"Diabolical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Perhaps that was just as well, if he got out of England. For himself there was no such retreat, nor did he wish it. He would have to face things out, if they had to be faced, and he did not yet despair of saving the situation, so far as it affected himself. What did that diabolical female know, really? He had a momentary vision of her stealing about the house, prying, watching, listening. He sank into ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... world, and 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 standing, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... tell him the truth without ceremony. This was enough to determine Napoleon to rid himself of the presence of Lannes. But under what pretest was the absence of the conqueror of Montebello to be procured? It was necessary to conjure up an excuse; and in the truly diabolical machination resorted to for that purpose, Bonaparte brought into play that crafty disposition for ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Vielle fille'), the intrigues against the peace of the d'Esgrignons and the sublime devotion to their interests of the notary Chesnel ('Le Cabinet des antiques'), and finally the ignoble passions that fought themselves out around the senile Jean Jacques Rouget, under the direction of the diabolical ex-soldier Philippe Brideau ('La Rabouilleuse,' sometimes entitled 'Un Menage de Garcon'), form the absorbing central themes of a group of novels—or rather stories, for few of them attain considerable length—unrivaled in the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... remote nations and classes into closer contact is often an explosion of antipathy; but in the long run it means a development of human sympathy. Wide, therefore, as is the opposition of opinions as to what is the true theory of the world—as to which is the divine and which the diabolical element—I fully believe that beneath the war of words and dogmas there is a growth of genuine toleration, and, we ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... stammered, "I'll never forgive myself for leading you and me into a trap, a confounded, diabolical, deep-laid trap, sir, a gin, a snare, a woman's wile. Let us get off anywhere, at Aurora, Newmarket, Holland Landing, Scanlans, anywhere to escape ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... out from the sides and top of the head, and an erect spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,—the grin, and the glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people have conferred diabolical instincts on so ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... would have a very good reply to the superior Teuton. The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the Red Indian: that such allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might not unreasonably ask, after a week-end in Belgium, what more diabolical things he could do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves. Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes deeper than any such details. ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... the Lands or the Houses of a quiet, inoffensive and peaceable people; to carry away or destroy their property, without any provocation on their part, only because they are not able to resist, are acts in themselves highly wicked and diabolical. ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... two men's action now stood revealed. They expected to frighten the two boys into giving up the skin map and into keeping secret their knowledge of the Cave of Gold. But, what a fiendish plot! And with what diabolical cunning it had all been worked out ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... Robert Guiscard is applicable generally to the Normans: "Bohemond was affectionate and true to father, wife, and children, pleasant, affable, and courteous: yet wrapped up in selfishness, possessed by insatiate ambition and almost diabolical cruelty, proud and faithless, but in spite of all these vices so seductive as to command the admiration even of those who knew him to be a heartless demon."—History Vol. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... than plump, so that climbing ladders is not my favorite form of exercise. But I went up that one with the agility and grace of sixteen. Melissa followed me, and we found ourselves on the roof—fortunately it was a flat one—panting and gasping, but safe, unless that diabolical dog ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton and its threats, that we had almost lost the God-given independence of American freemen, and seemed—thank God! events have proved only ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... superintending through the ever-efficient Cazi Moto the details of the camp. His shoulders were sagging forward wearily, and his face in repose fell into lines of infinite sadness. Her heart melted within her; and in a sudden revulsion she flamed against Winkleman and all his diabolical efficiency. After all, this little corner of an unknown land could not mean so much to the general result, and it would be so glorious a consolation to a brave man's blindness! Then she became ashamed of herself as a traitor. Her tent was now ready; so she entered it, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... It was Penn 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 ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... more diabolical scheme could have been more cleverly planned to ruin the character of a fellow-being. But it is ever thus, and shall be until the arch fiend, who first plotted in the Amaranthine bowers of Eden, shall be cast out forever beyond the reach ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... last he 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
... 'ce n'est pas un teche' (it is no sin); meaning, I suppose, that diabolical cruelty to animals did not come under the head ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... patent and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with tremendous eclat, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prudent principle—a great safeguard to its possessor. Men have committed murder for jealousy's sake, and anger's sake, and hatred's sake, and selfishness' sake, and spiritual pride's sake; but no man that ever I heard of, ever committed a diabolical murder for sweet charity's sake. Mere self-interest, then, if no better motive can be enlisted, should, especially with high-tempered men, prompt all beings to charity and philanthropy. At any rate, upon the occasion in question, I strove to drown my exasperated feelings towards ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... brutish; savage, savage as a bear, savage as a tiger; ferine[obs3], ferocious; inhuman; barbarous, barbaric, semibarbaric, fell, untamed, tameless, truculent, incendiary; bloodthirsty &c. (murderous) 361; atrocious; bloodyminded[obs3]. fiendish, fiendlike[obs3]; 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... only Creator. Would that God, if He were almighty, have permitted the existence of such an enemy (or indeed an enemy at all) as the Devil? And if He were merciful, would He, for the one disobedient act of one human being, have condemned to the most ghastly and diabolical sufferings, millions of human beings, and not only human beings, but animals? Ah! that's where the rub comes in, for though there may be some sense, if not justice, in causing men and women, who have sinned—to suffer, there is surely neither reason nor justice in making animals, ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... Jewish houses in Germany to be sold in the Catholic countries. Nor were there lacking the Chinese prints on red paper representing a man seated, of venerable aspect, with a calm, smiling face, behind whom stood a servant, ugly, horrible, diabolical, threatening, armed with a lance having a wide, keen blade. Among the Indians some call this figure Mohammed, others Santiago, [34] we do not know why, nor do the Chinese themselves give a very clear explanation ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... wife, of whom I had no mistrust, the slave and her son, and prayed her to take care of them during my absence, which was for a whole year. She made use of that time to satisfy her hatred: she applied herself to magic, and when she knew enough of that diabolical art to execute her horrible contrivance, the wretch carried my son to a desolate place, where, by her enchantments, she changed my son into a calf, and gave him to my farmer to fatten, pretending she had bought him. Her fury did not stop at this abominable action, but she likewise changed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... with these beggars, all vociferating at once, while other religious characters were singing with all the power of their lungs, and a native band, stationed in the verandah of the tomb, were at the same time making the most hideous discord by the help of all kinds of diabolical instruments. ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... rival daemons—her marriage foretold with a great daemon—a monk saw the prince of the daemons, instead of Justinian, on the throne—the servants who watched beheld a face without features, a body walking without a head, &c., &c. Procopius declares his own and his friends' belief in these diabolical stories, (c. 12.)] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... life as fireworks. He took the sum-total of the moral experience of the human race, and turned it upside down and jumbled it about, and used it as bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. And the hearers would gasp, and whisper, "Diabolical!" ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Whatever the other woman's whims and extravagances, Mrs. Belle Etoile is their victim. Her taste revolts, but her pride of place compels obedience. She cannot yield, she will not follow; and so Mrs. Colisle, with diabolical ingenuity, constrains her to run a course that gives her no honor and pays her no compensation. She scorns Mrs. Colisle's ways, she loathes her fashions and her company, and—outbids her for them! It is a very unequal contest, of course. Defeat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... management, and that a slight exercise of the favourite Whig plan of concilliation, might avail. Nothing of the kind. She was proof against all such arts; and what was still worse, there was no subject, no possible circumstance, no matter, past, present, or to come, that she could not wind by her diabolical ingenuity, into some cause of offence; and then came the quick transition to instant punishment. Thus, my apparently harmless inquiry as to the society of the neighbourhood, suggested to her—a wish on my part to make ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... with Spain. Portugal had not fulfilled the terms of her treaty, especially that clause which secured the English from the supervision of the diabolical Inquisition, and other nations were only waiting an opportunity to ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston
... considerable favour. At any rate, it set its face against anything German, even in the post-war days when the enemy sent its Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and we weakheartedly reopened trade with the diabolical Huns and allowed them to dump in their cheap and nasty goods just as though no ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... shock for my faith in human nature when General Speed—with whom I had maintained relations of cordial friendship for some fifty years—suddenly allowed himself to become a compliant coadjutor of Andrew Johnson in his diabolical plot to destroy me. The role of suppressing the truth, which he voluntarily assumed for himself and in which—without explanation or defense—he persisted down to his grave, amounted fully to this and to nothing ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... it should take place before the audience assembled, so as to prevent any sound of scraping or blowing. Unfortunately, on one occasion, some wag got access to the orchestra where the ready-tuned instruments were lying, and with diabolical dexterity put every string and crook out of tune. Handel enters. All the bows are raised together, and at the given beat all start off con spirito. The effect was startling in the extreme. The unhappy maestro rushes madly from his place, kicks to pieces the ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... sure, it was possible to identify a given pagan god with a certain demon, and this was often done; but it was impossible to identify the Pagans' conceptions of their gods with the Christians' conceptions of demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their gods not only demoniac (diabolical) but also divine qualities, which the Christians absolutely denied them. Consequently they had to recognise that pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion, on a misconception of the essential character of the gods which were worshipped. ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... she got. "I can see it all as plain as day," she muttered. "There isn't anything he wouldn't do! He did cut that pack sack, and he ran the sheep man out of the hills because he knew it would be dangerous for him to have a neighbor that might talk. And the Samuelson horse raid! Of all the diabolical plotting! With his outlaw friends holding trusted positions on the ranch, and old Mr. Samuelson sick in bed! Oh, it was cleverly planned! And that Pierce was right in with them. No wonder he wanted to lock ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... of their forefathers, were made, or constituted sinners: not only deprived of the favor of God, but also of His image; of all virtue, righteousness, and true holiness, and sunk partly into the image of the devil, in pride, malice, and all other diabolical tempers; partly into the image of the brute, being fallen under the dominion of brutal passions and groveling appetites. Hence also death entered into the world, with all his forerunners and attendants; pain, sickness, and a whole train ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... thickly tufted; it glows like burnished bronze in the sunshine, like enamelled scales of green and gold. These eucalypti are unique in Italy. Gazing upon them, my heart softened and I almost forgave the gums their manifold iniquities, their diabolical thirst, their demoralizing aspect of precocious senility and vice, their peeling bark suggestive of unmentionable skin diseases, and that system of radication which is nothing short of a scandal on this side of the globe. . ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... or hear about you, you are in that a talebearer, a slanderer, a backbiter, or a liar,—when you begin to see and admit that about yourself, you will not wonder at what the Bible says with such bitter indignation about the diabolical sins of the tongue. If you would just begin to-night to watch yourselves—on the way home from church, at home after the day is over, to-morrow morning when the letters and the papers are opened, and so on,—how instinctively, incessantly, irrepressibly you speak about the absent ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... perceive that the foregoing list of the dead reports only those who had died "since April last" (1622), consequently does not include the victims of the Indian massacre, which occurred on the 22d of March of that year. The number which fell by that diabolical conspiracy, as reported by Smith, amounted to 347, and in his Generall Historie, at page 149, he has a list of the numbers murdered at different places. Neill copies from the Records of the Virginia Company (now in the Congressional Library at Washington) a list of their names—see his "History ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... bedstead—the convulsions of the murdered woman. It was a dreadful sound, like the shaking of a tree and rustling of leaves. Then once more he steps to the side of the bed, and I heard another of those horrid blows—and silence—and another—and more silence—and the diabolical surgery was ended. For a few seconds, I think, I was on the point of fainting; but a gentle stir outside the door, close to my ear, startled me, and proved that there had been a watcher posted outside. There was a little tapping ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... incendiarism. He was one of those terrible men who do evil for evil's sake, and prefer the crooked path even when the straight one would lead them more quickly and surely to the goal. He had that lowering, wicked, diabolical look in his eyes which no one can endure, and which in a childlike age may have begotten belief in witches and sorcerers, because enjoyment of evil finds expression in it, indeed it seems of necessity to be forced to increase evil. A tavern ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... turned to the tent. It was young Hiram who brought about this boon. He was interested in the tent, and he wanted to know. Two things seemed to bother the boy: First, he was anxious to learn what diabolical cause had been at work to induce two apparently sane men to give up the comforts of home and live in this exposed manner, if they were not compelled to do so. Second, he desired to find out why people who had the privilege of living in large cities came of ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... universal custom, on any alteration of charters, is to hear the parties at the bar of the House. Now, the question is, Are the Americans to be heard, or not, before the charter is broken for our convenience?... The Boston bill is a diabolical bill.'" ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... but of others I can safely say, that I believe they delighted in it. Their conduct certainly exhibited a most blood-thirsty spirit. But, above all others present, and above all human fiends I ever saw, I think Sainte Hypolite was the most diabolical. She engaged in the horrid task with all alacrity, and assumed from choice the most revolting parts to be performed. She seized a gag, forced it into the mouth of the poor nun, and when it was fixed between her extended jaws, ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... Binomial Theorem, which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it he won the Mathematical Chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him. But the man had hereditary tendencies of the most diabolical kind. A criminal strain ran in his blood, which, instead of being modified, was increased and rendered infinitely more dangerous by his extraordinary mental powers. Dark rumors gathered round him in the university town, and eventually he was compelled to ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... necessary for election,—but it was not long before he had made his influence felt and had been chosen as a member of the committee. Leon Gozlan, who served with him, acknowledged his influence. "Balzac," he wrote, "brought to the Society a profound, almost diabolical knowledge of the chronic wretchedness of the profession; a rare and unequalled ability to deal with the aristocrats of the publishing world; an unconquerable desire to limit their depredations, which he had brooded over on the Mount Sinai of a long personal experience; and, above all else, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... call it a sinful thought?" said the priest, with a diabolical smile. "All weapons are blessed and made holy by God, when employed against heretics. The poison of the hemlock and the opium-plant is part of God's holy creation. He made them as weapons for the just against the unjust, and, when used for pious purposes, they are sanctified means of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 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 proposition to her. Resolving ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... sorely plagued by his critics. Those who peruse his Autobiography to the close, and every part of it is worth reading, will find him in violent ill humour with the theatrical public, whom he describes as taking a malicious and diabolical pleasure in damning plays. To hiss down a piece, he declares, is one of the chief amusements that fill the house. "Five minutes is the usual time, and the whistles resound, and the lovely women smile and felicitate themselves like the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... have been attained by their own courage or prowess. The disappointment of Pizarro and his congenial associates, when they found that the principal wealth of the city had been carried off by the Peruvians, vented itself in acts of diabolical cruelty. They seized on the aged and sick persons who had been unable to escape, and put many of them to the torture to make them confess where the treasures of Cuzco were concealed. Either these unfortunate ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... the instinct of knowing that he was starting for a perilous voyage? Was it a presentiment of dangers to come? The sailors decided that it was for the latter reason, and more than one pretended to joke who believed seriously that the dog was of a diabolical kind. Pen, who was a brutal man, was going to strike him once, when he fell, unfortunately, against the angle of the capstan, and made a frightful wound in his head. Of course this accident was placed to the ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... portion of the Scriptures every day, saying that the perusal preserved one "from all sorts of evils and diabolical temptations" (Histoire de Foix, Bearn, et Navarre, by P. Olhagaray, Paris, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... true to his character of the world's worst loser and winner, leaves behind him all manner of booby-traps, some puerile, many diabolical, which give our sappers plenty of work, cause a good many casualties, and only confirm the ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... odious uncle, the fair Constantia—what a meek saint!—and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a house on fire." Tears came to the eyes ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... cliffs together. "Let us get a firm grip of the very little which we DO know, so that when fresh facts arise we may be ready to fit them into their places. I take it, in the first place, that neither of us is prepared to admit diabolical intrusions into the affairs of men. Let us begin by ruling that entirely out of our minds. Very good. There remain three persons who have been grievously stricken by some conscious or unconscious human agency. ...
— The Adventure of the Devil's Foot • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Transmitted each vile diabolical story; And gave the least whisper of slips and falls, As that Gallery does in the Dome of St. Paul's, Which, as all the world knows, by practice or print, Is famous for making the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Pugh's precious puzzle exploded in my hand. I shook it doubtfully; nothing rattled. I held it to my ear. There was not a sound. What had taken place? Had the clockwork run down, and was the machine arranged with such a diabolical ingenuity that a certain, interval was required, after the clockwork had run down, before an explosion could occur? Or had rust caused the mechanism to again ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... good girl to go wrong; she talks to her of men and pleasures; this is a good idea, I think, for I feel sure it is women far more than men who lead women astray. Then the first woman whom he has loved for her beauty merely, comes along and continues the diabolical work of the first, by suggesting—I don't know, anything—that the young girl should go in for dress; the young man finds out the scheme, and to save the girl he murders her, he is thrown into prison, he is tried, and in the crowded Court he makes a great speech—he tells how he murdered ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... sharp oyster-shells had cut his hands to the very bone. A good glass of grog and some hot tea—the bushman's infallible remedy—soon brought him round, but the scars on his hands and knees will accompany him to his grave. He afterwards described the glances that the shark threw at him as perfectly diabolical, and confessed that he it not been for the cheery hails of the pilot, he should most certainly have relinquished his hold, and met with a death too ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... jail could not silence me, a diabolical attempt was made to bury me alive in an institution for the insane, but when it was found impossible to discover the slightest trace of insanity, or drive me insane during a sojourn of a month among ...
— Government By The Brewers? • Adolph Keitel
... and the rider, after coming out into the open, dismounts and walks away twenty yards from his animal, and literally smells himself all over, and with a feeling of profound relief pronounces himself Not the minutest drop of the diabolical spray has touched his dancing shoes! Springing into the saddle he proceeds to his journey's end, is warmly welcomed by his host, and speedily forgetting his slight misadventure, mingles with a happy crowd of friends. In a little while people ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and daring the greatest that all the chances of war can show. Happy the blest ages that knew not the dread fury of those devilish engines of artillery, whose inventor I am persuaded is in hell receiving the reward of his diabolical invention, by which he made it easy for a base and cowardly arm to take the life of a gallant gentleman; and that, when he knows not how or whence, in the height of the ardour and enthusiasm that fire and animate brave hearts, there should come some ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... as bad and cruel. Will was more than justified in any suspicions he might form against him. As Dent now walked through the streets his low type of face looked very bad indeed; the expression of cunning—that most unpleasant, that most diabolical of all expressions—was most apparent. It was past midnight now, and he cast sinister glances behind and around him. It would have been very unpleasant for him had certain people—Will Scarlett, for instance—the least idea he was still in Liverpool. ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... then was very bad, and thence by way of Nizza to Genoa, where they found a Brig bound for Messina, which they thought would serve their turn. And, in truth, the poor souls found it but too well served; for the Brig was captured off Bastia in Corsica by one of these diabolical Barbary Rovers, all on board made Slaves, and carried, not into Algiers, but into Sallee. There, after much suffering, poor Donna Satisfacion de Mismar died of a Distemper of the country, and poor Lilias was left without any other Protector than her own Virtue ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... fully prepared for, prepared for with all the diabolical perversions of science, will reduce Europe and America ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... placed in casks. In daylight the men thus employed looked grim enough, but at night, as they worked away, stripped to their waists, the fire casting a glare over their smoke-begrimed figures, they seemed more like a group of demons engaged in some diabolical work, than human beings. The midshipmen could scarcely recognise those with whom they had been talking familiarly ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... and had she not, in addition, whipped her dear little Casimir, which unseemly act had only lately come to her knowledge? and had she not also made every man in the castle that approached her mad for love of her, all by her diabolical conduct? No—away with the wretch: she merits her chastisement a thousand and a thousand-fold!" And old Ulrich exclaimed likewise, "Away with the wretch and ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... absolutely excruciating. Except for that damnable tune, there was nothing in his mind at all. Everything else was synthesized into a dull ache, a hollow, gnawing, physical ache. But he'd endure that, he thought, if he could get rid of the diabolical malice of that tune. Perhaps if he stopped walking and just sat still it ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... demonology was alone thought enough to dispose of his divinity. The one sentence of the article, which I cherish in my memory through all the changing years, ran thus: "If he was God, he knew there was no such thing as diabolical possession." It did not seem to strike the Hibbert critic that this line of criticism raises the question, not of whether Christ is God, but of whether the critic in the Hibbert Journal is God. About that ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... Chichirrenes, Campas, and Simirinches, were united. On an old manuscript in the monastery of Ocopa I found a marginal note, in which it was said, "As to the monster, the apostate Juan Santos Atahuallpa, after his diabolical destruction of our missions, the wrath of God was directed against him in the most fearful manner. He died the death of Herod, for his living body ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... vain. I watched the countenance of the captain, and the peculiar expression, which I could not decipher at my first interview, I now read most plainly: it was malignant cruelty, and delight in torturing his own species; he seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in the hateful operation which we were compelled to witness. The second boatswain's mate commenced, with a fresh cat, and gave a lash across the back of the prisoner, that made ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... efforts for children. Holding, as they did, in great dread all fetish, or obeah, practices; usually someone amongst them, more cunning than the rest, professed an acquaintance with the supposed diabolical ritual; and gained influence with, and extorted money from, his more timid comrades. Officers now in the 1st West India Regiment can remember the time when, there being many Africans in the regiment, the feathers of parrots or scraps of rags might be found in the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... is detestable enough when he has business on his hands and all his engines at work, he is still worse when he has nothing to do, and we only see into the hollowness of his heart. His indifference when Othello falls into a swoon, is perfectly diabolical. ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... difficulty in retaining its authority in many circles, in consequence of the widened horizon and the deepening of religious feeling, finally, the wild syncretism, whose aim, however, was a universal religion, all contributed to gain adherents for Simon.[334] His enterprise appeared to the Christians as a diabolical caricature of their own religion, and the impression made by the success which Simonianism gained by a vigorous propaganda even beyond Palestine into the West, supported this idea.[335] We can therefore understand how, afterwards, all heresies were traced ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... chalice of the material of the network and a paten of the material of the pillar. After passing again out of the network, they sailed for eight days towards the North, and here begins what may be called the diabolical ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... killed in a factory, and his body was so mangled by the fatal wheels that even his father was not allowed to see it. Late at night the father, by means of a diabolical talisman—the Monkey's Paw—succeeds in recalling his son to life, and the audience hears a knocking at the door. What is knocking? The mother is making frantic efforts to pull back the bolts. Her son is there, returned from the grave. The father, aware that the talisman, ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... perilous ocean of finance. I remind him that fifteen pounds of the money in the belt is his (he would be as likely as not to forget it). As for the accounts, they are so clear that a three-year-old child could understand them. I notice with a diabolical satisfaction which persists through the all-pervading peace by no means as incongruously as you might imagine—I notice particularly that the Commandant doesn't like this part of it a bit. There is not anybody in the Corps who wants to be responsible for its funds or enjoys ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... no sooner understood, by the rules of his diabolical art, that Aladdin had arrived to this height of good fortune, than his face became inflamed with anger, and he cried out in a rage: "This sorry tailor's son has discovered the secret and virtue of the lamp! I believed his death to be certain; but find that he enjoys the fruit of my labour ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... in shameless disregard of the forms of administering law, in cunning arrangement to entrap the defenseless, and in diabolical intent, this fugitive slave law stands alone in the annals of tyrannical legislation. I doubt if there be another nation on the globe having the brass and the baseness to put such a law on the statute-book. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... course, was a plot as deep laid as diabolical, hatched by the rebels for the purpose of getting rid of General Brown, who they feared was about to reinforce Gordon. But for the timely arrival of those pressing despatches it would have succeeded, and he and the I.G. would have been trapped ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... they were being rapidly blinded and asphyxiated by the loathsome fumes, and deafened by the hideous roaring and snapping of the dragons' jaws. Realizing that they could not much longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and a rush of imprisoned steam that drowned even the dragons' roar, and they were separated from them by a long fissure ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... to a horrible device to extinguish the embers of the rebellion. It was carrying out to a diabolical extent the policy of setting one Irishman against another. If the terror-stricken wretches hoped for pardon, they must deserve it, by murdering their relations. Accordingly sacks full of the heads of reputed rebels were brought in daily. Yet concerning him Mr. Froude makes this singular remark: ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... again, but slowly this time. Helena embraced and coaxed, but to no effect. Even with her chosen friend, Magdalena was reticent, not from choice, but necessity. But Helena, whose love was great and whose intuitions were diabolical, leaped to the secret. "I know!" she ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... deities,'—for which reason, we presume, those who were seated 'below the salt' at the banquets of the Middle Ages were always 'poor devils.' Attic salt is always held to be more pungent when there is a touch of the diabolical and caustic in it,—and therefore caustic itself is known as lapis infernalis. 'Poor Mr. N——,' said a country dame, of a recently deceased neighbor who was over-thrifty, 'he always saved his salt and lost his pork.' 'Yes,' replied a friend, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... and half-a-dozen loose sheets of music, the elusive quality of the latter seems to be something almost supernatural, not to say diabolical, and the pursuit would probably have been a lengthy one but for the fact that a tall man, who was rapidly advancing from the opposite direction, seeing the girl's predicament, came to her help and headed off the truant sheets. Within a few moments the combined efforts of the girl, the man, ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... insane, but the others continued until worn out with exhaustion. The Father learned that during these orgies not unfrequently whole villages were consumed, and the total extirpation of some families had resulted. No wonder that he saw in them the diabolical workings of the prince of evil, but the physician is rather inclined to class them with those cases of epidemic hysteria, the common products of violent and ill-directed ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... officers accused Mahony of treachery to the Spanish general, and the national jealousy of foreigners made their tale easily believed; but Peterborough had taken another step to secure the success of his diabolical plan against the honor of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... "By the most diabolical arts he obtained an interview with the Dauphine, in which he regained her confidence. He made her believe that he had been commissioned by her mother, as she had shown so little interest for the house ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the war-dance. They dance about the victims with a fierce glee like hundreds of fiends; they beat them, they slash them with knives, they thrust lighted brands upon the fresh young flesh till it blisters and throws out nauseous odors. Their acts are acts of diabolical torture, inconceivably savage. But the worst agony is endured in desperate silence by each victim. That is, by ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... among Christians, is educated among Pharisees; the great enemies of Christ—instructed by their greatest teacher—inspired with a double portion of their zeal and rancor against the cause of the Redeemer, and sent forth to destroy. But lo! This mighty Abaddan of diabolical and Jewish malice, is arrested in his course—changed into another man, and all his zeal and learning from that hour directed to buildup the cause of God! The energy instructed and furnished, but heaven ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... exposition of the commercial value of an invention which would appeal to twice ninety million legs at six pair of socks a year, flushed and rose heavily. The light had dawned upon him at last. They were being put in coventry and the diabolical mind that was thus taking its fiendish revenge could be none other than the man he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... forebears, and declined when it went that far. They then did other things to him which were not pleasant. Most of these pranks seemed to have been instigated by a laughing, curly-haired young man named Fay. Fay had clear blue eyes, which seemed always to mock you. He could think up more diabolical schemes in ten minutes than the rest of the men in as many hours. Bennington came shortly to hate this man Fay. His attentions had so much of the gratuitous! For a number of days, even after the enjoyment of novelty had worn off, ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... 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 ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... 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
... commission in the Blue Ribbon Army. GEORGE remembered this too late. The offer of a seat in the University Trial Eights must have suggested the blue ribbon which the University Crew wear on their straw hats. Thus the diabolical forces of heredity were roused to fever-heat, and the great-great uncle, with his blue ribbon, whose photograph hung in GEORGE's home over the parlour mantelpiece, became a living force in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... Stygian lake; puts fabulous people with real among the damned, Dido, and Cacus, and Ephialtes, with Ezzelino and Pope Nicholas the Fifth; and associates the Centaurs and the Furies with the agents of diabolical torture. It has pleased him also to elevate Cato of Utica to the office of warder of purgatory, though the censor's poor good wife, Marcia, is detained in the regions below. By these and other far greater inconsistencies, the whole place of punishment becomes ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... connection between her brother-in-law and a pretty and intelligent mulatto girl, about eighteen or nineteen years of age, who was still retained in the family in the capacity of housemaid. Having once struck this jarring chord, she continued to play upon it with diabolical skill. To those who watched the course of her unholy labors, the energy and ingenuity with which this wretched woman wrought at her task, and the completeness of her success, would have seemed a subject of admiration, if the result had not been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... is!" he said to himself with a diabolical sneer. "Did the half-pay Captain teach her that, I wonder? or does church-going, and psalm-singing, and Bible-reading come natural to all women? I know my mother was good at it, and my wife too. She used to fly to her Bible as a man flies to dram-drinking, or his pipe, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And according to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a diabolical relish used to tell of the middle-passage, where the slaves were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and dead were unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning, before washing down the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... my lower limbs with some kind of grease which smelt of resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little fires dropped some of the stuff on it, and it crackled merrily. He grinned at me—a slow, diabolical grin. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... which the report was concerned. The clergy attended in force and panoply led by His Serenity in person—monks, nuns, deacons and deaconesses—in a word, the Church was present. The cistern had been profaned. A son of Satan, moved by a most diabolical ingenuity, had converted it into a den of wickedness surpassing sinful belief; and the procession and awful conclave were to assist His Serenity in restoring the water to wholesomeness, impossible, in the belief of consumers, except by solemn exorcism.... Heed now, my ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... means of sounds. His descriptive powers were wonderful. Anybody with the least touch of imagination could bring before "his mind's eye" the infernal revel that the artist was depicting. The enchantments of the witches were visible. You could hear their diabolical songs, you could fancy their mad and wild dances; while, when the cock crew (imitated by the way in a most astonishing manner), you would feel that there was a rushing of bodies through the air, which were scattering in all directions. Then the lovely melody succeeding—descriptive of ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... visitor to pass, scrutinizing him curiously the while. Perhaps he might hope to find the good nature of an artist or to receive the good offices of an amateur not unfriendly to the arts; but besides an almost diabolical expression in the face that met his gaze, there was that indescribable something which has an irresistible ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... so strange, so contrary to human nature that the little man, though diabolical as he appeared to be in his disposition, should never hint at, or complain of, Philip's attempts upon his life. Had he complained—had he accused Philip of murder—had he vowed vengeance and demanded justice ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... wilfully invaded the territory of Hades Ranch, of which diabolical domain I, Algernon Tobey, am by grace of his Satanic majesty the master, I invite you to become my guests and participate in a grand ball which I shall give this evening ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... in a foundling hospital have their eyes taken out to make into photographic medicine—the hospital is demolished and the Sisters of Charity killed. A skeleton found in the house of a physician is paraded on the street as proof of diabolical acts—instantly an angry mob wrecks the building and murders every foreigner within its reach. One of these instances was seen in the Tientsin massacre of 1869, the other in the Lienchow massacre of 1905. Nor are these isolated cases. Two American ladies doing ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... to rescue the girl. Without taking any notice of the violence they threatened, as they were well armed, she spoke so forcibly of the judgments of God, that would inevitably fall on them if they persisted in their diabolical purpose, that they retired in confusion, leaving the trembling girl at liberty, and overpowered with gratitude for her benefactress. She afterwards became one of Margaret's life-long companions, and accompanied her to Canada, where she was known as Sister Crolo. But the ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... squabble, the other apex of the triangle being a circus grafter who "shibbolethed" at some of the "brace games," which at that time had police protection, so far as that could be given. He had interfered between the couple, and was, I am sorry to say, quite successful as an interferer; but he was a diabolical failure when he attempted to duplicate White's work as lecturer, and the act, after playing a date or two, sank out of sight and I have heard nothing more of her professionally. Lately I have learned that she died in London in 1900 and is buried ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... didn't you give me your confidence? If I had had the least notion of the dreadful things that were going on I should certainly have telephoned to Eastbourne before starting. But don't you see the diabolical cleverness of the scheme? The telegram arrived just in time to allow me to catch the 1:25 p. m. train, and rendering it idle to think of making a trunk call if I would obey an urgent message from my mother. Then again, when I reached Eastbourne, why should I suspect a foreign-looking gentleman ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... in all other countries, discontented characters I well know; as also that these characters are actuated by very different views:—Some good, from an opinion that the measures of the general government are impure;—some bad, and (if I might be allowed to use so harsh an expression) diabolical, inasmuch as they are not only meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially to destroy the confidence which it is necessary the people should place (until they have unequivocal proof of demerit) in their public servants:—for ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Mr. Davis was privy to the diabolical plot, but think it the emanation of a set of young men of the South, who are very devils. I want to throw upon the South the care of this class of men, who will soon be as obnoxious to their industrial classes as ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... swallowing up of the Moon and the Sun by Rahu, the falling of stars from their fixed positions and the diversions of constellations from their orbits, knowing the sad separation of all united objects and the diabolical behaviour of creatures in devouring one another, seeing the absence of all intelligence in the infancy of human beings and the deterioration and destruction of the body, marking the little attachment creatures have to the quality ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... 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, after they ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... 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 Devil to dine with him, he would be ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... ten days lost, always presuming that the diabolical postman would dare to repeat his attempt and produce ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... revolver in their strong box, and lackadaisically wave me adieu. Upon returning to the mehana, I find a corpulent pasha and a number of particularly influential Turks awaiting my reappearance, with the same diabolical object of asking me to "bin! bin!" Soon afterward come the two Mohammedan priests, with the same request; and certainly not less than half a dozen times during the afternoon do I bring out the bicycle and ride, in deference to the insatiable curiosity of the sure enough "unspeakable" ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... of this diabolical plot accidentally came to the ears of an officer in the army, who chanced to be in Taos at the time. This gentleman was one of the first to hear of it, and at once sought Kit Carson; but instead of directly telling him what he had ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... has diabolical skill. And then he won't fight fair. He killed young Atwater on a foul, you know. Slipped on the wet grass, and Chartersea had him pinned before he caught his guard. But there is Lady ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have been, had he been able to look upon it ignorantly, seeing no more than others saw, looking no further than a stranger could look. But with the black cloud which he saw brooding over it, what an arch mockery, what a diabolical delusion it seemed. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... not for that diabolical netting," thought I, "there would be some chance for us still." And as we ranged laboriously up alongside, my eye travelled up the face of the obstruction to its upper edge, and I saw that it was suspended at four points only, two on ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... diabolical in its passion. He leaned against the jamb of the open door and folded his arms mockingly, as if inviting an ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... officer, the choice of all your kindred, is eager to give you his name and loving protection. He will take you far away from war's rude alarms, with its attendant and horrible perils. We have no common foe to deal with, but monsters animated by unquenchable hatred and a diabolical spirit. I should betray my trust and be recreant to my duty did I not avail myself of the one avenue of safety still open to you. See, your cousin's brave men are mounted, armed, and ready to act as your escort. Dr. Williams is ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the apartment, the bishop rose, and deprecated the action that had been taken, and characterized it as childish and absurd. He declared that no man was safe one moment whilst "that diabolical wretch" still lived; that the only security for us all was in his immediate extirpation from the face of the earth, and that no amount of money could seal his lips, or close his hands. It would be no crime, he said, to deprive him of the means of assassinating the whole human family, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... now in the lead, turned sharply to his right and the next instant had the wind behind him. Almost involuntarily each member of the party looked back. Outside the breach of the broken wall, standing clear to view with the wind from the hills sweeping townward from them, were diabolical figures, naked and black, feeding ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... gained a victory over its enemies, took part in the feast. A blazing fire threw its bright glare on a dozen figures seated around huge banana-leaves, on which were spread the smoking viands of the diabolical repast. A disgusting odor was wafted toward the spot where our Frenchman and his companions lay perdu, enchained by a horrible fascination which produced the sensation of nightmare. Directly in front of them was an old chief with long white beard and wrinkled skin, who gnawed a head still covered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... lawless terror? As well might we seek the pure light of heaven in the bottomless pit. It is, indeed, a most horrible desecration of the sacred name of liberty, to apply it either to the butcheries and brutalities of the French Revolution, or to the more diabolical massacres of St. Domingo. If such were freedom, it would, in sober truth, be more fitly symbolized by ten thousand hissing serpents than by a single poisonous snake; and by all on earth, as in heaven, it should be abhorred. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... (such was learning's misfortune, at that great devastation of our English libraries, that) where a red letter or a mathematical diagram appeared, they were sufficient to entitle the book to be popish or diabolical." Theatrum Chemicum; prolegom. A. 2. rev. "The avarice of the late intruders was so mean, and their ignorance so undistinguishing, that, when the books happened to have COSTLY COVERS, they tore them off, and threw away the works, or turned them to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Even in Italy, the land of every German poet's dreams, Platen never felt himself at home, and the 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 ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Satan, the child wills! A drop of your diabolical blood has passed into her veins. I am yours for life. But first try reasonable means. Make my parents' acquaintance, cover up your horns and tail, try and win me like a bourgeois. If that fails, there is always Egypt. But quick, quick: I cannot bear scenes and delays and comments. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... stage-scoundrel who from time to time seeks to take some mean advantage of a heroine in distress, on which occasions said heroine (of Adelphi Drama) will request him to "unhand her," or to "stand aside and let her pass;" whereupon the dastardly ruffian retaliates with a diabolical sneer of fiendish malice, his eyes ablaze with passion, as, making his melodramatic exit at the O.P. wing, he growls, "Aha! a day will come!" or "She must and shall be mine!" or, if not making his exit, but remaining in centre of stage to assist ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 27, 1892 • Various
... her since that night which was about two years past. He knew that she had not been found, because he had not seen her amongst the other captives. If they had found her they would have been sure to carry her off, because—here Chimbolo's visage again grew diabolical—she was young, he said, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne |
