bedevilments

"What prevents us from coming to grips with ... our social bedevilments," Daniel Kevles of the California Institute of Technology observed in The New York Times recently, "has less to do with a lack of consilience in learning than with the interplay of interests and power."

Wilson's World 2008

Adèle, indeed, was always graciously kind, and, seeing his confirmed godlessness, tortured herself secretly with the thought that, but for her rebuff, he might have made a better fight against the bedevilments of the world, and lived a truer and purer life.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 Various

If the unhappy victims of mud-juice had constant access to the solar microscope, and there was occasionally in London a little sunshine to set off the animated bedevilments which are crowded into the composition, and could see thousands of animals, generated in filth, and living in the highest spirits and the greatest abundance, in the stuff destined for their stomachs, they would go mad.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 343, November 29, 1828 Various

After all the aches and bedevilments which had been forced on her, she might have cried aloud that some recompense was only her due.

The Emperor's Snuff-Box Carr, John Dickson, 1906-1977 1942

When he was among his own kind he summed up the bedevilments in the word "bunk."

Erik Dorn Ben Hecht 1929

Head and foot-board were fretted and carved with great blobs representing grapes, and cornucopias, and tendrils, and knobs and other bedevilments of the cabinet-maker's craft.

Cheerful—By Request Edna Ferber 1926

These, to me, were like the bedevilments of those dreams from which we groan to awake, but cannot.

London River 1915

Scotch eyes and his mother's nose and chin and a good, big, straight mouth, and full of the most engaging bedevilments for one and all.

Somewhere in Red Gap Harry Leon Wilson 1903

"That is where he does his bedevilments, I suppose?" the officer suggested.

John Thorndyke's Cases related by Christopher Jervis and edited by R. Austin Freeman 1902

I am to go and devote myself to coaxing the left ventricle wall to thicken pro rata -- among the mountains, and to have nothing to do with any public functions or other exciting bedevilments.

Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley — Volume 3 Leonard Huxley 1896