Sinister

The house itself looked toward town. it was huge and rambling and sagging, its windows haphazardly boarded shut, giving it that sinister look of all old houses that have been empty for a long time.

To my ears, there was something a little sinister in the sound of feet coming ever closer in the darkness up to an isolated cottage, but neither my host nor hostess seemed to anticipate any menace.

"A dwarf," she purred, in a voice as sinister as it was soft.

How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostóv noticed sadly that under this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed itself in the expression of Denísov's face and the intonations of his voice.

He dozed deeper, arms crossed on his chest, going over it and over it, and mixed up in all of it was this new thing, like a low and sinister counterpoint, one note at the threshold of audibility played on a synthesizer, heard in a migrainy sort of way that acted on you like a premonition: the rat, digging into the dead cat's body, munch, munch, just looking for something tasty here.

They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees.

"Attack has the sole purpose of tricking the opponent into a misstep, setting him up for the attack sinister. The shield turns the fast blow, admits the slow kindjal!"

They had drawn level with the only shop in Knockturn Alley that Harry had ever visited, Borgin and Burkes, which sold a wide variety of sinister objects.

I say at once there are fewer difficulties in holding hereditary states, and those long accustomed to the family of their prince, than new ones; for it is sufficient only not to transgress the customs of his ancestors, and to deal prudently with circumstances as they arise, for a prince of average powers to maintain himself in his state, unless he be deprived of it by some extraordinary and excessive force; and if he should be so deprived of it, whenever anything sinister happens to the usurper, he will regain it.

The waiting room was full. From behind the doctor's curtain, sinister voices murmured, interrupted by howls from savaged children. There was the clink of glass on metal, and the whisper and bubble of boiling water.

All of these were sinister incidents; but they were trifles compared to what Jurgis saw with his own eyes before long.

Thus threat'ning comets, when by night they rise, Shoot sanguine streams, and sadden all the skies: So Sirius, flashing forth sinister lights, Pale humankind with plagues and with dry famine fright: Yet Turnus with undaunted mind is bent To man the shores, and hinder their descent, And thus awakes the courage of his friends: "What you so long have wish'd, kind Fortune sends; In ardent arms to meet th' invading foe: You find, and find him at advantage now. Yours is the day: you need but only dare; Your swords will make you masters of the war. Now take the time, while stagg'ring yet they stand With feet unfirm, and prepossess the strand: Fortune befriends the bold."

For the dingy rags on his right shoulder were stained a sinister brown, and when he turned on his side he revealed the fact that those at his back were similarly stained, and a closer look through the tatters of cloth would discover that Brown's right breast was covered with a black, oozing clot of blood like an empty football bladder hanging from a bullet wound over Brown's third rib.

I looked through the keyhole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the keyhole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one.

The Purple Land is a very sinister book if read too late in life.

The Longinch himself wore black enameled plate and silvery ringmail. An onyx spider squatted malignantly atop his helmet, but his shield displayed his own arms: a bend sinister, chequy black and white, on a pale gray field. Dunk watched Ser Lucas hand it to a squire.

"The count had not uttered one word the whole of this time. His colleagues looked at him, and doubtless pitied his prospects, blighted under the perfumed breath of a woman. His misery was depicted in sinister lines on his countenance. ' M. de Morcerf,' said the president, 'do you recognize this lady as the daughter of Ali Tepelini, pasha of Yanina? '—'No,' said Morcerf, attempting to rise, 'it is a base plot, contrived by my enemies.' Haydée, whose eyes had been fixed on the door, as if expecting someone, turned hastily, and, seeing the count standing, shrieked, 'You do not know me?' said she. 'Well, I fortunately recognize you! You are Fernand Mondego, the French officer who led the troops of my noble father! It is you who surrendered the castle of Yanina! It is you who, sent by him to Constantinople, to treat with the emperor for the life or death of your benefactor, brought back a false mandate granting full pardon! It is you who, with that mandate, obtained the pasha's ring, which gave you authority over Selim, the fire-keeper! It is you who stabbed Selim. It is you who sold us, my mother and me, to the merchant, El-Kobbir! Assassin, assassin, assassin, you have still on your brow your master's blood! Look, gentlemen, all!' "These words had been pronounced with such enthusiasm and evident truth, that every eye was fixed on the count's forehead, and he himself passed his hand across it, as if he felt Ali's blood still lingering there.

Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics—all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I , the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.

He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different caste from his crew.

The story sounded ridiculous, but suddenly the piece of driftwood seemed more sinister, colder and heavier.

There were caricatures of other people: of Priscilla and Mr. Barbecue-Smith; of Henry Wimbush, of Anne and Gombauld; of Mr. Scogan, whom Jenny had represented in a light that was more than slightly sinister, that was, indeed, diabolic; of Mary and Ivor.

"No. Nobody really wanted to track Thresh down in that grass. It has a sinister feeling to it. Every time I look at that field, all I can think of are hidden things. Snakes, and rabid animals, and quicksand," Peeta says.

"Art thou not thyself the coffin full of many-hued malices and angel-caricatures of life? "Verily, like a thousand peals of children's laughter cometh Zarathustra into all sepulchres, laughing at those night-watchmen and grave-guardians, and whoever else rattleth with sinister keys.

Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the county and back, out of the corner of her eye—with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad.

Something whispers to me not to depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us, but I will not listen to such a sinister voice.

It looks less and less like a motorcycle rut in loose dirt and more like a drainage ditch for some sinister black effluent.

A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O'Beirne's wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury.

He says: "On the scutcheon we'll have a bend or in the dexter base, a saltire murrey in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron vert in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field azure , with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, sable , with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, Maggiore Fretta, Minore Otto. Got it out of a book—means the more haste the less speed."

Sand, or flint, or a desert of bare rocks was exciting sometimes, and in certain lights had the monstrous beauty of sterile desolation: but there was something sinister, something actively evil in this snake-devoted Sirhan, proliferant of salt water, barren palms, and bushes which served neither for grazing nor for firewood.

Coldly, but with a kind of repressed vehemence, General Kaplan said: "So they can see the living proof. You and I together - the killer and his victim. Standing side by side, exposing the whole sinister fraud which the police have been operating."

'Where is he?' said Frodo, looking round, as if he expected a masked and sinister figure to come out of a cupboard.

Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street.

Just behind the street was a building with a fantastic tower, a sinister conglomeration of pipes and ladders and tanks, and this, it appeared, was a sulphuric-acid works.

Sometimes it was the squat cuttlefish which drifted across and glanced at us with human sinister eyes, sometimes it was some crystal-clear pelagic form of life, cystoma or glaucus, which lent a flower-like charm to the scene.

The scar of an inkvine whip rippled along his jaw, giving him a sinister appearance, but a smile softened his face as he saw Stilgar.

He knits his thick gray brows and his eyes gleam with a sinister fire.

Inside the pub, Richard's friends continued to celebrate his forthcoming departure with an enthusiasm that, to Richard, was beginning to border on the sinister.

Like my grandmother at her petrol pump (but with more sinister motives) he gave patient audience to their woes; sipping whisky in the chandeliered splendor of ballrooms, he watched them batting their eyelids and breathing suggestively while they moaned; and always, at last, they contrived to drop a handbag, or spill a drink, or knock his swagger-stick from his grasp, so that he would have to stoop to the floor to retrieve whatever-had-fallen, and then he would see the notes tucked into their sandals, sticking daintily out from under painted toes.

Then first Polydamas the silence broke, Long weigh'd the signal, and to Hector spoke: "How oft, my brother, thy reproach I bear, For words well meant, and sentiments sincere? True to those counsels which I judge the best, I tell the faithful dictates of my breast. [pg 223] To speak his thoughts is every freeman's right, In peace, in war, in council, and in fight; And all I move, deferring to thy sway, But tends to raise that power which I obey. Then hear my words, nor may my words be vain! Seek not this day the Grecian ships to gain; For sure, to warn us, Jove his omen sent, And thus my mind explains its clear event: The victor eagle, whose sinister flight Retards our host, and fills our hearts with fright, Dismiss'd his conquest in the middle skies, Allow'd to seize, but not possess the prize; Thus, though we gird with fires the Grecian fleet, Though these proud bulwalks tumble at our feet, Toils unforeseen, and fiercer, are decreed; More woes shall follow, and more heroes bleed. So bodes my soul, and bids me thus advise; For thus a skilful seer would read the skies."

Dragon roads, men called the great stone roadways of the Freehold, but the one that ran eastward from Volantis to Meereen had earned a more sinister name: the demon road.

And then, sinister and distinct, breaking the peace of the night for good and all, two shots in rapid succession.

Rising in steep roofs and spires of seagreen slate in the manner of the old French-Scotch châteaux, it reminded an Englishman of the sinister steeple-hats of witches in fairy tales; and the pine woods that rocked round the green turrets looked, by comparison, as black as numberless flocks of ravens.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them.

that name best Befits thee, with him leagued, thyself as false And hateful: nothing wants, but that thy shape, Like his, and colour serpentine, may show Thy inward fraud, to warn all creatures from thee Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended To hellish falsehood, snare them.

The millers belonging to the mills, when they saw the boat coming down the river, and on the point of being sucked in by the draught of the wheels, ran out in haste, several of them, with long poles to stop it, and being all mealy, with faces and garments covered with flour, they presented a sinister appearance.

He experienced a keen premonition of danger and wondered if the chaplain too were plotting against him, if the chaplain's reticent, unimpressive manner were really just a sinister disguise masking a fiery ambition that, way down deep, was crafty and unscrupulous.