"Perversely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perversely through his head, mixing themselves up with all things and rippling the air about him into their own large waves, bearing now and then upon them, like the insistent iteration of an oratorio chorus, fantastic fragments—"If Thou hadst been here!—If Thou hadst ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... been one of her childish superstitions always "to wish at the new moon." How often, her desire seeming perversely to lift itself towards things unattainable, had she framed one sole wish that she might be ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... a kind to secure the admirable objects indicated above by King James's correspondent. In fact, for hundreds of years, and with the occasional interruptions of humanity or curiosity, the Boeothics were hunted to extinction and perversely disappeared, without, it must be supposed, having attained to the "civill and regular kinde of life" which was to ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... was not even any interest which could take the place of sympathy. Elizabeth did not really care whether Denas was offended or not, but she had a conscience, and it urged her to be kind and just. And she did try to obey the order, but when orders perversely go against inclination they do ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... what equals the same, that I and the toothbrush exist so that the stellar dust and the exceedingly long consequence of natural events should have a final purpose, an ultimate end—even if not an ideal fulfillment. Now only when causality, as in the latter case, is perversely teleological is determinism fatalistic. Fatalism is the result only when the ends of activity are necessarily but arbitrarily determined. But when causality is not arbitrarily teleological, or when only the natures of things, the instruments ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... and deep as were the impressions which he retained of Scotland, he would sometimes in this, as in all his other amiable feelings, endeavour perversely to belie his own better nature; and, when under the excitement of anger or ridicule, persuade not only others, but even himself, that the whole current of his feelings ran directly otherwise. The abuse with which, in his anger against the Edinburgh Review, he overwhelmed ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... caused them to be fitted unto several times; which hereupon began to be sung in private houses, and by degrees to be taken up in all the churches of the French, and other nations which followed the Genevian platform. Marot's translation is said by Strada to have been ignorantly and perversely done, as being but the work of a man altogether unlearned; but not to be compared with that barbarity and botching, which everywhere occurreth in the translation of Sternhold and Hopkins. Which notwithstanding being first allowed for private devotion, they were by little ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... made him remember that long-past time when girls had been a part of his life. What a sad and dark and endless void lay between that past and the present! He had no right even to dream of a beautiful woman like Ray Longstreth. That conviction, however, did not dispel her; indeed, it seemed perversely to make her grow more fascinating. Duane grew conscious of a strange, unaccountable hunger, a something that was like a ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... while the sickly pining girl, who would hardly find a mate of her own rank, and who had not even dowry enough for a convent, was such a shame and burthen to her as to be almost a distasteful object. But perversely, as it seemed to her, the only daughter was the darling of both father and brother, who were ready to do anything to gratify the girl's sick fancies, and hailed with delight her pleasure in her new attendant. Old ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... falsa: sc. visa, which governs the two genitives. Goer. perversely insists on taking somniantium recordatione ipsorum closely together. Non enim id quaeritur: cf. 80 n. Sext. very often uses very similar language, as in P.H. I. 22, qu. in n. on 40. Tum cum movebantur: ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... readers have doubtless gathered long ere this, is its own kind of a country, and rewards and punishments are so perversely adjusted that it seems a sort of Topsyturvydom. In this instance certain of Addicks' heelers went to State's prison and death; Kenney returned to the Senate to help make laws for the great free people of America, while the chief conspirator, with a threat to sue the blindfolded ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... had taken the skeleton literally instead of figuratively, she knew very well; but, perversely, she ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... a line could she put on the paper. That fancy of hers was not to be dismissed at will. Her mind was perversely busy now with an imaginative picture of the beauty of Mablethorpe House and the comfort and elegance of the life that was led there. Once more she thought of the chance which Miss Roseberry had lost. Unhappy creature! what a home would have been open to her if the shell had only fallen on ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... your two long letters, my dear Etherington, with equal surprise and interest; for what I knew of your Scottish adventures before, was by no means sufficient to prepare me for a statement so perversely complicated. The Ignis Fatuus which, you say, governed your father, seems to have ruled the fortunes of your whole house, there is so much eccentricity in all that you have told me. But n'importe, Etherington, you were my friend—you held me up when I was completely broken down; and, whatever ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in time, while the succession itself was eternal, it was palpably absurd to ask us to believe in a succession of beings that was thus infinitely earlier than any of the beings themselves which composed the succession. And Bentley, more perversely ingenious still, could assert, that as each of the individuals in an infinite series must have consisted of many parts,—that as each man in such a series, for instance, must have had ten fingers and ten toes,—it was palpably absurd to ask us to believe in an infinity ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... whom the rain had driven from the links to the shelter of the Oakwood Club was Katherine. She had gone once around the short course and perversely enough her score was unusually good; but she could not get her mind off the more exciting game which she knew must be in progress along the railway line west of the river. Altogether she welcomed the rain, and was glad when its increasing violence drove them to the shelter of the club house. There ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... hand about hers in sign of perpetual possession and protection? What beneath all was he who had taken with her, thus publicly, the mighty oath of fidelity, "until death us do part"? Each had said it; each believed it; each desired it wholly. Perversely, here in the moment of her deepest feeling, intruded the consciousness of broken contracts, the waste of shattered purposes. Ah, but theirs was different! This absolute oath of fidelity one to the other, each with his own will and ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... must call in Rouen on the way back to London. He had an instinctive mistrust of her desire for the place. But, perversely, she wanted to go there. It was as if she wanted to try ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... of disorder, financial and otherwise, in building his house. When I look back to the conditions that existed on this bit of Lake-front three years ago—the frog-hollows, tiling, the wasting bluffs, excavation, thirty-five cords of boulders unloaded perversely—the mere enumeration chafes like grit upon surfaces still sore.... I have sadly neglected the study of house-building in this book. It would not do now. The fact is, I don't know how to build a house, but one learns much that one didn't know about men and money. I sat here in the main, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... to, and in view of his antecedents, the range of Carlyle's critical appreciation is wonderfully wide. Often perversely unfair to the majority of his English contemporaries, the scales seem to fall from his eyes in dealing with the great figures of other nations. The charity expressed in the saying that we should judge men, not by the number of ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... where the flames forever blaze, yet never consume; where cries ever go up for one drop of water to cool the parched tongues of those who sought not God while they lived. He had told of one who died—one that the world called good, a moral man—but not a Christian; one who had perversely neglected the way of life. How, on his death-bed, this one had called in agony for a last glass of water, seeming to know all at once that he would now be where no drop of water could ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... be unhappy if I did not. And I am—most perversely hoping for happiness. I have told myself that what I saw over John Graham's signature was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... to me," he remarked perversely, "that windows will be a superfluous luxury. One can see out at a dozen places already; and as for ventilation, there is plenty of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... got to see!" Perversely, she caught up the field glasses from the table, drew them from their case, and, letting down the upper window sash with a slam, focused the glasses upon the river. "He usually crosses right at the mouth ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... Prayer Books are, of course, incomparably the commonest of all illuminated manuscripts. They vary from loveliness to contemptibility. Perversely, they figure in catalogues, and are lettered on their backs, as Missals; our ancestors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries forgot that a Missal must contain the service of the Mass, and that none ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... you are then perversely stupid! But it is impossible that you do not realize what justice, honour, gratitude and generosity demand from you! When your uncle wrote me that pitiful letter which informed me of the death of his last son, my first thought was that his daughter must be ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... added Browne, "who perversely refused to come out of the water to be cooked, in accordance with the royal will, and who nearly bit off the sacred thumb of one of our majesties, in ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... prudence, I don't," said Rose perversely. "And what's more, I won't, as Uncle Luke has asked ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... of defence, with horns, with tusks, with hoofs, and talons; but man has to depend on his superior sagacity. In all his encounters with these, his proper enemies, he resorts to stratagem; and when he perversely turns his hostility against his fellow-man, he at first continues the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... in spite of myself those ghostly tinklings were still worrying me. Were they, or were they not, imaginary? If they were— well, there was an end of it. But if they were not imaginary; if, as I now perversely began to think, they were actual sounds, then it followed, of necessity, that there must be a craft of some sort not very ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... way, were nearer together than ever, but with the effect of only adding to the vividness of that dire non-intelligence from which, all perversely and incalculably, her very beauty now appeared to gain relief. This made for him a pang and almost an anguish; the fear of her saying something yet again that would wretchedly prove how little he moved her perception. ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Persistently, perversely, Bennett stopped his ears to every consideration, to every argument. She wished to hazard her life. That ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... raised the ire of Byron, who regarded them as an irreverent assault upon his favorite poet, Pope. In the controversy occasioned by the Rev. W. L. Bowles's strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, Byron perversely asks, "Where is the poetry of which one-half is good? Is it the Aeneid? Is it Milton's? Is it Dryden's? Is it any one's except Pope's and Goldsmith's, of which ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... next to Talten, not far from thence, at the Season of the Royal Diversions: Here he preached to Cairbre, and Conall, the two Brothers of King Leogin; the former received him with great Indignity, and perversely shut his Ears against his Doctrine; but Conall believed, and was baptized, and gave St. Patrick a Place to ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... to Corsanico is a never-ending affair. Deep in mire, it meanders perversely about the plain; meanders more than ever, but of necessity, once the foot of the hills is reached. I soon gave it up in favour of the steam-tram to Cammaiore which deposits you at a station whose name I forget, whence you may ascend to Corsanico through a village called, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... not to make use professionally of my knowledge of them. I HAD no knowledge—nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it—they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted for my confusion—perversely, I allow—by the idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the general ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... relating to charity cannot be blameworthy, since charity "dealeth not perversely" (1 Cor. 23:4). Now a man deserves to be blamed for loving himself, since it is written (2 Tim. 3:1, 2): "In the last days shall come dangerous times, men shall be lovers of themselves." Therefore a man cannot love himself ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... Committee and the Oxford Union: to Scotland for Rectorial Campaigns: dinners at the Inner Temple and the Philosophical Society: Detection Club dinners and Mock Trials, at one of which he was Defendant on the charge of "perversely preferring the past ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... a time for all things, and I must feel it unworthy of thy womanhood to so perversely jeer and flout at a good man's love, when 't is honestly ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... etape, doubtless, on the way to New York, for the Albany kinship, but the limit to our smaller patiences of any northward land-journey. And yet not the young fatigue, I repeat, but the state of easy wonder, is what most comes back: the stops too repeated, but perversely engaging; the heat and the glare too great, but the river, by the window, making reaches and glimpses, so that the great swing of picture and force of light and colour were themselves a constant adventure; the uncles, above all, too pre-eminent, too recurrent, to the creation ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... remind me of the cow that the man wanted to train so as to consider eating a superfluity—she was coming on admirably, but unfortunately for the full success of the experiment, she perversely died, the very day her owner had reduced her to ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... which would not quite declare themselves, restless fidgetings of his limbs, vague depression of spirit. Konrad Karl and Madame quarrelled openly and bitterly. His revilings stung her. Her own ill-temper left her raw. She fled to her room and locked herself into it. The King, perversely persistent, went after her. He could be heard scolding her through the closed door at one moment, begging pathetically for admittance at another. Gorman wandered restlessly from room to room. He opened windows, panting ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... agreed. "But even without that—if, as you seem to think, the very desolation of that girlish figure had a sort of perversely seductive charm, making its way through his compassion to his senses (and everything is possible)—then such words ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... sunlight. Presently he shivered slightly. He leaned his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his hands and sat still. Alexander! He felt no hot straining toward meeting, toward fighting, Alexander. Perversely enough, after a year of impatient, contemptuous thought in that direction, he had lately felt liking and an ancient strong respect returning like a tide that was due. And he could not meet Alexander in April—that was impossible! ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... years before the peace of Utrecht,) and so far the mind of any man acquainted with these circumstances was staggered, in attempting to associate this eastern wreck of Crusoe with this western island,—but a worse obstacle than that, because a moral one, is this, that, by thus perversely transferring the scene from the Pacific to the Atlantic, De Foe has transferred it from a quiet and sequestered to a populous and troubled sea,—the Fleet Street or Cheapside of the navigating world, the great throughfare of nations,—and thus ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress, by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain." Mr. Graves, the zealous friend of Shenstone, indignantly denies that any of the Lyttelton family had evinced so ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... could bestow no thought. This is common with men who have risen from poverty; if they have not become hard and suspicious, they are generally obtuse to the minor indications by which shrewd men of education know the impostor, and they are perversely indulgent to little meannesses in their fellows which they are incapable of committing themselves. In Lincoln this was aggravated by an immense good-nature—as he confessed, he could hardly say "no";—it was an obstinate good-nature, which found a naughty pleasure in refusing ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... perversely ordering that men and women of just this disposition should become desperately enamored of their exact opposites. The man of rules and formulas and hours has his heart carried off by a gay, careless little chit, who never knows the day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... and Lavender proceeded to have a game, the former being content to accept something like thirty in a hundred. It was speedily very clear that Lavender's heart was not in the contest. He kept forgetting which ball he had been playing, missing easy shots, playing a perversely wrong game, and so forth. And yet his spirits were not ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the love making of ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... little—as to my Bodleian reading, and the article on the "Poema del Cid" that I was writing. He confesses, however, that he did his best to draw me—examining the English girl as a new specimen for his psychological collection. As for me, I can only perversely remember a passing phrase of his to the effect that there was too much magenta in the dress of Englishwomen, and too much pepper in the English cuisine. From English cooking—which showed ill in the Oxford of those days—he suffered, indeed, a good deal. Nor, in spite ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... something in particular. Outside the family nothing was suspected. Lawrence Newt was simply one of those incomprehensibly pleasant, eccentric, benevolent men, whose mercantile credit was as good as Jacob Van Boozenberg's, but who perversely went his own way. One of these ways led to all kinds of poor people's houses; and it was upon a visit to the widow of the clergyman to whom Boniface Newt had given eight dollars for writing a tract entitled "Indiscriminate ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... amused him perversely. He smiled—but it was closer to a leer—and lunged into his cabin. What he said to Sheila was no joke. He really did have a splitting headache. It had come on suddenly and it was like no headache he had ever known. It pulsed and throbbed and beat against ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... the sea knows no repression. 'Twas blowing smartly, with the promise of greater strength—'twas a time for reefs; 'twas a time for cautious folk, who loved their young, to walk warily upon the waters lest they be undone. The wind is a taunter; and the sea perversely incites in some folk—though 'tis hardly credible to such as follow her by day and night—strange desire to flaunt abroad, despite the bitter regard in which she holds the sons of men. I was glad that the folk of our harbor were within the tickle: for the sea of ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... is blue-eyed and light-haired, like the Rendalens, she will devote her life to obliterating in it, or transforming into useful activities, the destructive vigor of the paternal character. Thomas, when he is born, chooses a golden mean between these two extremes, and perversely makes his appearance as a red-haired, gray-eyed infant, in which both a Kurt and a Rendalen might have made comforting observations. He is accordingly permitted to live, and to become the hero of one of the most remarkable novels which has ever been ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... January and February? Then there are those two long rows of foxgloves and Canterbury bells, across the rear of the vegetable garden, where they were set in the fall to make strong plants before being put in their permanent places—or rather their season's places, for these lovely flowers are perversely biennials, and at least seven times every spring I vow I will never bother with them again, and then make an even larger sowing when their stately stalks and sky-blue bells are abloom in summer! Tenderly you lift the pine boughs from them on a balmy April day ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... that the major part of sour-tempered, perversely wrong-headed, and unhappily disposed people, of hot-headed fanatics, victims to one idea, of once noble souls who sink themselves in sensuality, and so go down to death, and of all the sad cases one hears and reads of day after day and year ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of this transaction, therefore, we, the committee for Norfolk Borough, do give it as our unanimous opinion, that the said John Brown, has wilfully and perversely violated the Continental Association to which he had with his own hand subscribed obedience, and that, agreeable to the eleventh article, we are bound forthwith to publish the truth of the case, to the end that all such foes to the rights of British ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... my father (and I do not know whether he spoke perversely or in earnest), "a matter of ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... thought it would be only a little shower the people of Johnstown were yet more foolish. The railroad officials had repeatedly told them that the dam threatened destruction. They still perversely lulled themselves into a false security. The blow came, when it did, like a flash. It was as if the heavens had fallen in liquid fury upon the earth. It was as if ocean itself had been precipitated into an abyss. The slow but inexorable march of the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... spite of the honourable intention which involved a frequent absence from his place of commerce, those who journeyed thither with the set purpose of possessing one of his justly-famed opium pipes so perversely regarded the matter that, after two or three fruitless visits, they deliberately turned their footsteps towards the workshop of the inelegant Ming-yo, whose pipes are confessedly greatly inferior to those produced by the person who is now speaking. Nevertheless, the rapacious Kai Lung, to ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... moment Cary thought she would take it. She halted her horse at the head of it and looked down toward the gate. She sat full in his sight. He sat full in hers. She must have seen him, as he certainly saw her. Did they recognize each other? O Love, that is so sharp-eyed ever, how perversely blind it is sometimes. Cary should have pulled up his horse's reins, cleared the fence and ridden like mad up the avenue. The lady should have waved her kerchief in token of a tryst and cantered down the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Stag Inn at Wychford four miles away. Mark did not feel much inclined to blunt his impression of the chapel by perambulating Rushbrooke Grange under the guidance of Mrs. Honeybone, the old housekeeper; but Esther perversely insisted upon seeing the garden at any rate, giving as her excuse that the Rector would like them to pay the visit. By now it was a pink and green May dusk; the air was plumy with moths' wings, heavy with the scent of ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... Wynnette, perversely. "I don't remember any glorious sunshine, or splendid frost and snow, or any blue waters. It has always been rain, and mud, and darkness in this world ever since I was born! And I don't remember anything else, and I don't believe in ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Thackeray is most graphic and characteristic. He stirs in me both sorrow and anger. Why should he lead so harassing a life? Why should his mocking tongue so perversely deny the better feelings ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... much of the night was spent by him in writing; and now he could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This fine poem, perversely disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and County Magazine, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... passed his criticism over it—before it went to you—and so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it, the reason is—his merit and not mine. But don't believe him—no!—don't believe even Mr. Kenyon—whenever he says that I am perversely obscure. Unfortunately obscure, not perversely—that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then, I assure you, another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... admonition—like much of the excellent admonitions in this world—affected me perversely: it made me more restless than ever. I felt that I could not rest properly until I found out who wanted me to rest, and why. It opened indeed a limitless vista for ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... later time when Benjulia arrived, she was quiet and uncomplaining. The change for the worse which had induced Teresa to insist on sending for him, was perversely absent. Mr. Null expected to be roughly rebuked for having disturbed the great man by a false alarm. He attempted to explain: and Teresa attempted to explain. Benjulia paid not the slightest attention ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... was so unwell that I wrote to Frank Beard, from whom I shall doubtless hear to-morrow. I mention it, only in case you should come in his way, for I know how perversely such things fall out. I felt it a little more exertion to read afterwards, and I passed a sleepless night after that again; but otherwise I am in good force and spirits to-day. I may say, in ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... their progress took the form of a veritable unmasking which, perversely enough, only fixed the mask tighter upon Julien Tenney. By way of loosening up his wrist for the open season, Peter Quick Banta had taken advantage of an amiable day to sketch out a composite floral and faunal scheme on the flagging ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... so innocently and interpreted so perversely! And yet the fierce and blind bewilderment with which Phoebe read or misread them was natural enough. She never doubted for a moment but that the bad woman who wrote them meant to offer herself to John. She was separated from her husband, John had said, declaring of course that it was ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... after quelling certain rebels, set up Siward as the heir to his father's sovereignty. With him he sojourned a long time; but when he heard—for the rumour spread—that Ingild, the son of Frode (who had been treacherously slain), was perversely minded, and instead of punishing his father's murderers, bestowed upon them kindness and friendship, he was vexed with stinging wrath at so dreadful a crime. And, resenting that a youth of such great parts should have renounced his descent from his glorious ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... in dancing, which should be wilful yet airily composed, thoughtless yet inducing. Circumspection! —in nothing else hath Mary shown it where she should. 'Tis like this Queen perversely to make a psalm of dancing, and then pirouette with sacred duty. But you have spoken the truth, and I am well content. So get you to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It is better to write great things than to execute small ones. Then the soul rises on wings, the imagination is kindled; whereas it shrivels in amazement at the applause which the absurd public lavishes so perversely on that mincing creature of a Dangeville, who plays so flatly, who walks the stage nearly bent double, who stares affectedly and incessantly into the eyes of every one she talks to, and who takes her grimaces for finesse, and her little strut for grace; or on that ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this poor side of her—making a mistake? Losing, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... depths of her soul, though her lips tight set betrayed no sound. Oh, miserable chaos of the human world, that such pent up love should be wasted—wasted; that they, too, young and strong and beautiful, alone together, so near, with such glorious happiness within their reach, should yet be so perversely ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... up from her writing-table. Perhaps perversely she felt that she would mind meeting Cynthia Clarke less if her treachery had been rewarded by the accomplishment of her purpose. A useless treachery seemed to her peculiarly unpardonable. She hated having done a wrong without securing a quid pro ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... the 'European society,' the poor daughter's bugbear," I said to myself. "Certainly," I remarked aloud—I admit, rather perversely—"if you have lived a great deal in pensions, you must have got acquainted with ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... so," Chia Lien rejoined, "it will after all do! But there's only one thing; all I was up to last night was simply to have some fun with you, but you obstinately and perversely wouldn't." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... shone with inward excitement and she carried her head proudly, but her face was white. And he, sensible that she had suddenly hardened towards him and strove, he could not divine why, to keep him at arm's length, turned perversely teasing again. He would not await a more convenient season. Here and now he would satisfy his curiosity—and at her expense—regarding one at least of the queer riddles Deadham Hard had sprung ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for our separation! Pleasant were the weeks we have recently passed together in this ancient and embowered mansion! I had strongly felt the silence and vacancy of the depriving day on which you vanished. How prone are our hearts perversely to quarrel with the friendly coercion of employment at the very instant in which it is clearing the torpid and injurious mists of unavailing melancholy!' Then follows a sprightly attack before which ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... fact that his ward had fulfilled his prophecy, and he stole a few minutes out of the busy morning to motor to the Merrimans' apartment to bear the joy-bringing tidings personally to little Rose, whose eyes shone happily and whose lips smiled their thanks, but who—perversely, it seemed to him—gave Miss Merriman the reward which he felt should ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... eclipsed, now suddenly radiant and now utterly extinct, in the various and voluminous array of his writings. Although his earlier plays are in every way superior to his later, there is evidence even in the best of them of the author's infirmity of hand. From the first he shows himself idly or perversely or impotently prone to loosen his hold on character and story alike before his plot can be duly carried out or his conceptions adequately developed. His "pleasant Comedie of 'The Gentle Craft,'" first printed three years before the death of ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... perversely stripped of fear, even though he was sure some of the men out there were monsters and others were their dupes. He tapped one of the men ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... only at guarding the quality of all one does or says—or rather the very word "aims" is a wrong one; there is no longer any aim or effort, except the effort to feel which way the gentle guiding hand would have us to go; the only sorrow that is possible is when we rather perversely follow our own ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... too queer to express—was almost to wish that it shouldn't be. Then, for the future, there would be safety and peace, and not the peace of death— the peace of a different life. It is to be added that our young man clung to the former of these ways in proportion as the latter perversely tempted him. He was nervous at the best, increasingly and intolerably nervous; but the immediate remedy was to rehearse harder and harder, and above all to work it out with Violet Grey. Some of her comrades reproached him with working it out only with her, as if she were the whole affair; ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... troubled themselves about such things. I think it was a far better life when men were heathens; and now I want my food, and no nonsense.' The good-wife answered: 'I am sure you will come to sorrow to-day if you act thus perversely'. ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... affair of the moment. She had been the dupe, she had thought, of an absurd passion on her own part; but now—how was it now? She did not bring herself to think that she should ever be Lady Lufton. She had still, in some perversely obstinate manner, made up her mind against that result. But yet, nevertheless, it did in some unaccountable manner satisfy her to feel that Lord Lufton had himself come down to Framley and himself told this story. "He has told everything to Mark," said Mrs. Roberts; and ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... my shaky knees would hold me, I ran. I wanted to hide my hot face, my disgust, my disillusion; I wanted to put my head in mother's lap and cry; I wanted to die, or be ill, so I need never see him again. Perversely enough, I did none of those things. With my face still flaming, with burning eyes and hands that shook, I made a belated evening toilet and went slowly, haughtily, down the stairs. My hands were like ice, but I was consumed with rage. Oh, I would show him—that this was New ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... fire. The club was filling up, but he still had to himself the small inner room, with its darkening outlook down the rain-streaked prospect of Fifth Avenue. It was all dull and dismal enough, yet a moment earlier his boredom had been perversely tinged by a sense of resentment at the thought that, as things were going, he might in time have to surrender even the despised privilege of boring himself within those particular four walls. It was not that he cared much for the club, but that the remote contingency of having to give it up ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... laughing, dainty, snowy-fingered aristocrat, sweet-lipped, provocative, half reclining under a purposely conventional oak, between the branches of which big white clouds rolled in a dark-blue sky—this was Rosalie as Duane had painted her with all the perversely infernal skill of a brush always tipped with a mockery as delicate as her small, bare foot, dropping below the ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... speak of "my church." I occasionally read of Mr. So-and-So's church! I know that the phrase is colloquially used, but nevertheless, it is unfortunate. Words that are perversely used tend to pervert the spirit. And this phrase tends to displace the Bridegroom. It helps to make us obtrusive, unduly aggressive, when we ought to be reverently hiding our faces with our wings. The Bride ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... unprotected Japanese coast. And, at first sight, this seemed to be the Russian Admiral's intention, for, on the 4th of February, the fleet, having coaled, weighed and steamed out to sea, leaving only two battleships—the Sevastopol and Peresviet—in the harbour, where they had perversely stuck on the mud and refused to be got afloat again, for the moment at least. The Russians, twenty-six ships strong, inclusive of eleven destroyers, having cleared the roadstead, steamed slowly to the eastward, and were, that same day, sighted in the offing from Wei-hai-wei, apparently practising ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... time or space, Progressive goodness thro' the human race! Thou monitor! by youth and age revered! By wisdom prized! to tenderness endear'd! While men and angels bid thy fame extend, And nature owns thee her benignant friend; Could there be mortals so perversely blind, As coarsely to revile thy tender mind, Basely applying, with malignant glee, The hateful title Misanthrope, to thee! Let just oblivion wrap in endless night Such baleful fruits of worth-defaming spight: Truth ne'er could Cowper's want of zeal reprove, As ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley
... who says the Coming of Christ considered as a doctrine, as a truth or a motive, is not intensely practical and all-compelling to Christian devotion and service, is either blindly and excuselessly ignorant of the Word of God or brutally and perversely guilty of denying a truth that flashes like lightning from one end of the Bible to the other and illuminates every hortative passage in the ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... perversely frivolous about the most exclusive metropolitan society in the world. But Uncle Peter was a crabbed old man, lingering past his generation, and the young people made generous ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... over a difficulty is as great as his faculty of construction. Having assumed Lady Rich (that Stella whose golden hair makes half the glory of Sidney's verse) to be the "black beauty" of the Sonnets, he finds that Sonnet 130 perversely says, "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head"—a bit of evidence that would seem to upset this theory. But Mr. Massey is not to be put down so easily. This is ironical, he says in effect; Shakespeare did not mean this; "it is a bit of malicious subtlety ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... pestle and mortar on a large scale. Why we adhere to this form of pulverising machine is that, though somewhat wasteful of power, it is easily understood, its wearing parts are cheaply and expeditiously replaced, and it is so strong that even the most perversely stupid workman cannot easily break it or ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... set out with as little delay as possible for Flanders; and passing the old school by their nearest road thither, stay for an hour, find an excuse for coming into the hall in uniform, with which it must be confessed they seem thoroughly satisfied—Uthwart quite perversely at ease in the stiff make of his scarlet jacket with black facings—and so pass onward on their way to Dover, Dunkirk, they scarcely know whither finally, among the featureless villages, the long monotonous lines of the windmills, the poplars, blurred with cold fogs, but marking the ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... his face westward, a spirit that gave him no rest until, at the end of many months, he finally dropped anchor in the riotous little harbor of Lame Gulch. This turbulent haven seemed to promise every facility for the shipwreck on which he had so perversely set his heart, and he was content to wait there for whatever storm or collision should bring matters to a crisis. Perhaps the mere steady under-tow would suck him down to destruction. The under-tow is not ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... than a sapling, yet it required upward of half an hour of the most arduous and persistent labour, and several large water blisters appeared on the palms of my hands before it tottered, bent, cracked and finally fell quivering on the earth. In descending it perversely took the wrong direction, narrowly escaping striking me in its fall; indeed, one of its lower limbs severely ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the lower step to Kenneth, when he had asked that grave, sweet question of the Lord's, and said perversely,— ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... said Patty, perversely, and then, pulling out half a dozen more sprays, she threw them indiscriminately around, to Cameron, and several of the other ushers who were grouped about. Farnsworth made a slight effort to catch one, but he didn't really try, and the flower fell to the floor just beyond his reach. He ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... and never troubled greatly whether anyone else really loved him, and now he realised what he had made of his life. And at the same time he knew that if his chance were to come again he would throw it away just as surely, just as perversely. Fate played with him with loaded dice; he ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... had been in a terrible state of ferment. When he had found the philosopher, "the uncontaminated child of Nature, the self-educated combination of civilized and savage man," his daughter had perversely refused him, and the old man had taken the disappointment so to heart that he was in a state ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... would rise, at his back, for he knew that El Obeid lay due west of his present position. It was true that he had a compass attached to his watch chain, but for some unknown cause the thing had struck work a fortnight back, and now the black half, which ought always to have turned to the north, perversely remained where you choose to place it. But, after all, the sun in the morning and evening, and the polar star at night, will put you somewhere in the right direction, when you ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... consultation with him on the subject. An astonishing dish of minced asparagus fried in oil was concocted in accordance with his prescription. It was ingenious, but I preferred her dish of barbel from the Tarn, notwithstanding the multitudinous bones which this fish perversely carries in its body, to choke the enemy, although nothing could be more absurd than ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... true line of intellectual descent in prose lies through Bede (who wrote in Latin, the 'universal language'), and not through the Blickling Homilies, or, AElfric, or the Saxon Chronicle. And I am sure that Freeman is perversely wrong when he laments as a 'great mistake' that the first Christian missionaries from Rome did not teach their converts to pray and give praise in the vernacular. The vernacular being what it was, these men did better to teach the religion of ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... bit; why should it? But he really is not ill, only getting feeble and obstinate. The man is in his dotage. I saw him yesterday, and he refused, most perversely, to sanction the marriage until some facts shall come to his knowledge, of which he is not quite certain at present. I told him the young people would not wait; and he replied, that if I give you my daughter now, I shall do ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... His claim to be the King of Israel, and His silence before the Sanhedrin. That silence is only explicable because they rightly understood the meaning of the claim which they contemptuously and perversely rejected. Jesus Christ knew that His death was the forfeit, as I have said, and yet He locked His lips ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... will Thou wear this corollary. Nature ever Finding discordant fortune, like all seed Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill. And were the world below content to mark And work on the foundation nature lays, It would not lack supply of excellence. But ye perversely to religion strain Him, who was born to gird on him the sword, And of the fluent phrasemen make your king; Therefore your steps have wander'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts of honour in Typee; no unreasonable tailors and shoemakers perversely bent on being paid; no duns of any description and battery attorneys, to foment discord, backing their clients up to a quarrel, and then knocking their heads together; no poor relations, everlastingly occupying the spare bed-chamber, and diminishing the elbow room at the family table; ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... considerable time to Charley's education, but I regret to say the results never reflected much credit upon my educational powers. As for writing—it was a trying business to Charley, in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated, and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop and splash, and sidle into corners, like a saddle donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters Charley's young hands had made. They, so shrivelled ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Perversely blended with that vision of the blooming peach is a glimpse of a pet deer in the kitchen of the same little house, with its head up and its antlers erect, as if he meditated offence. My boy might never have seen him so; he may have had the vision at second hand; but it is certain that there was ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of her system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... viper of Aesop, and indicated more faintly an animal that, when one bestows the choicest favors on it, turns and rends one. Then, becoming suddenly just to the brute creation, she said: "No, it is only your abominable sex that would behave so perversely, so ungratefully." ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... temporary aims, it still remains the only wholesome and handsome choice for the race at large: and therefore do we, as a race, refuse to tolerate—on no matter how plausible an artistic plea—any view of human life which either professes indifference to this universal sentiment, or perversely challenges it. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... "If they sin against Thee (for there is no man that sinneth not) and Thou be angry with them and deliver them to be carried away captive into the land of the enemy, far or near, if they then bethink themselves and make supplication to Thee, saying, We have sinned and have done perversely and are guilty, and so return unto Thee with all their heart and all their soul in the land of the enemies which led them away captive, and pray unto Thee toward their land which Thou gavest unto their fathers, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... days of my captivity, Mrs. Clayton was truly a piteous sight to see—swathed in flannel and helpless as an infant, yet still perversely vigilant as she had been in her hours of health, and determined on the subject of opiates as before. I sometimes think she feared to place herself wholly in my hands, as she must have been under the influence ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... all, if we sat down with some propensities toward evil, and walk away with much stronger toward good, in the midst of a world which we never had entered and of which we never had dreamed before—shall we perversely put on again the old man of criticism, and dissemble that we have been conducted by a most beneficent and most potent genius? Nothing proves to me so manifestly in what a pestiferous condition are its ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his mother a haughty and violent temper, and profligate tendencies from his father. He was through life a spoiled child, whose main characteristic was willfulness. He liked to shock people by exaggerating his wickedness, or by perversely maintaining the wrong side of a dispute. But he had traits of bravery and generosity. Women loved him, and he made strong friends. There was a careless charm about him which fascinated natures as unlike each other ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... entirely new set of most perplexing circumstances. On the whole, Haldimand had done very well in spite of many personal and public drawbacks; and it was through no special fault of his, nor yet of Hope's, that the threads which Carleton picked up formed such a perversely tangled skein. ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... midst a golden apple grew,— A most prodigious pippin,—but it hung Rather too high and distant; that she threw Her glances on it, and then, longing, flung Stones and whatever she could pick up, to Bring down the fruit, which still perversely clung To its own bough, and dangled yet in sight, But always at a most ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... bore the doctor away, a perversely melancholy little figure, contemplating the young ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Mainwaring, and with such an open, good-humoured countenance, that one cannot help loving him at first sight. Mr. Johnson and he are the greatest friends in the world. Adieu, my dearest Susan, I wish matters did not go so perversely. That unlucky visit to Langford! but I dare say you did all for the best, and there ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... reformers) that these inequalities are the work of wicked and unscrupulous men. Financial or political pirates of one kind or another have been preying on the guileless public, and by means of their aggressions have perversely violated the supreme law of equal rights. These men must be exposed; they must be denounced as enemies of the people; they must be held up to public execration and scorn; they must become the objects of a righteous popular vengeance. Such are ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... which Murphy had taken up his abode was part library, part studio, and part a good many other things. A large picture—the canvas measured six feet—was being worked upon on this second morning after the young dog's arrival; and, as was perversely ruled, it was just here that an accident occurred that might well have been judged impossible. The easel, in fact, with its huge canvas, was overset, carrying many things into limbo as they fell; and with the fate that too often pursues the unfortunate, Murphy therefore ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... female point of view. The woman's wisdom stands partly, not only for a wholesome hesitation about punishment, but even for a wholesome hesitation about absolute rules. There was something feminine and perversely true in that phrase of Wilde's, that people should not be treated as the rule, but all of them as exceptions. Made by a man the remark was a little effeminate; for Wilde did lack the masculine power of dogma ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... her rebuke without protest. Either something in this passage-at-arms had perversely brought a sudden impulse to his mind, or he had all along a purpose in his fantastic trip West. As they reached the two ladies, he burst out, "Say, Madrina, why couldn't I go on to La Chance and go to school there, and live with ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... of science. The Holy Father enumerates also in this Encyclical the principal grounds of faith, and exhorts all bishops to oppose with all their zeal and learning those who, alleging progress as their motive, perversely endeavor to destroy religion by subjecting it to every man's individual judgment. He condemns indifference as regards religion, eloquently defends ecclesiastical celibacy, and, mindful that the Church is the teacher of the great as well as of the humble, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... walls: for the 2410 sins of the race, of the treacherous apostates, are heavy. I will now find out what the men are doing, O man of the Hebrews, [to see] whether they [actually] commit sins so grossly in their habits and thoughts as they perversely speak of crimes and vices: sulphur and black 2415 flame, sorely and grimly, hotly and vehemently, shall avenge this on ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... going to say had never considered it; but that would not be accurate, for we had glanced at it once or twice; and if any single incident in his or our joint cruise had provided a semblance of confirmation, he, at any rate, would have kindled to that spark. But you will see how perversely from first to last circumstances drove us deeper and deeper into the wrong groove, till the idea became inveterate that the secret we were seeking was one of defence and not offence. Hence a complete mental somersault ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... me for a moment, then he lit his pipe. It was quite true that I was in a bad temper, and I went on perversely: ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Church, that is, in his own place, with no one above him, except as, for the sake of ecclesiastical order and expedience, arrangements had been made by which one was put over or under another. So much for our own claim to Catholicity, which was so perversely appropriated by our opponents to themselves:—on the other hand, as to our special strong point, Antiquity, while, of course, by means of it, we were able to condemn most emphatically the novel claim of Rome to domineer over other ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and I remained for another year in complete ignorance of the structure of woman's sexual organs and of the intercourse between man and woman. In the meantime I cultivated my fancies of intercourse with animals, often still perversely imagining myself taking the part of the female; and the notion of such relationships gradually became so familiar as to seem possible and desirable. This is especially significant in view of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... 17. "No one would have suspected him to be a dishonest man, if he had not perversely chosen to assume a style which (as he himself confesses) the world ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... grew more perversely morbid the more she was catered to, courted, flattered, and cajoled. Something had happened, she could never guess what, perhaps some mysterious reaction effected through the chemistry of last night's slumber, to turn her vivid zest in life to ashes in her mouth, so that nothing ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... Grosvenor Square; 'tis a poor thing, however, and leaves a void in the mind, but I have had my compting-house duties to attend, my sick master to watch, my little children to look after, and how much good have I done in any way? Not a scrap as I can see; the pecuniary affairs have gone on perversely: how should they chuse [an omission here] when the sole proprietor is incapable of giving orders, yet not so far incapable as to be set aside! Distress, fraud, folly, meet me at every turn, and I am ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... from their fitting standpoint, they must still 'censure me in their wisdom,' they have previously 'awakened their senses that they may the better judge.' Nor do I apprehend any more charges of being wilfully obscure, unconscientiously careless, or perversely harsh. Having hitherto done my utmost in the art to which my life is a devotion, I cannot engage to increase the effort; but I conceive that there may be helpful light, as well as reassuring warmth, in the attention and sympathy I gratefully ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... sandals nor shoes were worn, of corns on the soles of the feet. It is, moreover, not at all uncommon to see toes cocked up, as if pressed out of their proper places; at home, we should have unhesitatingly ascribed this to the vicious fashions perversely followed ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... the minister was branded with ridicule, more pernicious, perhaps, than hatred, to a public character. The subjects of Arcadius were exasperated by the recollection, that this deformed and decrepit eunuch, [6] who so perversely mimicked the actions of a man, was born in the most abject condition of servitude; that before he entered the Imperial palace, he had been successively sold and purchased by a hundred masters, who had exhausted his youthful strength in every mean and infamous office, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... from supposing that such things enter into the purposes of those excellent persons whose zeal has led them to this kind of measure; but the measure itself will lead them beyond their intention, and what is begun with the best designs bad men will perversely improve to the worst of their purposes. An ill-founded plausibility in great affairs is a real evil. In France we have seen the wickedest and most foolish of men, the constitution-mongers of 1789, pursuing this very course, and ending in this very event. These projectors of deception set ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... CHARITY, not that charity which consists merely in feeling and speaking, but a charity that is active, and which penetrates the entire life by its divine, influence; that charity which is patient and beneficent, not envious, dealing not perversely, not puffed up. True charity is not ambitious seeks not its own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity but for the good it beholds everywhere, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things; such ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter musick of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, Perplex the fawning niece and pamper'd guest, While growing hopes scarce awe the gath'ring sneer, And scarce a legacy can bribe to hear; The watchful guests still hint the last offence; The daughter's petulance, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... stories that have been told about her would fill a book! She was exceedingly plain, rather like a toad, yet, perversely, she was more vain of her looks than of her acting. In the theater she gave herself great airs and graces, and outside it hobnobbed with duchesses ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... no part of the arrangement that she should come to fetch her; it had been out of the question—a stroke in such bad taste as would have put Rose in the wrong. The girl had never dreamed of it, but somehow, suddenly, perversely, she was glad of it now; she even hoped that her grandmother and her ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... unreasonable prejudice against western men and women, western towns and prairies, and, in short, everything western, down to western politics and western politicians, whom she perversely asserted to be tue lowest ot all western products, there was still some common sense in Sybil's idea. When that ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... word under his tongue with an accent that was a clue to the psychology of the popular drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself: "If I could only have struck that note I should have been running in six ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... think that her coldness and gravity suited her beauty—laughter, blushes, dimples would have spoiled it. Her frigid manner did not repel him now; it had a charm for him which no warmth and graciousness could have had; and yet, perversely he longed intensely to see her both kind and sweet. How beautiful she was! He glanced at her reflected face in the mirror, and winced and frowned and bit his lip, seeing his own beside it. A small, plain, dark, clean-shaven man—he was her very antithesis. Intellectual-looking, ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford |
