"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... best is very terrible; and there were two circumstances which made the war in Ireland more terrible than others. It was a religious war, and it was a civil war. It often happens that when religion is turned to hatred it stirs up the worst and most diabolical passions of the human breast; and the evil feelings brought on by a civil war necessarily last longer than animosity against a foreign foe. The horrors of 1798 make one shudder to think what must happen in Ireland if civil war ever breaks out ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friendship—I have but one enemy in the world—it is he. It must, then, be acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by degrees, is undermining ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... to Shame or Misery, is also highly suitable to his Character; as the Comfort he draws from their disturbing the Peace of Heaven, that if it be not Victory it is Revenge, is a Sentiment truly Diabolical, and becoming the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... brought up at early dawn under a high cliff of smoky quartz. Here, in the great crevices, the drove of diabolical vampires ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... Santo and Argantino at the dreadful enchanted grotto of the great magician Malagigi. I was glad to see Argantino; it was nearly as good as seeing Malagigi in his habit as he lived because, although the son only had one diabolical book, yet in his personal appearance he strikingly resembled the father, being indeed the same marionette and distinguished chiefly by his wings, which he inherited from his mother Sabina who was a witch. Argantino always wore his wings ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... stroke they drove all the Moors and Jews from Hespana, and that deed they considered as their glory. Your Majesty must not think that these people are only in or about Manila, for they are through the whole country and scattered all about; and they are spreading this diabolical crime and other vices throughout the whole land, and even their evil doctrines. In spite of this even the religious, as well as the others, tolerate them for the temporal advantages in building and other affairs, which they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... stags and does which broke into them in herds at sunset, tried to keep them out by means of clappers and bad odours. I have seen and smelled the so-called "Frenchman's oil" with which the posts were smeared, that its really diabolical odour—I don't know from what horrors it was compounded—might preserve the crops. The ornament of the forests had become the object of the keenest hate, and as soon as—shortly before we entered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... tramp of feet was heard outside the house. Mr. R. called out, "It's a serenade, H. Get up and bring out all the wine you have." Annie and I peeped through the parlor window, and lo! it was the company of volunteers and a diabolical band composed of bones and broken-winded brass instruments. They piped and clattered and whined for some time, and then swarmed in, while we ladies retreated and listened ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... that he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!" and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for, notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against he reached the middle of the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... "the thing that interests me most about this case is not the evidence of the bombs. Bombs are common enough weapons, after all. It is the evidence of almost diabolical cunning that has been shown in the effort to get rid of the father of the revolution, as you ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... first published in 1839, which gave or was supposed to give indiscreet revelations as to some of his clients. Besides legal pamphlets, he proved his sound Evangelicalism by a novel called 'The Jesuit at Cambridge' (1847), intended to unveil the diabolical machinations of the Catholic Church. An unfortunate catastrophe ruined his prospects. He had founded a society for the purchase of reversions and acted as its solicitor. It flourished for some years, till misunderstandings arose, and Sir George ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... no discoveries that will help us much, I have learned just enough to understand that there is a diabolical plot on foot." ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... revolver, but it was not the deliberately deadened sound of that slight weapon which had startled the guests in the dining-room on the night of the murder. The report they had heard was made by the heavier pistol in front of him. It was a ruse of terrifying simplicity but diabolical ingenuity. The wick of the tinder-lighter was an admirable slow match, obtainable in any tobacconist's shop for a few pence, which, by means of this trick, had established a false alibi for the actual murderer by causing the report which had reached the dining-room, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... the dozens, hundreds—thousands—blazed with a violent suddenness, a suddenness that Peter could compare only with that of a tropical sun leaping out of the ocean; and Peter blinked upon green. It was a hideous green, a green of diabolical intensity. He shivered. It seemed to creep, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... we concede that Satan has had the especial care of tobacco, we cannot be surprised at his finding the means, if he had the desire, of introducing it into America. We have before alluded to what the Abbot Nyssens says, and if in addition we call to mind what others have uttered about its diabolical nature, and that the American Indians were wont to propitiate the powers of darkness by making offerings to them of tobacco, we cannot help thinking that King James was nearer truth and propriety than he imagined, when he declared that if he were to invite the ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... bombarded the officer with questions, but he wouldn't answer many of them; only he said that nothing but a direct hit with a six-inch shell would penetrate its hide; and it could go through any hole or walk right over a house. It was some diabolical device all right, and we went back chuckling over the surprise that the Germans would get next day. That night we went in, marching in single file. It was pitch-dark and the Germans were shelling furiously, though before we left all our massed artillery had carried ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not. But as to Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him. There was something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that. And what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will never think well ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... the Church of Rome, is suppressed in Cuba, but the political inquisition, as exercised by the government on the island, is even more diabolical than that of the former Jesuitical organization, because it is more secret in its murderous deeds, not one half of the horrors of which will ever be publicly known. Moro Castle is full of political prisoners, who are thinned out by executions, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... held a hurried conversation. I learned then that Fuero and his associates had many years before organized a society for the development of the light-ray in its various forms. They had soon realized in their experiments its diabolical power of destruction, and had taken oath then that they would not use it, or allow it to be used, except under the most critical circumstances of the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... and with shawms," will you be assailed in the most diabolical doggerel. I wish my name not to transpire till the day is decided. I shall not be in town, so it won't much matter; but let us have a good deliverer. I think Elliston [2] should be the man, or Pope [3]; not Raymond [4], I implore you, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... 9-8-5—nine rupees eight annas and five pie— for I always keep small change as bakshish when I am in camp. Gunga Dass clutched the coins, and hid them at once in his ragged loin cloth, his expression changing to something diabolical as he looked round to assure himself that no one ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of Netherlandish illumination above every other quality establishes its identity. Look at the expression of the onlookers in a Crucifixion, or a Christ before Pilate, or a Stoning of St. Stephen—the diabolical ferocity, the fiendish earnestness, the downright intentional ugliness put on some of the characters are in direct contrast to the sweet indifference, the calm complaisance, and blank unconcern of a crowd as shown in ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... health. Malarial fever, contracted in the gloomy, rain-soaked forests of New Ireland and New Britain, had poisoned my blood, soured my temper, and all but made me an old man at seven-and-twenty years of age. Violent attacks of ague, recurring with persistent and diabolical regularity every week for many months, had so weakened me, that although I was able to attend to my business and do justice to my employers, I felt that I should never live to see the end of my two years' engagement unless I either shook off the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted for a yard or two by the blaze of our fires, everything seemed to turn into life. Every creature, every reed, every leaf had a voice of its own; a howl, a rustle, a sigh that filled the night air with diabolical sounds. It was a fearful pandemonium; a mighty strife twixt victim and victor; an insatiable lust for blood; a ferocious ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... is German. How gladly would Pauli, that honest, noble German soul, stay, if he had but an occupation. The subjection of the mind by the government here becomes more vexatious, more apparent, more diabolical. One form of tyranny is that of Augustus, the more thorough, because so sly. They will not succeed in the end, but meanwhile it is horrible to witness. More firmly than ever I settle myself down here in Heidelberg, and will take the whole house, and say, "You must leave me my cottage ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... gave her on earth. Not another was allowed him. He was hurried off by the stony-hearted familiars, with his brother martyrs and their companions in affliction. The first part of the exhibition had been a cruel, a blasphemous mockery—that which was to follow was to be a diabolical reality. ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... to his own diocesan, begging him to communicate with the Cardinal of York and the Bishop of London, that three of the highest church authorities in England might become participes criminis, by acting on this diabolical information. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... The friar began, subsequently, to imagine he observed a certain coldness or indifference on the part of his companion in guilt, and, attributing that change to a feeling of the woman's self-disgust and reproach, he had recourse to the most diabolical means of searing her conscience, and making her still more the associate of his depravity: indeed, it is not possible even to read without horror of the abominable artifices to which this monster of iniquity had recourse, although these were all minutely ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Enemies, to the publick Peace; when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes, But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders, that have sucked the sweet of this Doctrine) had them never so much as ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... pictures of him from his Italian life are of a tragic, lonesome figure. The discord between body and soul, that homelessness in one's own physical body which characterized Hoffmann and made him seem diabolical to so many, is also to be noted in Platen. Carried over to the moral world, it accounts for his ardent cultivation of friendship rather than love, and frees him from the bitter accusations of Heine, whose attack in The Baths of Lucca is one of the most scurrilous and venomous ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine^, ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded^. fiendish, fiendlike^; demoniacal; diabolic, diabolical; devilish, infernal, hellish, Satanic; Tartaran. Adv. malevolently &c adj.; with bad intent &c n.. Phr. cruel as death; hard unkindness' alter'd eye [Gray]; homo homini lupus [Lat.] [Plautus]; mala mens [Lat.], malus animus [Lat.] [Terence]; rich gifts wax poor when givers ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ceremonies which the king was so intent to establish. Such institutions, for a time, are esteemed either too divine to have proceeded from any other being than the Supreme Creator of the universe, or too diabolical to have been derived from any but an infernal demon. But no sooner is the mode of the controversy past, than they are universally discovered to be of so little importance, as scarcely to be mentioned with decency amidst the ordinary course of human transactions. It suffices here ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... more than hinted. There the unholy skill and power came in: they suggested so abominably, leaving most to the imagination. To find such significance in a bourgeois villa garden, and to interpret it with such delicate yet legible certainty, was a kind of symbolism that was sinister, even diabolical. The delicacy was her own, but the ...
— The Damned • Algernon Blackwood
... being so, the reader will be prepared for the statement that she never really supposed the peculiar relations of Cary with Pauline could affect her. Jealousy she had not, because she was incapable of it, but even if she had not been above this most diabolical of female vices, she could not have felt it, because she did not realize that there was any occasion for it. Hence when Cary spoke to her with deepest concern of Pauline's illness, of his fears of the result, and of his desire to do all in his power to avert the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... to say few can bring themselves to face without some manifestation of discomposure. Although my cheeks and lips may have blanched for a moment, I permitted no further and greater sign of fear to escape me. I returned their glances of fiendish ferocity with an unquailing eye, and listened to their diabolical jests in apparently unruffled silence, as I was conducted through their ranks by my captors toward a small hillock, overshadowed by a gigantic bois immortelle, upon which sat a negro in solitary state, appeasing his hunger by ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the days of the Inquisition—or still later, since the terrible punishments visited upon the insurgents of 1848 by the Austrian aristocrats—has been so diabolical as the stocks and chain-gangs, as used by Wirz. At one time seven men, sitting in the stocks near the Star Fort—in plain view of the camp—became objects of interest to everybody inside. They were never relieved from their painful position, but were kept there until all of them died. I think ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... and spirit store at Bramley, and corrupted the whole country round with his wares, doing far more for the devil and sin than the preachers could do for God and holiness. Yet no one seemed to think there was anything dishonorable or diabolical ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... shoots a monkey in South Africa, and wounds it, allowing it to escape, there usually come droves of its kinspeople, screaming and chattering the most diabolical language, seeking to revenge the wrong done their tribe. Nothing demonstrates plainer that they have a common language; otherwise, how could they understand that one of their number had been wounded? It is because of the communication of ideas by a common ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... in its evident truth) of superstition which has survived religion; of a heart which has abandoned the love of kindred and friends, only to lose itself in a wilderness of petty spite, terminating in an abyss of diabolical hatred. The ordinary providential helps to goodness have been rejected; the ill-provided adventurer has sought to scale the high snow-peaks of saintliness,—he has missed his footing,— and the black chasm which yawns beneath, has ingulfed him." —E. J. ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... a longing for amusement, I should like to invite everybody to the house, to give a dinner, a ball, a supper, a reception, to have some sort of diabolical carnival—I should like to have everybody, everybody. I am not ill-natured at heart, I am ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... no moment to speculate about that. So far it merely tended to prove the almost diabolical cleverness of the people with whom the police had to deal. The Rajah himself could be seen standing moodily in the doorway chewing a cigar between his strong, yellow teeth. ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... under water; he liked to stay under long enough to scare the spectators, and then appear at a distance, thrashing about in the water as if he were rescuing himself from drowning, sputtering out at the same time the most diabolical noises —curses, no doubt, for he had been heard to swear. But as he skated alone he swam alone, appearing and disappearing at the swimming-place silently, with never a salutation to any one. And he was as skillful ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thousands, but millions, of Roman Catholic girls and women whose keen sense of modesty and womanly dignity are above all the sophisms and diabolical machinations of their priests. They never can be persuaded to answer "Yes" to certain questions of their confessors. They would prefer to be thrown into the flames, and burnt to ashes with the Brahmin widows, ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... Fabarum; which custom continued till the Reformation of Religion, and then that producing Puritanism, and Puritanism Presbytery, the profession of it looked upon such laudable and ingenious customs as Popish, diabolical and anti-Christian."[46] Queen's College, Oxford (whose members have from time immemorial been daily summoned to dine in hall by sound of trumpet, instead of by bell as elsewhere), is noted for its ancient ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... proceeds: "The sentiment is diabolical; and the question argued at the London dinner-table (Mr. Sotheby's) was 'Could the writer have been other than a devil?'... Several of the great guns among the literary body were present—in particular Sir Walter Scott, and he, we believe, with his usual good nature, took the apologetic side ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!" ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... of Europe, three centuries ago, were alchymists. Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr. Dee, and the Rosicrucians, all laid as much stress upon their knowledge of the days to come, as upon their pretended possession of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. In their time, ideas of the wonderful, the diabolical, and the supernatural, were rifer than ever they were before. The devil or the stars were universally believed to meddle constantly in the affairs of men; and both were to be consulted with proper ceremonies. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... confusion that have been produced in this part of the country by this infamous statute. It has turned Southeastern Pennsylvania into another Guinea Coast, and caused a large portion of the inhabitants to feel as insecure from the brutal violence and diabolical acts of the kidnapper, as are the unhappy creatures who people the shores of Africa. Ruffians from the other side of the Slave-line, aided by professional kidnappers on our own soil, a class of men whose 'occupation' until lately, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... seem as though ordinary citizens sought to avoid them. We have known a couple of stage villains to have Waterloo Bridge, Lancaster Place, and a bit of the Strand entirely to themselves for nearly a quarter of an hour on a summer's afternoon while they plotted a most diabolical outrage. ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... maiden, within herself, "are but half converted after all, and hold many of their old hellish rites in the worship of elementary spirits. Their very saints are unlike to the saints of any Christian country, and have, as it were, a look of something savage and fiendish—their very names sound pagan and diabolical. It is fearful being alone here—and all is silent as death in the apartment into which my lady has been thus strangely compelled. Shall I call up Gillian?—but no—she has neither sense, nor courage, nor principle, to aid me on such an occasion—better alone ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... how weak he is!" I said, as I stood on my guard, and writhing now with bodily as well as mental pain, he came at me looking almost diabolical. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... and the crone could perceive by his manner that the nature of the communication she was about to make had been already known to him, though not, she was confident, in so dark and diabolical a shape as that in which ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... quavered the hag; and the gleam in her eyes, as she laid her hand upon the chiefs shoulder, was most diabolical to see. "My poor simple son is down to the village with the pony for some provisions for my little cabin. Ma belle I shall be able to use handsomely, when she comes." Fetching then a black bottle, around which were many tangles of cob-web, she set it before; her visitors. The ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Christians to sail on the said ships for the purpose of robbery. He is a pirate and thief, and a pagan who, in accordance with the teachings of his idolatry, has two hundred men killed, in order to bathe in their bile; and those by whom he has himself washed must be virgins. There is also a diabolical custom that, when a chief dies, they burn his body; his wife and his women are also burnt in the same fire. Because of this and other abuses and pernicious idolatries, and, above all, by the general injuries which he inflicts upon all travelers, on a route so general ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... "Man depicts himself in his gods," says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the conscience of the community, and with it of the individual items, began aspiring to its golden age,—Perfection. "Dieu est le superlatif, dont le positif est l'homme," says Carl Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... had been cut down were nicely placed at each end of the path in an upright position, so as to conceal it from the eyes of the passer. For a long time the mulatto reflected upon the conversation he had heard, and considered the means of defeating the diabolical plot. Against a band of ruffians, such as Vernon would enlist for the service, he could not contend single-handed. To remove his mistress from the island, while Henry Carroll lay helpless there, would not be an acceptable ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... her relations with Deronda?" said Grandcourt, with the coldest possible sneer in his low voice which in poor Gwendolen's ear was diabolical. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hell!' He adds, that 'this barbarity is not their national character, for no people sympathize so much at the execution of a criminal; but it is the damnable nature of their religion, and the most diabolical spirit of their priests; their celibacy deprives them of the affections of men, and their creed gives them the ferocity of devils.' Geddes saw one man gagged, because, immediately he came out of the Inquisition gates, he looked up at the sun, whose light for many years had ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Weasel in a falsetto voice before a fractious baby, a small but intensely critical child, a stolidly contemptuous nurse, an agitated mother and a gaping photographer, with the knowledge that success or failure hangs upon your lips, and that all the time a diabolical machine in the street below is scoring threepence against you every minute or so? Of course you haven't; but possibly you may be able to enter into my feelings in this hour of trial. With a prickly heat suffusing my whole body and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... his mouth, when a horrible apparition presented itself to his view. Slowly rising from his bed, and putting on the fictitious nose, while he drew his white nightcap over his ghastly and livid brow, Tom thrust his face through the aperture, and uttered a diabolical cry; then sank down upon his unseen couch as noiselessly as he had arisen. The cry was like nothing human, and it was echoed by an involuntary scream from the lips of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Apology is being sent to you—though it is rather a Confession. Mittitur tibi apologia nostra, quamquam verius confessio est. I included [in the Confession] almost all articles of faith, because Eck published most diabolical lies against us, quia Eckius edidit diabolikontatas diabolas contra nos. Against these it was my purpose to provide an antidote." (C. R. 2, 45; Luther, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... that the little black bag about her sister's neck, which she had innocently taken for a memento of Ramy, was some kind of sacrilegious amulet, and her fingers shrank from its contact when she bathed and dressed Evelina. It seemed to her the diabolical ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... how Curly would blacken anything he touched, even a tree. But you didn't burn him. Such a diabolical thing is not in ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... century a change took place, prison songs and thieves' ritournelles assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial mien. The plaintive malure was replaced by the larifla. We find in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety. We hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and which seems to have been flung into the forest by a will-o'-the-wisp playing ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... in the corner of the box he had sent them, she began to remember little traits of boyish malice and cruelty. Had they worked out of his nature, as such strains sometimes will, or was this stage adventurer, cold-blooded, unscrupulous, with a vein of diabolical humour in his malevolence, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Steele Weir as he strode away from the dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole diabolical evening. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... declare that he is the channel of Divine inspiration; all his wisdom is ignorance, but he has written one book of which every line is absolutely perfect: and meanwhile that which one man singles out as the Divine element is to another the diabolical, so strangely dim is our vision, and so imperceptible is the difference between ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... two ten-dollar greenbacks compressed into a little wad in one corner of my watch fob; and that corner escaped inspection. Dick Turpin never was the richer for that money. They examined suspiciously a pocket edition of the New Testament in the original Greek; but I assured them it was not some diabolical Yankee cipher, and they allowed me to keep it. I made the most of my freemasonry, and they permitted me to retain my overcoat. One of our prisoners, it was whispered, had secretly stuffed $1300 in greenbacks into his canteen, but all canteens were taken from us as contraband of war, and ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... never have it. 'Tis an infernal disease," says my lord, "and its twinges are diabolical. Ah!" and he made a dreadful wry face, as if he just ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the muezzin, who, from the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis, calls every Mussulman to his prayers. That tower springs from the Parthenon itself; and every time we paused and directed our eyes towards it, our guide set up a wail, that a temple which had once been won from the diabolical uses of the pagans to become the temple of another virgin than Pallas—the Virgin Mother of God—was now again perverted to the accursed ends of the Moslem. It was the sight of those walls of the Acropolis, which disclosed themselves in the distance ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... constantly recurring evil thoughts, or evil words keep popping into it till they apparently spring from within. Or perhaps the suggestion to commit some sinful act keeps persistently coming to mind. Maybe feelings one considers foreign to the sanctified experience possess one. Possibly some diabolical temptation keeps whirling one about. All of these are sent with the avowed object of overthrowing ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... had returned in radiant health. He even predicted how the miracle would come about; it would be like a lightning stroke, an awakening, an exaltation of the entire being, whilst the evil, that horrid, diabolical weight which stifled the poor girl would once more ascend and fly away as though emerging by her mouth. But at the same time he flatly declined to give a certificate. He had failed to agree with his two confreres, who treated him coldly, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Asmodeus—that diabolical personage, who would have been created by every fertile imagination if Le Sage had not acquired the priority in his great masterpiece—would have enjoyed a singular spectacle, if he had lifted up the roof of the little house in the Rue Saint-Germain-des-Pres, while Debray was casting up his ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes, when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a scraper, pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... quarter stretch: Sir Archy is bounding, like some diabolical monster, far before his companions, spite of his owner's cries; the Arabian has come up and locks the mare; they run neck and neck. Sir Archy whirls past the stand, and wins by a hundred yards. The immense crowd utters a shout that shakes the surrounding ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... hands together in a sort of ecstasy, while tears streamed from his eyes. The old woman glared upon me from a far corner, and muttered over her beads, as if they were a spell to secure her against some diabolical art. When I could no longer see to read, Michael took my hand, and ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... inclined to attach much value to Imperator's prayers. They will take them for one of the diabolical inventions of which secondary personalities are capable. Evidently, if we take them apart from the rest, this is the most plausible explanation; but the character and ideas of Imperator must be considered as a whole. I can assure my readers that ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... associated with their military history, now all smoking ruins, can scarcely contain their rage, and not unnaturally vent it with ferocity on an enemy which deliberately planned the destruction of Paris as the price of victory to the conquerors, and who are even yet endeavouring to carry out their diabolical design of destroying the houses still uninjured by secretly introducing petroleum balls and fusees into the cellars. I saw a soldier suddenly seize a man as he was apparently harmlessly walking along the street; his pockets were ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... father and mother, what shall we say of this truly diabolical master! O, how shall I find words to paint my griefs, and his deceit! I have as good as confessed I love him; but, indeed, it was on supposing him good.—This, however, has given him too much advantage. But now I will break this wicked ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... was stricken midway into a gasp. Marie Louise told her the story of the diabolical prayer. Lady Webling took the blow without reeling. She expressed shock, but again ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... life, if still isolated, was a shade more expanded than of old,—yet she had no desire for greater change, and she had no keener vision for the world outside herself than before. She saw nothing of that diabolical thing which her father and madame had been so long plotting as the outcome of their friendship, the parable of which her education had been the text. If her intelligence was warping out from the narrow limits in which her mother had confined it, it was still below the average—as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... self-reliant girl might have been aware of certain resources of her father's; or might not some old friend greatly indebted to the father have come forward in the hour of need? That was not so incredible. Only, only, and this question recurred to him with an insistence diabolical and mocking. Why should a woman, young, beautiful, luxurious to the point of extravagance, preserve these mysteries? Aye, there ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he declared his conviction that the chief effect of the Brethren's religion was to fill the mind with absurd ideas about the Side-Wound of Christ, and rivers and seas of blood; and, therefore, he earnestly besought all Methodists who had joined the Church of the Brethren to quit their diabolical delusions, to flee from the borders of Sodom, and to leave these Brethren, loved the darkness ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... against us, and assembled their choicest warriors at Old Chilicothe, to go on the expedition, in order to destroy us, and entirely depopulate the country. Their savage minds were inflamed to mischief by two abandoned men, Captains McKee and Girty. These led them to execute every diabolical scheme, and on the 15th day of August, commanded a party of Indians and Canadians, of about five hundred in number, against Bryant's station, five miles from Lexington. Without demanding a surrender, they furiously assaulted the garrison, which was happily prepared to oppose them; and, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... room was traditionally called 'Tom's Corner.' It had been assigned to him at first because of its being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls, with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments, foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate nose, and especially of his sister; who always being ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... as near the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to the tomb the remains of a faithful, a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... farm in the vicinity of Rochelle. As he walked one afternoon in the main street of that city, he was very rudely accosted by a couple of officers of the holy inquisition, whose looks and dress were as dark and diabolical as ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... lay hands upon her Hannah Darling offered to go with him of her own free will, but immediately after leaving the house cleverly eluded the Indian, slipped in again at the door and fastened it. The despicable savage advanced to the window with diabolical threats, whetted his knife before their eyes and finally seized a club to make forcible entry only to find himself confronted at the doorway by the plucky girl with a loaded musket in her hands. Her spirit was now thoroughly aroused; ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... Edgar, and in the Professional Fantasque of the Fool, all operating to contrast and heighten each other. There is yet another feat in this kind, which Shakespeare has performed;—he has personified malice in his Caliban; a character kneaded up of three distinct natures, the diabolical, the human, and the brute. The rest of his preternatural beings are images of effects only, and cannot subsist but in a surrounding atmosphere of those passions from which they are derived. Caliban is ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... measured two metres in length and was as thick as a man's arm. They don't wait till you can hit them, he said, but rush straight at you, swift as an arrow, upraised on their massive posterior coils, hissing like a steam-engine, and swelling out their throat with diabolical rage. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... beautiful evening, and with the Genoese ladies and Captain Tarlton to take care of me I sat out in the stern gallery till 10 P.M., when Tarlton told me he had a bed made for me in a spare cabin below. In this I got a good night's rest in spite of the diabolical witlow; the witlow is so unromantic a wound that I shall leave it out of the narrative for the future. The next morning I was with General La Marmora at daylight and from him I went to the municipality. I found them in a sad ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... about twelve years, saturated his clothes and hair with camphene, and then procuring a rope, fastened one end to a lamp- post, the other around his neck, and were about to set him on fire, and hang him; they were interfered with by some citizens and by the police of the First Ward, and their diabolical attempt at murder frustrated. While Mrs. Derrickson was attempting to save the life of her son she was horribly bruised and beaten, with a cart-rung. The victim, after lingering three or four weeks, died from the effects of ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... after it had been disposed of, Mr. Pickwick, to the intense horror and indignation of his followers, related the adventure he had undergone, and the success which had attended the base artifices of the diabolical Jingle. 'And the attack of rheumatism which I caught in that garden,' said Mr. Pickwick, in conclusion, 'renders me lame ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... no mistaking his sex, or identity either," gasped Mr. Joe, backing himself away from this diabolical figure until he was stopped by the wall, from which he cried out, "Here, Jerry, show the—Enemy—into ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Colony are the native inhabitants treated with greater injustice than in South Africa.* Yet in spite of all I had seen and heard, I must say that, until this Report reached me, I never would have believed my white fellow-countrymen capable of conceiving the all but diabolical schemes propounded between the covers of Volume I of the Report of the South African Lands Commission, 1916, and clothing them in such plausible form as to mislead even sincere and well-informed friends of the Natives. There are pages ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... prove his power and his knowledge, but whether malignant or benign, would remain doubtful, until by purely moral evidence, which no miracles could give, the doubt should be solved.[7] This is the old difficulty about diabolical wonders. The moderns cut the knot, by denying that any but God can possibly work real miracles. But to establish their principle, they make their definition and verification of a miracle so strict, as would have amazed ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... have given my word you will bring Lady Ormont. You will?—and not let me be confounded! Yes, and we shall make a party. I see consent. Aminta will enjoy the switch of steel. I love to see fencing. It rouses all that is diabolical in me.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her shutters with a bang. By breakfast-time my revered relation becomes a respectable and no longer a riotous member of society, but during the early morning hours her inventions for disturbing her neighbors are ingenious and diabolical. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... opponents into violence and into acts of desperation!!! I know that he will complain, and that he has just cause of complaint, and I dread the consequence, because I know full well their arts, and the power which they have to carry their diabolical plans into execution. If he be troublesome, they will stick at nothing, and I should not be the least surprised if they were ultimately to have some of their spies to ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... the castle, with instructions to kill the king in some way or other, but, if possible, in such a manner as to make it appear that he died a natural death. These men tried various plans without success. They administered poisons, and resorted to various other diabolical contrivances. At last, one night, dreadful outcries and groans were heard coming from the king's apartment. They were accompanied from time to time with shrieks of terrible agony. These sounds were continued for some time, and they were heard in all parts of the castle, and in many of ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... suspicions now rushed into her mind. Why should her uncle be thus exposing himself to the public gaze with Maria Port? Why did it give the woman such diabolical pleasure to be seen there with him? With a mind already prepared for such sickening revelations, Olive was convinced that it could mean nothing but that her uncle intended to marry Maria Port. What else could it mean? But no matter what it meant, she could not stop. She ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... himself, his hat and clothes in his hand, smeared with black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had mistaken ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... are, if I choose," said Helen, defiantly. But for all that she did not do it. She said piteously, "What offense had I ever given you? What crime had I ever committed, that you must make me the victim of this diabolical deceit? Oh, sir, what powers of mind you have wasted to achieve this victory over a poor unoffending girl! What was your motive? What good could come of it to you? He won't speak to me. He is not even penitent. Sullen and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Indian theory bears on its face the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to be stamping bridle-paths into quagmires; dragging unwieldy lumbering carts, and thereby frightening horses into fits; tugging and frequently running away with, all manner of primitive ploughs and sledges; ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... feeding to the full his lust of gold. The bailiff had more than once, as we have hinted, found means to increase his evil hoard, by having secretly gained power over female innocence and honest reputation: similarly he now devised a deep-laid plot, nothing short of diabolical. His plot was this: and I choose to hurry over such foul treason. Let a touch or two hint its outlines: those who will, may paint up the picture for themselves. Simon looked at Sir John—young, gay, wealthy; he coveted his purse, and fancied that the surest bait to catch ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Gentlemen, what is't you design? is it a general Massacre, pray? or am I the only Person aim'd at as a Sacrifice for the Nation? I know, and all the World knows, how many Plots have been laid against my self, both by Men, Women, and Children, the diabolical Emissaries of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... persuasive voice, "mind that such imprudence would save our enemies, but would not save your father. Pray consider and answer me. Do you really think that your arguments would be stronger than Sarah Brandon's? You cannot so far underrate the diabolical cunning of your enemy. Why, she has no doubt taken all possible measures to keep your father's faith in her unshaken, and to let him die as he has lived, completely deceived by her, and murmuring with his ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... of Mrs. Shchapoff really belong to a peculiar species of haunted houses. Our ancestors, like the modern Chinese, attributed them to diabolical possession, not to an ordinary ghost of a dead person. Examples are very numerous, and have all the same "symptoms," as Coleridge would have said, he attributing them to a contagious nervous malady of observation in the spectators. Among the most notorious is the ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... know," he went on. "An old traveler like me to be taken in thus! Evidently there is under all this one of those diabolical combinations which time even fails to unravel. We ought to ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... (Vampyrus spectrum; Artibeus jamaicensis; or Phyllostomus hastatus panamensis). Several remarkably diabolical representations of bats (Maya, so[c], usually written zotz) occur among the Maya remains. These all show the prominent nose leaf distinguishing the family Phyllostomatidae and, as the Mayas ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... were afraid to engage themselves by the year, lest any unforseen accident should leave them parishioners in a place where they knew they must perish miserably; so that great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings. ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... stood in state, festooned with tumblers, a gaudy pitcher, which would have thrown Tearsoul and Lelie into ecstasies of delight. It was almost as wonderful a specimen of art as my chintz hanging. The groundwork is pure white, upon which, in bas-relief, are executed two diabolical-looking bandits, appallingly bewhiskered and mustached, dressed in red coats, yellow pantaloons, green boots, orange-colored caps with brown feathers in them, and sky-blue bows and arrows. Each of the fascinating vagabonds is attended by a bird-of-paradise-colored ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... a diabolical thing?" Jasper mused, as if to himself. "Let us examine the ground very carefully to see if the man who did this deed left any trace. He might ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... diabolical, and, it is to be regretted successful, attempt, was made to kiss the Princess Royal. It appears that the Royal Babe was taking an airing in the park, reclining in the arms of her principal nurse, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... only astonishment at the flight of his niece. How was it that he had never suspected the cause that disturbed her thoughts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more excuse therefore for an uncle!" So he resumed his musing on elevated art, quieting his displeasure—for his ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... ye are called to times of trial, and your brother Man is the agent whom Providence uses to correct you. Remember that he is only the agent. In the abode of condemned spirits the Almighty permits an uncontrolled mis-rule of diabolical passions, and total misery is the result. In the celestial regions, the will of the Creator is understood and obeyed; and there dwells eternal peace. In this mixed state the best err, from frailty and ignorance; but the wrath of the wicked is over-ruled by Divine ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... man of honor was ever placed under a more great embarrass. Yonder was the object of my devotion, exposed to all the diabolical machinations of a heartless villain; and here was I concealed in my Lord's bedroom, his desk broken open, and his papers in my pocket. To remain quiet was impossible, since 'twas to expose her to a fate worse than death; yet to reveal myself was to confess ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... heard the word, I think," she said, as though she thought there might be something diabolical in it. "And do you heal the sick in this way ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... poor are death-doomed from their cradles. Look for one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill, amidst the smell of oil, the smoke of lamps, the rattling of wheels, the dizzy and complicated motions of diabolical mechanism: contemplate the little human machines that keep play with the revolutions of the iron work, robbed at that hour of their natural rest, as of air and exercise by day: observe their pale and ghastly features, more ghastly in that baleful and ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... "practical politics." Francis Bacon learned of Machiavelli, who "wrote what men do and not what they ought to do." This is the philosophy of fact. He dealt with men as he found them. He was a sublime, almost a diabolical opportunist I have often thought Benjamin Franklin, with his "honesty is the best policy," is another Machiavelli, only touched a little with the pharisaism of the Puritan. With the Italian anything that would win is the best policy, and this is his honest estimate of men. The best policy ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... So long, however, as the deadly liquor is sold in almost every store and cabin, the cause of disturbances will remain, and men's active brains, continually fired with poison as they are, will concoct schemes diabolical enough ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... to report all well, except that I have wretched nights. The weather is diabolical here, and times are very bad. I cut "Copperfield" with a bold dexterity that amazed myself and utterly confounded George at the wing; knocking off that and "Bob" by ten minutes ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... were many facetious things more suitable to exhilarate the supper-table than the interpretation of Holy Writ, and begged that they might be no longer bored with Scripture. Thoroughly satisfied by their singular way of thinking that his guests were diabolical, paterfamilias cries out in Latin worthy of Father Tom, "Apagite, vos scelerati nebulones!" This said, the tartarean impostor and his companions at once vanished with a great tumult, leaving behind them a most unpleasant foetor and the bodies of three men who had been hanged. Perhaps ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... And he thought of his supper, and turned away. Walking fast, he Had scarcely passed the First steps of his way, when he saw something nasty; 'Twas tall and big, And he saw from its rig 'Twas the Devil in full diabolical fig. There were wanting no proofs, For the horns and the hoofs And the tail were a fully convincing sight; But the heart of the Saint Ne'er once turned faint, And his halo shone with redoubled light. 'Hallo, I fear You're trespassing here!' ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... scoundrel for his insolence—to drive him from the neighbourhood—and I know not what other menaces of formidable import. The devil, in the old stories of diablerie, was always sure to start up at the elbow of any one who nursed diabolical purposes, and only wanted a little backing from the foul fiend to carry his imaginations into action. The noble Captain MacTurk had so far this property of his infernal majesty, that the least hint of an approaching quarrel drew him always to the vicinity ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... his work. Even with the promise of a speedy third volume before me, I feel by no means sure of living to see Mary Powell back in her husband's house; for it is just at this crisis that Mr. Masson, with the diabolical art of a practised serial writer, leaves us while he goes into an exhaustive account of the Westminster Assembly and the political and religious notions of the Massachusetts Puritans. One could not help thinking, after having got Milton fairly through college, that he was never more mistaken in ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... turned away for a moment and stooped down. The trick has been done often enough upon the stage, often in less time, but seldom with more effect. The wonderful wig disappeared, the spectacles, the lines in the face, the make-up of diabolical cleverness. With his back to the wall and his fingers playing with something in his pocket, Peter, Baron de Grost, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... her death-bed, he did it to create a favorable impression in the minds of the doctor and the nurse! Again, when his grief under his bereavement completely overwhelmed him, he was triumphing in secret, and acting a part! If you looked into his heart, you would see there a diabolical hatred for his wife and an infatuated passion for Mrs. Beauly! In everything he had said he had lied; in everything he had done he had acted like a crafty and heartless wretch! So the chief counsel for ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... was at work upon that diabolical task of mine, there came, from time to time, to watch me, some of the Cardinals who were invested in the castle; and most frequently the Cardinal of Ravenna and the Cardinal de' Gaddi. I often told them not to show themselves, since their nasty red caps ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... mind. He knew how Corona would suffer if she were not allowed either to see little Orsino or to know what became of him while she was living her solitary life of confinement in the mountains. The diabolical cruelty of the idea fascinated him for a moment, and he looked coldly into her eyes as though he did not mean to answer her. In spite of his new jealousy, however, he was not capable of inflicting this last blow. As ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... that of the weather-gage in a naval action. In Europe, the transient possession of our Capital can be no disgrace. Nearly every Capital there was in possession of its enemy some often and long. But diabolical as they paint that enemy, he burnt neither public edifices nor private dwellings. It was reserved for England to show that Bonaparte, in atrocity, was an infant to their ministers and their generals. They are taking his place in the eyes of Europe, and have turned into our channel all its ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... whom I described above as the real author of this diabolical Bill, determined at one blow to lower the status of the Hierarchy by forcing them to submit to the pollution of Colour, and at the same time to destroy their domestic opportunities of training in the Art of Sight Recognition, ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... informed you of a set of diabolical incendiaries having set fire to Savannah, Charleston, Baltimore, and New York. The villainy of these infernals is likely to be productive of some good. The inhabitants of Charleston have agreed to prohibit the erection of wooden buildings in that city. The ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... life-Guard, who were to have assassinated him: knowing that no person could be admitted into the magazines or among the cannon but those who were of the Artillery they have found several in our Regiment vile enough to be concerned in their diabolical Designs—these were to have blown up the Magazines and spiked the cannon. (Tell Homans, one Rotch, a fellow he bled for me in Morton's company at No 1 is taken up with his brother for being concerned.) Their Design was deep, long concerted, and wicked to a ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain to oust him therefrom. I ceased to qualify my statement that Protection would make food dearer for the agricultural labourer. I began to speak of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at once insane and diabolical, as a man inspired by a passionate desire to substitute manacled but still criminal Chinese for honest British labourers throughout the world. And when it came to the mention of our own kindly leader, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... words responded tremulous and weak, And mustering his dissipated strength, A sitting posture he assumed at length,— "Whate'er thou art, thou harbinger of gloom, Thou fiend or ghoul, fresh from the new made tomb, Thou vampire, diabolical and fell, Thou stygian shade or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress. Why hast thou burst my chamber's bolted door Where guest unbidden never ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... their plans the more carefully for his warning and massacred the entire encampment. Prisoners were taken, but when food became scarce they were brutally knocked on the head. These tribes had never heard guns before, and at the sound of shots fled as from diabolical enemies. It was an easy matter for the young braves in the course of a few weeks to take a score of scalps and a dozen prisoners. At one place more than two hundred beaver were trapped. At the end of the raid, the booty was equally divided. Radisson asked that the woman prisoner ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... granted. He ascended into the tower and took the rope in his hands; the mighty bell swung forth, but ah! what a sound was that! The people pressed their hands over their ears and shuddered; those in the streets hurried to their homes; all were filled with deadly fear as the diabolical bell flung its awful tones over the startled city. This, then, was the result of Wolf's ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... were detailed to wait upon us. Uncle Parker, who brought us toddy and green nuts, was an elderly, almost an old man, with the spirits, the industry, and the morals of a boy of ten. His face was ancient, droll, and diabolical, the skin stretched over taut sinews, like a sail on the guide-rope; and he smiled with every muscle of his head. His nuts must be counted every day, or he would deceive us in the tale; they must ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... even to prove, and on charges which were withdrawn without the accused having ever been confronted with their accusers. Base and daring fabricators of falsehood! Francois Corbeille, an innocent man, the victim only of unjust suspicions, on the one hand, and of diabolical selfishness, on the other, died in consequence of the injury his health received in that prison where tyranny had placed him. But he could issue no proclamation. His voice was not loud enough in the tomb to reach the Court of St. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... not so very remarkable, when we give the matter thought, that the African mother should be so affectionate and devoted in her relations to her children. The diabolical system of polygamy has but this one feeble apology to offer in Africa. The wives of one man may quarrel, but the children always find loving maternal arms ready to shelter their heads against the wrath of an ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... explained the limits of that portion of Africa, which the bill intended to set apart as sacred to peace and liberty. He showed that this was but one-third of the coast; and therefore that two-thirds were yet left for the diabolical speculations of the slave-merchants. He expressed his surprise that such witnesses as those against the bill should have been introduced at all. He affirmed that their oaths were falsified by their own log-books; and that ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... the distance. A night for romance and love—for a maiden at a stile and a lover who hung rapt and humble upon her whispers! But that red eye before him held no romance. It leered as the luxurious sedan swayed from side to side, a diabolical thing with speed. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... They expressed therein their deep sorrow for any conduct open to misconstruction, tendered their unqualified apology for any indiscreet acts they might have committed, and testified their "great abhorrence and absolute detestation" of anarchists and seditionists and their diabolical methods. His Highness thereupon ordered the prosecution to be abandoned, but at the same time banished the defendants from his State and declared their posts to be forfeited by such as had been in his service, and only in a few cases were these ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... with Jews, who had settled unmolested under the Moslem rule, and there were also many Moriscoes, or people of mixed Spanish and Moorish origin; and these unfortunates were now to be submitted to the tortures of that diabolical institution known as the Inquisition, because they were not enthusiastic in their support of the Catholic religion. Isabella tried to oppose the introduction of these barbarous practices into Castile, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... enough to take the law into his own hands, to thrash him publicly, to make Monte Carlo impossible for him. And then, suddenly, he remembered his duty. They were trusting him in Downing Street. Chance had put into his hands so many threads of this diabolical plot. It was for him to checkmate it. He was the only person who could checkmate it. This was no time for him to think of personal revenge, no time for him to brood over his own broken life. There was work still to be ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Richard Darke. As he retreats from the scene of his diabolical deed, his only thought is to put space between himself and the spot where he has shed innocent blood; to get beyond earshot of those canine cries, that seem commingled with the shouts of men—the voices ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... minority in Congress, whose expositions of the secret reasons of the war, and the falsehood of those alleged by the President and his friends, is unanswerable, and must hand down the promoters of this diabolical measure to the execration of posterity.' 'Your representatives finished their labours with placing in the hands of His Honour the President (Sir Isaac Brock), all the public money they could collect, in order to contribute ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... be compared with those of the negroes of West Africa; neither is the jaw prognathous. The men are extremely independent in manner. They are armed with lances of various patterns; their favourite weapon is a horrible instrument barbed with a diabolical intention, as it can neither be withdrawn nor pushed completely through the body, but, if once in the flesh, there it must remain. This is called the chimbane; it is usually carried with two other lances with plain heads. The Tokrooris despise shields; ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... mind that this is a war of extermination. 'No quarter' is too frequently the cry on either side. I do not say that the Russians mean it to be so, but when Bashi-Bazouks torture their prisoners in cold blood, and show fiendish delight in the most diabolical acts of cruelty, even going the length of roasting people alive, is it strange that a brutalising effect is produced on the Russians, and that they retaliate in a somewhat similar spirit at times? The truth is, mother, that one of the direct and most powerful effects of war ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne |
