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Vicious   /vˈɪʃəs/   Listen
Vicious

adjective
1.
(of persons or their actions) able or disposed to inflict pain or suffering.  Synonyms: barbarous, brutal, cruel, fell, roughshod, savage.  "Brutal beatings" , "Cruel tortures" , "Stalin's roughshod treatment of the kulaks" , "A savage slap" , "Vicious kicks"
2.
Having the nature of vice.  Synonym: evil.
3.
Bringing or deserving severe rebuke or censure.  Synonyms: condemnable, criminal, deplorable, reprehensible.  "A deplorable act of violence" , "Adultery is as reprehensible for a husband as for a wife"
4.
Marked by deep ill will; deliberately harmful.  Synonyms: poisonous, venomous.  "Venomous criticism" , "Vicious gossip"



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"Vicious" Quotes from Famous Books



... multiply and thicken on them; they are involved, through a labyrinth of confused detail, in an industry without limit, and without direction; and, in conclusion, the whole of their work becomes feeble, vicious, and insecure. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... all men are vicious, selfish and immoral is projecting pernicious mind stuff into space, which is as dangerous to the peace of the community ...
— The Heart of the New Thought • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... a continuous change of amusements, each noisier and duller than the one before. Now in the theatre, now in the open, they played a stupid but obscene vaudeville piece, and vicious topical songs were sung (a thunder of applause); an animated chansonnette-singer screeched and pulled about with her naked, excessively whitened shoulders, and winked with her exaggeratedly painted eyes; a woman acrobat, raising ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub

... head. "I don't know; sometimes I give up on the human race. Manning at least has a little culture in him—but he's more vicious than he seems, nevertheless. If ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr

... and next my marriage with my own cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw. The placing was a great affair, for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing of me whatsoever. They were really mad and vicious, insomuch that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery. Dirt was flung upon us as we passed, and the finger of scorn held out to me. But I endured it with a resigned spirit, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... us, the voice of my father. He was standing in the doorway. "Will these monkey-tricks come to an end or not? Where are we living? In the Russian empire or in the French republic?" He came into the room. "Let any one who is turbulent and vicious begone to France.—And how do you dare to enter here?" he asked of Raissa, who, rising a little and turning her face toward him, was evidently alarmed, although she continued to smile gently. "The daughter of my sworn enemy! How have you dared? And to embrace him too! Away ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... as we crawled back into the trench, that a fury of shots broke out from a point along the line two or three hundred yards away; sharp, vicious shots on the still night air, stabbing, merciless death in their sound. Oh, yes, there was war in France; unrelenting, shrewd, tireless war. A touch of suspicion anywhere ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... Assistant," in shape of a dictionary of names, with their concomitant virtues and vices; and this book shall be scattered broadcast through the land, and shall be on the table of every one eligible for god-fathership, until such a thing as a vicious or untoward appellation shall have ceased from off the face ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... say when we affirm that God is just. According to human ideas, (which are, however, the only ones that men are possessed of,) justice will always exclude caprice and partiality; and never can we prevent ourselves from regarding as iniquitous and vicious a sovereign who, being both able and willing to occupy himself with the happiness of his subjects, should plunge the greatest number of them into misfortune, and reserve his kindness for those to whom his whims have ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... a Majority in Both Senate and Assembly, Good Bills Were Defeated, and Vicious Measures Passed - Three Reasons for This: (1) Reform Element Was Without Plan of Action, (2) Was Without Organization; (3) The Machine Was Permitted to ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... pretty sure that if anyone ever did see a real thing here that he thought was a ghost it was a tramp in disguise. And I don't believe you're afraid of a tramp—though I'd rather meet a ghost, myself, than a vicious tramp." ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... with that bread which will make us live for ever? Instead of being steady, honest, hard-working, God-fearing young men, a credit to me, and respected by all who know them, they would have been careless, idle, and vicious. Neighbours often say to me, 'How is it, John Hadden, that your sons are good steady young men, and do as you tell them?'—then I say, 'It is just this, because I bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The Bible tells me how to bring up my children, and I do it. If ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston

... single-handed, or as in the second, although opposed, we have the host of Heaven ranged on our side. Thus are the scales of Divine Justice evenly balanced, and man is still a free agent, as his own virtuous or vicious propensities must ever decide whether he shall gain ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... of the Iliad are men, beautiful, mighty, vicious: I can understand them," said Olivier. "I like them or dislike them: even when I dislike them I still love them: I am in love with them. More than once, with Patroclus, I have kissed the lovely feet of Achilles as he lay bleeding. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... When Ponocrates knew Gargantua's vicious manner of living, he resolved to bring him up in another kind; but for a while he bore with him, considering that nature does not endure sudden changes without great violence. Therefore, to begin his work the better, he requested a learned physician of that time, called ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... was apparent that they got no pleasure out of it. They ran with their heads hanging down, and it seemed to Cleggett that they were quarreling as they ran, for occasionally one of them would give a vicious jerk to the handcuffs that would almost upset the other, and that must have hurt the ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... springs, and suddenly one venetian blind rattled down. His shoulders reappeared, jammed in the small opening; his head hung out, distended and tossing like a captive balloon, perspiring, furious, spluttering. He reached for the gharry-wallah with vicious flourishes of a fist as dumpy and red as a lump of raw meat. He roared at him to be off, to go on. Where? Into the Pacific, perhaps. The driver lashed; the pony snorted, reared once, and darted off at a gallop. Where? To Apia? To Honolulu? He had 6000 miles of tropical belt to disport ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... herself set the blood drumming through her arteries, keyed her will to the very highest pitch, quickened her brain, made her feel in some inexplicable way, confident and irresistible, laid on this girl a paralyzing hand. It wasn't her fault that she didn't meet her difficulties half-way with a vicious, driving offensive—rout them, demoralize them. It was ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... sides are most womanishly tender. I go abroad no more without Excalibur." He tapped his sword hilt as he spoke. Huguette glared fiercely up at him. "Will it teach you not to play the fool again?" asked, with a vicious snap of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Miggs finished her solo, her mistress struck in again, and the two together performed a duet to the same purpose; the burden being, that Mrs Varden was persecuted perfection, and Mr Varden, as the representative of mankind in that apartment, a creature of vicious and brutal habits, utterly insensible to the blessings he enjoyed. Of so refined a character, indeed, was their talent of assault under the mask of sympathy, that when Dolly, recovering, embraced her father tenderly, as in vindication of his goodness, Mrs Varden expressed ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... Cr. Law, Sec.205): "There can be no crime unless a culpable intent accompanies the criminal act." The same author, (1 Cr. Prac. Sec.521), repeated in other words, the same idea: "In order to render a party criminally responsible, a vicious will must concur with a ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... one must be serious and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life," concluded Sergey Ivanovitch. But Levin forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this painful feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody except the waiters at the refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing up the crockery and setting in order their plates and wine glasses, seeing ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Dickens obtained such unexampled popularity. Be was a public instructor, a reformer and moralist. Whatever was good and amiable, bright and joyous in our nature, he loved, supported and augmented by his writings; whatever was false, hypocritical and vicious, he held up to ridicule, scorn ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... in the forest. For God's sake let there be no more desertions; he that wishes to quit me, may now quit me unmolested; but, after this moment, martial law will be, enforced, and I shall give orders to shoot down any man detected in treachery, as I would shoot down a vicious dog." ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... should have imagined that some echo of his turpitudes must have penetrated even to a hermitage—that they would be written upon the very face of Nature, which he outrages at every step of his infamous life. He is a monster, a sort of antichrist; the most ruthless, bloody, vicious man that ever drew the breath of life. Indeed, there are not wanting those who call him a warlock, a dealer in black magic who has sold his soul to the Devil. Though, for that matter, they say the same of the Pope his father, and I doubt not that his magic is just ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... foundation stood the court: the King, generous-minded but deceived, and jealously attached to the crown servants, impatient of any annoyance, and always declaring a willingness to resign his throne; the Queen, clear-headed and ambitious, but self-indulgent, extravagant, and vicious; Godoy, the Prince of the Peace,—so called from the treaty which he had negotiated at Basel to conclude the French and Spanish revolutionary wars,—the real ruler, soothing the King's sensibilities and gratifying the Queen's passions. To preserve his ascendancy this trimmer had ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Tyle's little laugh rippled out. "You're quite dramatic about it, my dear. The man's of no importance. He's a poseur, a demagogue, and one with a vicious streak in him. I understand, of course, that you're interested only because he different from the other men you know. That merely a part of ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... The vicious ants had really bitten his cheeks so that they were swollen up very much, and Bumpus looked like a ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... Florence for his virtues, for he was assiduous in his work, quiet and good by nature, and a truly God-fearing man; he had a great liking for a life of peace, and he shunned vicious company, delighted much in hearing sermons, and always sought the society of learned and serious persons. And in truth, it is seldom that nature creates a man of good parts and a gentle craftsman, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... stood motionless for a moment in astonishment. He was helpless as a girl in that vicious grasp that was bearing him under slowly, relentlessly. "For the love of heaven," he cried, "Let go my arm, you brute, you'll sprain ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... noiseless, cat-like tread of his which she had always hated, perceiving in it a true index to his character: the prowl of a beast of prey, furtive, cowardly, cruel. It was so: Victor was as feline and as vicious as a jungle-cat. Watching him with this thought in mind, one could almost credit old tales of beasts bewitched and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... the present year: it began in visions of prosperity, it closed with a certainty of adversity. The derangement of commercial affairs doubtless arose from the dangerous mania of speculation, aided by a vicious system of making paper money, which increased the currency, drove gold out of the country, and then caused a demand for it in exchange for paper, which it was impossible to meet. The natural consequence was an almost general breaking up ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... terrible sense of exclusion had not now the same palliative of righteous resentment. With Yvonne Rupert, the splendid-flaming, vicious ingrate, he had felt himself the sinned against. But before this wife-widow, this dutiful, hard-working, tragic creature, he had nothing but self-contempt. He tottered downstairs. How should he even get his bread—he whose ill-fame was doubtless the gossip of the Ghetto? ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... us victims of a vicious family. This is not the moment to pile up charges against those who in this very hour are standing before the terrible tribunal of God; but they have done me an irreparable wrong—they have broken ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... turned and frightened each of them off like a dog with his tail between his legs. Don't give yourself confidence, Allen. That's all you are, that's all we are—two dogs fighting for a stolen bone. The man who rules you here is an ignorant negro, debauched and vicious and a fanatic. He is shut off from every one, even to the approach of a British ambassador. And what do you suppose he cares for a dog of a Christian like you, who has been robbed in a hotel by another ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... various parts of the colony. These probation stations, as they were called, were intended to inculcate habits of industry and subordination; they were provided with supervisors and religious instructors; and had they not been tainted by the vicious virus brought to them by others arriving from the penal stations, they might have answered their purpose for a time. But they became as bad as the worst of the penal settlements and contributed greatly to the breakdown of the whole system. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... chest, and the nifty shoulder-straps—why should he glare at me in that cold, suspicious way? I wasn't tryin' to break into the army with felonious intent. How could he be sure, just from a casual glance, that I was such vicious scum? ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... at the scissors was great, not less great was it at the punching machine, which punched little buttons the size of a sixpence out of cold iron full half-an-inch thick. This vicious implement not only punched holes all round boiler-plates so as to permit of their being riveted together, but it cut patterns out of thick iron plates by punching rows of such holes so close to each other that they formed one long cutting, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... somebody some day. The sooner we get rid of her the better. Just look at that," he added, as the mare laid back her ears and made a vicious snap ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... fist struck her mouth and flung her backward against the horse. Half fainting, she saw Freckles lunge over her shoulder and heard the vicious click of his teeth snapping together. But Lynch, ducking out of reach of the angry horse, caught Mary about the waist and dragged her toward ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... chum he sprang around the corner or the wall, his electric advanced, his automatic ready for instant use. As he turned the corner one foot caught on a loose rock and he half fell to the ground. As he did so, Tommy saw a hairy paw shoot out with vicious force and brush and scrape across the ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher

... of organizing work and failing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge. The love of pleasure will not be denied, and when it has turned into all sorts of malignant and vicious appetites, then we, the middle aged, grow quite distracted and resort to all sorts of restrictive measures. We even try to dam up the sweet fountain itself because we are affrighted by these neglected streams; ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... case with the abnormal, these unfortunate types are found at the social extremes; in the so-called "depths" and the so-called "heights." There are women too vicious to make good mothers and women too vain to make good mothers. But these are ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... still, knowing what I had suffered, and what a weight of misery I bore with me? I, whose life was wrecked beyond salvation; who only lived that I might slit the throats of those that had so irreparably wronged me. Think you still that it was so vicious a thing, so unpardonable an offence to seek the blessed nepenthe of the wine-cup, the heavenly forgetfulness that its abuses brought me? Is it strange that I became known as the wildest tantivy boy that rode with the King? What ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... of their promenade up and down and of their meeting at Vicksburg was accurately weighed by the enemy; and, however it may have imposed upon the Northern people, did nothing to insure the safety of the unarmed vessels upon which supplies depended. This essentially vicious military situation resulted necessarily in a degree of insecurity which could have but one issue—a retreat by both squadrons toward their respective ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... was valid in the days when disobedience to the Head Man meant getting lost in a bog or eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. Today it is more than obsolete. It is among the most vicious sicknesses that have ever infected ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones

... reformation of the Church! Never was it more necessary, and never did the state of the Church need more vigorous endeavours." "We are troubled with heretics," he went on, "but no heresy of theirs is so fatal to us and to the people at large as the vicious and depraved lives of the clergy. That is the worst heresy of all." It was the reform of the bishops that must precede that of the clergy, the reform of the clergy that would lead to a general revival of religion in the people at large. The accumulation ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... lashes round them, so like and yet so horribly unlike the happy eyes he had adored, he could not bear the sight of them and turned away pale as death. After that he scarcely ever saw him except when he was asleep, and all he knew of him was that he was a confirmed invalid, with a vicious, hysterical, half-insane temper. He could only be kept from furies dangerous to himself by being given his ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... not long to wait! For an instant the pearl-pale zenith shone serenely void. Then, heralded by a droning noise as of giant bees, and a vicious spitting of shrapnel, high overhead sailed a wide-winged black bird, chased by four other birds bigger, because nearer earth. They soared, circling closer, closer—two mounting high, two flying low, and so passed westward, while the sky was spattered with shrapnel—long, ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... haunts of the Pawnee Indians, reported to be "vicious savages and daring thieves." Before us also stretched the summer range of the antelope, deer, elk, and buffalo. The effort to keep out of the way of the Pawnees, and the desire to catch sight of the big game, urged us on at a good rate of speed, but not fast enough to keep our belligerents on ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... provided according to the best modern theories. Nothing had been left to chance. Marian should be a paragon, physically and morally. Yet, her mother had to confess, the child bored her,—was a wooden doll! In the scientifically sterilized atmosphere in which she had lived, no vicious germ had been allowed to fasten itself on the young organism, and yet thus far the product was tasteless. Perhaps Molly was merely a commonplace little girl, and she was realizing it for the first time. Isabelle's maternal pride refused to accept such a depressing answer, and moreover she did ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... imitative), but in the application of philosophic methods to education, in the attempted regeneration of society and the amelioration of its conditions by schemes of reform and discipline, relating to the institutions of benevolence and to the control of the vicious and criminal. With all these efforts go along always much false sentimentality and pseudo-philanthropy, but little by little gain is made that could not be made in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... this conversation, as it will give the reader a better idea of Tom, and his way of treating his father. Tom was fond of his father, and although mischievous, and too fond of drinking when he could obtain liquor, was not disobedient or vicious. We had nearly reached Battersea Fields when they returned ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the Golampis think it hardly worth while to be truthful, to abstain from slander, to do justice and to avoid vicious actions. "The practice," they say, "of deceit, calumniation, oppression and immorality cannot have any sensible and lasting injurious effect, and it is most agreeable to the mind and heart. Why should there be personal self-denial without ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... he began, "I'm satisfied that the back-bitin', the scrappin', the petty jealousies and general cussedness that characterized our lives on the old Maggie will not be duplicated on the Maggie II. Them vicious days is gone forever, I hope, an' from now on the motto of us ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... confidence he had so shamefully abused. Serpents should be crushed, traitors should be punished, however unpleasant may be the exercise of the judicial function; for to permit evil men to continue in their evil-doing is to encourage vicious habits detrimental to the well-being of humanity. The more just the judge, the more severe should he be towards such calculating sinners, lest, infected by example, mankind should become even more corrupt than it is. Bishop Pendle was ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... the cage as per announcement; but he was not long in discovering by various signs not to be mistaken that his charges were in no humour to be played with on that day. Even the ring master from his place in the centre of the ring, perceived that old King of the Forest, the largest and most vicious of the lions, was meditating mischief, and called to the Signor to come out of the cage. The Signor, keeping his eye steadily fixed on the brute, began a retrograde movement from the den. He had the door open, and was swiftly backing through, when, with a roar that seemed ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... obnoxious to every Liberal principle. I would ask you to remember some words in Mr. Ruskin's chapter on "The Future of England," in his Crown of Wild Olive, which are very applicable to the situation:—"In Ireland, especially, a vicious system has been so long maintained that it has become impossible to give due support to the cause of order without seeming to countenance injury." The bodies which would deal with education, with private Bills, with provisional order ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... letter which he had been reading for the seventh time, with a vicious intentness, and then jumping up from the big leather chair in which he had been buried, ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... leader in the march of progress, because of the influence exerted by a small class, who have grown so powerful through special privileges given to them by the nation that they now assume to thwart beneficent legislation in order that they may continue to grow richer through this vicious form of governmental paternalism, which places the multitude in the power of ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... endeavor after continuance of existence (III. prop. 6); why not all after virtue? If all endeavor after it, why do so few reach the goal? Whence the sadly large number of the irrational, the selfish, the vicious? Whence the evil in the world? Vice is as truly an outcome of "nature" as virtue. Virtue is power, vice is weakness; the former is knowledge, the latter ignorance. Whence the powerless natures? Whence defective knowledge? Whence imperfection ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... schoolmastering in Britain has become a vast vested interest in the hands of men who have nothing to teach us. They try to bolster up their vicious system by such artificial arguments as the "mental training" fallacy. Forced to admit the utter uselessness of the pretended knowledge they impart, they fall back upon the plea of its supposed occult value ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... the conclusion that imprudent acts will be punished hereafter. So, too, with the attempt to show that from the analogy of the present life we may not unreasonably infer that virtue and vice will receive their respective rewards and punishments hereafter; it may be admitted that virtuous and vicious acts are naturally looked upon as objects of reward or punishment, and treated accordingly, but we may refuse to allow the argument to go further, and to infer a perfect distribution of justice dependent upon our conduct here. Butler could strengthen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... Does, and How it is allowed to Drain Away, Weakening, Emasculating and Dementing the Vicious and the Careless. Diurnal (daily) Emissions. Nocturnal (nightly) Emissions. Impalpable Oozings. Losses in the Urine. Losses while ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... heedless influence, of other people; and, secondly, in the absence of interesting minor occupations or arts, such as keep the mind busy, yet not over-excited or too deeply absorbed. An important element in such cases is to interest deeply the patient in himself as a vicious subject to be subdued by his own exertions. No one who has never had the gout severely can form any conception of the terribly arrogant irritability which accompanies it. I say arrogant, because it is independent ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... difficult to analyze. They follow normal processes and may be thus stated: Secrecy breeds suspicion; suspicion, doubt; doubt, distrust; and distrust produces lack of frankness, which is closely akin to secrecy. The result is a vicious circle, of which deceit and intrigue are the very essence. Secrecy and its natural consequences have given to diplomacy a popular reputation for trickery, for double-dealing, and in a more or less degree for unscrupulous and dishonest methods of obtaining desired ends, a reputation that ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... we have seen, was the hunter, Mestigoit; another, the sorcerer; and the third, Pierre, whom, by reason of his falling away from the Faith, Le Jeune always mentions as the Apostate. He was a weak-minded young Indian, wholly under the influence of his brother, the sorcerer, who, if not more vicious, was far more resolute and wily. From the antagonism of their respective professions, the sorcerer hated the priest, who lost no opportunity of denouncing his incantations, and who ridiculed his perpetual singing and drumming ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... be proud of, sir! I'm not a vicious sort of fellow, but I do feel sometimes as if I should like to see him set up as a mark, and a couple of score o' Boers busy trying ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... by this urchin's intimacy with death. It struck him as utterly vicious and terrible. A horror of the rosy-faced little creature, with good-conduct medals gleaming on its breast, came ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... what to call you," cried the same Mihalevitch, at three o'clock in the morning. "You are not a sceptic, nor a pessimist, nor a Voltairean, you are a loafer, and you are a vicious loafer, a conscious loafer, not a simple loafer. Simple loafers lie on the stove and do nothing because they don't know how to do anything; they don't think about anything either, but you are a ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... beat him by one point, secured by a rather vicious putt, then lightly requesting him to take her clubs back to the Club House with his, she summoned Christopher to take her home. Geoffry had not protested again. He took early opportunity to challenge Christopher instead and reaped a small revenge of easy ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant

... is, that I simply desire to dress like one of yourselves, to see the last of these uncouth garments." I could not help putting a little vicious ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... experiences of a street waif, who has been brought up by burglars, and passed the greater part of his time among them, without being wholly spoiled by his corrupt surroundings. His struggles between gratitude and duty on the one hand, and loyalty to his vicious guardians on the other, will, it is hoped, excite the interest and sympathy of the reader. The author has sought to indicate some of the influences which make it difficult for the neglected street children to grow up virtuous and well-conducted members of society. Philanthropy ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger

... pretty, and yet not sweet. Those who are sweet-tempered show it in their faces. You know how a bunch of flowers in a room makes it sweet and wholesome. Now every good child in a home, or a school, is like a nosegay of blossoms, making the place sweet and wholesome; and every bad, vicious, unruly, child is like the smell which comes from poisoned water. When I used to visit the sailors in their ships to talk to them about God, I used to say to them, "Now I want one of you men to be a little pinch of salt in this ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... I know? He's vicious enough to do anything. But what does that matter? It's Mr. Blake. Can't you see why he took it? He was getting himself out of the way. I didn't understand then what he said—about the bad place being nearer than Alaska—but ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... on Lord Russell's trial—Finch summed up the evidence against him. But ... shewed more of a vicious eloquence, in turning matters with some subtlety against the prisoners, than of solid or sincere reasoning.—Swift. Afterwards Earl of Aylesford, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... we had ascended to the aerial conning-tower, and all was in readiness to repeat the trial of the night before. Vicious and sly the Z99 looked in the daytime as she slipped off, under the unseen guidance of the wireless, with death hidden under her nose. Just as during the first trial we had witnessed, she began by fulfilling the highest expectations. Straight as ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve

... the part of the Body, the other on the part of the Soul. On the part of the Body it is, when the parts are unfitly disposed, so that it can receive nothing as with the deaf and dumb, and their like. On the part of the Soul it is, when evil triumphs in it, so that it becomes the follower of vicious pleasures, through which it is so much deceived, that on account of them ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri

... happiness you would never go home until morning, but would live with them in this bright world of wine and women and song. Really, they are melancholy places, especially in their gayest hours. If vice really were attractive, how vicious most of us would be! I do not say that O'Corrigan's was a vicious place. At certain hours its patronage was of the dullest respectability from the suburbs. Dull respectability is not supposed to be abroad in the early hours of the morning, ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... part of many who doubted their fitness to go to communion. But as a result of the interworking of this teaching and of the practice of the Half-Way Covenant, church membership came in time to include almost any one not openly vicious, and willing to give intellectual, or nominal, assent to church doctrines and also to a few church regulations. With the change, the large body of townsmen became the electors of the minister. Cotton Mather ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... that monarch. The gift was confirmed by King John and by Henry III. (1227); but the unfortunate brethren of the order did not retain possession more than a century, for in the reign of Edward II. they were dispossessed of their lands and goods, under pretence of their leading a vicious course of life, but in reality to satisfy the avarice of their dispossessors. The present building dates from about James I., has one fine room overlooking the river, and underneath is a spacious vault called by Grose ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... silent, and busied himself in unstrapping his canvas and paint-box with a great deal of almost vicious energy. In a few moments he had gained sufficient composure to look full at her, and taking his palette in hand, he began dabbing on ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... that the larger clubs are now generally divided into sections, and that membership in these sections is supposed to be dictated by interest. This is a step in the right direction, but it is an excessively short one. The programme, with all its vicious accompaniments and lamentable results, persists. What I have said and shall say applies as well to an art or a domestic science section as to ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... integrity, walks with a very different step to the low sensualist, or the cunning and unprincipled knave; therefore the young pupil will be sure that even the art of walking, which seems to be an exertion purely physical, will not be acquired properly if his mind has taken a vicious and unprincipled bias: it will either indicate his pride or his dastardly humility, his haughty self-sufficiency, or his mean truckling to the opinion of others, his honest independence, or his cringing servility. But he who has been blessed with the full ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin

... work of keeping things sweet and wholesome. But it is impossible to be continually introducing the saving clause, "all are not so bad as these." The seven thousand righteous who have not bowed the knee to Baal are understood to exist in all communities; and, vicious as any special section may be, there must always be the hidden salt and savor of the virtuous to keep the whole from falling into utter corruption. This is specially true of modern women. Certainly, some of them are as unsatisfactory ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... by the snapping mania. He was not a brave dog, he was not a vicious dog, and no high breeding sanctioned his pretensions to arrogance. But, like his owners, he had contracted a bad habit, a trick, which made him the pest of all timid visitors, and indeed ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... in the very throes of impatience. "She wouldn't come with me, would she? She certainly wouldn't come with you!" The speaker brought out the last pronoun with a vicious satisfaction. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... said by observers among ourselves that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessness. If, on the other hand, a prude is one who, living a decent life, cultivates, either by bent or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... There are not places enough for all. Stand aside and give us room." Many others there were who, with dreams forgotten, labored as dull cattle, goaded by brute necessity, with no vision, no purpose, no hope, to make of their toil a blessing. And these laughed at him with vicious laughter, saying: "Why should anyone want ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright

... malpractices. But further, the Governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods. These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... of a people that desired to break its chains. Further, France could not reverse her decision concerning the Scheldt. She would not revolutionize Holland, but she expected Great Britain not to intervene in support of a constitution which the Dutch considered "vicious and destructive of their interests." Finally, the French Government could not recognize the guarantees of the Dutch constitution undertaken by England and Prussia in 1788.[136] On the same day Lebrun sent a message to Maret, who was still in London, adverting in ironical terms to the military ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... he had left, he rushed to the screen, and drew it back. No; there was no further change in the picture. It had received the news of Sibyl Vane's death before he had known of it himself. It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. The vicious cruelty that marred the fine lines of the mouth had, no doubt, appeared at the very moment that the girl had drunk the poison, whatever it was. Or was it indifferent to results? Did it merely take cognizance of what passed within the soul? He ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to condemn or praise this self-made dog! We praise his human brother. And thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With the more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral thought, the vices that are born with them remain invincible throughout; and they live all their years, glorying ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of featherless brutes that go on two legs. When a man is brutal, he cannot be kind and good; when a man is good, he cannot be brutal;—believe my long experience, which has learned it. If all blockheads are not vicious,—and I think they are,—all wicked men are necessarily foolish. And that is the moral of this story, if you can't find a better one. If you will find me a better, I will go and tell it to the Pope ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... city. He also had the benefit of travel in Greece and Egypt, after which he practiced law in Rome. The student of education is interested in Seneca chiefly as the tutor of Nero, who was committed to his charge at the age of eleven. Without doubt the lad had already formed vicious habits, as his teacher had great trouble in managing him; nor did Seneca eradicate those evil tendencies which bore such terrible fruit in Nero's ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... discharge, like the rapid strokes of a Nasmyth hammer on its anvil, might have shaken the resolution of any but the steadiest troops, seeing that our field-battery on Maiden's Castle could not for a long time locate the exact hiding-place of those vicious little weapons, and when they did get a chance, the enemy's heavy artillery replied to their fire with a more persistent cannonade than ever. The Manchesters stood manfully the test of long exposure to this galling storm of iron and lead, their fighting line continuing ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... camp are particularly vicious, and stoned two parties of our pilgrims a day or two ago who brought about the difficulty by showing their revolvers when they did not intend to use them—a thing which is deemed bad judgment in the Far West, and ought certainly to be so considered any where. In the new Territories, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... calamities they naturally produce. He maintained a perpetual struggle between reason and appetite. He frequently fell into indulgencies, which cost him many a pang of remorse, and under the conviction of the danger of a vicious life, he wrote his Christian Hero, with a design to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion. But this secret admonition to his conscience he judged too weak, and therefore in the year 1701 printed the book with his name prefixed, in hopes that a standing ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... was too late. A surge right and left, a vicious tug, and Betty's line floated on the surface ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... to bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms all day; and—high above the heat, hum, and dust—the head and shoulders, voice and hammer, of the Auctioneer, are ever at work. The men in the carpet caps get flustered and vicious with tumbling the Lots about, and still the Lots are going, going, gone; still coming on. Sometimes there is joking and a general roar. This lasts all day and three days following. The Capital Modern Household ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... the limit. But what I always think is—of course I don't say these things—no use to make yourself unpopular—but to meself I often think: Take 'em man for man, and you'd find 'em much the same as we are, I daresay. It's the vicious way they're brought up, of actin' in the mass, that's made 'em such a crool lot. I see a good bit of crowds in my profession, and I've a very low opinion of them. Crowds are the most blunderin' blighted ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... richly and queerly expressive of the lively and perverse enigma of man, is a full education in human tolerance. Privately, one studies his own ill-modeled visnomy to see if by any chance it bespeaks the emotions he inwardly feels. We know—as Hamlet did—the vicious mole of nature in us, the o'ergrowth of some complexion that mars the purity of our secret resolutions. Yet—our friends have passed it over, have shown their willingness to take us as we are. Can we do less than hope to deserve their generous tenderness, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... reasoning adopted in this essay appeared to Macaulay to be essentially wrong. He entertained a very strong conviction that the only sound foundation for a theory of Government must be laid in careful and copious historical induction; and he believed that Mr Mill's work rested upon a vicious reasoning a priori. Upon this point he felt the more earnestly, owing to his own passion for historical research, and to his devout admiration of Bacon, whose works he was at that time studying with intense attention. There can, however, be little ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... disposition; but almost always in a predominance of what is evil instead of good. There will be fretfulness, or ill-nature, or selfish exactions, or mental obscurity, or unreasoning demands, or, it may be, vicious and cruel propensities, where, when the brain was undisturbed by disease, reason held rule with patience and loving kindness. If the disease which has attacked the brain goes on increasing, the mental disease which follows as a consequence of organic disturbance ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... or vicious men, or even drunken men, treating women with disrespect, the presence of a single good woman at the polls seems to make the whole crowd of men as respectful and quiet as at the theater or church. For ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... that serve no good purpose and cause very great expense to your royal treasury. At those presidios the soldiers die in great numbers from the unhealthful climate, insufficient and poor food, and their own inactivity and vicious lives. We believe that a small fleet for the sea could be maintained at a much smaller cost; that will sweep it of enemies, will keep the soldiers contented and in sufficient numbers (and if they are killed, it will be while performing their duty, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... beautiful, sparkling women of no name, bravely dressed and barbarously jewelled? Such is the Riviera of to-day; the life imposed upon it by hordes of foreign idlers in a land whose warmth and luxuriance may have lent itself but too easily to the vicious and frivolous pleasures for which they have made it notorious, but a land which has no native history that is effeminate, nor any so unworthy as its exotic present. "The Riviera" may be Nice, Beaulieu, and their like, but the Provencal ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... there is room and welcome, too, For there's land quite enough and to spare, But we pray that all the vicious crew To their homes o'er the ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite

... thing towards these women. He's forced everything else he's wanted through Congress, and if he wanted to give these women the vote badly enough he could force the suffrage amendment through. If you and I were in these women's places, sonny, we'd act real vicious. We'd want to come here and clean out the ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... with wings on his bare heels, made off through the gap in the hedge. At the corner of the street he encountered an adventure, a gentleman's legs and a heavy hand at the same time. The hand fell on his shoulder, arresting his scamper with a vicious jerk; and the boy was too awed to attempt an escape, for he knew his captor well by sight, although never before had he found himself so directly in the company of Rouen's richest citizen. The note dropped from the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... in time the habit of playing on the steps or around the old windlass well in the backyard. Herr Carovius procured forthwith a mean dog and named him Caesar. Caesar was tied to a chain, to be sure, but his snarls, his growls, his vicious teeth were hardly calculated to inspire the child with a love for the place near him. She ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... revival of the same coalition within a short time. If, however, there was such a revival, it may remind us of the conditions of all warfare for God and goodness, either in our own lives or in the world. Sins and vicious institutions, once defeated, have a terrible power of swift recovery. The thorns cut down sprout fast again. Let no man say, 'I have extirpated that sin from my nature,' for, if he does, it will surprise him when he is lulled in false security. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... discovery by the doctor of the latter's duplicity. And yet there was an element in Carcajou that frowned upon the young lady. Her accusation had been reported far and wide. To the settlers of the place her suspicions had seemed uncalled-for and bespeaking a mean and vicious disposition. Hugo, after all, had been everybody's friend. He was now about to marry this young woman from far-away New York. This utterly disproved Sophy's statements, wherefore she became more unpopular than ever. A couple of hundred men had come over to work at the sawmill, that ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... preparation for their flight. There was one horse in the herd, she said, that was the swiftest in the tribe, and he must be either killed or she would ride him. Her father had always objected to her mounting this animal because he was so vicious; but, now that he was away, it would be a good time for her to ride the animal, and show to her father that she was a better horsewoman than he thought. Once upon him, she could pretend a fondness for the beast, and thus secure him to ride on ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... memories of Goldsmith, neither of them pleasant, are associated with the house. One is concerned with his acceptance of an invitation to dinner here with Charles Lloyd, who, at the end of the meal, walked off and left his guest to pay the bill. The other incident introduces the vicious William Kenrick, that hack-writer who slandered Goldsmith without cause on so many occasions, Shortly after the publication of one of his libels in the press, Kenrick was met by Goldsmith accidentally in the Chapter and made to admit that he had lied. But no ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... also hinted about a disturbed condition among the planters. They were having an unusually great amount of trouble with vicious characters, mostly blacks; and several lynching bees had taken place within ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... sir!" cried the carpenter, waving his navy straw hat and giving it two or three vicious sweeps at the flies. "Just the very gent as I wanted to see. How are yer, Mr Burnett, sir? Warm, aren't it? Don't you wish you was a chips, sir?" he added sarcastically, as Fitz gave him ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... common instrument for sending the light of Christianity out into the world in its most practical form, drawing young men who were strangers into places where they could have companionship that stimulated them and suggestions that kept them straight and occupations that amused them without vicious practice; and then, by surrounding themselves with an atmosphere of purity and of simplicity of life, catch something of a glimpse of the great ideal which Christ lifted when He was elevated upon ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... submerged in the sea, and would have been hopelessly drowned, but for Mulford's timely succour. Women might swim more readily than men, and do so swim, in those portions of the world where the laws of nature are not counteracted by human conventions. Rose Budd, however, had received the vicious education which civilized society inflicts on her sex, and, as a matter of course, was totally helpless in an element in which it was the design of Divine Providence she should possess the common means of sustaining herself, like every other being ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... third of the kingdom, were at once declared vacant. The western counties chiefly were obstinate in this particular. New ministers were sought for all over the kingdom; and no one was so ignorant or vicious as to be rejected. The people, who loved extremely and respected their former teachers; men remarkable for the severity of their manners, and their fervor in preaching; were inflamed against these intruders, who had obtained their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... and still more laudable sentiments, must be excited. The gratification even of curiosity alone might have formed a sufficient apology for the author; but he has seen too much of virtue even among the vicious to be indifferent to the sufferings, or backward in promoting the felicities of ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... the illegitimate daughter of the last Visconti. On the death of Francesco Sforza, in 1466, he left two sons, Galeazzo Maria and Lodovico, surnamed Il Moro, both of whom were destined to play a prominent part in history. Galeazzo Maria, dissolute, vicious, and cruel to the core, was murdered by his injured subjects in the year 1476. His son, Giovanni Galeazzo, aged eight, would in course of time have succeeded to the duchy, had it not been for the ambition ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... on and up, the pace of both ever slackening. One hundred yards only separated them now, and, with almost every stride, the distance was lessening. The summit was in sight. The pony was blowing hard. Effie urged him, and the vicious Mexican spurs found his flanks. There was no thought of sparing in the girl's mind. If the broncho failed her, then she must finish the chase ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum

... found its mark, the battle would have been over. But the Black Chief, for all his bulk, was quick as an eel. He bowed himself to the earth, so that the stroke whistled idly over him, and in the next second he swung a vicious, short blow upwards. It was well-aimed, at the small of Grom's back. But the latter, feeling himself over-balanced by his own ineffective violence, leapt far out of reach before turning to see what had happened. The Chief ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the connexion, yet it is so important, that a man is never ruined who has an interesting, faithful, and virtuous wife; while he is lost to comfort, fortune, and even to hope, who has united himself to a vicious and unprincipled one. The fate of woman is still more intimately blended with that of her husband; for, being in the eyes of the law and the world but second to him, she is the victim of his follies and vices at home, and of his ill success and degradation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... station life which had been led since our departure. These under the circumstances might well be considered the deaths of one pony and one dog. The pony was that which had been nicknamed Hackenschmidt from his vicious habit of using both fore and hind legs in attacking those who came near him. He had been obviously of different breed from the other ponies, being of lighter and handsomer shape, suggestive of a strain of Arab blood. From no cause which could be discovered either by the ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... throat. This probably made him speechless for so long, and after returning his gaze she flung the burning torch with a wide sweep of the arm into the river. The ruddy fiery glare, taking a long flight through the night, sank with a vicious hiss, and the calm soft ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... for them to do, nothing to learn, nobody to care for them,—they are just left to grow and fatten like swine, till they are in condition to be sold or to be broken in to their tasks in the field. Utterly neglected, they contract, of necessity, lazy and vicious habits, and it is no wonder they have to be whipped and broken in to work as animals to the yoke or harness; and no wonder that under such treatment for successive generations, the race should become so reduced in mental and moral ability, as to be thought ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society

... crossing the Plains. If so, you lost a beautiful long letter - I am sure it was beautiful though I remember nothing about it - and I must say I think it serves you properly well. That I should continue writing to you at such length is simply a vicious habit for which I blush. At the same time, please communicate at once with Charles Baxter whether you have or have not received a letter posted here Oct 12th, as he is going to cable me ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... what I think. Young people's pranks! Youth, let the moderns say what they will, is inclined to vice and to vicious actions. Senor de Rey, who is a person of great endowments, could not be altogether perfect—why should it be wondered at that those pretty girls should have captivated him, and, after getting his money out of him, should ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... voice there was a soft, musical ring that struck agreeably upon the ear, and harmonised to admiration with the song of the bells just when we were approaching the middle of the river's breadth of four hundred sazheni. There resounded over the surface of the ice a vicious rustle while a piece of ice slid from under my feet. Stumbling, and powerless to retain my footing, I blundered down upon my knees in helpless astonishment; and then, as I glanced upstream, fear gripped at my throat, deprived me of speech, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... reach the craft the madman picked up the long ice pole and aimed a vicious prod with it ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty

... those souls that he had thrilled through and through for good and evil, were now wrapped in silence. Susannah rode fast, guiding her horse on the grass by the roadside lest the sound of his hoofs should arouse some vicious mind to renewed wrath. Her imagination, possessed by the scenes of the past night, presented to her lively fear for Halsey's safety. She gave her horse no peace; she thought nothing of her own fatigue until she had reached the Chagrin valley, ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... of the vicious attack. He followed out his prearranged programme with machine-like movements, sending his first bomb with such cleverness that it struck close to the stern, for Jack had made his hawk-like swoop so as to pass completely along the entire length of the deck—this ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... charge of lending countenance to licentiousness and impiety—whose writings, in fine, are calculated to inflict serious injury upon the tastes, the understandings, and the hearts of her youthful female readers, by accustoming them to a vicious and ridiculous style, by filling their minds with false and perverted sentiments and wrong impressions upon some of the most important matters, and by setting before them the example of a woman who ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Menehould, Mr. Carlyle's 'bold old dragoon,' who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and naturally enough turned up under the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... to a prisoner on trial his right to be confronted by his accusers. It was received with open disdain; and one of the officers who stood by, hoping perhaps to curry favor with his superiors, actually struck Jesus a vicious blow,[1254] accompanied by the question, "Answerest thou the high priest so?" To this cowardly assault the Lord replied with almost superhuman gentleness:[1255] "If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why smitest thou me?" Combined with submissiveness, however, this constituted ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... determined—yet it cannot be one single man. It must be an organized gang, for all the crimes have been so strangely similar, occurring to three men who are friends, and entrez nous, notorious for their peccadilloes. The girls must be in the vicious circle, and ably assisted. But there is one thing I forgot to tell you, which you forgot ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... Baron. Fisher, more and more astonished, made no resistance, but suffered himself to be led, or pushed, toward the door. Dr. Rapperschwyll opened the door wide enough to give the American exit, and then closed it with a vicious slam. A quick click informed Fisher that the key had ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... displaying Hebrew placards and weird, unfamiliar commodities and a concourse of bright-eyed, eagle-nosed people talking some incomprehensible gibberish between the shops and the barrows. And soon I became quite familiar with the devious, vicious, dirtily-pleasant eroticism of Soho. I found those crowded streets a vast relief from the dull grey exterior of Brompton where I lodged and lived my daily life. In Soho, indeed, I got my first inkling of the factor of replacement ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells

... walking home. The fine and ancient Tory borough provided education for the whole of the Five Towns, but the relentless ignorance of its prejudices had blighted the district. A hundred years earlier the canal had only been obtained after a vicious Parliamentary fight between industry and the fine and ancient borough, which saw in canals a menace to its importance as a centre of traffic. Fifty years earlier the fine and ancient borough had succeeded in forcing the greatest railway line ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... corporations at the expense of the public. This power has been the chief source of municipal corruption, since it has made the misgovernment of cities a source of great profit to a wealthy and influential class. Those who imagine that the ignorant and vicious part of our urban population is the main obstacle to reform take but a superficial view of the matter. The real source of misgovernment—the active cause of corruption—is to be found, not in the slums, not in the ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith

... of Thucydides, to the fact that that great historian always accounts for causes in the following manner: A. is produced by B., and B. by A. (Roscher, Leben Work und Zeitalter des Thukydides, 199 ff.; compare especially Thucyd., I, 2, 7, seq.) Such a circle is not a vicious one. All first class historians have thus explained historical phenomena. The one-sided deduction of A. from B., and B. from C., etc., which the so-called pragmatic writers like Polybius, for instance, is the result of overlooking all reciprocal action. Scialoja, Principii (1840), p. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. When he is more particular, he is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him; and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters, and help him ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Vicious with irritation, Malcourt laid his hand on the girl's arm: "Take it from me, Dolly, that's the sort of citizen who'll sneak around to call on ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Accordingly, as though reasoning to himself that he had done his share in carrying his rider so many miles, when he felt the sharp cut of the lariat he resented it. And his resentment took the form of a vicious lunge forward of his head, which enabled him to get the bits in his teeth, with which advantage ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... his unscrupulousness in transactions which had laid him open to criminal prosecution, from the effects of which he was only saved by uncommon adroitness and, some said, by legal technicalities. His career also was denounced by some as wholly vicious in its effect upon the youth of the republic, and as lowering the tone of public morals. And yet it was remembered that he had been a frank, open-hearted friend, kind to his family, and generous in contrast with some of his close-fisted contemporaries. There was nothing mean about him; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... end, surely. Then, to what is it the means, if not to health? Once we admit that in spite of our wealth our national health is going downhill through town-blight, we assert the failure of our country's ideals and life. And if, having got into a vicious state of congested town existence, we refuse to make an effort to get out again, because it is necessary to "hold our own commercially," and feed "the people" cheaply, we are in effect saying: "We certainly are going to hell, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy



Words linked to "Vicious" :   inhumane, malicious, wrong, wicked, vice



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