hours after he had returned, affecting to have learnt from the new clerk, Ford, that Madison's peculations required to be winked at with equal forbearance, and giving ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Nebulous, nefarious, negation, neophyte, nepotism, neurotic, noisome, nomenclature, nonchalant, non sequitur, nucleus, nugatory, obdurate, objurgation, obligatory, obloquy, obsequious, obsession, obsolete, obstreperous, obtrusive, obtuse, obverse, obviate, occult, octogenarian, officious, olfactory, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... at once isolated, to determine what would happen to them. The ground near where Pocut Pete had carried on his nefarious operations was sprayed with disinfectants, and the cattle that had been with those he inoculated ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... drive. Here the cattle were to meet their death. Here it was that the pemmican was to be made. On the hillside opposite there was doubtless a similar fence and these two would constitute the fatal funnel down which the cattle were to be stampeded over the cut-bank to their destruction. This was the nefarious scheme planned by Raven and ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... murderers, who formed his party. He was under a noble exterior a man without heart, pity, honour, or conscience. He aspired to nothing but tyranny, and though he would have made use of Gaspar Ruiz for his nefarious designs, yet he soon became aware that to propitiate the Chilian Government would answer his purpose better. I blush to say that he made proposals to our Government to deliver up on certain conditions the wife and child of the man who ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... fallacy to maintain that an increased issue is the cause of national distress, unless, indeed, it were possible to suppose that bankers were madmen enough to dispense their paper without receiving a proper equivalent—not only senseless, but positively nefarious, when the clear broad fact stares them in the face, that Scotland has in fifteen years thrown double the amount of capital into its banking establishments, increased its productions in a threefold, and in some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... few years, reduced in France, and to that general laxity of moral conduct which even now distinguishes that country, was Fraudulent Bankruptcy. The merchant, no longer possessing the means of making his fortune by fair speculation, has recourse to this nefarious mode of bettering his condition. He settles with his creditors for a small per centage; disposes of his property by fictitious sales, ventes simulees, and thus enriches himself upon the ruin of his creditors. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... be said in the first place, that they act as an annual register for tabulating the amount of danger to which society is exposed by the nefarious operations of lawless persons. By these statistics we are informed of the number of crimes committed during the course of the year so far as they are reported to the police. We are informed of the number of persons brought to trial for the perpetration of these ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... and a cowpuncher known as Shorty, a broad, heavy-set little man who worked for Bradley Steelman, owner of the Rocking Horse Ranch, what time he was not engaged on nefarious business of his own. He was wearing a Chihuahua hat and leather ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... no more. Hortense could not have lived another hour without betaking herself to the scene of these nefarious transactions, and inspecting the state of matters in person. ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... describing a storm at sea his rather monotonous style of writing suddenly rises to eloquence. But in his exalted devotion to the Almighty War Lord, and to the Fatherland, he openly reveals his fanatical joy in the nefarious work he ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... that he would yet "deal with secretary Walsingham to write jointly to sir Amias and sir Drue Drury to sound them in this matter; "aiming still at this, that it might be so done as the blame might be removed from herself." This nefarious commission Davison strangely consented to execute, though he declares that he had always before refused to meddle therein "upon sundry of her majesty's motions,"—as a thing which he utterly disapproved; and though he was fully ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... shoutin' a thousand murdhers, and cryin' "The dhraggin, the dhraggin!" and he couldn't stop the horse nor make him turn back, but away he pelted right forninst the terrible baste that was comin' up to him, and there was the most nefarious smell o' sulphur, savin' your presence, enough to knock you down; and, faith, the Waiver seen he had no time to lose, and so he threw himself off the horse, and made to a three that was growin' ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... without their annual dinner. The village was so tenacious of this practice, that nothing could induce them to resign it; every enemy to it was looked upon as a disbeliever in Divine Providence, and any nefarious churchwarden who wished to succeed in his election had nothing to do but to represent his antagonist as an abolitionist, in order to frustrate his ambition, endanger his life, and throw the village into a state of the most dreadful commotion. By degrees, however, the obnoxious ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Huddled together in huge tenements this compact population affords by its density, as well as by its ignorance, a peculiarly accessible field to the trained agitator. Tilak's emissaries, mostly Brahmans of the Deccan, brought, moreover, to their nefarious work the added prestige of a caste which seldom condescends to rub shoulders with those whose mere contact may involve "pollution." In this, as in many other cases, politics were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of labour in ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... vigil, my thoughts unhappy. I had much to reflect upon. The extreme difficulty of our present situation, encompassed and separated as we were: De Noyan was bewitched by a siren who had already bound him by silken cords to any nefarious scheme her unscrupulous desires might compass; Cairnes was as helplessly entangled in her power, although held to his fate by ropes of a different nature; while Madame was scarcely less a prisoner, powerless to escape the ruthless grasp of a false-hearted woman whose jealousy ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... banks who cashed his cheque when he was "temporarily short for a few hundreds." An excellent linguist in the principal Continental languages, he could also talk like, and assume the manners of, the rough gold-diggers with whom he so frequently associated for his nefarious purposes. Unlike his associates—the Jew, Barney Green (alias Capel), and Pinkerton and Cheyne—he had only once seen the inside of the prison, when as "the Hon. Wilburd Merriton" he was given a sentence of two years' hard labour for forgery ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... conditions of the series of events, as the machinery by which everything is brought about, these defects are of the utmost importance to the story. It is the accused system that awards to Tyrrel and Falkland their immense preponderance in society, and enables them to use the power of the law for the most nefarious ends. Tyrrel does his cousin to death and ruins his tenant, a man of integrity, by means of the law. This is the occasion of Falkland's original crime. His more heinous offence, the abandonment of the innocent ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... another clever piece of duplicity on your part, the only object of which was the accomplishment of your nefarious purposes. I believe you yourself were ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the windows. There were three of them, set side by side, each facing south. They were of thick clear glass, of a sort whose manufacture is a lost art, for these windows had been among the spoils brought back by Duke Asmund from nefarious raidings of Philistia, in which country these windows had once been a part of the temple of Ageus, an immemorial god of the Philistines. For this reason the room was ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... gone into his office at ten minutes to ten o'clock at night for the purpose of extracting L5000 worth of notes and gold from the bank safe, whilst giving the theft the appearance of a night burglary; granting that he was disturbed in his nefarious project by his wife, who, failing to persuade him to make restitution, took his side boldly, and very clumsily attempted to rescue him out of his difficult position—why should he, at nine o'clock the following ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... of all human weakness, especially if the banker be of middle age, unmarried, and deprived by an unromantic superfluity of adipose tissue of the possibility of living through a romance of his own. Turner had consented to countenance, if not actually to take part in, a nefarious scheme, to rid France and the present government of one who might easily bring about its downfall, on certain conditions. Knowing quite well that Loo Barebone could take care of himself at sea, and was quite capable of effecting an escape if he desired it, he had ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the opportunity of the time, because the Roman armies were in distant lands, induced Catiline to conspire for the destruction of his country."[183] Mommsen, who was certainly biassed by no feeling in favor of Cicero, declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."[184] All this is no evidence. Cicero and Sallust may possibly have combined to lie about Catiline. Other Roman writers may have followed ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... uncharitably minded fighting men were wont to insinuate that the best beloved brands of jam, such as strawberry and raspberry, never got beyond the Beach, the A.S.C. who handled the supplies being suspected of a nefarious weakness for these varieties. One hesitates to listen to such calumnious suggestions, but it must be admitted that for many long weeks we received an overwhelming proportion of "Apricot Jam" with ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... was not ill-pleased to have discovered the nefarious trade which was being here carried on, and determined to have the house closely watched in future, in the hope of thus noting and securing a great number of the most expert and ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin |
