Sentence Examples:
Feeling ran high; and higher still when, a few weeks later, the civil magistrates vented their rage on several redcoats by imposing sentences exceeding even the utmost limits of their previous vindictive action.
Quite a change from the vaudeville show of the restless personal ambitions of vindictive fools and greedy scoundrels, the mischief and adventures of half-witted geniuses and licensed rogues that have been figures of the prologue.
Cave was, with little examination, stigmatized as the thief and murderer; not because he was more apparently criminal than others, but because he was more easily reached by vindictive justice.
What were the more violent and vindictive methods of proceeding, it is not necessary, with regard to this motion, to examine; since I shall only propose, that we should, in imitation of our predecessors, in cases of this nature, humbly address his majesty to remove the minister from his presence and councils.
"Why, Harry, they had no reason sufficient to justify them in their cruel and vindictive course; but they did no more than was to be expected from an entirely barbarous nation, and I am sure they had no good example in the conduct of the white people, from whom much better behavior might have been expected."
It was the French Revolution of that cold tyranny, the vindictive overthrow of the pampered vegetable aristocrats.
It was Victor who answered the summons, Victor with round, vindictive eyes that openly accused him for a moment, and then softened inexplicably and looked elsewhere.
Alone in his deserted house with the memory of his dead wife and child, he sat for hours brooding on these vindictive thoughts; and like a beast shaking the bars of its cage, waiting for the chance to spring, his mind raged furiously against the inhibitions the war put upon him with its iron circle of the trenches.
The Ordinance drawn up in 1648 by the Puritan authorities was incredibly vindictive against what they judged to be heretical.
She cast another vindictive glance at the young guardsman, and rattled on once more upon her way.
Something like a consciousness of having ill-treated Mark was to be traced among the people; and this feeling was manifested under a well-known law of our nature, which rendered those the most vindictive and morose, who had acted the worst.
Smith was a peculiarly saturnine individual, by far the most cruel and vindictive of our guards.
A being, whose passions have never been curbed from infancy, and whose only notion of what he conceives to be his right is to retaliate for an offense with blood, must naturally form a cruel and vindictive character.
The records of missionaries and others who have dwelt among savages contain examples of deeds as foul, as irrational, as vindictive as Medea's; deeds in which, as in the play of Euripides, the fury is vented on innocent victims, while the real culprit escapes with his life and sometimes even derives amusement from the situation.
The troubled peace was continually threatened by the actions either of ungovernable frontiersmen or of bloodthirsty and vindictive Indians.
He is considered to be very ready to take offense, vindictive, envious, and far too slow in benefaction.
The first professor, an erudite entirely worthy of the sentiment of scholarly esteem prompting the visit, behaved (if we exclude the dagger) with the vindictive jealousy of an injured Spanish beauty.
The people about me were apprized, that I entertained, and not without just reason, a very bad opinion of them; which could not but inspire them with vindictive sentiments, and a firm resolution to hurt me, if ever they had it in their power.
Beside these men, though actuated by very different and much less honorable motives, stood many recruits, some even from the Democracy, who were so vindictive against the South that they desired to inflict abolition as a punishment.
James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence of death.
He went on with his breakfast, thinking aloud for the benefit of his companion, who made no comments, preferring silence to the discomfort of talking with a man whose vindictive humor was so thoroughly uppermost.
Baited, circumvented, driven mad like the snared lion, Valor had to sink extinguished under vindictive Chicane.
On the contrary, the vindictive Grand Duke caused her to be prosecuted for blackmailing, and she would undoubtedly have languished in prison if Priscilla had not interfered and sent her back to her parents.
I accuse myself of having been imprudent and cruel; I fear I have not, as you say, inspired two undying passions, two life-long devotions, but exasperated two vindictive men.
Such is too often the real history of Indian warfare, which in general is traced up only to some vindictive act of a savage; while the outrage of the scoundrel white man that provoked it is sunk in silence.
And the monosyllable was breathed over and over again with a ferocity of emphasis that showed how deep and vindictive was the passion in the speaker's mind.
By the advice of his counselors it was resolved to waive the controversy respecting the "customs," and to fight with those more powerful weapons which the feudal jurisprudence always offered to the choice of a vindictive sovereign.
Were they plotting to bring this ambitious man and his still more ambitious and vindictive consort from the despised throne at Naples to seize on power at Paris while the Emperor was engulfed in the Spanish quagmire?
The feeble body, wrapped in brown garments, gave, by its heavy attitude and the absence of all movement, a vivid impression of the monotonous existence, the terrible repose of this man once so active, so enterprising, so vindictive.
The risk of Allan, in his wanderings, sustaining injury from these vindictive freebooters, was a perpetual source of apprehension.
German projectiles began to kick up the water close to the Vindictive and the Brigadier.
For the first time it was now ascertained that the Vindictive, in anchoring off the Mole, had over-run her station and was berthed some four hundred yards farther to the westward than had been intended.
It was his paramount duty, remitted only by death itself, to endeavor to save Iris from the indescribable fate from which no power could rescue her if ever she fell into the hands of these vindictive savages.
She believed him fully capable of vindictiveness, and yet, so subtle had been his strategy, he had not seemed vindictive.
On the large plantations the owners ruled with power unlimited over life and property, and could a faithful record be found it would prove one of vindictive oppression, productive oftentimes of misery and bloodshed.
Before being reproved and chastened we see her in history, as vindictive, unrelenting to pity, eager for retaliation.
It was the fashion for patrons of the stage at this time to treat its professors with great scorn, and often to view them with a kind of vindictive jealousy, "I see the gallants do begin to be tired with the vanity and pride of the theater actors, who are indeed grown very proud and rich," noted Pepys, in 1661.
You are blighted with eternal shame for having allowed these cowardly vindictive conspirators, popularly called the Allies, to besmear you, as well as themselves, with the blood of a hero.
It is incredible that a nation so thickly stocked with men of ability in every important department should have had the misfortune to have her affairs entrusted to Ministers and officials who were childishly incompetent and ludicrously vindictive.
The zealous biographer's research for material favorable to his deified hero caused him to ransack prints that were written by unfriendly authors and vindictive critics of the great captive.
The laws were punitive and vindictive rather than reformatory or remedial, criminal rather than civil.
In vain had they been threatened with the eternal resentment of an exasperated and vindictive enemy.
Is he a mere blusterer, whose bark is worse than his bite; or is he vindictive and unscrupulous?
And was it not possible, nay, probable, that, in her place of concealment behind the tomb, the vindictive hag had overheard the previous conversation with Dorothy, and based her own declaration upon it?
From that day he ceased to be the enemy of the white man; and as he was not one who could act a negative part, he became the firm ally and friend of those against whom his tomahawk had been so long raised in vindictive animosity.
She was a jealous and vindictive monster, delighting in cruelty, and at the slightest provocation overwhelming the unoffending victims of her rage in widespread ruin.
Her assertion of willingness to blow up innocent boarders in their beds would seem, for instance, to indicate a vixenish and vindictive sort of temper quite unwarranted by the circumstances; but a glance at the girl herself contradicts the thought.
How can justice be administered under the federal statutes if the federal judges must fight their way, while going from district to district, to overcome armed and vindictive litigants who differ with them concerning the judgments they have rendered?
Here, after stress of weather, or a temporary drubbing at the hands of their vindictive foes, or in swift flight with golden booty, those old marauders came, and lay snugly out of all harm's reach.
We do not say that the worthy baronet squinted, but there was a bad, vindictive look in his small, cunning eyes, which, as they turned upon Reilly, was ten times more repulsive than the worst squint that ever disfigured a human countenance.
Meantime, the lady had overtaken them; but, terrified by the menaces of her vindictive kinsmen, she did not dare to reveal herself to her husband, of whose concealment on the roof of the very house the party were searching she was aware.
It was not pleasant to have twelve masked faces turned upon you and to see twelve pairs of vindictive Italian eyes fixed with fierce intentness upon your face.
I recalled the swift, darting onslaughts with the fly whackers, the fierce, vindictive slaughter of the frogs, his early-morning pursuit of the flock of migrating birds.
It is so difficult, indeed, to detach the appearance of vindictive warmth from punishments which are made to follow quickly after the offense, that in all such cases there is great danger incurred of inflicting much pain to little or no purpose.
Though I rather think it is pearls before swine; for he is too good a fencer not to see I am sparing him, and too jealously vindictive to appreciate my courtesy.
As the cattleman clambered to his feet he caught one full view of the chauffeur's triumphant, vindictive face.
Even the many dark shades in his character, which could not escape her discernment, she was ever ready to palliate; and her bland influence often restrained the violence of his stern and vindictive temper.
I was transfixed by the vindictive glare of her eyes, of her huge dark eyes.
The outlaw was heavily armed, but his weapons were sheathed, and, though there was a wary glitter behind the vindictive exultation in his eyes, his capable hands betrayed no knowledge of the existence of his revolvers.
Margaret, sitting as gracefully as a beautiful cat, on the ferry boat that morning realized the vindictive working of her claws, and her impulse to strike at her odds of life, and she derived therefrom an unholy exhilaration.
They would think themselves dishonored forever, if they had not brought these crimes before your Lordships, and with the utmost energy demanded your vindictive justice, to the fullest extent in which it can be rendered.
Markham remained in office, of whom, as his immediate patron, he may have stood in awe, I am told that he restrained his natural disposition, which has been described to me as rapacious, unfeeling, haughty, and to an extreme vindictive.
His reason acquiesced in the justice of the sentence, which required blood for blood, and he acknowledged that the vindictive character of his countrymen required to be powerfully restrained by the strong curb of social law.
When a sharpshooter has picked you out and is plugging at you, they are intelligent and vindictive.
He wished to issue a vindictive proclamation, full of hot fulminations, and could scarcely be persuaded by his minister to tone down his foolish utterances.
Punishment, therefore, could not be exemplary, since the person punished exemplified nothing to Mankind; and if vindictive, then would be shocking, since that which is vindicated, in the mind of the victim either did not exist, or ought not.
Those who may feel that her history is incomplete, that they have been robbed of their full meed of vindictive satisfaction, I must refer back to an earlier paragraph.
That is the kind of man I am, hard and vindictive and selfish to the core: the man whom you have idealized, whom you have put on a pedestal all these years.
Bridget Kennedy displayed more marked traces of race than her master, but it was the Celtic nature under its least attractive aspect to strangers, proud, passionate, fanciful, and vindictive.
She was a woman false, deceitful, vindictive, malicious; but, unhappily for France, had, by her capacity, which was considerable, acquired an absolute ascendant over her son.
Such a man, standing between the hulks and a vast fortune, was necessarily vindictive, domineering, quick in decisions, yet as dissimulating as a Cromwell planning to decapitate the head of integrity.
At last the Vindictive, though a mere mangled wreck, got off and limped home victorious with all that was left of the equally daring flotilla of small craft.
The man who had made his country rich had made himself poor by his devotion to her interests, and had received nothing but vindictive abuse in requital of his unrivalled labors.
The Union men were powerless, and the secessionists were dominant in affairs and already vindictive.
She was the most imperious, restlessly proud, and vindictive woman of her time, and kept up a constant warfare with her husband and the King of France; to whom she could not endure that the Count de Lusignan should be considered a vassal.
Bitter and vindictive sarcasm, irresistible mimicry, and a pathetic narrative of his own experiences of slavery, were the intellectual manifestations which they encouraged him to exhibit on the platform or in the lecture desk.
The vindictive bitterness, the marked caution, the studied reverse, and the cumbrous ambiguity, practiced by our white folks, when alluding to this subject, was now fully explained.
The shadow of the log cabin was upon him, making more sinister his uncouth attire, and his lean vindictive face under the huge Mexican hat.
The poet had no doubt the offenses of himself and his comrades in mind at the time, and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive threats of the puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the pompous indignation of Sir Thomas.
The young man was unscrupulous and vindictive, and he obeyed no law save that of his own unbridled will.
He had the reputation of being treacherous, vindictive, and cruel; and he was not likely to grow merciful towards men who had ventured into his island in disguise, for the purpose, he would naturally suspect, not only of rescuing her, but of observing his means of defense, in order afterwards to attack him.
Nothing but the very weak state that I was in when Captain Turnbull spoke to me would have softened me down to give the kind message that I did; but my vindictive mind was subdued by disease, and better feelings predominated.
We have at least arrived at this point in our search for a definite criterion: that when in any work of art a vein of excessive cruelty or, worse still, a vein of sneering and vindictive malice, dominates the emotional atmosphere, such a work of art, however admirable it may be in other respects, falls below the level of the most excellent.
Two days later he made another and rather disconcerting discovery, which set him wondering afresh as to the real nature of the woman who, like himself, had been the victim of a strangely vindictive fate.
If affairs moved on smoothly, he was the just or magnanimous prince; if disturbed and perplexed, and his will crossed, he was the imperious and vindictive tyrant.
No longer would she forgather with the neighbors over a pot of tea for a pleasant vindictive chat.
No longer would she forgather with the neighbors over a pot of tea for a pleasant vindictive chat.
I am by nature as vindictive as an unconverted Indian, and as I am deeply convinced that it is vile and wicked, I fight vigorously against it.
It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.
Somehow he could not forget that skulking figure he had seen leaving the vicinity of the cabin at dusk, and he would have given much to have known just what mission brought the vindictive Jim out there.
French Canadian writers call him cruel, vindictive, rapacious, and arbitrary, but he has never been the favorite of historians.
The men were more disciplined and hardened on both sides; and the Federal leaders, feeling that their only hope lay in victory now, hurled brigade after brigade against the now vindictive and battle-thirsty Confederates.
Marcia the child, who had for years been her slave and done her bidding, had arisen in her way, and she hated her with a sudden vindictive hate that would have killed without flinching if the opportunity had presented at that moment.
He was so tired that when he got himself in the saddle with the cow ambling along meekly at his stirrup, he found himself feeling grateful to them instead of vindictive.
He was a man, she felt, to be feared and shunned; and very earnestly did she warn Bertrand to avoid meeting, or, at all events, all possible chance of collision with his exasperated, and, she was sure, merciless and vindictive rival.
When the hunter and his dogs encounter one of these armies, his only chance of escape is to climb the nearest tree, when they can only stand below gnashing their teeth, and gazing up at him with their vindictive little eyes.
There are many such cases, and the most vindictive individual who may believe that every who sins should be punished will admit that sterility, as the price of a moment's forgetfulness, is a terrible fee to pay.
He replied, but in a voice of inquiry; for all that he had heard of the tremendous passions and vindictive fury of the conspirator, flashed on his mind, and he fancied that he knew not what of vengeance would fall on the head of the soft beauty.
The sleepless hostility with which the Indian follows the trail of his foe, is not more vindictive and persevering than the feelings of hatred with which he coiled himself up for the spring which he was nursing all his strength to make upon me.
He picked up a quire of it, and a smile of vindictive satisfaction played upon his wrinkled face, as he discovered upon it the identical stamp of the forged note.