malice prepense

He did, it is true, occasionally chafe against some susceptible spot or other of those around him, but there was no malice prepense in it, any more than there is intentional offence in the passage of a strong man through a crowd; so he elbowed his way, and pushed on in conversation, never so much as suspecting that he jostled any one in his path.

Not at once, I confess—not off-hand, and with such malice prepense as the others—for Nicodemus Handy had a soul above such black ingratitude—but after a pause, and, let the truth be told in extenuation, because he could not help it.

The whole development of the substantive law as to murder rests on judicial rulings as to the meaning of malice prepense coupled with the extrajudicial commentaries of Coke, Hale and Foster; for parliament, though often tempted by bills and codes, has never ventured on a legislative definition.

Nature, it would seem, did not make Giles a dwarf out of malice prepense: she constructed a head and torso with her usual care: but just then her attention was distracted, and she left the rest to chance; the result was a human wedge, an inverted cone.

Occasionally they come into keen polemical strife; but it amounts to little more than a gladiatorial exhibition, or rather a light skirmishing, without malice prepense, or much evil result.