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Malevolence   Listen
Malevolence

noun
1.
Wishing evil to others.  Synonym: malignity.
2.
The quality of threatening evil.  Synonyms: malevolency, malice.






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"Malevolence" Quotes from Famous Books



... impressions, or whether an awe imperceptibly crept over him, through his frequent communings with old people (when he was in more advanced life) who had no doubt of the existence of witches and spirits, good and bad, visiting the earth, and performing acts of benevolence or malevolence, according to the inclination or caprice of the uncanny or unearthly agent, we cannot say; but of one thing there can be no doubt, that even in years of maturity he believed there were spirits that ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... there can be such a thing as benevolent neutrality. A neutrality really benevolent towards one of the belligerents is really malevolent towards the other, consequently it is more or less undisguised partiality. Between benevolence and malevolence there is no room for neutrality." He only knew, he said, one kind of neutrality—the absolute neutrality towards both belligerents.[1] And he lived up to his knowledge so conscientiously that he earned the gratitude of neither, ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... as he had not much grace of delivery, or elegance of manner, he could not make so good a figure in conversation, as many persons of his knowledge, with a happier appearance. Of all authors Mr. Banks was the farthest removed from envy or malevolence. As he could not bear the least whisper of detraction, so he was never heard to express uneasiness at the growing reputation of another; nor was he ever engaged in literacy contests. We shall conclude this article in the words of lord Clarendon. 'He that lives such a life, need be less anxious at ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... sensation began slowly to take possession of his body and his mind. He could not have said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt it rather as a consciousness—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and superior to them in power. He knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching him; from what direction ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... and fell to the ice groaning, their bodies twisting in convulsions. Others laughed madly—laughed at the dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite Annadoah. Losing all control they were carried away by their delirious malevolence; their voices reached a high shrill pitch. Their arms clawed the air. Through the dead curses were invoked upon Olafaksoah, the great trader, who had cowed them and robbed them. They begged of the tornarssuit that he might ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... vain are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to public contempt. The indignant feeling that should be reserved for the persecutor, in the mortification of their disturbed sensibility, is too often visited on the victim; and the cause of annoyance is recognised not in the ignorant malevolence of the powerful, but in the conscientious conviction of the innocent sufferer. Seventeen years, however, elapsed before my grandfather entered into this union, and during that interval he had not been idle. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... except as underpinning for an edifice of national prestige. It is, at least, a safe generalisation that the patriotic sentiment never has been known to rise to the consummate pitch of enthusiastic abandon except when bent on some work of concerted malevolence. Patriotism is of a contentious complexion, and finds its full expression in no other outlet than warlike enterprise; its highest and final appeal is for the death, damage, discomfort and destruction of the party of ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... patience under his severity, which he seemed either not to feel or not to mind. It was of a piece with the behavior of the rascally boy whom he had cuffed for frightening Cynthia and her little brother long ago, and he wondered what final malevolence it portended. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... I am sorry to say it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir. In 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... article (June 28, '88) upon Mr. Hitchman's "Biography of Sir Richard Burton." No denizen of Grub Street in the coarse old day of British mob-savagery could have produced a more damning specimen of wilful falsehood, undignified scurrility and brutal malevolence, in order to gratify a well-known pique, private and personal. The "Saturday Reviler"—there is, I repeat, much virtue in a soubriquet—has grown only somewhat feebler, not kindlier, not more sympathetic since the clever author of "In Her Majesty's Keeping" styled this Magister Morum ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Halifax Supplies voted The Bill of Rights passed Inquiry into Naval Abuses Inquiry into the Conduct of the Irish War Reception of Walker in England Edmund Ludlow Violence of the Whigs Impeachments Committee of Murder Malevolence of John Hampden The Corporation Bill Debates on the Indemnity Bill Case of Sir Robert Sawyer The King purposes to retire to Holland He is induced to change his Intention; the Whigs oppose his going to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... diligently exerted. They cannot look back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which are those of your interests, to endless researches, which can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... any private man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose of saving four or five rixdollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as his father; but Frederic's wit enabled him often to show his malevolence in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted, and to inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic, it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, differed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... hardly need to look at each other to know each other's thoughts: they can guess them by the breathing, by a thousand imperceptible signs. This natural aptness, which is fortified by living together, was in Lionello sharpened and refined by his ever wakeful malevolence. He had the insight of the desire to hurt. He detested Christophe. Why? Why does a child take a dislike to a person who has never done him any harm? It is often a matter of chance. It is enough for a child to have begun by persuading himself that he detests some one, ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... due. Bertram is in reality his demon-father, whose every effort is directed to making a thorough-paced villain of his son, so that he may have the pleasure of enjoying his society for all eternity. In strong contrast to the fiendish malevolence of Bertram stands the gentle figure of Alice, Robert's foster-sister, who has followed him from Normandy with a message from his dead mother. Isabella supplies Robert with a fresh horse and arms; nevertheless, he is beguiled away from Palermo by some trickery of Bertram's, ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... perished miserably: insomuch (for the days of witchcraft were still within the memory of living men and women) it was the general opinion that Satan had been personally concerned in this affliction, and that the Brazen Serpent, so long honored among them, was really the type of his subtle malevolence and perfect iniquity. It was rumored even that all preparations that came from the shop were harmful,—that teeth decayed that had been made pearly white by the use of the young chemist's dentifrice,—that cheeks were freckled that had been changed to damask ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... as to what manner of man this might be; who one moment could smile with all the malevolence of a fiend and again could welcome him with all the generous and genial hospitality he might show to ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... not less in natural power than in acquired knowledge; nay, bunglers who have failed in the lowest mechanic crafts, and whose presumption is in due proportion to their want of sense and sensibility; men, who being first scribblers from idleness and ignorance, next become libellers from envy and malevolence,—have been able to drive a successful trade in the employment of the booksellers, nay, have raised themselves into temporary name and reputation with the public at large, by that most powerful ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... generous-hearted man that could be—has been the victim of some such infamous treachery. Do you know what we learned from the reading of your ancestor's will? Why, that he died the victim of the malevolence of these people; and now, at the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, his descendants are still exposed to the hate of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... substantial assistance promised by Quarrier would ever be given. And yet, it was not disagreeable to picture Quarrier's rage when he found that the bribe had been expended to no purpose. If he had felt animosity against the wealthy man before meeting him face to face, he now regarded him with a fiercer malevolence. It was hard to relinquish Lilian, and harder still to have no means of revenging himself upon her and her pretended husband. Humiliated by consciousness of the base part he had played, he wished it in his power to inflict upon them ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... in his mind; a consciousness that he did owe explanation and apology to Feltram, and an insurmountable reluctance to undertake either. The old dislike—a contempt mingled with fear—not any fear of his malevolence, a fear only of his carelessness and folly; for, as I have said, Feltram knew many things, it was believed, of the Baronet's Continental and Asiatic life, and had even gently remonstrated with him upon the dangers into ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... gone; there was no reason for it, now that he had discovered that the man was not his father. But the demon in him was not yet subdued, and he got to his feet, not because the young woman had ordered him to do so, but because he saw no reason to stay down. A cold, mocking smile replaced the malevolence on his face when, after reaching an erect position, he saw that the weapon in the young woman's hand had drooped until its muzzle was directed toward the floor at his feet. A forty-five caliber revolver, ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... he answered, with a flash of malevolence that did not escape me. "But this is a private favour, M. de Rosny. It is nothing that Madame de Sourdis can desire, either for herself or ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... discussions with you; for, however vulnerable you may possibly be, I regard an argumentum ad hominem as the weakest weapon in the armory of dialectics—a weapon too often dipped in the venom of personal malevolence. I merely gave expression to my belief that miserable useless lives are sinful ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... she, toning down a little, but still betraying malevolence of a very advanced order in her voice and expression. "I see nothing derogatory in the idea of a young girl devoid ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

... character, but with the frankest, gentlest and sweetest face, it seemed to us, in all the world. He was not allowed to accompany us to school and scarcely ever left the yard, but Matt Gallagher in some way discovered my deep affection for this pet and thereafter played upon my fears with a malevolence which knew no mercy. One day he said, "Me and brother Dan are going over to your place to get a calf that's in your pasture. We're going to get excused fifteen minutes early. We'll get there before you do and we'll fix that dog of yours!—There won't ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... McCarthy and the somewhat raucous and malevolent accents of Mr. Chamberlain, was very marked. Not that Mr. Chamberlain was by any means so nasty as usual; it looked as if he had been taught by the failure of his last utterance into learning at last that malevolence in the end defeats itself by its very excess, and he evidently had resolved to put a very severe restraint upon himself, and attuned his oratory to a very minor key. But this new tone was just as unsuccessful as the other, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... different it would have been, however, had I been guilty of such a mistake in a personal dispute! The injured party would never have believed that my oversight was accidental, and not malicious, in spite of the fact that it would have been the most stupid malevolence to say that which every one who can read would instantly recognise as untrue. But enough of this, and enough to show that my Horseherd at least remained consistent. Even when he so far forgets himself as to say, "God be praised," he excuses himself. Only he has unfortunately ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it is the bane of AĆ«pytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of unfortunate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... Washington's success at Trenton in the following terms: "This success had a mighty effect on General Howe and his council, and roused them to a sense of their own weakness. * * * Their obduracy and death-designing malevolence in some measure abated or was suspended. The prisoners, who were condemned to the most wretched and cruellest of deaths, and who survived to this period, though most of them died before, were immediately ordered to be sent within General ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... so many evils begins to be frighted at herself, and sometimes confesses secret commerce and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepid parts of our species, in whom human nature is defaced by infirmity and ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... neighbors. We further request, that a law be made, equally applicable to the Half-breed and Indian, punishing all parties who set fire to our forest or plain. Not many years ago we attributed a prairie fire to the malevolence of an enemy, now every one is reckless in the use of fire, and every year large numbers of valuable animals and birds perish in consequence. We would farther ask that our chiefships be established by the Government. Of late years almost every trader ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... slumbered in their native quarry but for the ardent exertions of the individual who called them into life: to his never-slumbering talents you are indebted for whatever pleasure this haunt of the Muses is calculated to afford. If, in defiance of chaotic malevolence, the destroyer of the temple of Diana yet survives in the name of Erostratus, surely we may confidently predict that the rebuilder of the temple of Apollo will stand recorded to distant posterity ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... vengeance. In the nether world this trifling dissension might have been expected to bear its crop of violent language and straightway pass into oblivion; but Miss Peckover's malevolence was of no common stamp, and the scene of to-night originated a feud which in the end concerned many more people than those ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... Zeke's, stooped over and shuffling, in the same old peaked cap he had always worn. And in the jug was the apotheosis of Mr. Mosby's contempt for Mr. Burrus, and as it passed the light it gleamed and sparkled with a deep golden malevolence. And hearing steps on the porch, and voices, and fearing lest he might be seen spying at the window, Joe crept back to bed. And directly he heard the familiar roaring clatter of a car starting up somewhere down below there in the darkness, and after a while—silence. ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... Providence, for having protected her last night from the wicked aims of unbridled lust. This observation introduced a series of jokes at the expense of Pallet, who hung his ears, and sat with a silent air of dejection, fearing that, through the malevolence of the physician, his adventure might reach the ears of his wife. Indeed, though we have made shift to explain the whole transaction to the reader, it was an inextricable mystery to every individual in the diligence, because the part which was acted by the Capuchin was known to himself alone, and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... derogatory to the dignity of the Crown, that an officer who held a commission from His Majesty should ever be commanded by an officer who held a similar commission from a republic. To this advice, evidently dictated by an ignoble malevolence to Holland, William, who troubled himself little about votes of the Upper House which were not backed by the Lower, returned, as might have been expected, a very short and dry ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... young man, "I have said sufficient to induce your highness not to overwhelm before his majesty my poor friend, De Guiche, against whom all the malevolence of a party bitterly opposed to your ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... So he condemned himself to a perpetual approximation, which was enough for illustrations demanding only life and character, but fatal for large canvasses, with half or full sized figures. This was the cause of his disappointments and failures which he attributed to malevolence and a hostility, which really did exist, but which took advantage of this opportunity to make the painter pay for the exaggerated success of the designer that had been extravagantly praised by the press from the beginning. He laid himself open to ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... view very seriously. She thought it was some personal malevolence against the Tawaras themselves, probably put up by some other professionals, with whom Madame ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... frequency of these inquisitorial visitations.[132] Any casual acquaintance, on leaving a man's house, might denounce him as the possessor of a proscribed volume; and everybody who owned a book-case was bound to furnish the Inquisitors with a copy of his catalogue. Book-stalls lay open to the malevolence of informers. We possess an insolent letter of Antonio Possevino to Cardinal Sirleto, telling him that he had noticed a forbidden book by Filiarchi on a binder's counter, and bidding him to do his duty by suppressing it.[133] When this ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... the Harpies, they smear every thing that they touch with a miserable slime, which has the effect of a virus in corroding, or as some say, in scorching and burning. And then, perhaps, as if all this were little, when they can do nothing else, they die; as if out of sheer malevolence to man, for the poisonous elements of their nature are then let loose and dispersed abroad, and create a pestilence; and they manage to destroy many more by their death than in ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... inside rail the official starter eyed the nonwinners with undisguised malevolence. Some of them were cantering steadily toward the barrier, some were walking and one, a black brute, seemed almost unmanageable, advancing in a series of wild plunges and ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... contempt which he has himself been conscious of incurring. One of the most disagreeable men I know is a man of great ability, who was bullied in his youth. The result upon him has been that he tends to believe that most people are inspired by a vague malevolence, and he uses his ability and his memory, not to add to the pleasure of a party, but to make his own power felt. I have seen this particular man pass from an ungainly speechlessness into brutal onslaughts on inoffensive persons; ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... thing only. They will keep your secret. The second sort of woman will reveal your secret to a friend; the third will make of it a tale against you. And this they do instinctively, as dogs will bark or asses bray, without malevolence or any kind ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... insufficiency of income being the immediate cause of misery, it is fitting that we should know why, misfortune and malevolence aside, the workingman's income is insufficient. It is still the same question of inequality of fortunes, which has made such a stir for a century past, and which, by a strange fatality, continually reappears in academic programmes, as ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... had strange fashions in those rough old times. Nowadays, we neither stab, shoot, nor poison. I scarcely think we hate except as interest guides us, without malevolence." ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... nail on the head that time," said Aunt Mary, without any unnecessary malevolence concealed behind her sarcasm; then she re-read the ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... to make public, but which will also be communicated to Congress. The British Minister has hastened to conclude an eventual treaty of peace with the United States, and to grant them in the utmost extent every advantage they could desire. The malevolence with which that power has carried on the war in America, did not forebode this extreme facility in them, and it has been an agreeable surprise to the belligerent powers, and you will easily judge, Sir, that our satisfaction has been complete, and in seeing the great obstacle to peace ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... said Saunders. "We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled with pure malevolence—to you and all mankind. After you spiked it through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in that safe, you know, for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... blood-sucker and damnable egotist; the laborer is no longer universally assumed to act from sinful greed; both parties begin, at least, to abandon the program of charging the other with demands and tactics inspired by personal malevolence. This literalizing of the conflict has come about in Germany rather along the lines of theory; in England, through the operation of the trade unions, in the course of which the individually personal element of the antagonism has been overcome. In Germany this ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... we'd lost you," said William. He looked from one to the other, and seemed to take stock of Denham's unfashionable appearance. He seemed to wish to find some outlet for malevolence, but, failing one, he remained silent. The glance, the slight quiver of the upper lip, were not lost ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... part, and all that was admired was entirely his own. If it had been possible for modest merit to have repelled the shafts of slander, the work which he executed immediately afterwards in the church of S. Lodovico, representing the life of St. Cecilia, would have silenced the attacks of envy and malevolence; but they only tended to increase the alarm of his competitors, and excite them to redoubled injustice and malignity. Disgusted with these continued cabals, Domenichino quitted Rome, and returned to Bologna, where he resided several years in the quiet practice of his profession, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... decry Froude as being unworthy of the name of historian. Stubbs, indeed, did pay public tribute to Froude's "great work," but he stood almost alone of his school. Freeman for many years pursued and persecuted Froude with a persistent malevolence which happily has no parallel in the story of English scholarship. It is not necessary in this place to do more than refer to that unpleasant episode. Since the publication of the brilliant vindication of Froude in ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... thenceforward hears, which bear in the least on his favourite craze, appear to give evidence in its favour, even though in reality they are most obviously opposed to it. He learns to look upon himself as an unappreciated Newton, and to see the bitterest malevolence in those who venture to question his preposterous notions. He is fortunate if he do not suffer his theories to withdraw him from his means of earning a livelihood, or if he do not waste his substance ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... impeachment of Dekker as a more virulent and intemperate controversialist than Jonson is not less preposterous than the structure of this play. The nobly gentle and manly verses in which the less fortunate and distinguished poet disclaims and refutes the imputation of envy or malevolence excited by the favor enjoyed by his rival in high quarters should have sufficed, in common justice, to protect him from such a charge. There is not a word in Jonson's satire expressive of anything but ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... braccia, and it was so well planned, both in the ordering of the columns and in the rest of the ornaments, that it would be impossible to make a work richer, more lovely, or more graceful than that one. And in truth, but for the malevolence of those who are ever spoiling the beautiful beginnings of any work in order to appear to have more understanding than others, this would now be the most perfect church in Christendom; and even as it stands it is more lovely and better designed ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari

... proved mathematically that the mark was four times the size it ought to have been on that hypothesis. Miss Burns had not been attended professionally by any one as she was averse to doctors. Mr. Angus in his defence ascribed the whole of the legal proceedings against him to the malevolence of two interested parties, and had it not now been for their influence, the circumstance of Miss Burns' death would have passed over without remark. Mr. Angus, so far from desiring to harm Miss Burns, expressed himself as deeply indebted ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... done after our arrival he gave us a display of his wanton malevolence. We were nearly all assembled on the East Side, and were standing in ranks, at the edge of the swamp, facing the west. Barrett was walking along the opposite edge of the swamp, and, coming to a little gully jumped, it. He was very awkward, and came near falling ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... community immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the public disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has carefully read over the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in his power ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... rather sit alone in a warm place, and wait till your nurse comes to feed you. If Hercules had sat loitering at home, what would he have been? You are not Hercules, to extirpate the evils of others. Extirpate your own, then. Expel grief, fear, desire, envy, malevolence, avarice, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... the invisible shaker was also called Yanari. When, without apparent cause, some house would shudder and creak and groan in the night, folk used to suppose that it was being shaken from without by supernatural malevolence. ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... Thornton re-ascend the stairs: he opened the door, and entered but one pace. Never did human face wear a more fiendish expression of malevolence and wrath. "Sir Reginald Glanville," he said, "I thank you heartily. He must have iron nails who scratches a bear. You have sent me a challenge, and the hangman shall bring you my answer. Good day, Sir ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... taste unimproved by the diligent study of the most perfect models; yet they are always acute, lucid, and original. That his judgment is often warped by a political bias can scarcely be doubted; but there is no good reason to suspect that it is ever perverted by malevolence or envy. The booksellers left it to him to name his price, which he modestly fixed at 200 guineas; though, as Mr. Malone says, 1000 or 1500 would have been readily given if he had asked it. As he proceeded, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... much less to impute to him -,my consciousnesses of the intended crime that I am going to relate. The person against whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never, in the most distant manner, suspected the bishop of being privy to the plot-No: animosity of parties, and malevolence to the champions of the House of Brunswick, no doubt suggested to some blind zealots the perpetration of a crime which would necessarily have injured the bishop's cause, and could by no means ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... from the common notion, that two would always create emulation, in the actors. Others too were as eager for them, from the natural ill-will that follows the fortunate or prosperous in any undertaking. Of this low malevolence we had, now and then, remarkable instances; we had been forced to dismiss an audience of a hundred and fifty pounds, from a disturbance spirited up, by obscure people, who never gave any better reason for it than that it was their fancy to support the idle complaint of one rival ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... attention to it, for they are very teasing to little children, and often give them a pinch which is supposed to come from a mosquito, and fearing that the cry might come from some little unhappy victim of their malevolence, I followed the sound until I came to a small house which looked as if it might be a forester's—a forester, Lady Laura, you know, is one who plants and trims the trees, and sees that the brushwood is cut properly, and in every way keeps the forest in order. Well, as I said, the cry came from this ...
— The Princess Idleways - A Fairy Story • Mrs. W. J. Hays

... add to these last wise words. La Sale knew not how to obtain pardon for his first success. We have related subsequently by what concurrence of circumstances his second enterprise miscarried. He died, the victim it may be said, of the jealousy and malevolence of the Chevalier de Beaujeu. It is to this slight cause that we owe the failure to found in America a powerful colony, which would very soon have been found in a condition to compete with the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... forthwith becomes a pandar of the basest sort. But the character of Manly is the best illustration of our meaning. Moliere exhibited in his misanthrope a pure and noble mind, which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malevolence, disguised under the forms of politeness. As every extreme naturally generates its contrary, Alceste adopts a standard of good and evil directly opposed to that of the society which surrounds him. Courtesy seems to him a vice; and those stern virtues ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The singular malevolence displayed by bishop Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca towards Columbus and his family, and which was one of the secret and principal causes of their misfortunes, has been frequently noticed in the course of this work. It originated, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... which I had begun to introduce it, though not without much controversy and opposition, I thought it likely that I should, by annual publications, improve my little fortune, and be enabled to support myself in freedom from the miseries of indigence. But Mr. Pope, in his malevolence to Mr. Benson, who had distinguished himself by his fondness for the same version, destroyed all my hopes by a distich, in which he places Johnston in a contemptuous comparison with the author of Paradise Lost[2]. From ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... entire career, right down to his last days, The General was at times personally assailed with a malevolence and bitterness that could hardly have been exceeded. It has constantly been suggested, if not openly stated, that he was simply "making a pile" of money for himself; and yet, as will be seen in our chapter on Finance ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton

... lover. I had a child by him. He was handsome once." Her eyes, full of malevolence, turned to the dark grove. "He ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... contented with the King. Next morning, the King repaired as usual to his council-chamber, and the amirs and viziers and chamberlains took their places round him. Now he had among his viziers one who was forbidding of aspect, sordid, avaricious and envious: a man of ill omen, naturally inclined to malevolence: and when he saw the esteem in which the King held Douban and the favours he bestowed on him, he envied him and plotted evil against him; for, as says the byword, "Nobody is free from envy"—and again—"Tyranny is latent in the soul: weakness ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... various gestures, shrugs, and muttered expressions in Gaelic addressed to each other, my imagination recurred to the witches of Macbeth, and I imagined I read in the features of these crones the malevolence of the weird sisters. The little children also, who began to crawl forth, some quite naked, and others very imperfectly covered with tatters of tartan stuff, clapped their tiny hands, and grinned at the English soldiers, with an expression of national hate and malignity which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... mention, even as to the former affair that you suspect. I see a great deal in your view of her to make you uneasy, but nothing that would not be capable of explanation, above all to such a man as my brother. It would appear like mere malevolence." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... looked on at the affray with the calmness of an Olympian god. But for some weeks past the other papers had seemed to be beginning to disregard his inviolability: they had begun to attack his vanity as a writer with a rare malevolence in which, had Waldhaus been more subtle, he might have recognized the hand of a friend. As a matter of fact, the attacks were cunningly instigated by Ehrenfeld and Goldenring: they could see no other way of inducing him to stop ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... any expectations can be lower than mine concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest ignorance in which all worldlings of every rank and situation must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... argued about the grapes. For myself, I used to improve under the abbe's criticisms; this was an emphatic way of letting Edmee know how much I preferred her to all others. She, however, appeared to be more scandalized than flattered, and seriously reproved me for the tendency to malevolence which had its origin, she said, in my ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... relatives, those poor girls, the Greys, Catharine and Mary, sisters of poor Lady Jane, whose fair and clever head Mary I. had taken off. The barren Queen, too jealous to share her power with a husband, hated marriage with all "the sour malevolence of antiquated virginity," and was down upon the Lady Catharine and the Lady Mary because they chose to become wives. Then she imprisoned her cousin, Mary Stuart, for nineteen years, and finally had her butchered under an approach to the forms of law, and in total violation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... king lies under no suspicion; nor is it easy to believe that Meyer would have dared to open such a negotiation without sufficient authority from Napoleon. Hitherto he had betrayed no symptom of personal malevolence towards the House of Bourbon—but henceforth the autocrat, insulted as he thought in the style of "Monsieur Buonaparte," appears to have meditated some signal ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... them. She was not desirous to mix up your name in the matter, of course, but her delight was, and still is, to blacken your sister's character to the utmost of her power, without risking too greatly the exposure of her own malevolence!' ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... to think of the malevolence and ill-will which produced this war, and arrayed the states of Greece against one another, putting a stop to such a glorious career of conquest at its very outset, exchanging a foreign for a civil war, and recalling the arms which were being used against the Persians to point ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... few friends whom the malevolence of fortune had yet left me; I could not therefore but be sensibly concerned for his present indisposition; there seldom passed a day on which I did ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... quietly. "We'll have no litter around this camp." Larry la Roche stared at him in hushed malevolence. "Stand up and get 'em," repeated Andrew. As he saw the big hands of Larry twitching he smiled across the fire at the tall, bony figure. "I'll give you two seconds ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... was charged, and caring but little for anything that might happen, he remained inactive, without either seeing Silvanus, or delivering the letters which commanded him to appear at court. And having taken the receiver of the province into his counsels, he began with arrogance and malevolence to harass the clients and servants of the master of the horse, as if that officer had been already condemned and was on the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... his chair as he rushed to the kitchen. He arrived in time to see the lid of the priceless heirloom disappearing in a puddle of pewter. It seemed to the Toomeys that the Fates had singled them out as special objects for their malevolence. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... behind us upon which his gaze was fixed. A face was looking in at us out of the darkness. We could see the whitening of the nose where it was pressed against the glass. It was a bearded, hairy face, with wild cruel eyes and an expression of concentrated malevolence. My brother and I rushed towards the window, but the man was gone. When we returned to my father his head had dropped and his pulse ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle

... natural man can in various ways produce very fair imitations of true virtue. By help of association of ideas, for example, or by the force of sympathy, it is possible that benevolence may become pleasing and malevolence displeasing, even when our own interest is not involved (ii. 436). Nay, there is a kind of moral sense natural to man, which consists in a certain preception of the harmony between sin and punishment, and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... circumstances with pathetic ones, and never so much impressed with its supernatural fantasies as to be in danger of retaining them as any part of its religious faith. The good spirit descends gradually from an angel into a fairy, and the demon shrinks into a playful grotesque of diminutive malevolence, while yet both keep an accredited and vital influence upon the character and mind. But the language in which such ideas will be usually clothed, must necessarily partake of their narrowness; and art is systematically incognizant of them, having ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... possibly know anything of the episode in the stable he was received there with distinction. Military to the very bottom of his soul, the prospect of rising in his profession consoled him from finding himself the butt of Bonapartist malevolence, which pursued him with a persistence he could not account for. All the rancour of that embittered and persecuted party pointed to him as the man who had never loved the Emperor—a sort of monster essentially ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... letters, makes me regret the loss of it on your departure. I feel, too, the want of a person there to whose discretion I can trust confidential communications, and on whose friendship I can rely against the unjust designs of malevolence. I have no reason to suppose I have enemies in Congress; yet it is too possible, to be without that fear. Some symptoms make me suspect, that my proceedings to redress the abusive administration of tobacco by the Farmers General have indisposed towards me a powerful ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the chief affair: to see them go. I dwelled upon the idea fiercely; and presently slipped on, in a kind of malevolence, to consider how very poorly they were like to fare when David Balfour was no longer by to be their milk-cow; at which, to my own very great surprise, the disposition of my mind turned bottom up. I was still angry; I still hated her; and yet I thought ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... an alienation between him and some of the relations of the last, will see that it amounts to nothing more than the scandals incident to imbittered parish quarrels, and inevitably engendered in such a state of credulity and malevolence, as the witchcraft prosecutions produced. Yet our "historian," in his report of the case, says: "Now G. B. had been infamous, for the barbarous usage of his two successive wives, all the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... is left a prey to the greediness and pride of the few who keep her in subjection. I grieve for you; for I fear that the evils which this day cease to affect me, and commence with you, will pursue you with even greater malevolence than they have me. Comfort, then, each other; resolve to bear up against every misfortune, and conduct yourselves in such a manner, that when disasters befall you (and there will be many), every one may ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... his urbane smile changed to a grin of impish malevolence. Even through my torpor I felt the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... spoons and ladles to Betty without a word. She was still incredulous of what she would find at the top of the three flights of creaking age-worn stairs that separated her from the nest of rooms that were the storm quarters of her hostelry, now converted by a sudden malevolence on the part of fate into a temporary hospital. As she took the last flight she could hear Gaspard's stertorous breathing coming at the regular intervals of distressful slumber, and through that an ominous ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... be rendered to him. Malevolence was not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing but hatred around him. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... lantern it is easy to see that the breakage is not due to malevolence. But it is none the less true that the two last vans, the mortuary van and the rear van occupied by the goods guard, are missing. How far off ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... serene malevolence of names Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus? Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games Would have you long,—and you are ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... the grand procession of nature; could produce rain, avert pestilence, famine, and death in all its forms. There was no idea of the certain; all depended upon divine pleasure—or displeasure, rather; heaven was full of inconsistent malevolence, and earth of ignorance. Everything was done to appease the divine wrath; every public calamity was caused by the sins of the people; by a failure to pay tithes, or for having, even in secret, felt a disrespect for a priest. To the poor multitude the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... wild Inconsistencies in the Thoughts of a Man in love, that I have often reflected there can be no reason for allowing him more Liberty than others possessed with Frenzy, but that his Distemper has no Malevolence in it to any Mortal. That Devotion to his Mistress kindles in his Mind a general Tenderness, which exerts it self towards every Object as well as his Fair-one. When this Passion is represented by Writers, it is ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele



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